The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

Delacorte, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0525577942

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

Elizabeth Lavenza is the ultimate example of the “cool girl”  described by Amy Dunne in Gone Girl: 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’s 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’s younger brothers– 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  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’s 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’s done is essential to her continued status as a ward of the Frankenstein family.

In the original novel, Elizabeth is an afterthought as Victor Frankenstein tells his story– she doesn’t 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’s crimes and experiments in Ingolstadt and making her complicit in covering them up. The abusive nature of the Frankensteins’ 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’s activities. Anyone who has read Frankenstein knows what happens to Justine and Victor’s younger brother, William, but it’s 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’s part. Few YA readers are probably aware of the injustice that allowed women to be committed to asylums based only on their husband’s or father’s assertion that they were mentally disturbed (since most won’t read “The Yellow Wallpaper” 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.

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’s rescuer, the most sensible and likable person in the book). It’s not just unsatisfying but infuriating that in Shelley’s 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’s deeply disturbing actions (there is a scene with a bird’s nest at the beginning and another with Victor’s 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’t quite ring true for me, and I feel that it’s 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 Frankenstein I’m worn down,  but Elizabeth as a character doesn’t stand on her own, and I don’t think her voice successfully carries the story on its own, either. Just as Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne can’t tell the entire story of her twisted marriage on her own, Elizabeth needs another voice to balance hers in telling her story. Recommended for Frankenstein-lovers, if they haven’t burned out after a year of adaptations, retellings, critical studies, and biographies, and for teens who enjoy complex characters and have strong stomachs.

Editor’s Note: The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White is on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.