"It is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of it's own reason"
About this Quote
Calling virtue a "farce" is doing deliberate work here: it’s not polite disagreement, it’s a takedown of morality that arrives pre-approved. Shelley frames virtue as something that can’t be inherited, imposed, or performed on cue. If it doesn’t come from the "exercise of its own reason", it’s theater - obedience dressed up as goodness.
The subtext is a quiet revolt against the era’s favored model of the “good” person: the woman trained to be compliant, the child trained to be dutiful, the citizen trained to be loyal. In that world, virtue is often measured by how smoothly you submit to authority. Shelley flips it. A virtue that isn’t chosen through thinking is suspect because it can’t be stable; it’s dependent on surveillance, reward, and fear. Today you behave; tomorrow the script changes and you follow that, too.
Context matters: the Wollstonecraft lineage (Mary Wollstonecraft’s fierce arguments for women’s rational agency) hangs over the sentence like a family standard. In the early 19th century, reason wasn’t just a mental skill; it was a political credential, routinely denied to women and the lower classes. Shelley’s line insists that virtue requires the very faculty society withholds from so many people.
It also foreshadows the moral anxiety running through her literary world: if humans outsource judgment to custom or authority, they can create monsters while believing they’re being good. Reason, in this formulation, isn’t cold logic; it’s moral ownership.
The subtext is a quiet revolt against the era’s favored model of the “good” person: the woman trained to be compliant, the child trained to be dutiful, the citizen trained to be loyal. In that world, virtue is often measured by how smoothly you submit to authority. Shelley flips it. A virtue that isn’t chosen through thinking is suspect because it can’t be stable; it’s dependent on surveillance, reward, and fear. Today you behave; tomorrow the script changes and you follow that, too.
Context matters: the Wollstonecraft lineage (Mary Wollstonecraft’s fierce arguments for women’s rational agency) hangs over the sentence like a family standard. In the early 19th century, reason wasn’t just a mental skill; it was a political credential, routinely denied to women and the lower classes. Shelley’s line insists that virtue requires the very faculty society withholds from so many people.
It also foreshadows the moral anxiety running through her literary world: if humans outsource judgment to custom or authority, they can create monsters while believing they’re being good. Reason, in this formulation, isn’t cold logic; it’s moral ownership.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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