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more faithful, more delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned Love, but he shed a grace, borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of life, which inasmuch as we rebel against, we err and injure ourselves and others, he promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable truth. In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or insensibility, or mistake. By reverting in his mind to this first principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could disclose the secrets of all hearts, and his delineations of passion and emotion touch the finest chords in our nature. Rosalind and Helen was finished during the summer of 1818, while we were at the Baths of Lucca."
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marriage. The bridegroom dies from the shock of the revelation. They would be committing incest. When the father dies, he leaves
Rosalind and her mother with nothing. She is forced to marry a man she does not love in order to provide for herself and her mother. She has three children, all of whom loathe their father. The father dies. In his will, he stipulates that his wife shall not receive anything and that the children will be provided for as long as their mother separates from them. Rosalind decides to accept the terms rather than subject her children to poverty and want. She can no longer see her children.
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about that spot: "This silent spot tradition old/Had peopled with the spectral dead." A "hellish" shape appears regularly at midnight who leads the ghost of a youth and sits beside him there. A naked child wanders by when "the fiend" turns into "a lady fair". This is due to "a monstrous curse" because of incest between a brother and a sister that was "solemnized" at that spot. The sister and her child were murdered there by a mob. The brother was burned alive in the market-place. This tale of intolerance foreshadows the stories that
Rosalind and Helen relate.
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By contrast, Helen loves "not wisely but too well", rejecting the societal norms and traditions of marriage. She is in love with the upper-class Lionel, who is amiable and outgoing but who espouses radical and revolutionary ideas which seek to reform and change the system under which he lives. He is
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Helen is traumatized by his death. She is cared for by Lionel's mother. During this time, Helen gives birth to a son. Lionel's mother dies during this period. Helen recovers. She discovers that Lionel had left her large sums of money and assets in his will. The "ready lies of law", however, prevent
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was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside, till I found it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind, and develop some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human life and the human heart, no pictures can be
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Rosalind and Helen are two exile
English women who meet at the shore of Lake Como in northern Italy. Helen is accompanied by her son Henry. They sit on "a stone seat beside a spring" in a wooded and secluded mountainous region to relate their experiences. First, a "speaker" relates a local legend
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Rosalind relates her story. She was living with her mother. Her father was absent. She established a relationship with a man whom she planned to marry. As they prepared to wed at the altar, her father appeared and informed them that the bridegroom was his son by another woman. He forbids the
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Lionel attacks the social, political, and religious status quo of society. He makes speeches and issues pamphlets. Frustrated in reforming society imbued with "tyranny" and "superstition", he becomes an exile and wanderer, an outcast from society. He returns after three years and renews his
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Rosalind is reunited with her daughter. Her daughter and Helen's son live together and eventually establish a relationship and plan to wed. It is unclear, however, if they follow the traditional marriage vows as
Rosalind did or whether they reject them as Lionel and Helen did.
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Shelley uses the motif of "worms" as a poetic symbol or evocation of death in the work: "When he was in the church-yard lying/Among the worms. ... And the crawling worms were cradling her. ... he dead ... Among their crawling worms."
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The poem was begun at
Marlowe in the summer of 1817. Shelley sent a copy to the publisher in March, 1818, before leaving England. It was completed in August, 1818 at the Baths of Lucca in Italy and published in the spring of 1819.
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relationship with Helen. His spirit is revived with new hope and vigor to renew the battle against the powers that be but his health begins to decline. Their relationship is unconventional and unorthodox.
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The final epithet posits an ambiguous and conjunctive posthumous transcendence: "And know, that if love die not in the dead/As in the living, none of mortal kind/Are blessed, as now Helen and
Rosalind."
74:, but removed in the 1831 edition, which Shelley contributed to in 1816–1817. Victor Frankenstein marries his cousin Elizabeth. Shelley would return to the controversial incest theme in the 1819 play
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Shelley seeks to show the role or plight of women under the traditional and conventional laws and customs of marriage. Rosalind is a pliant victim. She stoically follows those customs.
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Lionel is subsequently arrested on charges of blasphemy and seditious libel for his alleged attacks against religion and the government. He is sent to prison.
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a thinly disguised characterization of
Shelley himself. Rosalind looked askance at their relationship at that time and broke off her friendship with Helen.
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He is released "soon, but too late" from imprisonment. He takes a carriage from London to his residence in Wales. He is near death. He dies soon after.
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Helen lives in a house with her son on the banks of Lake Como. Helen and
Rosalind subsequently both live at this house.
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described the genesis of the poem and
Shelley's theme of "Love" as "the law of life" and "the essence of our being": "
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The themes in the poem, such as marriage, political and religious reform, and incest, demonstrate similarities to
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published in 1819. The collection also contains the poems "Lines written on the
Euganean Hills", "
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edited by Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb.London and New York: Routledge, 2015, pp. 117-136.
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Robinson, Charles E. "Percy Bysshe Shelley's Text(s) in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's
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Donovan, Jack. "Shelley's Second Kingdom: Rosalind and Helen and 'Mazenghi' in
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286:: A Lecture. London: Printed for private circulation, 1888.
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her from securing it. She brings legal action to obtain it.
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Wolfstein, The Murderer; or, The Secrets of a Robber's Cave
223:: A Lecture. London: Printed for private circulation, 1888.
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Rosalind and Helen: A Lecture by Harry Buxton Forman,1888.
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Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle
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Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; With Other Poems
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Online version. Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue.
139:Rosalind dies at an early age. Helen outlives her.
293:, Vol. 30, No. 2 (April, 1931), pp. 218–222.
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438:Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things
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291:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology
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509:Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson
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271:Donovan, Jack. "Shelley's Second Kingdom:
257:Rosalind and Helen. 1819 edition, page 68.
246:Rosalind and Helen. 1819 edition, page 48.
25:1819 title page. C. and J. Ollier, London.
289:Havens, Raymond D. "Rosalind and Helen",
174:Havens, Raymond D. "Rosalind and Helen",
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16:Poem collection by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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766:Wolfstein; or, The Mysterious Bandit
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782:Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline
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646:Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude
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954:The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley
485:" (published posthumously, 1840)
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1072:Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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860:The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
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1034:The Haunting of Villa Diodati
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431:The Necessity of Atheism
34:is a poem collection by
961:Shelley's Vegetarianism
1051:Shelley Memorial Award
282:Forman, Harry Buxton.
219:Forman, Harry Buxton.
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986:Bride of Frankenstein
968:Shelley: A Life Story
917:Thomas Jefferson Hogg
710:The Masque of Anarchy
277:The Neglected Shelley
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1092:Works about marriage
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937:Edward John Trelawny
790:Zastrozzi, A Romance
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36:Percy Bysshe Shelley
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854:authorship question
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702:The Triumph of Life
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483:A Defence of Poetry
208:Rosalind and Helen.
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368:Prometheus Unbound
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989:(1935 film)
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758:Adaptations
528:Short poems
423:Non-fiction
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1077:1819 poems
1066:Categories
978:Portrayals
922:John Keats
901:Lord Byron
739:Proserpine
630:Long poems
564:Ozymandias
557:Mont Blanc
543:Mutability
412:St. Irvyne
147:References
50:Background
638:Queen Mab
592:The Cloud
404:Zastrozzi
360:The Cenci
77:The Cenci
891:(father)
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42:", and "
1102:Sonnets
1044:Related
678:AdonaĂŻs
613:A Dirge
396:Fiction
266:Sources
1002:Gothic
879:(wife)
870:People
801:Places
793:(1986)
785:(1977)
777:(1850)
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376:Hellas
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747:Midas
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