SOURCE: “Mary Shelley on the Therapeutic Value of Language,” in Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 30, No. 4, Fall 1994, pp. 387-407.

In the following essay, Brewer proposes that Shelley's use of oral and written language as a therapeutic tool is a dominant theme in many of her works, including Mathilda.

The therapeutic value of oral and written self-expression is a recurrent theme in Mary Shelley's works, particularly in those works, such as Mathilda and Valperga: or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca, in which the heroines have been subjected to psychological trauma. For example, the eponymous heroine of Mathilda refuses to tell her friend Woodville of her dead father's incestuous passion for her because she fears words, especially the word “incest,” and, perhaps partially as a result of this self-censorship, she lives out her life in a state of chronic depression. In contrast, Beatrice, the brutalized...