This chapter focuses on the communal ecology at work in the narratives that predate The Last Man and Lodore. Mary Shelley promotes a communal ecology is evident enough in Frankenstein, but also in the family tales she composed in 1819 and in 1820 wherein, again, a child is either physically displaced and longing to be reunited with an absentee father, or vice versa. True happiness belongs to the ecologically minded family man rooted in his natural habitat and not to the queer sovereign or even Castruccio Castracani dei Antelminelli who, from this point on in the novel, runs roughshod over everyone standing in his way. In Shelley’s Maurice and Valperga, however, only those who possess a strong sense of place and connection to the so-called “great whole” are commendable. The ideal dwelling place in both Maurice and Valperga is the cottage, an amphibious structure that blends indoor and outdoor places.