SOURCE: Wilson, James D. “Beatrice Cenci and Shelley's Vision of Moral Responsibility.” Ariel 9, no. 3 (July 1978): 75-89.

In the following essay, Wilson alleges that The Cenci is not a tragedy, despite Shelley's claim in the Preface.

The supposed moral disintegration of Beatrice after she is violated by her father has become the central source of dismay among scholars who analyze Shelley's gothic drama, The Cenci (1820). Despite Shelley's prefatory attempt to elevate his heroine to angelical stature, labelling Beatrice “a most gentle and amiable being … one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another …,”¹ scholars insist that after the rape in Act III Beatrice becomes a calculating demon whose actions and insensitivities rival the atrocities of her sadistic father. Bertrand Evans links her to Lady Macbeth, while Robert Whitman insists that despite her pathetic and hopeless plight, Beatrice commits a “pernicious mistake” in...