189:— by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Summary, Meaning & Analysis
Shelley argues that marriage, as dictated by law and religion, acts more like a cage that stifles love instead of safeguarding it.
The poem
Even love is sold. Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary affections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve. How long then ought the sexual connection to last? what law ought to specify the extent of the grievances which should limit its duration? A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other: any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation of the right of private judgement should that law be considered which should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human mind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of the object. The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness and imperfect civilization. The narrow and unenlightened morality of the Christian religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness is the sole end of the science of ethics, as of all other sciences; and that the fanatical idea of mortifying the flesh for the love of God has been discarded. I have heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour of Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling! (The first Christian emperor made a law by which seduction was punished with death; if the female pleaded her own consent, she also was punished with death; if the parents endeavoured to screen the criminals, they were banished and their estates were confiscated; the slaves who might be accessory were burned alive, or forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring of an illegal love were involved in the consequences of the sentence.—Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall”, etc., volume 2, page 210. See also, for the hatred of the primitive Christians to love and even marriage, page 269.) But if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and disunions; if the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, then the connection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the comfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved when its evils are greater than its benefits. There is nothing immoral in this separation. Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow, in both cases, excludes us from all inquiry. The language of the votarist is this: The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to many others; the creed I now profess may be a mass of errors and absurdities; but I exclude myself from all future information as to the amiability of the one and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and in spite of conviction, to adhere to them. Is this the language of delicacy and reason? Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth than its belief? The present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to one whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest season of their life in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their partner or the welfare of their mutual offspring: those of less generosity and refinement openly avow their disappointment, and linger out the remnant of that union, which only death can dissolve, in a state of incurable bickering and hostility. The early education of their children takes its colour from the squabbles of the parents; they are nursed in a systematic school of ill-humour, violence, and falsehood. Had they been suffered to part at the moment when indifference rendered their union irksome, they would have been spared many years of misery: they would have connected themselves more suitably, and would have found that happiness in the society of more congenial partners which is for ever denied them by the despotism of marriage. They would have been separately useful and happy members of society, who, whilst united, were miserable and rendered misanthropical by misery. The conviction that wedlock is indissoluble holds out the strongest of all temptations to the perverse: they indulge without restraint in acrimony, and all the little tyrannies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational basis, each would be assured that habitual ill-temper would terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and dangerous propensity. Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors. Women, for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder; and the punishment which is inflicted on her who destroys her child to escape reproach is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the prostitute is irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the impulse of unerring nature;—society declares war against her, pitiless and eternal war: she must be the tame slave, she must make no reprisals; theirs is the right of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life of infamy: the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all return. She dies of long and lingering disease: yet SHE is in fault, SHE is the criminal, SHE the froward and untamable child,—and society, forsooth, the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abortion from her undefiled bosom! Society avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation; she is employed in anathematizing the vice to-day, which yesterday she was the most zealous to teach. Thus is formed one-tenth of the population of London: meanwhile the evil is twofold. Young men, excluded by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society of modest and accomplished women, associate with these vicious and miserable beings, destroying thereby all those exquisite and delicate sensibilities whose existence cold-hearted worldlings have denied; annihilating all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their body and mind alike crumble into a hideous wreck of humanity; idiocy and disease become perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations suffer for the bigoted morality of their forefathers. Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery, that some few may monopolize according to law. A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage. I conceive that from the abolition of marriage, the fit and natural arrangement of sexual connection would result. I by no means assert that the intercourse would be promiscuous: on the contrary, it appears, from the relation of parent to child, that this union is generally of long duration, and marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion. But this is a subject which it is perhaps premature to discuss. That which will result from the abolition of marriage will be natural and right; because choice and change will be exempted from restraint. In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical code of misery and servitude: the genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed book of God ere man can read the inscription on his heart. How would morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image should she look in the mirror of nature!—
Shelley argues that marriage, as dictated by law and religion, acts more like a cage that stifles love instead of safeguarding it. He believes love can only thrive when individuals are free to choose whether to stay together or separate as their feelings evolve. Forcing people to remain married after affection has faded creates an environment of misery, hypocrisy, and cruelty. The piece concludes with a plea to dismantle the religious and legal codes that, in his opinion, are designed to foster unhappiness.
Line-by-line
Even love is sold.
Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of positive institution.
How long then ought the sexual connection to last?
The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness and imperfect civilization.
But if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and disunions;
The present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies.
Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors.
I conceive that from the abolition of marriage, the fit and natural arrangement of sexual connection would result.
