Author(s): Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Fiction

Mathilda is Mary Shelley's haunting story of an incestuous and fatal love. The narrative traces the teenaged Mathilda's reunion with her unnamed father, and the development of their obsessive bond that culminates in suicide. Shelley's own father, William Godwin, was so disturbed after reading the manuscript that he refused to return it to her and it remained unpublished for over one hundred years. This near-forgotten and harrowing work encompasses the Romantic themes of the individual's growth, isolation, and the power of imagination. Shelley's violent and terrifying short stories share Mathilda's fixation with feminist concerns and Gothic conventions. The murderous plots and sinister settings of these later stories reveal Shelley's ongoing preoccupation with the supernatural, transformation, and untamed nature