The Analysis of Discourse and Composition in a Psychoanalytical Reading of Mathilda Sid Ali Kercenna College

Mathilda is Mary Shelley’s second long work of fiction after Frankenstein. It was written in the summer and fall of 1819 during a stormy period of her matrimonial life. For such reason, this book is often read as a biographical work; an approach that fails in acknowledging its literary merits in the attempt of identifying the narrative voice as Mary Shelley’s. Written in an epistolary style, Mathilda is the autobiography of its eponymous heroine constructed as a dramatic tragedy that betrays her egocentric view of life as a stage on which she performs the leading role of an incest victim. The overuse of dramatic references along with the remarkable mastery and control of discourse all point in the direction of the heroine’s psychological instability as her manner of relating her life borders on insanity.

In November 1818, Mary and Percy Shelley lost their one-year-old daughter Clara. In June of the following year, the loss of their son William at the young age of three years added to their misfortune and grief. It was at this period that Mary had started weaving the plot of her novella which remained unpublished until 1956. Its delayed appearance gave rise almost instantly to many biographical readings ascribing its events to...