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Mary Shelley, Corinne, and “the mantle of enthusiasm”

Germaine de Staël’s writings, particularly Corinne with its portrait of the woman artist as improvisatrice and ideology of enthusiasm, play a significant role in Shelley’s thinking about notions of freedom. Shelley’s accounts of the improvisatore Tommaso Sgricci in her letters and journals and in her essay “The English in Italy” are influenced by her reading of Corinne and influence an exploration of the inspired woman in her fiction, as well as the critical perspective Shelley takes in her biography of Staël. The two writers share a conviction that emancipation arises from uniting inspiration with Godwinian forms of conversation and communality; Staël’s awareness of William Godwin is made clear in the second edition of De la Littérature. In Shelley’s own formulation, the improviser provides a model for female authority. If she shares with Staël a sense of the difficulty women writers have in finding a public voice, her opinions incorporate a deep familiarity with the writings of her father Godwin. Shelley imagines a space for women in the arena of political reform which frees them from the kinds of constraint Staël traces in her novel.