This communication with the outside world includes sections in the novel that clearly show she feels blame and guilt at her depression and how it has made her treat her "beautiful" poet, Woodville. She writes, "But now also I began to reap the fruits of my perfect solitude. I had become unfit for any intercourse, even with Woodville the most gentle and sympathizing creature that existed. I had become captious and unreasonable: my temper was utterly spoilt" (Shelley 76). In fact, she believed her own depression and temperament helped drive Shelley to indulge in extra-marital affairs, and because of this, she became even more depressed and morose. She shows this in Mathilda, in a way to assuage her grief and guilt at placing even more of a strain on her marriage.
It is also interesting to note that Mary formats the novel in the form of a journal or letters to a trusted friend. In another parallel, Mary often wrote detailed letters to friends and family, and several of her journals were published after her death. The novel takes on an even more realistic and autobiographical note because of how Mary fashioned it and it is difficult not to see her own torment in the words. She writes, "I am, I thought, a tragedy; a character that he comes to see act: now and then he gives me my cue that I may make a speech more to his purpose: perhaps he is already planning a poem in which I am to figure" (Shelley 78). She is clearly in pain as she writes, and the novel is cathartic in that it allows her to write vividly about her own feelings, while attributing them to an extremely sad and sympathetic character. It is Mary's way of dealing with the grief in her life, and it perpetuates how lonely and despondent she really felt.
In addition, it is clear the poet in the story is certainly Shelley. She writes of him, "I have said that he was a poet: when he was three and twenty years of age he first published a poem, and it was hailed by the whole nation with enthusiasm and delight" (Shelley 68). This shows the esteem she had for her...
She clearly worships him, as she must have worshipped Shelley. She edited several books of his poems and writings after he died, and while she did seem to engage in some romances after he died, she never married again (Teuber).
In conclusion, Mathilda may not be one of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's most well-known works, but it is one of the most insightful into her own life. She wrote the novel at a difficult time in her life, and she clearly modeled several of the characters after the most influential people in her own life. It tells a difficult and dark story of incest, love, and loss, and shows how isolated Mary felt during the time she wrote the novel. In addition, it mirrors many aspects of her life, from the estrangement with her father, to her growing distance from the poet she loved. She was a respected and highly prolific writer, but her personal life, like that of her heroine Mathilde, was a blend of love, loss, and despair.
References
Nitchie, Elizabeth. Mary Shelley: Author of "Frankenstein." Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970.
O'Sullivan, Barbara Jane. "Beatrice in Valperga: A New Cassandra." The Other Mary Shelley: Beyond Frankenstein. Ed. Audrey a. Fisch, Anne K. Mellor, and Esther H. Schor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 140-156.
Rajan, Tilottama. "Mary Shelley's 'Mathilda': Melancholy and the Political Economy of Romanticism." Studies in the Novel 26.2 (1994): 43+.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mathilda. Ed. Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1959. http://manybooks.net/titles/shelleym15231523815238-8.html
Shelley, Mary. The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814-1844. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Teuber, Andrea. "Mary Shelley Biography." Brandeis University. 6 Jan. 2006. 3 July 2007. http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/shelleybio.html#MainEssaySection
