SOURCE: “‘Did you get Mathilda from Papa?’: Seduction, Fantasy and the Circulation of Mary Shelley's Mathilda,” in Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring 1989, pp. 49-67.

In the following essay, Harpold draws parallels between the events in Mary Shelley's life and the action of Mathilda, noting that the book mirrors major events in the author's life.

In a dream, I saw myself descending toward my father, intending to join him in the library. But along the way, the little skeleton always snatched me from behind with its outstretched hand. And I continued to live with my nightmares, and would never dare, when night had fallen—and now even in the day—to go down alone to the library.

This phobia was a too marvelous compromise between two powerful tendencies in my unconscious: to be my mother, in dying like her, which satisfied the most positive part of my oedipal...