Please see the previous brief historical description of New York. Deciding to expose Ethel to civilization and her countrypeople, Lodore begins a journey back home. They stop in New York which, we soon learn, is as far as Lodore makes it before dying in a duel. Dueling had declined greatly in the Eastern United States in the 19th century, so Shelley’s choice to have Lodore’s death occur through these means seems a particularly interesting choice. With the act being associated with a particularly medieval mindset, it almost seems to imply that, even to his death, Lodore is subject to outdated ways of thinking and seeing the world. This would hold up in comparison to Shelley’s challenge to feminine representations in Ethel in Cornelia, the echo of Wollstonecraftian ideas in Fanny, and even other male characters like Villiers and Saville.
“Lodore answered this application in person. He found an English family residing in one of the best streets of New York, and was introduced to the lady who addressed him. Her story, the occasion of her request, was detailed without reserve. Her husband’s family had formerly been American royalist, refugees in England, where they had lived poor and forgotten.” (143)