"Do You then Repair My Work": The Redemptive Contract in Mary Shelley's Valperga (Critical Essay‪)‬

MARY SHELLEY'S VALPERGA, PUBLISHED IN 1823, OFFERS A REVISION OF fourteenth-century Italian political history by inserting two fictional characters into "The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca," as the subtitle reads. Careful examination of the rhetoric of bargain, promise, and exchange in the novel reveals a persistent concern with contract not yet addressed in the critical literature. Specifically, the novel exposes how contractual relations between the characters lead to inequities that require coveting up, in the form of "care" for others, in order to validate the economic and moral aspects of contract. Given this concern, the novel may be read as a displacement of Shelley's nineteenth-century present that offers a sustained critique of the role of contract in prevailing economic thought. Valperga tells the story of childhood friends Euthanasia, Countess of Valperga, and Castruccio, the future prince of Lucca. (1) Euthanasia, educated in history and classics by her father, rules benevolently over her ancestral estate. Castruccio, on the other hand, is exiled with his Ghibelline family from his homeland as a child, and schooled in the arts of war and political intrigue. He returns to Italy intent on accumulating political power, and his increasing ambition, corruption, and cruelty estrange him from Euthanasia. Even after conquering Florence and capturing Euthanasia's palace, Castruccio continues to insist that she be his. In the course of securing political allies in the Church, Castruccio seduces and abandons a young girl, Beatrice, who is convinced until her fall that she is the chosen prophet of God. Neither woman survives the machinations of Castruccio. Beatrice succumbs to madness and death after a severe, self-inflicted atonement, and Euthanasia dies in a shipwreck after being exiled from Italy for her participation in an assassination plot against Castruccio.