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Book Review: Mary Shelley Makes a Monster by Octavia Cade

Mary Shelley Makes a Monster: Conversation Pieces Vol. 70 by Octavia Cade

Aqueduct Press, 2019

eISBN: 978-1-61976-174-2

Available: Paperback

 

 

Instead of reading dry academic pieces on women writers who have made significant contributions to literature and thought, enjoy Octavia Cade’s uniquely creative approach to literary criticism in Mary Shelley Makes a Monster: Conversation Pieces Vol. 70. A group of provocative short poems is devoted to each of Cade’s selected authors including Mary Shelley, Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Janet Frame, Sylvia Plath, Grace Mera Molisa, Octavia Butler, Angela Carter, and Murasaki Shikibu.

 

In the poems, each woman represents a part of Mary Shelley’s literary legacy and is viewed as a possible “mother” for her monster. Effects on the monster become a means of describing the effects each writer has had on literature. Cade captures the essence of each woman by using references to the authors’ work, their own life and environment, the ideas that inspired the content of their writing, and their role in overcoming the obstacles facing a woman who writes.

 

The feminist perspective in this book is clear and shines a light on the complexities of the writing life. In the first poem of the section devoted to Grace Mera Molisa, Cade writes of the monster: “It has begun to understand that it has been made / more of parts that women were never meant to emulate. / Anti-custom, with too much of speech patterned over it.” This is the type of observation found throughout the poems. Readers who know the authors will find excellent insights on their writing, and those who don’t will be so intrigued that they will want to read the work of these trailblazers.  Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Nova Hadley

 

Editor’s note: Mary Shelley Makes a Monster was nominated to the final ballot of the 2019 Bram Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection.

 

Posted on April 15, 2020 by , Reply

Book Review: Ladies of Gothic Horror: A Collection of Classic Stories edited by Mitzi Szereto

Ladies of Gothic Horror: A Collection of Classic Stories edited by Mitzi Szereto

Midnight Rain Publishing, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1794556317

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

 

Next time someone says that women can’t write horror fiction, point them to this book. In Ladies of Gothic Horror,  Mitzi Szereto has collected 17 stories by women writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries that will creep you out, chill your bones, and check the locks on your doors.  While some names may be more familiar to readers of supernatural fiction, such as Mary Shelley, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, many of the stories are by women writers better known for other works: Edith Nesbit is chiefly known for her children’s books, Elizabeth Gaskell for her social realist novels, Edith Wharton for her novels about the American upper class, Virginia Woolf for her modernist and feminist writings, Helena Blavatsky for her theosophical and occult work. Szereto follows each of the stories with a detailed biographical note about the author, when that information is available (very little is available on Eleanor F. Lewis, who evidently wrote only two stories– it’s too bad she didn’t write more).

Many of these women were supporting their families by writing for magazines, and their writing can be dramatic, depending on stereotypical characters, but they also skillfully build suspense and atmosphere, administer retribution, and illuminate tragedy.  Standout stories include Gertrude Atherton’s “Death and the Woman”, which manages to create dread and suspense without ever having the main character leave her husband’s bedside;  Edith Nesbit’s “Man-Size in Marble”, in which a newlywed husband discovers why you should pay attention to your housekeeper; Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s “The Cold Embrace”, in which a young man learns that having your fiancee return from the grave is not actually romantic; Edith Wharton’s “Afterward”, in which an American couple discover that an English haunting is no joking matter; and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Elia W. Peattie’s “The Room of the Evil Thought” and Eleanor F. Lewis’ “The Vengeance of a Tree” are brief, terrifying stories of strange hauntings. Helena Blavatsky’s “The Ensouled Violin” is positively gruesome. The collection ends with Virginia Woolf’s “A Haunted House”, a much lighter piece than the rest, that provides a satisfying conclusion.

Ladies of Gothic Horror does a valuable service by spotlighting supernatural and gothic works by women writers better known for other work and by introducing some of the 19th and early 20th centry women writers of supernatural fiction that can still be found in print (some, like Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s The Wind in the Rose-bush, are even available free on Kindle).  While there are a few writers, like Eleanor F. Lewis, who may have been previously unknown, this book makes a good starting place for further investigating works by women writers of supernatural and gothic horror from the time period. There are few other anthologies similar to it that are still in print, although I expect we will see more now that people are discovering women writers of horror through the just-released Monster, She Wrote by Lisa Kroger and Melanie Anderson, which we recently reviewed.  Ladies of Gothic Horror is a great opportunity for widening your horizons and experiencing the chills, suspense, and terrors, that can be found in these women’s works. Highly recommended.

 

 

Posted on September 18, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

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.

 

Posted on March 23, 2019 by , Reply
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