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A review by catbag
The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White
5.0
The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein ✵ Kiersten White
“While I saw the destruction of the tree as nature’s beauty, Victor saw power—power to light up the night and banish darkness, power to end a centuries-old life in a single strike—that he cannot control or access. And nothing bothers Victor more than something he cannot control.”
I can’t even explain how much I loved Kiersten White’s take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. She expertly crafted an alternate take on the well-known story of Victor Frankenstein. In Shelley’s original, Victor’s perspective was very clearly flawed, and White took this flaw and expanded upon it in this empowering, tragic, beautiful retelling.
White showed us how Victor’s journey could look from the perspective of someone close to him and expanded on what that would really mean for Elizabeth Lavenza in particular. She and other characters who are mentioned briefly or not at all in the original are fleshed out in this reimagining. In doing so, we’re given a fuller scope of how the actions of a self-centered maniac would impact the lives of the people around him.
“They had stripped us of everything we were taught made us women, and then told us we were mad.”
Through Elizabeth, I found myself seeing more realistically what it sometimes meant to be a woman in the 1800s and how they had to work within the limits placed on them by society. From this angle I watched with anger and sadness as Victor was allowed to be a madman and society would simply see him as an oddity, while if any of the women attempted to break free of the restraints society placed on them, they would be shut in an asylum and made to disappear.
“I am not saying you should not feel remorse or sadness. But if nothing else, your past should teach you the value of life. The wild and precious joy of it. Do not let Victor steal that, you. He has already taken enough.”
White also retains some of the themes of the original while adding her own, which I found to only add to both versions. In the original, we only see a man’s perspective as we uncover what godhood and humanity mean, but Elizabeth’s perspective added, for me at least, a whole different level to that. She was a woman in the world of a man who believed himself to be godlike, and she suffered the consequences of that. My heart broke for her over and over as Elizabeth tried desperately to stay afloat in a society that would never care about her unless she made it.
“While I saw the destruction of the tree as nature’s beauty, Victor saw power—power to light up the night and banish darkness, power to end a centuries-old life in a single strike—that he cannot control or access. And nothing bothers Victor more than something he cannot control.”
I can’t even explain how much I loved Kiersten White’s take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. She expertly crafted an alternate take on the well-known story of Victor Frankenstein. In Shelley’s original, Victor’s perspective was very clearly flawed, and White took this flaw and expanded upon it in this empowering, tragic, beautiful retelling.
White showed us how Victor’s journey could look from the perspective of someone close to him and expanded on what that would really mean for Elizabeth Lavenza in particular. She and other characters who are mentioned briefly or not at all in the original are fleshed out in this reimagining. In doing so, we’re given a fuller scope of how the actions of a self-centered maniac would impact the lives of the people around him.
“They had stripped us of everything we were taught made us women, and then told us we were mad.”
Through Elizabeth, I found myself seeing more realistically what it sometimes meant to be a woman in the 1800s and how they had to work within the limits placed on them by society. From this angle I watched with anger and sadness as Victor was allowed to be a madman and society would simply see him as an oddity, while if any of the women attempted to break free of the restraints society placed on them, they would be shut in an asylum and made to disappear.
“I am not saying you should not feel remorse or sadness. But if nothing else, your past should teach you the value of life. The wild and precious joy of it. Do not let Victor steal that, you. He has already taken enough.”
White also retains some of the themes of the original while adding her own, which I found to only add to both versions. In the original, we only see a man’s perspective as we uncover what godhood and humanity mean, but Elizabeth’s perspective added, for me at least, a whole different level to that. She was a woman in the world of a man who believed himself to be godlike, and she suffered the consequences of that. My heart broke for her over and over as Elizabeth tried desperately to stay afloat in a society that would never care about her unless she made it.