“Islanded in the World”: Cultural Memory and Human Mobility inThe Last Man

Abstract

The Last Man, Mary Shelley's novel of 1826, describes the extinction of humanity by a plague that leaves only one man alive. The plague exerts pressure on the idea of national community by forcing a reevaluation of the number of people needed to continue a nation. It also increases human mobility, severing all local attachments as its survivors seek safety. By considering these issues, The Last Man engages with contemporary sociopolitical debates, reflects on the consequences of those debates for literary production and readership, and meditates on the possibilities for cultural memory in a peripatetic world. This essay introduces a neglected historical context for the novel: the debates over emigration, especially state-aided emigration, during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. Shelley's novel aligns itself, in a strikingly pessimistic way, with those who opposed any encouragement of emigration.

Sublimating an Apocalypse: An Exploration of Anxiety, Authorship, and Feminist Theory in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man

“…As the last man, Verney finds that his “voice, unused now to utter sound, comes strangely on [his] ears” (Shelley : 372). Sussman (: 12) states that “[t]he diminishing number of human voices first erases the identity of the nation and finally threatens to render the last individual unrecognizable to himself.” The anxiety of illness thus transpires, as Shelley identifies with Verney as the last woman of her familial, Romantic inheritance. Like Shelley, Verney’s solitude brings him to the “edge of narrative's capacity to preserve and communicate experience” (Sussman : 14).…”

“…Sussman (: 12) states that “[t]he diminishing number of human voices first erases the identity of the nation and finally threatens to render the last individual unrecognizable to himself.” The anxiety of illness thus transpires, as Shelley identifies with Verney as the last woman of her familial, Romantic inheritance. Like Shelley, Verney’s solitude brings him to the “edge of narrative's capacity to preserve and communicate experience” (Sussman : 14). Therefore, with no one left in Shelley’s life, she may have struggled with feelings of isolation, particularly in regards to her voice being heard.…”

“…The obliteration of humanity has double implications; not only is humanity demolished, but there is also the potential for those who once lived to never be remembered again. Charlotte Sussman () and Gilbert and Gubar suggest that Shelley feared her voice would not be heard or considered as significant as those who preceded her (such as her mother, father, and husband). Compounding Shelley’s “burden,” scholarly critic Anne Mellor (: 118) contributes to her apparent anxiety by discussing the deprivation of female role models and a lack of familial unity:

Mary Shelley herself was deprived of a feminist role‐model and a supportive family when her mother died and was subsequently denounced in the popular British press as a harlot, atheist, and anarchist.

…”

A literary human extinction scenario

“…. .The disease is the novel's most compelling device for imagining a world in which no culture or community can remain isolated from others'' [21]. Furthermore, ''without sufficient numbers, the nation becomes a dead body or space; without the governing idea of a nation, human interaction is reduced to the ''animal functions'' of doomed ants.…”

“…. .The empirical and figurative descriptions of the nation disengage; the ''numbers'' move on, while England becomes a ''depopulate[d]'' ''corpse'''' [22]. In a sense, MWS's depopulation of England due to the plague and the transfer of peoples across borders is a warning to her contemporary inhabitants of England that what makes them English, their culture, traditions, political organization, and kinship structures, are being threatened by large scale emigration.…”