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But the additions are usually improvements: a much fuller account of Mathilda's father and mother and of their marriage, which makes of them something more than lay figures and to a great extent explains the tragedy; development of the character of the Steward, at first merely the servant who accompanies Mathilda in her search for her father, into the sympathetic confidant whose responses help to dramatise the situation; an added word or short phrase that marks Mary Shelley's penetration into the motives and actions of both Mathilda and her father.
And perhaps she was remembering her own handling of the theme when she wrote the biographical sketch of Alfieri for Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia nearly twenty years later. She then spoke of the difficulties inherent in such a subject, "inequality of age adding to the unnatural incest. Mathilda's father was young: he married before he was twenty.
Like Mathilda she met and loved a poet of "exceeding beauty," and also like Mathilda in that sad year she had treated him ill, having become "captious and unreasonable" in her sorrow. Mathilda's loneliness, grief, and remorse can be paralleled in Mary's later journal and in "The Choice." This story was the outlet for her emotions in 1819.
The descriptions of Mathilda's father and mother and the account of their marriage in the next few pages are greatly expanded from F of F A, where there is only one brief paragraph. For the identifications with Mary's father and mother, see Nitchie, Mary Shelley, pp. 11, 90-93, 96-97.
This paragraph, which is much expanded from F of F B, may be compared with the discussion of good and evil in Julian and Maddalo and with Prometheus Unbound and A Defence of Poetry. In the revision of this passage Mathilda's sense of her pollution is intensified; for example, by addition of "infamy and guilt was mingled with my portion." Some phrases of self-criticism are added in this paragraph.
Oh!" groaned Miss Mathilda, as she went back up the stairs. Miss Mathilda's attempt to make peace between the constantly contending women in the kitchen had no real effect. They were very soon as bitter as before. At last it was decided that Molly was to go away. Molly went away to work in a factory in the town, and she went to live with an old woman in the slums, a very bad old woman Anna said.
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.
See Journal, pp. 79, 85-86. The end of this paragraph gave Mary much trouble. This revision is a good example of Mary's frequent improvement of her style by the omission of purple patches. But the passage also has intrinsic interest. Mathilda's "adoration" for her father may be compared to Mary's feeling for Godwin. See Nitchie, Mary Shelley, p. 89, and note 9.
The early circumstances and education of Godwin and of Mathilda's father were different. But they produced similar men, each extravagant, generous, vain, dogmatic. There is more of Godwin in this tale than the account of a great man ruined by character and circumstance.
Though it is worth noticing that Mary chose a name with the same initial letter as her own, it was probably taken from Dante. There are several references in the story to the cantos of the Purgatorio in which Mathilda appears. Mathilda's father is never named, nor is Mathilda's surname given. The name of the poet went through several changes: Welford, Lovel, Herbert, and finally Woodville.
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