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Short Fiction · Chapter

VI explained

Mathilda, in deep emotional turmoil after her father's confession, spends hours weeping in solitude.

What happens

Mathilda, in deep emotional turmoil after her father's confession, spends hours weeping in solitude. She resolves to flee from him and considers becoming a nun. She curses her father to wander until age purifies him, then prepares to write him a letter. She hears footsteps at her door but does not respond. After a nightmare of her father leaping off a cliff, she wakes to learn he has already left the house before dawn, leaving a letter and instructions for her to be mistress until his return.

Themes in this chapter

  • Love and Loss

    Mathilda mourns the loss of her father's pure love and the destruction of their relationship, weeping bitterly over the memory of former happiness.

  • Solitude and Melancholy

    Mathilda seeks perfect solitude in her chamber, weeping for hours and contemplating a life of dreary seclusion or becoming a nun.

  • Fate and Inevitability

    Mathilda feels that a mighty revolution has taken place, that the natural work of years has been transacted in a few hours, and that she and her father must be forever separated by seas and lands.

Characters to notice

  • Mathilda

    The narrator and protagonist, who experiences profound grief and resolves to separate from her father after his confession.

  • My Father

    Mathilda's father, who has confessed a forbidden passion and leaves the house before dawn, causing her anguish.

Key passages

  • “I sat with my hands folded, silently letting fall a perpetual stream from my eyes.”

    She sat motionless, hands clasped, crying continuously.

    Describes Mathilda's quiet, intense grief, likened to Boccaccio's Sigismunda.

  • “Go, Devoted One, and return thus!⁠—This is my curse, a daughter’s curse: go, and return pure to thy child, who will never love aught but thee.”

    She curses her father to wander until he is old and purified, then return to her as a sinless parent.

    Mathilda's anguished curse, wishing her father to suffer until age quenches his passion.

  • “The mutual link of our destinies is broken; we must be divided by seas⁠—by land.”

    She believes their fates are severed and they must live apart, separated by great distances.

    Mathilda's conviction that she and her father can never again share the same space or time.

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