Reading Perdita: Spoiler Alert!

Reading Perdita: Spoiler Alert!

In Shelley’s The Last Man, Perdita, Lionel’s sister is an intriguing character. Her name is a Shakespearian reference to The Winter’s Tale. In Shakespeare’s play, Perdita is the Sicilian princess unaware of her own royal status because her father, King Leonotes, suspected Queen Hermoine of adultery before Perdita was born. Perdita grows up poor, but in the plot of the play, learns of her royalty, is reunited with her parents, and lives happily ever after with her lover Florizel. Shelley’s Perdita is quite different. although their beginnings are quite similar. Both Perditas begin with nothing. And Shelley’s Perdita has fallen from a high position due to her father’s demise. Here the stories start to deviate. The suspected adultery in The Winter’s Tale is perhaps emulated in Shelley’s Perdita through her husband, Raymond’s infidelity later in the book. However, Shakespeare’s Perdita enjoys a happy ending. Shelley’s does not. When Lionel decides to take Perdita away from the city Raymond died against her will, she takes her own life. After all, the name “Perdita” means “loss” in Italian. And maybe in her own way, Shelley uses her own Perdita to rewrite Shakespeare. The Winter’s Tale is considered as one of his problem plays, as the first three acts are full of psychological tension, while the last three acts end as a comedy.

            Although, what seems even more interesting regarding Perdita is how Lionel describes her, especially in her childhood. Very early in the novel, he describes his sister as such: “If my darling and courage obtained for me a kind of respectful aversion, her youth and sex, since they did not excite tenderness, by proving her to be weak, were the causes of numberless mortifications to her; and her own was not to be constituted as to the evil effects of her lowly status” (11). Pretty harsh words to describe a young girl, let alone a sister. And it seems strange that Lionel regards Perdita’s status as low when his is no higher. At this point in the novel, they both have nothing. so why does Lionel perceive himself superior? Probably because he is a man, their only difference. And let’s also consider that when Perdita is older Lionel seems to miraculously find her less repugnant, and Shelley offers no explicit answer as to why. I believe the only possible reason is that when Perdita is older and at a mature age, she can offer something to society in Lionel’s eyes: she can bear children, when as a girl, she had no such ability. Perhaps in this way, Shelley is very subtly critiquing the way men have only found value in women through their power of reproduction. And perhaps that better explains why Perdita kills herself. When Raymond dies, she no longer has the opportunity to bear children. This is only one way that Shelley puts forward a feminist argument in The Last Man.