Narrado desde su lecho de muerte, Matilda cuenta la historia de la confesión de amor incestuoso que tenía su padre por ella, y su suicidio por ahogamiento. Su relación con un joven y dotado poeta llamado Woodville no conseguirá revertir el retraimiento emocional de Matilda ni evitar su solitaria muerte.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.