The Utopian Possibilities of the Plague in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man

Abstract

This article examines the utopian possibilities of the plague in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826). Contrary to literary critics who employ the immense destruction the plague causes in the novel to read it as a deeply pessimistic text, which they interpret as Shelley’s skeptical response to the optimism found in the early progressive works of Romantic writers, I suggest Shelley nonetheless maintains her faith in the future fate of humanity, which is brought into greater relief when one compares The Last Man to Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). It is my argument that Shelley counters Malthus’s dystopian projections about the poor by using the pestilential disease as a means to alleviate their dismal living conditions in her last man narrative. By illustrating how Shelley employs the plague’s mode of transmission, its widespread infection, the extensive mobility it necessitates, and the source of Lionel’s immunity to collapse the distinctions between the different social classes and generously redistribute the world’s limited resources, this article sheds light on the utopian society that Shelley envisages being temporarily formed in a plague-ravaged world. In so doing, it demonstrates how Shelley’s apocalyptic novel constitutes a crucial example of a “critical dystopia,” which Tom Moylan defines as a dystopia that retains a utopian essence despite its apparent pessimism.