Shame and Its Affects: The Form–Content Implosion of Shelley’s The Cenci

Abstract

Combining Silvan Tomkins’ theories about shame’s relation to the self and Brian Massumi’s influential concept of the “autonomy of affect,” this chapter reads the character of Beatrice in Percy Shelley’s The Cenci as a study in self-construction. Beatrice struggles to articulate the fact that she has been raped; this leads to critical uncertainty about the reliability of her disclosures. While the aporia of the rape is normally read as a critique of social hegemony, Roberts demonstrates how Shelley uses reticence to enable Beatrice to manipulate the “autonomy” of shame and style herself as a wronged martyr. Providing an original perspective on how affects are textually expressive, Roberts argues that Beatrice’s manipulation of multiple levels of textual signification parallels how affect simultaneously accesses various aspects of consciousness.