{"id":1778,"date":"2019-06-04T16:22:24","date_gmt":"2019-06-04T20:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=1778"},"modified":"2019-06-04T16:23:28","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T20:23:28","slug":"book-review-the-dark-descent-of-elizabeth-frankenstein-by-kiersten-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/?p=1778","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>by Kiersten White<\/p>\n

Delacorte, 2018<\/p>\n

ISBN-13: 978-0525577942<\/p>\n

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Elizabeth Lavenza is the ultimate example of the \u201ccool girl\u201d\u00a0 described by Amy Dunne in\u00a0Gone Girl<\/em>: she is never herself, always what someone else (usually a man) needs her to be. An orphan purchased by the Frankenstein family to be solitary Victor\u2019s friend, she knows her status is always endangered unless she can demonstrate how much she is needed. From the very first, the observant Elizabeth is aware that there is something not quite right with Victor, that she is needed to help him become socially acceptable on the surface, while covering up and erasing his more disturbing behavior, and she does everything she can to make certain he needs her as much as she needs him. Her only friend is Justine, a girl she rescued from an abusive mother and was able to have installed as governness for Victor\u2019s younger brothers\u2013 but even Justine does not know the extent of what Elizabeth has done to make herself essential to Victor and his family. At the same time, knowing that he can be erratic, unreliable, and sometimes even dangerous, she alters herself\u00a0 in his absence to appeal to Henry Clerval, a bright and optimistic young man of the merchant class who is mesmerized by both Victor and Elizabeth. As duplicitous as Elizabeth is, she knows she cannot keep it up indefinitely, and she is at a desperate disadvantage in Victor\u2019s absence once he leaves for university and stops responding to her letters. Finding him, saving him, and covering up his disturbing actions while also trying to avoid knowing exactly what he\u2019s done is essential to her continued status as a ward of the Frankenstein family.<\/p>\n

In the original novel, Elizabeth is an afterthought as Victor Frankenstein tells his story\u2013 she doesn\u2019t even have a speaking part, and while he is completely involved in his obsession, she totally disappears from the story. White fills in some of those blanks by placing Elizabeth at the scene of Victor\u2019s crimes and experiments in Ingolstadt and making her complicit in covering them up. The abusive nature of the Frankensteins\u2019 relationship with Elizabeth is such that she is able to even deceive herself about horrific events that it is clear to the reader were caused by Victor\u2019s activities.\u00a0Anyone who has read\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>\u00a0knows what happens to Justine and Victor\u2019s younger brother, William, but it\u2019s after this that the novel takes a left turn. Learning that Victor did successfully create a monster, Elizabeth overhears a conversation between the monster and Victor that leads her to believe that something terrible is supposed to happen on her wedding night. Rather than being smothered as she is in the novel, Victor reveals his terrible acts and future plans to immortalize Elizabeth. When she reacts in horror and threatens to expose him, he has her committed to an asylum, diagnosed with hysteria. This was an outstanding move on the author\u2019s part. Few YA readers are probably aware of the injustice that allowed women to be committed to asylums based only on their husband\u2019s or father\u2019s assertion that they were mentally disturbed (since most won\u2019t read \u201cThe Yellow Wallpaper\u201d until college) but it did actually happen and is a very clever way of getting Elizabeth out of the way so the Frankenstein story can advance further.<\/p>\n

I totally understand wanting to give Elizabeth a voice, flesh out Justine, and add another female character to the story (Mary Delgado, a bookseller from Ingolstadt and Elizabeth\u2019s rescuer, the most sensible and likable person in the book). It\u2019s not just unsatisfying but infuriating that in Shelley\u2019s novel Elizabeth and Justine basically exist to be fridged. And I appreciate that White worked hard to create an Elizabeth of her times, who was invalidated and gaslighted by the men in her life in a way that forced her to navigate social and gender roles seamlessly in order to believe she could have a place at all. There is some great writing here, especially in scenes where she takes an active role in witnessing, encouraging or covering up Victor\u2019s deeply disturbing actions (there is a scene with a bird\u2019s nest at the beginning and another with Victor\u2019s brother that will stick with me for a long time), on her wedding night, and in the asylum. But somehow, as a whole, the book doesn\u2019t quite ring true for me, and I feel that it\u2019s longer than it needs to be. I want to like it, and it could just be that after a year of reading about Mary Shelley and\u00a0Frankenstein\u00a0<\/em>I\u2019m worn down,\u00a0\u00a0but Elizabeth as a character doesn\u2019t stand on her own, and I don\u2019t think her voice successfully carries the story on its own, either. Just as\u00a0Gone Girl\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Amy Dunne can\u2019t tell the entire story of her twisted marriage on her own, Elizabeth needs another voice to balance hers in telling her story. Recommended for\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>-lovers, if they haven\u2019t burned out after a year of adaptations, retellings, critical studies, and biographies, and for teens who enjoy complex characters and have strong stomachs.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s Note:\u00a0The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein\u00a0<\/strong>by Kiersten White is on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein\u00a0by Kiersten White Delacorte, 2018 ISBN-13: 978-0525577942 Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD   Elizabeth Lavenza is the ultimate example of the \u201ccool girl\u201d\u00a0 described by Amy Dunne in\u00a0Gone Girl: she is never herself, always what someone else (usually a man) needs her to be. An orphan purchased […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,20],"tags":[311,312],"class_list":["post-1778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-ya-books","tag-2018-stoker-awards","tag-frankenstein"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Eu9f-sG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1779,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778\/revisions\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/ReadingBites\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}