The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

by Kiersten White

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...