Tone & mood
The tone is consistently indignant and prosecutorial. Shelley isn't simply reflecting; he's making a case, and his writing carries the intensity of a furious lawyer. There are sharp moments of sarcasm, particularly when he discusses society calling itself "the pure and virtuous matron" while simultaneously fostering the very conditions it criticizes. By the final paragraph, the tone shifts to something nearly prophetic, depicting morality flinching at its own reflection in nature's mirror.
Symbols & metaphors
- Fetters / chains — Shelley describes marriage law using terms associated with physical bondage — like fetters, constraint, and despotism. This metaphor emphasizes that a legal contract isn't just a neutral agreement; it's a force exerted on something (love) that can't thrive under captivity.
- The mirror of nature — In the closing image, nature acts as a mirror that shows things as they truly are, free from societal adornments. Morality, adorned in 'stiff stays and finery,' would recoil at its own reflection — suggesting that traditional morality is so disconnected from genuine human experience that it can't even recognize itself.
- The accursed book of God — Religious scripture is portrayed as a book that needs to be dismantled, page by page, before people can understand 'the inscription on his heart' — their own innate moral instincts. This symbol places divine law and human nature at odds with one another.
- Prostitution as offspring of marriage — Shelley deliberately employs the biological metaphor of parentage. If marriage represents the institution, then prostitution is its offspring — not an accident or deviation, but a natural outcome. This imagery ties the 'respectable' institution to the suffering it officially denounces.
- The votary / votarist — Shelley uses religious language—where a votary is someone committed to a vow—and applies it to both lovers and believers. This comparison suggests that committing to eternal love and committing to unwavering faith in a belief system involve the same kind of intellectual surrender: both demand that you stop questioning.
Historical context
Shelley wrote this prose note as part of the extended apparatus for his long poem *Queen Mab* (1813), which he composed when he was nineteen and twenty. *Queen Mab* was considered too radical for public release — it criticized monarchy, religion, and marriage all at once — and circulated in pirated editions, making it hugely influential among working-class radicals and freethinkers throughout the nineteenth century. Shelley's beliefs about free love were not just theoretical; he had already left his first wife Harriet to live with Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley), whose own parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, famously challenged the institution of marriage. The note incorporates Enlightenment utilitarianism, Godwin's anarchist philosophy, and Wollstonecraft's feminist arguments, creating a direct critique of Christian sexual morality at a time when expressing such views posed real risks.
FAQ
It’s a prose note added to *Queen Mab*, Shelley’s verse poem. The note, numbered 189, is one of several detailed arguments Shelley included to clarify and elaborate on the poem's radical ideas. The heading 'Even love is sold' comes directly from the poem, and the note serves to explain that line. This places it in a unique position: it acts as commentary on the poem, authored by the poet, and published within the same work.
In the philosophical language of Shelley's time, 'positive' law refers to laws created by human authorities, in contrast to natural law or moral instinct. Shelley argues that marriage is a legal construct invented by people, rather than a natural or divine requirement, and it shouldn't dictate something as involuntary as love.
No, and he directly addresses this near the end. He believes that even without legal requirements, people would still enter into long, committed partnerships—they would simply be chosen freely and sustained voluntarily. His argument critiques the *force* of marriage law, not the idea of lasting relationships.
Both are commitments to stop thinking. Shelley's argument is that promising to feel or believe something forever means choosing to overlook any future evidence. Just as you might later come across arguments that question your religious beliefs, you might also meet people who are a better fit for you than your current partner. In both situations, the commitment requires you to close your eyes to reality.
He argues that prostitution isn't a moral failing of individual women but rather a structural outcome of the marriage system. When society limits all acceptable sexual expression to marriage, and when marriage confines people to unhappy unions, the system itself creates the conditions for prostitution. Society then punishes the women it has effectively generated, which Shelley describes as blatant hypocrisy.
Largely yes, and it caused quite a scandal. In 1814, the year after *Queen Mab* circulated, he left his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, for Mary Godwin. He was also influenced by William Godwin, Mary's father, who had written critiques of marriage — even though Godwin eventually married Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's personal life reflected the philosophy in this note, bringing with it a web of complications and pain.
Edward Gibbon wrote *The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire* (1776–1789), which is considered one of the most esteemed historical works of its time. Shelley references him to illustrate how Christian-influenced law has historically dealt with sexual desire in brutally harsh ways — such as death for seduction and burning alive for slaves caught in 'illegal love.' By choosing a well-respected historian instead of a more radical source, Shelley made a pointed rhetorical decision.
Shelley envisions conventional morality as a figure adorned in restrictive, artificial attire ('stiff stays and finery'). If this figure were to gaze into a mirror reflecting genuine reality instead of societal pretense, it would be appalled by its own appearance. This portrayal suggests that the disparity between accepted morality and true human nature is so significant that morality wouldn’t even recognize its own image.