The Politics of History and the History of Politics: Gender, Power, and Resistance in Mary Shelley's Valperga

Abstract Mary Shelley’s Valperga: or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823) is a significant work of Romantic historical fiction that transforms medieval Italian political history into a complex examination of power, gender, violence, liberty, and resistance. Although the novel takes its title and ostensible subject from Castruccio Castracani, the historical prince of Lucca, its ethical and ideological centre gradually shifts toward Euthanasia, Countess of Valperga, a fictional woman ruler whose political principles challenge the masculine logic of conquest represented by Castruccio. Set against the wars between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, the novel does not simply reconstruct the past; it interrogates the processes through which political authority becomes historical memory. This paper argues that Valperga creates a counter-history of political power by placing Castruccio’s history of conquest, sovereignty, and military ambition against Euthanasia’s alternative history of liberty, moral responsibility, sympathy, and resistance. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s concepts of power, knowledge, and resistance; Hannah Arendt’s distinction between power and violence; Hayden White’s theory of historical representation; Joan Wallach Scott’s understanding of gender as a category of historical analysis; and Mary Wollstonecraft’s arguments concerning female rationality and autonomy, the paper examines Shelley’s critique of masculine political authority and patriarchal historiography. Euthanasia and Beatrice, although fictional and therefore absent from conventional historical records, become central to Shelley’s reconstruction of the moral meaning of history. The novel ultimately challenges the assumption that political victory constitutes historical or ethical legitimacy and suggests that the history of power must also include the experiences of those who resist, suffer under, and are excluded by it. Keywords: historical fiction, gender, power, resistance, historiography, Euthanasia, political violence