Mary Shelley 
Lodore 
Gothic Romance Novel

Lodore focuses on the microcosm of the family. The central story follows the fortunes of the wife and daughter of the title character, Lord Lodore, who is killed in a duel, leaving a trail of legal, financial, and familial obstacles for the two ‘heroines’ to negotiate. Lodore’s daughter, Ethel, is raised to be over-dependent on paternal control while his estranged wife, Cornelia, is preoccupied with the norms and appearances of aristocratic society. They are both contrasted with the intellectual and independent Fanny Derham.

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley’s works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and Enlightenment political theories.