Mathilda_ is evident
from her effective use of it at one of the crises in the tale. 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. To shed any interest over such an attachment,
the dramatist ought to adorn the father with such youthful attributes
as would be by no means contrary to probability."[xvii] This she
endeavored to do in _Mathilda_ (aided indeed by the fact that the
situation was the reverse of that in _Myrrha_). Mathilda's father was
young: he married before he was twenty. When he returned to Mathilda,
he still showed "the ardour and freshness of feeling incident to
youth." He lived in the past and saw his dead wife reincarnated in his
daughter. Thus Mary attempts to validate the situation and make it "by
no means contrary to probability."

_Mathilda_ offers a good example of Mary Shelley's methods of
revision. A study of the manuscript shows that she was a careful
workman, and that in polishing this bizarre story she strove
consistently for greater credibility and realism, more dramatic (if
sometimes melodramatic) presentation of events, better motivation,
conciseness, and exclusion of purple passages. In the revision and
rewriting, many additions were made, so that _Mathilda_ is appreciably
longer than _The Fields of Fancy_. 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. Therefore _Mathilda_ does
not impress the reader as being longer than _The Fields of Fancy_
because it better sustains his interest. And with all the additions
there are also effective omissions of the obvious, of the
tautological, of the artificially elaborate.[xviii]

The finished draft, _Mathilda_, still shows Mary Shelley's faults as a
writer: verbosity, loose plotting, somewhat stereotyped and
extr