The subject of this book is the importance of the mother–infant relationship in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry and life. However, the book also uses Shelley as a touchstone by which to examine the rich historical and theoretical issues relevant to motherhood in the Romantic period. The book offers a detailed account of the historical rise in attention paid to mothering, the changing cultural attitudes towards the role of the mother, and the resulting effect on the nature of family life. It further discusses the psychoanalytic, Marxist, and developmental approaches to the mother–infant relations ... More

The subject of this book is the importance of the mother–infant relationship in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry and life. However, the book also uses Shelley as a touchstone by which to examine the rich historical and theoretical issues relevant to motherhood in the Romantic period. The book offers a detailed account of the historical rise in attention paid to mothering, the changing cultural attitudes towards the role of the mother, and the resulting effect on the nature of family life. It further discusses the psychoanalytic, Marxist, and developmental approaches to the mother–infant relationship, particularly to the connection each makes between that relationship and the acquisition of language. By combining psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and feminist theory with extensive biographical material on Shelley and information on the position of mothers in England after 1790, the book offers an important reassessment of Shelley’s avowed feminism and the failure of his utopian vision.