A review by lectrixnoctis
Matilda by Mary Shelley

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

"Matilda" is a book by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley that examines the life of Matilda, a woman separated from society due to her strange upbringing. Matilda's mother dies directly after childbirth, leaving her father destroyed. He hands on the parental responsibility to Matilda's aunt and leaves. Sixteen years later, the father returns exclusively to confess his eternal incestuous love for her daughter and then commits suicide by drowning.

After the demise of her aunt and father, Matilda drops into a cycle of loneliness, unhappiness, and suicidal tendencies. Drowning in a severe depression, she simulates her death and completely removes herself from society, choosing to live in utter sequestration with just her one maid as a business. Tormented with the same fate as her father, she plans to commit suicide. Matilda enrols the help of her close friend, a poet, and asks him to make her demise as romantic as likely by drinking poison together.

Involuntary to kill himself, the poet tries to detract Matilda from killing herself to no avail. He attempts to help her find meaning in life, but she dies after consumption. There is a longing that Matilda reunited with her father in the hereafter and returned his incestuous passion.

"Matilda" is a novella packed with melodrama and controversial issues buried for a century because of its unfettered probe of incestuous affection and suicidal endeavour. After Matilda's father acknowledges his sexual emotions to her, it is implied that Matilda began to grow those same feelings for his father too. His premature death thoroughly devastates her as she feels like everyone who adored her has left her. All she can do is find harmony in dying, where she wishes to reunite with her father and lover.

Okay, this short novella is literary gold. I enjoyed every second of it, and I would highly recommend it; however, I do think you should check out the trigger warnings before grabbing it since there are some complex topics to deal with. If you are really into Gothic and Victorian literature, this will be one of your favourites. It filled my heart with warmth.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings