# VI explained — Short Fiction

> Chapter companion for Short Fiction by Mary Shelley.

## 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.

## Character check-ins

### 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 lines

> 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._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_38_se/chapters/vi
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_38_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_38_se/chapters