Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Mathilda, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Margaret Davenport Garrett (essay date 1996)

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Margaret Davenport Garrett (essay date 1996)

SOURCE: “Writing and Re-writing Incest in Mary Shelley's Mathilda,” in Keats-Shelley Journal, Vol. XLV, 1996, pp. 44-60.

[In the following essay, Garrett traces the development of Mathilda's text, proposing that Shelley uses this work to critique women's education and experience.]

I

Mary Shelley's second work of fiction, written in 1819 but not published until 1959, was a “tale” she eventually titled Mathilda. This novella has received relatively little critical attention, and, for the most part, analyses have been directed to the autobiographical or psychological significance of the work. Elizabeth Nitchie, editor of the first published version, read the story of Mathilda, her father, and Woodville the poet as versions of Mary Shelley herself, her father, William Godwin, and Percy Shelley.¹ More recent critics have found in the narrative...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Terence Harpold (essay date 1989)
   2. Tilottama Rajan (essay date 1994)
   3. William D. Brewer (essay date 1994)
   4. Kerry McKeever (essay date 1996)
   5. Margaret Davenport Garrett (essay date 1996)
   6. Rosaria Champagne (essay date 1996)
   7. Audra Dibert Himes (essay date 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Mary Shelley