'Mathilda' is the second long work of fiction by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, written between August 1819 and February 1820 and first published posthumously in 1959. It deals with common Romantic themes of incest and suicide. The narrative deals with a father's incestuous love for his daughter.
Mary Shelley wrote this novel to distract herself from her grief after the deaths of her one-year-old daughter Clara in Venice and her three-year-old son William in Rome. Narrating from her deathbed, Mathilda, a young woman barely in her twenties, writes her story as a way of explaining her actions to her friend, Woodville.
Her narration follows her lonely upbringing and climaxes at a point when her unnamed father confesses his incestuous love for her. This is then followed by his suicide by drowning and her ultimate death; her relationship with the gifted young poet, Woodville, fails to reverse Matilda's emotional withdrawal or prevent her lonely death.
