Title: Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice
Author: Damien Angelica Walters
Date of First Publication: 2016
Place of Publication: Eternal Frankenstein
Type: Short story
Characters: No Character
Themes: ANDROID; MAD SCIENTIST/MONSTER; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER; WOMEN WRITING MONSTERS
Critical Summary: “Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice” is a short story that focuses on a young girl’s secret and what happens when her classmates find out. Told from an unreliable narrator, the story tells of a young girl, Tara, changed at the start of tenth grade. Three of her classmates, the narrator, Madison, and Ellie, work to find out what changed over the summer.
When stiches are found on Tara’s wrist and ankle, the tenth-grade class dubs her as “Frankenstein” and the three girls become even more determined to find out Tara’s secret. Inviting her to an abandoned building under false pretenses of a “hang-out”, the girls find out that the previous summer Tara had attempted suicide. Her mother and a doctor, stitched up body parts together and brought her back to life. Shocked and horrified, the girls are in disbelief. Madison decides to bully Tara into letting her use scissors on Tara’s stiches. Madison ends up removing Tara’s hand. In the end, it is alluded that Tara was found dead later that same night, though it is unclear whether she killed herself or the girls murdered her.
This story contains multiple direct connections to Frankenstein. First, Tara is the monster in the story and, much like Victor Frankenstein’s monster, does not asked to be birthed. Tara feels isolated by her differences from her classmates and her “weirdness” causes her to become a pariah among her classmates. Bullied and misunderstood, Tara struggles to fit in with. This can be connected to when the monster watches the De Lacey family, and, upon trying to make friendly contact, is chased away. Both Tara and the monster are judged by their looks as opposed to their temperament, personality, and moral values.
Tara is pieced back together by her mother, but as some of her body parts were unsalvageable, her mother made do. This is exposed when Tara shows off the stitches on her stomach to the three girls and mumbles something about organ donors. Madison crudely comments, “Are you even you anymore?” Tara does not answer this question, signifying that since her suicide attempt, she cannot figure out who she is anymore. Is she a monster? Is she the product of a horrible experimentation of her grieving mother?
When the class decides to nickname Tara as “Frankenstein” the narrator has pointed out to her that Frankenstein is the name of the scientist, not the monster. She responds by saying that Frankenstein is an old novel not worth her time.
Is Tara’s death at the end of the story tragedy or relief? Suppose the three girls murdered Tara after finding out that she is not the girl they remembered from previous years, would that make them more monstrous than Tara? Tara takes on the role of “monster”, but, aside from crude physical appearance she attempts to go through the tenth grade quietly. Whereas, the three girls, it is assumed, bully Tara because of her differences and could be held responsible for her subsequent death regardless of the cause.
Drawing parallels, can the monster in Frankenstein be held accountable for his murders? One could argue that he was not murderous upon birth, but rather, driven to madness his creator’s and society’s rejection of him.
Administrative Notes: Kaleigh Weaver, CSUF; Yesenia Rodriguez (editing)