Frankenstein
Both works examine a parent’s obligations and the isolation that follows a failed family bond.
Read our take
Mathilda
by Mary Shelley
A secluded young woman writes the history she has been unable to tell her only friend.
- 1959
- 144
- Melancholy
- Atmospheric
- lyrical
- intimate
- dark
About Mary Shelley
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeFrom a cottage on an English heath, twenty-year-old Mathilda addresses a final account of her life to the poet Woodville. She recalls a lonely childhood, her father’s return after sixteen years away, and his devastating confession of incestuous desire. Written in 1819 but unpublished until 1959, the novella follows her grief, secrecy and difficult attempt to accept friendship.
The story, in more detail
Mathilda has grown up with an emotionally distant aunt beside Loch Lomond in Scotland. Books, music and imagined meetings with her absent father supply the affection missing from her daily life. His return seems at first to fulfill those hopes.
When her father becomes withdrawn and angry, Mathilda presses him to explain. His confession destroys her sense of safety. She repeatedly blames herself for demanding the truth, but that self-accusation belongs to her distressed account. She is not responsible for his desire or conduct.
The later chapters bring her into friendship with Woodville, a poet grieving his fiancée. He listens without forcing her to reveal her history. Their conversations ask what companionship can offer when one person’s anguish remains largely hidden from the other.
A history addressed to one friend
Mathilda’s mother, Diana, dies shortly after her birth. Her unnamed father leaves her with his older half-sister and travels abroad. He returns when Mathilda is sixteen, and their early happiness gives way to his jealousy when a young man begins to court her. At the family home in Yorkshire, he finally tells her that he loves her with a desire he recognizes as forbidden.
Mathilda recoils from the confession and wishes for a separation that might make a safe reunion possible. Her father leaves a letter and departs. Fearing that he intends suicide, she follows with the steward Gaspar, but arrives too late to save him from drowning.
After recovering from a fever, Mathilda makes her relatives believe that she too has died. The text withholds the practical details of that deception. She retreats to a remote cottage, where Woodville eventually becomes her companion. When she proposes that they die together, he refuses and stays to comfort her.
How it ends — spoilers ahead
Woodville leaves to attend his sick mother. During his absence, Mathilda becomes ill after spending a cold, wet night outside. She expects to die and completes the account addressed to him, while concealing the seriousness of her condition in her ordinary correspondence.
Her farewell imagines death as a release and a reunion with her father. Those hopes express her troubled state of mind. The narrative ends with her words to Woodville, before a death is witnessed or reported by anyone else.
Quotes from Mathilda
I did not desire sympathy and aid in ambition or wisdom, but sweet and mutual affection; smiles to cheer me and gentle words of comfort.
We know not what all this wide world means; its strange mixture of good and evil.
Why we recommend it
Follow the difference between feeling guilty and being responsible
Mathilda’s account gives direct access to her self-accusation. Reading it carefully means attending both to those feelings and to the actions her father chooses.
Consider what a friend can know
Woodville offers company while remaining unaware of the history that explains much of Mathilda’s suffering. Their friendship shows both the value of listening and the limits imposed by secrecy.
Read a work withheld during its author’s lifetime
Shelley completed the story in 1819, but it first appeared in Elizabeth Nitchie’s 1959 edition. That long delay matters when placing it beside the books Shelley published herself.
What this book explores
The people in its pages
Timeline
1819
Shelley writes Mathilda in August and September, then revises it. The manuscript is dated Florence, November 9, 1819.
1959
Elizabeth Nitchie edits the first publication, issued by the University of North Carolina Press in Chapel Hill.
2006
Melville House publishes the selected US paperback on May 1 in The Art of the Novella series.
Book editions
- Paperback
- Melville House
- 2006
- 9780976658375
Reader reviews
Readers may also like
The Last Man
Shelley again gives an isolated narrator the task of recording lost relationships, this time within a future history of plague.
Read our take
The Metamorphosis
Kafka’s novella offers a different account of family exclusion and a person’s diminishing access to companionship.
Read our takeMathilda: frequently asked questions
Was Mathilda published in 1819?
No. Shelley wrote it in 1819, but it remained unpublished during her lifetime. Elizabeth Nitchie’s edition appeared in 1959; that is the first-publication year used here.
Is Mathilda an autobiography?
It is fiction. Readers and editors have discussed parallels with Shelley’s life, but the invented father-daughter relationship is not evidence that the same events occurred in her family.
Does the story depict a sexual relationship between Mathilda and her father?
Her father confesses incestuous desire, and she reacts with horror. The novella does not depict a sexual act between them or present the confession as a mutually accepted romance.
Does Mathilda become a nun?
No. She adopts clothing she compares to a nun’s and lives in a remote cottage. She does not enter a religious order or a convent.
Is Mathilda’s death shown?
No. She expects to die after becoming ill and writes a farewell to Woodville. The story ends within her account, without an outside witness confirming her death.
Which edition is listed here?
The Melville House US paperback published May 1, 2006, ISBN 9780976658375, 144 pages. The quotations and chapter references use the Gutenberg transcription of Nitchie’s 1959 edition.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Mathilda, its publication, and its place in literary history.
1Mathilda
NovelMary Shelley, 1959Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
2Mathilda — Elizabeth Nitchie’s 1959 edition
WebsiteProject Gutenberg; original edition, University of North Carolina PressUsed forThe complete novella was read for plot, twelve character observations and quotations. The introduction supplies composition and publication history. The earlier draft The Fields of Fancy and the full notes apparatus were not read in full; no claim is made to have read the selected 2006 paperback.
3Mathilda — Melville House 2006 paperback
WebsitePenguin Random House; Melville HouseUsed forVerifies the selected paperback’s publisher, date, ISBN and page count. The promotional description’s claims of a first standalone publication and direct autobiography are not used.
4Timeline of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Life
WebsiteBodleian LibrariesUsed forCorroborates the start of Mathilda’s composition in August 1819.
5Mathilda — 1959 edition edited by Elizabeth Nitchie
WebsiteNational Library of New ZealandUsed forIndependent catalogue evidence for Nitchie’s 1959 first publication, issued by the University of North Carolina Press as Studies in Philology, Extra Series 3.
6Introduction to Transcription of Mathilda for the Shelley-Godwin Archive
WebsiteShelley-Godwin Archive; Michelle FaubertUsed forExplains why transcriptions differ when the author never oversaw publication. The introduction was read in full; manuscript images and the complete archive transcription were not consulted. Its incorrect statement of Shelley’s age at Frankenstein’s publication is not adopted.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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