Mathilda

By: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Narrated by: Sarah Douglas

The second novel from Mary Shelley, written in 1819-20 but not published in full until 1959. The story deals with common romantic themes but also incest and suicide. Narrating from her deathbed, Mathilda tells the story of her unnamed father’s confession of incestuous love for her, followed by his suicide by drowning; her relationship with a gifted young poet called Woodville fails to reverse Mathilda’s emotional withdrawal or prevent her lonely death.

The act of writing this short novel distracted Mary Shelley from her grief after the deaths of her one-year-old daughter ,Clara, at Venice in September 1818 and her three-year-old son, William, in June 1819 in Rome. These losses plunged Mary Shelley into a depression that distanced her emotionally and sexually from Percy Shelley and left her, as he put it, 'on the hearth of pale despair'.

The story may be seen as a metaphor for what happens when a woman, ignorant of all consequences, follows her own heart while dependent on her male benefactor.

©1820 Mary Wollstonecroft Shelley (P)2015 Spokenworld Audio & Ladbroke Audio Ltd

I just wanted to say, "Get over it."

I read this book because I wanted to get a feel for Mary Shelly's writing before I read her longer works. Glad I did. I was raised in the era of the "Great Classics" stories produced into movies. I found many of the stories such as Frankenstein and Jane Eyre tedious. I was a "too the point mind" listening to one talk around the subjects ad nauseum. Back to Mathilda, Her father's unacceptable but never acted upon love for her absolutely ruins her life, in soooo many words. Get over it and move on, I wanted to scream. #hardship #incestual thoughts #flowery language #Tagsgiving #Sweepstakes