In no country of Europe is the marriage vow kept. Why not then, argued Shelley, abolish this institution which makes hypocrites of men? “Marriage is the tomb of love.... Two lovers only meet when in good humor, or when resolved to be so; a married couple think themselves entitled to torment each other with their ill-humors. When a lover presents a trifle to his beloved, she receives it with smiles; when a husband makes a present to his wife, which indeed happens seldom enough, he runs the risk of being told that he has no taste, or that she could have bought it cheaper.”[41]
The Empire of the Naires is not so much an exposition of the free-love system of the Naires as a grossly distorted and exaggerated picture of the miseries that follow from the present system of regulating the relations between the sexes in the different countries of the world. Lawrence draws horrible pictures of misery, degradation, and even murder that are a consequence of our opinions on love and marriage. “Whenever women are treated like slaves,” he writes, “they act like slaves with artifice and hypocricy.”[42] Shelley affirms that “the present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites of open enemies.”[43]
Lawrence attributes the social evil to the existing code of morality. If a girl falls, she is driven from her home, and the only road then open to her is that which leads to the brothel. “Prostitution,” says Shelley, “is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors. Women for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. Society avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation.”[44]
It does not seem that Shelley made much use of the plot or rather of the different incidents of the Empire of the Naires. However, it may not be amiss to indicate the slight resemblance that exists between the story of Margaret Montgomery and that of Rosalind in Rosalind and Helen.
Rosalind loves a young man whom she is about to marry. On the day fixed for the wedding, her father returns from a distant land to die, and informs them that Rosalind and her lover are brother and sister.
Hold, hold!
He cried! I tell thee ’tis her brother!
Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod
Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold;
I am now weak and pale, and old:
We were once dear to one another,
I and that corpse! Thou art our child!
Her betrothed falls dead on the receipt of this news. Rosalind marries another who uses her very cruelly, perhaps because she gives birth to an illegitimate child. Her husband dies, and his will, because she was adulterous,
Imported, that if e’er again
I sought my children to behold
Or in my birthplace did remain
Beyond three days, whose hours were told,
They should inherit naught:
In The Naires Margaret Montgomery and James Forbes had known and loved each other from childhood. Shortly before the time set for their wedding, James’ father sent a letter to Margaret’s father breaking off the marriage in the most positive terms. The latter’s pride was inflamed, and a quarrel ensued in which Forbes was mortally wounded. The dying man sent for Margaret and told her that she and her lover are sister and brother, that he and not Montgomery was her father, and hence her mother’s and his opposition to the marriage. Margaret is enceinte, and her reputed father turns her out of doors. Her lover is killed in Naples. A friend sends Margaret some money during her stay in London. Shelley makes Rosalind, who has been dispossessed too, receive some money from an old servant.
Rosalind and Margaret are separated from their life-long friends who know—