The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

by Kiersten White

“Imagine the shore of a lake. The water crystal clear. The bottom perfectly visible. But as soon as you reach in, or stomp through, the sediment is churned up, the water muddied, all the treasures inside the once-placid water hidden from view. Perhaps something could be found by digging, but why bother, when everything is fine as it is? That is all you need to know of my origins.”

“And if you meant it, about marrying me, you will need to talk to Victor. I know his mother always treasured the thought of Victor and me marrying, but he and I have never spoken of it.

Awkward

He deserved someone who could accept a proposal with a joyful heart, not a calculating and conniving mind.

Besides, I already knew how to be Victor’s. I did not want to learn how to be anyone else’s.

“Elizabeth,” he said, his tone firm and chiding. He lifted my chin and fixed my eyes with his. “You are mine. You have been since the first day we met. You will be mine forever. My absence should not have caused you to doubt the firmness and steadfastness of my attachment to you. It will never fade.”

“Elizabeth Lavenza.” Her black eyes narrowed with intensity. “It is time to kill your husband.”

My soaked skirts dripped a steady puddle of water that would damage the wood if left unmopped. As a child, I would have cleaned it immediately, wishing to leave no trace of myself and no opening for censure. I leaned over and wrung out my hair all over the floor.

“I have just escaped from the asylum where you trapped me, have come here with the express purpose of killing you, and you want me to change my clothes?”

AUTHOR’S NOTE Two hundred years ago, a teenage girl sat down and created science fiction. She did it on a dare. The coolest thing I ever did on a dare was ask my now-husband out. Which, granted, changed my world. Mary Shelley? Changed the whole world. Rarely does a story come along that reshapes the public imagination in such a startling and notable way. The fact that we are still talking about Frankenstein, studying it, remaking it, speaks volumes to the questions Mary Shelley asked. Because it isn’t the answers in stories that are interesting—it’s the questions. When I sat down to write a retelling of a book that has meant so much to me, I wasn’t sure where I wanted to start. I knew I wanted a female protagonist, but beyond that, I needed direction. I needed my questions. I found them in Mary Shelley’s own introduction to the book. In it, she deflects focus from herself, talking about her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, instead. “My husband,” she said, “was from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and enroll myself on the page of fame….At this time he desired that I should write, not so much with the idea that I could produce any thing worthy of notice, but that he might himself judge how far I possessed the promise of better things hereafter.” And then in the preface, the only part of the book written by him, Percy makes certain to note that if people knew Lord Byron was writing at the same time Frankenstein was drafted, th...