Mathilda by Mary Shelley (1959 published, written 1820)
Tuesday’s Mysterious Tale, a Novella August 29, 2023
In Memory of Mary Shelley’s birth date, August 30,1797, Somers Town, London, England
Honoring Mary Shelley has become a time at the end of every summer for Frankenstein fans, Mary Shelley readers, and for many Gothic and quiet horror lovers. Featured here is Mary’s second piece of fiction, Mathilda, not published until 1959.
She actually began writing Mathilda in August of 1819. This novella has been overlooked by many readers. But I have to say, it is a beautifully written, and oh so very Gothic, work of Romantic literature. I think it is Mary Shelley’s finest.
The opening of the story brings you deep into the mind of Mathilda …
“I am in a strange state of mind. I am alone—quite alone—in the world—the blight of misfortune has passed over me and withered me; I know that I am about to die and I feel happy—joyous.—I feel my pulse; it beats fast: I place my thin hand on my cheek; it burns: there is a slight, quick spirit within me which is now emitting its last sparks.”
There is a ghostly luminescence going on within this story. I say this because of the dark presence that pervades but also the enlightenment that Mathilda finds through nature, art, flowers, sky and trees, and through the poet Woodville whom she finds enchanting. What is explored here, though, is the devastation of incest. And most fascinating is the perspective of her Mathilda’s father’s desires for his daughter. A torment for both of them.
We can read this through the lens of Mary’s life (psychobiographical?) or we can say this is fantasy, or even an unreliable narrator. However you read this novella, this is a story of isolation, loneliness, love, passion, an excess of madness, and death by suicide. Drama? Lots of it. Don’t we love Mary’s exaggerated characters? Compelling? Absolutely. The suspense is like a wheel that spins slowly but mesmerizes so consistently you cannot take your eyes off it.
Mathilda’s attraction to solitude in her daily life breathes through this novella with a great deal of light and inspiration.
“What had I to love? Oh many things: there was the moonshine, and the bright stars; the breezes and the refreshing rains; there was the whole earth and the sky …”
“I was confined to Nature and books. Then I bounded across the fields; my spirit often seemed to ride upon the winds, and to mingle in joyful sympathy with the ambient air. Then if I wandered slowly I cheered myself with a sweet song or sweeter day dreams.”
And I daresay her attraction to her father captivated her. And captivates the reader.
“As I came, dressed in white, covered only by my tartan rachan, my hair streaming on my shoulders, and shooting across with greater speed that it could be supposed I could give to my boat, my father has often told me that I looked more like a spirit than a human maid.
I approached the shore, my father held the boat, I leapt lightly out, and in a moment was in his arms.
And now I began to live.”
Surely a dark masterpiece. I was left wondering if Matilda will find peace. And I so wished it for her.
Read the novella here at Gutenberg.org.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15238/15238-h/15238-h.htm
Listen to the audio at Librivox, read by Cori Samuel (3 hours). This audio is so evocative. Cori Samuel’s dramatic reading is in a rich and clear English accent. Practically musical.
[For more of Cori Samuel’s readings go to Librivox.org.]
Here are Mary Shelley’s short stories at Reading Fiction Blog, and other posts.
Click the underlined text to read:
Shelley, Mary On Ghosts, October 15, 2013 (scroll down)
Shelley, Mary The Invisible Girl, October 15, 2013
Shelley, Mary The Mortal Immortal, February 26, 2013 WIHM*
Shelley, Mary Transformation, February 4, 2014 WIHM*
Shelley, Mary The Last Man February 8, 2016 WINHM*
Shelley, Mary Anniversary of Her Death Tribute, February 1, 2018
Shelley, Mary, The Dream, August 28, 2018
Tribute to Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley,
August 2020.
A Lump of Death, February 2016
I would be remiss as an author not to mention my own short story about Mary Shelley, a ghost story, Beyond Castle Frankenstein. Originally published in anthology Journals of Horror: Found Fiction, Editor Terry M. West, Pleasant Storm Entertainment, Inc., 2014.
Mary Shelley is haunted. Haunted beyond cemeteries and tombstones. Love and madness rattle her every day. Scandal and drama steal her sleep. And finally it is the stab of her own impending death that drives her to conjure the dead.
(Beyond Castle Frankenstein is currently free on Amazon and Smashwords)
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