Mathilda, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley [i can read book club .TXT] 📗
- Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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[18] This paragraph is in F of F—B but not in F of F—A. In the margin of the latter, however, is written: "It was not of the tree of knowledge that I ate for no evil followed—it must be of the tree of life that grows close beside it or—". Perhaps this was intended to go in the preceding paragraph after "My ideas were enlarged by his conversation." Then, when this paragraph was added, the figure, noticeably changed, was included here.
[19] Here the MS of F of F—B breaks off to resume only with the meeting of Mathilda and Woodville.
[20] At the end of the story (p. 79) Mathilda says, "Death is too terrible an object for the living." Mary was thinking of the deaths of her two children.
[21] Mary had read the story of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius in 1817 and she had made an Italian translation, the MS of which is now in the Library of Congress. See Journal, pp. 79, 85-86.
[22] The end of this paragraph gave Mary much trouble. In F of F—A after the words, "my tale must," she develops an elaborate figure: "go with the stream that hurries on—& now was this stream precipitated by an overwhelming fall from the pleasant vallies through which it wandered—down hideous precipieces to a desart black & hopeless—". This, the original ending of the chapter, was scored out, and a new, simplified version which, with some deletions and changes, became that used in Mathilda was written in the margins of two pages (ff. 57, 58). This revision is a good example of Mary's frequent improvement of her style by the omission of purple patches.
[23] In F of F—A there follows a passage which has been scored out and which does not appear in Mathilda: "I have tried in somewhat feeble language to describe the excess of what I may almost call my adoration for my father—you may then in some faint manner imagine my despair when I found that he shunned [me] & that all the little arts I used to re-awaken his lost love made him"—. This is a good example of Mary's frequent revision for the better by the omission of the obvious and expository. But the passage also has intrinsic interest. Mathilda's "adoration" for her father may be compared to Mary's feeling for Godwin. In an unpublished letter (1822) to Jane Williams she wrote, "Until I met Shelley I [could?] justly say that he was my God—and I remember many childish instances of the [ex]cess of attachment I bore for him." See Nitchie, Mary Shelley, p. 89, and note 9.
[24] Cf. the account of the services of Fantasia in the opening chapter of F of F—A (see pp. 90-102) together with note 3 to The Fields of Fancy.
[25] This passage beginning "Day after day" and closing with the quotation is not in F of F—A, but it is in S-R fr. The quotation is from The Captain by John Fletcher and a collaborator, possibly Massinger. These lines from Act I, Sc. 3 are part of a speech by Lelia addressed to her lover. Later in the play Lelia attempts to seduce her father—possibly a reason for Mary's selection of the lines.
[26] At this point (f. 56 of the notebook) begins a long passage, continuing through Chapter V, in which Mary's emotional disturbance in writing about the change in Mathilda's father (representing both Shelley and Godwin?) shows itself on the pages of the MS. They look more like the rough draft than the fair copy. There are numerous slips of the pen, corrections in phrasing and sentence structure, dashes instead of other marks of punctuation, a large blot of ink on f. 57, one major deletion (see note 32).
[27] In the margin of F of F—A Mary wrote, "Lord B's Chde Harold." The reference is to stanzas 71 and 72 of Canto IV. Byron compares the rainbow on the cataract first to "Hope upon a death-bed" and finally
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
[28] In F of F—A Mathilda "took up Ariosto & read the story of Isabella." Mary's reason for the change is not clear. Perhaps she thought that the fate of Isabella, a tale of love and lust and death (though not of incest), was too close to what was to be Mathilda's fate. She may have felt—and rightly—that the allusions to Lelia and to Myrrha were ample foreshadowings. The reasons for the choice of the seventh canto of Book II of the Faerie Queene may lie in the allegorical meaning of Guyon, or Temperance, and the "dread and horror" of his experience.
[29] With this speech, which is not in F of F—A, Mary begins to develop the character of the Steward, who later accompanies Mathilda on her search for her father. Although he is to a very great extent the stereptyped faithful servant, he does serve to dramatize the situation both here and in the later scene.
[30] This clause is substituted for a more conventional and less dramatic passage in F of F—A: "& besides there appeared more of struggle than remorse in his manner although sometimes I thought I saw glim[p]ses of the latter feeling in his tumultuous starts & gloomy look."
