Empiricism’s Secret History: Fleetwood and Rousseau

Criticism often organizes Godwin’s career by genre, suggesting that Godwin progressed from political theory to sentimental fiction. Instead this chapter argues that Godwin follows Rousseau in writing literature to ‘judge’ his own philosophy. In Enquiry Concerning Political Justice Godwin posits society as prior to the individual. He regards the general good as mandatory rather than voluntary. Godwin’s novels examine the struggles of individuals in conforming to his model of compulsory sociability. In Fleetwood and Mandeville Godwin explores the shortcomings of Rousseau’s theory of individualist education. He fictionalizes Rousseau, Hume, Wollstonecraft, and the First Earl of Shaftesbury, exploring the shortcomings of their theories. In Fleetwood Godwin uses elements of the genre of the secret history to explore political theory’s failure to validate women within the public sphere. Deloraine extends Godwin’s criticism of the social contract tradition for being inherently patriarchal. In Godwin’s writings Rousseau eclipses Aristotle as the founding theorist of sociability.