Publication
The Art of the Novella (2006), Paperback, 144 pages
Physical description
144 p.; 6.97 inches
ISBN
0976658372 / 9780976658375
Language
Collections
Description
Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: Mathilda is narrated from the title character's death bed. She recounts her relationship with her father, who had an incestuous love for her, and his suicide by drowning. Her relationship with a gifted young poet was unable to prevent her emotional withdrawal after her father's death, or the lonely fact of her own dying. Shelley wrote Mathilda in an attempt to deal with the loss of her two infant children..
Genres
User reviews
LibraryThing member amydross
Wonderfully lurid and disturbing gothic(ish) tale. But there's one point where the narrator says, "my story is basically over, and I'm not sure why I'm still writing," and I have to agree. The climax comes early, and the rest doesn't really measure up.
LibraryThing member birdie.newborn
Given the premise of the book, one is led through a lonely childhood with delight in nature, to exquisite joy, soon followed by anguish, despair, and a will to die. Heady, but also sobby.
LibraryThing member john257hopper
This short novel was Mary Shelley's second book after Frankenstein, but due to its controversial themes, it was not published until 140 years later in 1959. It is a semi-autobiographical portrayal, with the roles of Shelley, her father William Godwin and her husband Percy Shelley taken by Mathilda,
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her unnamed father and her poet companion, Woodville. The controversy lies mainly in the theme of the incestuous love ("unlawful and monstrous passion") her father feels for Mathilda, which, not surprisingly, given that there is no suggestion of any real such impropriety, led to William Godwin refusing to return the manuscript to Mary for publication. Linked to this theme, the main thrust of the novel is Mathilda's despair and wish for death because of guilt at supposedly having provoked the unnatural love on the part of her father; it is a bleak piece of writing, penned by Shelley after the death of her two young children, one year old Clare and three year old William, which led to her temporary alienation from her husband. In sum, a morbid read, arguably significant more for its literary background than its intrinsic merit as a novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member DrFuriosa
I was promised a scandalous book about incest, and I instead got a Romantic treatise on suicide. So, this is absolutely going on every grad school syllabus on any Romantic era seminar.
Original publication date
1819