The European population in Illinois started growing in the western part of the state, near the Mississippi River. It also received settlers from the south in the late 1700s, after the Revolutionary War. It became a state in 1818. Illinois’s prairie land made it an attraction for agriculture, with immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden settling there. There was also a lot of activity here in relation to slavery/abolition, wars with Native American tribes (like the Black Hawk War), and severe winter storms. Shelley’s choice to move her characters here, rather than another state, is interesting given what was going on there historically. Many of the characters get contrasted with Fanny and her pro-abolition stances, so it makes me wonder what she is inferring about Lodore as a resident of Illinois — where free slaves were treated with hostility in the southern part of the state and where colonization of Native American land was actively happening. It is even specifically mentioned that Ethel has a black female servant (64). At minimum, I think she is showing at least a tolerance of those things on Lodore’s part. I wonder how this plays also into class sentiments of these — Lodore being upper class, and Fanny seemingly a middle class figure.
“An English gentleman, advanced to middle age, accompanied by an infant daughter, and her attendant, arrived at a settlement in the district of the Illinois in North America. It was at the time when this part of the country first began to be cleared, and a new comer, with some show of property, was considered a welcome acquisition.” (54)