Commentators have often read the text as autobiographical, with the three central characters standing for Mary Shelley, William Godwin (her father), and Percy Shelley (her husband).[10] There is no firm evidence, however, that the storyline itself is autobiographical.[11] Analysis of Mathilda's first draft, titled "The Fields of Fancy", reveals that Mary Shelley took as her starting point Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished "The Cave of Fancy", in which a small girl's mother dies in a shipwreck.[12] Like Mary Shelley herself, Mathilda idealises her lost mother.[13] According to editor Janet Todd, the absence of the mother from the last pages of the novella suggests that Mathilda's death renders her one with her mother, enabling a union with the dead father.[14] Critic Pamela Clemit resists a purely autobiographical reading and argues that Mathilda is an artfully crafted novella, deploying confessional and unreliable narrations in the style of her father, as well as the device of the pursuit used by Godwin in his Caleb Williams and by Mary Shelley in Frankenstein.[15] The novella's 1959 editor, Elizabeth Nitchie, noted its faults of "verbosity, loose plotting, somewhat stereotyped and extravagant characterization" but praised a "feeling for character and situation and phrasing that is often vigorous and precise".[11]
The story may be seen as a metaphor for what happens when a woman, ignorant of all consequences, follows her own heart while dependent on her male benefactor.[16]
Mathilda has also been seen as an example of redefining female Gothic narratives. An important characteristic of this redefined genre often includes female narrators having more control over the story than was common at the time.[17] According to Kathleen A. Miller, "Although Shelley's novella appears to relate a conventional female gothic narrative of a young woman victimized by her father's incestuous desire, it leaves open the possibility that, in fact, it is Mathilda, rather than her father, who wields control over the novel's gothic script."[18] This potentially allows for Mathilda to be viewed as a positive role model in nineteenth-century literature as she overcomes paternal authority and refuses to conform to commonly accepted practices regarding female characters in literature of the time. This redefinition occurs in various ways: Mathilda's refusal to name her father, her voice being the primary source of information provided to readers, and a lack of the novella ending in marriage which was the typical motif for female gothic literature.[19]
