Motherhood, children and loss in the works of Sara Coleridge and Mary Shelley, 1820-52

Molly Watson

Motherhood, children and loss in the works of Sara Coleridge and Mary Shelley, 1820-52

Publication Date

July 28, 2026

Creator

Molly Watson

University of Nottingham, UK

Abstract

This thesis traces a rhetoric of maternal loss in a group of hitherto relatively unexplored works by Sara Coleridge and Mary Shelley, from 1820 to 1852. I read Coleridge and Shelley not only as the daughters of famous authors, but as mothers themselves. In so doing I aim to show how Coleridge’s and Shelley’s conceptions of the family coalesced around loss. This thesis argues that Coleridge and Shelley use the language of mourning to interrogate different types of absent presence. The absent presence was an enduring figure in nineteenth-century literary culture. Even if an individual was physically absent, their presence was still felt. In this thesis the absent presence refers to both deceased individuals and those who are ‘lost’, such as missing children and parents. It considers both the theological and secular significance of the absent presence in Coleridge’s and Shelley’s body of work. It uses a range of unpublished and unused manuscript material from the Coleridge and Godwin-Shelley family archives, including correspondence, journals, commonplace books, biographical accounts, and verse. By using manuscripts by and related to Coleridge’s and Shelley’s parents and children, this thesis aims to develop a new analysis of intergenerational loss. By this I mean that Coleridge and Shelley mourn as mothers, daughters, wives, and widows. In so doing this thesis aims to develop a new analysis of Coleridge’s and Shelley’s work for and about children and motherhood within the context of mourning culture; to examine different forms of mourning and loss in the Romantic and Victorian periods; and to investigate how themes of loss can be shown to have shaped Coleridge’s and Shelley’s approaches to motherhood and childhood. My analysis consists of four main chapters. The first two focus on Sara Coleridge. Chapter 1 considers the ways in which Coleridge presents herself as an absent mother in her 1830s poems to and for children. I argue that Coleridge uses maternal absence as a means of interrogating the relationship between mothers and children. Chapter 2 extends this idea of maternal absence in its analysis of (un)dead mothers in Coleridge’s fantasy novel, Phantasmion (1837). By ‘(un)dead’ I mean mothers that die only to return. It argues that Coleridge uses the materiality of death to interrogate maternal absence. Chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to Mary Shelley. Chapter 3 develops my previous explorations of parental loss in its exploration of child abduction in Shelley’s short stories for children, Proserpine and Maurice; or, The Fisher’s Cot (both 1820). It contends that Shelley uses storytelling as an intergenerational strategy whereby lost child and grieving parent are reunited. My analysis is informed by Shelley’s own experience as a grieving mother. Chapter 4 builds upon this line of thought by considering Shelley’s position as a widowed mother in her travel memoir, Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844). This chapter seeks to highlight Shelley’s self-fashioning as a widowed mother who grapples with the loss of her husband and children as she goes on a spiritual journey of recovery. The conclusion considers the legacy of maternal absence in regard to Jane, Lady Shelley and Edith Coleridge, both of whom used biography as a form of memorialisation. Full transcriptions of archival material referenced in this thesis are available in the Appendices. By reading their work through the lens of maternal and child absence, this thesis aims to highlight the multiplicity of loss. Intergenerational dynamics are central to Coleridge’s and Shelley’s conceptions of the family. These writings reveal the nuance of loss in the Romantic and Victorian period. Coleridge and Shelley mourned as daughters, wives, and mothers. While this thesis is about Sara Coleridge and Mary Shelley, the themes of maternal and child loss have wider cultural significance throughout the period. It compares Coleridge and Shelley with writers such as Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sarah Fricker Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, William Godwin Jr., Felicia Hemans, Anne Grant, and Clotilda Elizabeth Stisted. Moreover, it draws connections between the nineteenth-century and earlier literary representations of maternal loss. By so doing this thesis locates maternal and child loss as an enduring cultural phenomenon in literary history.

Item Type

ethesis

Thesis Type

PhD

Supervisors

Pratt, Lynda