Furthering St. Leon‘s disadvantage with a modern audience, William Godwin had three aims with the novel: revolutionize the longevity narrative, amending his reputation, and critiquing the Enlightenment.

The revolutionizing of longevity narrative flies over a modern audience’s heads. Andrea Charise explains in her article that in Godwin’s time, readers wanted novels about immortality (914). This means that Godwin was responding to a need of his current audience and not one that a modern audience shares or recognizes. Much like how a future audience may not share the current audience’s need for different kinds of superhero movies, a modern audience is not hungering for a longevity narrative like Godwin’s original audience. Though impressive, what Godwin was doing is thus unappreciated and unrecognized.

Another aim that is lost on a modern audience is how Godwin was trying to fix his reputation. Rowland Weston explains in his article that Godwin wanted to “set the record straight in St. Leon” particularly about his stance on “domestic affections” (13). Basically, Godwin felt that everyone misunderstood his thoughts about the importance of familial love and decided to fix it in his novel. In Weston’s opinion, Godwin made it quite apparent that familial connections must be greatly tended to and that the connections were very important for society (Weston 14). Again, the ignorance of a modern audience continues to hinder St. Leon and leaves them unable to understand what and why Godwin writes Reginald in the novel. His critique of the Enlightenment furthers this as well.

The aim of critiquing the Enlightenment is another one of Godwin’s intention with the St. Leon. David Colling explains in his article that Godwin was critiquing the Enlightenment with Reginald’s character, suggesting that it was Godwin’s “hopeless, if absolute, protest” (870). Colling also suggests that Reginald keeping the audience ignorant of the philosopher stone and its secret was Godwin’s way of saying that the Enlightenment can only occur if “absolute knowledge” is never achieved (869). This critique builds on Godwin’s other aims and compounds the issue of a modern audience’s ignorance. If the audience does not have any of this background information, then Reginald’s character comes across contradictory since Godwin is stressing familial connections in Reginald yet Reginald does not reveal the secret in order to save his wife.

Here is a meme that I think sums up how what Godwin is doing with St. Leon in terms of thinking about Enlightenment does not “catch on” with a modern audience:

(https://memecrunch.com/meme/A90HE/enlightenment-meme)