History of A Six Weeks' Tour - Genre

Genre

History of a Six Weeks’ Tour is a travel narrative, part of a literary tradition begun in the seventeenth century. Through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Continental travel was considered educational: young, aristocratic gentlemen completed their studies by learning European languages abroad and visiting foreign courts. In the early seventeenth century, however, the emphasis shifted from classical learning to empirical experience, such as knowledge of topography, history, and culture. Detailed travel books, including personal travel narratives, began to be published and became popular in the eighteenth century: over 1,000 individual travel narratives and travel miscellanies were published between 1660 and 1800. The empiricism that was driving the scientific revolution spread to travel literature; for example, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu included information she learned in Turkey regarding smallpox inoculation in her travel letters. By 1742, critic and essayist Samuel Johnson was recommending that travelers engage in "a moral and ethical study of men and manners" in addition to a scientific study of topography and geography.

Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Grand Tour became increasingly popular; travel to the Continent for Britain’s elite was not only educational but also nationalistic. All aristocratic gentlemen took similar trips and visited similar sites, often devoted to developing an appreciation of Britain from abroad. The Grand Tour was celebrated as educational travel when it involved exchanging scientific information with the intellectual elite, learning about other cultures, and preparing oneself to lead. However, it was condemned as trivial when the tourist simply purchased curio collectibles, acquired a "superficial social polish", and pursued fleeting sexual relationships. During the Napoleonic Wars, the Continent was closed to British travellers and the Grand Tour came under increasing criticism, particularly from radicals such as William Godwin who scorned its aristocratic connections. Young Romantic writers criticised its lack of spontaneity; they celebrated Madame de Staёl's novel Corinne (1807), which depicts proper travel as "immediate, sensitive, and above all enthusiastic experience".

A new form of travel emerged—Romantic travel—which focused on developing "taste", rather than acquiring objects, and having "enthusiastic experiences". History of a Six Weeks' Tour embodies this new style of travel. It is a specifically Romantic travel narrative because of its enthusiasm and the writers' desire to develop a sense of "taste". The travellers are open to new experiences, changing their itinerary frequently and using whatever vehicles they can find. For example, at one point in the journal, Mary Shelley muses:

The money we had brought with us from Paris was nearly exhausted, but we obtained about £38. in silver upon discount from one of the bankers in the city, and with this we resolved to journey towards the lake of Uri, and seek in that romantic and interesting country some cottage where we might dwell in peace and solitude. Such were our dreams, which we should probably have realized, had it not been for the deficiency of that indispensible article money, which obliged us to return to England.

Not everything she encounters is beautiful, however, and she juxtaposes her distaste for the German working class with her delight with French servants. Although politically liberal, Mary Shelley is aesthetically repelled by the Germans and therefore excludes them. Unlike the non-discriminating Claire Clairmont, Shelley feels free to make judgments of the scenes around her; Shelley writes that Claire "on looking at this scene...exclaimed, 'Oh! this is beautiful enough; let us live here.' This was her exclamation on every new scene, and as each surpassed the one before, she cried, 'I am glad we did not stay at Charenton, but let us live here'". Shelley also compares herself positively to the French peasants who are unaware that Napoleon has been deposed. As scholar Angela Jones contends, "Shelley may be said to figure herself as a more knowledgeable, disinterested English outsider capable of rendering impartial judgment"—an Enlightenment value.

However, as Romanticist Jacqueline Labbe argues, Mary Shelley challenges the conventions of the Romantic travel narrative as well. For example, one reviewer wrote, "now and then a French phrase drops sweetly enough from fair mouth", and as Labbe explains, these phrases are supposed to lead the reader to imagine a "beautiful heroine and her group passing easily from village to village". However, both French quotations in History of a Six Weeks' Tour undercut this Romantic image. The first describes the overturning of a boat and the drowning of its occupants; the second is a warning not to travel on foot through France, as Napoleon’s army has just been disbanded and the women are in danger of rape.

While the overarching generic category for History of a Six Weeks' Tour is that of the travel narrative, its individual sections can be considered separately. The first journey is told as a "continuous, undated diary entry" while the second journey is told through epistolary and lyric forms. Moskal agrees with Reiman that the book was constructed to culminate in "Mont Blanc" and she notes that this was accomplished using a traditional hierarchy of genres—diary, letters, poem—a hierarchy that is gendered as Mary Shelley’s writings are superseded by Percy’s. However, these traditional gender-genre associations are undercut by the implicit acknowledgment of Mary Shelley as the primary author, with her journal giving the entire work its name and contributing the bulk of the text.

The journal is also threaded through with elements of the medieval and Gothic romance tradition: "accounts of ruined castles, enchanting valleys, and sublime views". In fact, in "The English in Italy", Mary Shelley writes of the journey that "it was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance". However, these romantic descriptions are often ambiguous. Often single sentences contain juxtapositions between "romance" and "reality": "Many villages, ruined by war, occupied the most romantic spots". She also references Don Quixote, but he was "famous for his delusions of romance", as Labbe points out. Mary Shelley’s allusions to Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605) not only places her text in a romance tradition, they would also have hinted at its radicalism to contemporary readers. During the 1790s, Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, connected his support for the French Revolution with the romance tradition, specifically Don Quixote and any allusion to the novel would have signalled Godwinian radicalism to readers at the time. It would also have suggested support for reform efforts in Spain, which was rebelling against Napoleon. The beginning of the journal is dominated by romance conventions, but this style disappears when the travellers run out of money. However, romance conventions briefly return during the trip down the Rhine. As Labbe argues, "it would appear that while seems to be industriously salting her narrative with romance in order, perhaps, to garner public approval, she also ... exposes the falsity of such a scheme."

One of the most important influences on History of a Six Weeks' Tour was Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), written by Mary Shelley’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft. A travel narrative which reflects on topography, politics, society, aesthetics, and the author’s personal feelings, it provided a model for Mary Shelley's work. Like her mother, Mary Shelley revealed her liberalism by boldly discussing politics; however, this political tone was unusual for travel works at the time and was considered inappropriate for women writers. Like Wollstonecraft’s Letters, History of a Six Weeks' Tour blurs the line between private and public spheres by using intimate genres such as the journal and the letter, allowing Mary Shelley to present political opinions through personal anecdote and the picturesque.