[31] These paragraphs beginning Chapter V are much expanded from F of F—A. Some of the details are in the S-R fr. This scene is recalled at the end of the story. (See page 80) Cf. what Mary says about places that are associated with former emotions in her Rambles in Germany and Italy (2 vols., London: Moxon, 1844), II, 78-79. She is writing of her approach to Venice, where, twenty-five years before, little Clara had died. "It is a strange, but to any person who has suffered, a familiar circumstance, that those who are enduring mental or corporeal agony are strangely alive to immediate external objects, and their imagination even exercises its wild power over them.... Thus the banks of the Brenta presented to me a moving scene; not a palace, not a tree of which I did not recognize, as marked and recorded, at a moment when life and death hung upon our speedy arrival at Venice."
[32] The remainder of this chapter, which describes the crucial scene between Mathilda and her father, is the result of much revision from F of F—A. Some of the revisions are in S-R fr. In general the text of Mathilda is improved in style. Mary adds concrete, specific words and phrases; e.g., at the end of the first paragraph of Mathilda's speech, the words "of incertitude" appear in Mathilda for the first time. She cancels, even in this final draft, an over-elaborate figure of speech after the words in the father's reply, "implicated in my destruction"; the cancelled passage is too flowery to be appropriate here: "as if when a vulture is carrying off some hare it is struck by an arrow his helpless victim entangled in the same fate is killed by the defeat of its enemy. One word would do all this." Furthermore the revised text shows greater understanding and penetration of the feelings of both speakers: the addition of "Am I the cause of your grief?" which brings out more dramatically what Mathilda has said in the first part of this paragraph; the analysis of the reasons for her presistent questioning; the addition of the final paragraph of her plea, "Alas! Alas!... you hate me!" which prepares for the father's reply.
[33] Almost all the final paragraph of the chapter is added to F of F—A. Three brief S-R fr are much revised and simplified.
[34] Decameron, 4th day, 1st story. Mary had read the Decameron in May, 1819. See Journal, p. 121.
[35] The passage "I should fear ... I must despair" is in S-R fr but not in F of F—A. There, in the margin, is the following: "Is it not the prerogative of superior virtue to pardon the erring and to weigh with mercy their offenses?" This sentence does not appear in Mathilda. Also in the margin of F of F—A is the number (9), the number of the S-R fr.
[36] The passage "enough of the world ... in unmixed delight" is on a slip pasted over the middle of the page. Some of the obscured text is visible in the margin, heavily scored out. Also in the margin is "Canto IV Vers Ult," referring to the quotation from Dante's Paradiso. This quotation, with the preceding passage beginning "in whose eyes," appears in Mathilda only.
[37] The reference to Diana, with the father's rationalization of his love for Mathilda, is in S-R fr but not in F of F—A.
[38] In F of F—A this is followed by a series of other gloomy concessive clauses which have been scored out to the advantage of the text.
[39] This paragraph has been greatly improved by the omission of elaborate over-statement; e.g., "to pray for mercy & respite from my fear" (F of F—A) becomes merely "to pray."
[40] This paragraph about the Steward is added in Mathilda. In F of F—A he is called a servant and his name is Harry. See note 29.
[41] This sentence, not in F of F—A, recalls Mathilda's dream.
[42] This passage is somewhat more dramatic than that in F of F—A, putting what is there merely a descriptive statement into quotation marks.
[43] A stalactite grotto on the island of Antiparos in the Aegean Sea.
[44] A good description of Mary's own behavior in England after Shelley's death, of the surface placidity which concealed stormy emotion. See Nitchie, Mary Shelley, pp. 8-10.
[45] Job, 17: 15-16, slightly misquoted.
[46] Not in F of F—A. The quotation should read:
In a dark hint, soft and slow.
[47] The mother of Prince Arthur in Shakespeare's King John. In the MS the words "the little Arthur" are written in pencil above the name of Constance.
[48] In F of F—A this account of her plans is addressed to Diotima, and Mathilda's excuse for not detailing them is that they are too trivial to interest spirits no longer on earth; this is the only intrusion of the framework into Mathilda's narrative in The Fields of Fancy. Mathilda's refusal to recount her stratagems, though the omission is a welcome one to the reader, may represent the flagging of Mary's invention. Similarly in Frankenstein she offers excuses for not explaining how the Monster was brought to life. The entire passage, "Alas! I even now ... remain unfinished. I was," is on a slip of paper pasted on the page.
[49] The comparison to a Hermitess and the wearing of the "fanciful nunlike dress" are appropriate though
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