Human Evil Out Of Excessive Desire In D. Manley's New Atalantis

Delariviere Manley(1663-1724)is a prolific female writer in the eighteenth century Britain. Scholars often put her name with Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood together and called them the “fair triumvirate”. Manley once worked for the Tory publication The Examiner together with Jonathan Swift, who quite appreciated her. Her novel New Atalantis(1709-1710)which exposes political and sexual scandals of the society was very popular in the eighteenth century. It has been studied from such different perspectives as feminism and political satire. Reading it as a dystopian novel, this thesis studies New Atalantis from the perspective of “radical evil”.Immanuel Kant puts forward the concept of “radical evil”, that is, an individual does evil things in the name of kindness and goodness and adopts evil standards as their ethics. Later, Hannah Arendt has developed this doctrine and holds that “radical evil” has emerged in connection with the system of totalitarianism. In New Atalantis, both the rulers and ordinary people are addicted to the excessive pursuit of self-interest and hedonism. Wearing the mask of moral models, these selfish and cold people harm the interests of society and other people in their pursuit of excessive desire. In the 18 th century, with the rise of trade, army and colonial activities, the development of material civilization in Britain surpassed that of spiritual civilization, which brought a lot of social problems. From a “spectator's” point of view, Manley depicts in the novel New Atalantis a dystopian society which magnifies these social problems at that time as a warning.This thesis explores dehumanization under excessive desire in New Atalantis and digs deep the author's real intention of depicting a dystopian society full of desire for power, material and sex. It is divided into three chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion. The first chapter discusses the rulers' inhuman political lust for power. Driven by the desire for power, Henriques, Fortunatus and the ruling party wage wars under the flag of democracy and justice or take measures of totalitarianism. All the other people are merely their tools to seize power. The second chapter unveils the fact that the upper class become ruthless in pursuing undue wealth. Officials pretend to be loyal to the monarch. But in private, they grab wealth with their power regardless of their duty. Some noble people wear moral mask and achieve interests by cheating those who trust and love them. The third chapter mainly discusses the upper class' distorted passion for sexual hedonism. Duke and Hernando seduce ignorant girls who are their foster daughters under their guardian. Some married ladies observe female virtues and are elegant in the public. In fact, in order to satisfy their sexual desire, they have affairs with young handsome men in private, without considering their families and even do harmful thing to the society.In the state of New Atalantis, people do evil things in the disguise of morality. While most people were immersed in the complacency of the rising bourgeoisie period, Manley incisively exposes the barbaric desire and moral degradation in the seemingly civilized society. Though the New Atalantis is evidently an exaggerated reflection of the social problems in Great Britain at that time, Manley is trying to urge the necessity to seek balanced development between material civilization and spiritual civilization by depicting a dystopian picture devoid of humanity, so that the society will not become a real “New Atalantis” which is full of greed and devoid of humanity.