54 pages • 1 hour read
Kate Elizabeth RussellMy Dark Vanessa
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaThemes
The Unreliability of Memory
Much of the novel takes place in Vanessa’s memory, as she thinks back to her sophomore year in high school at Browick, and the theme of the unreliability of her memory allows the reader to trace the changes in Vanessa’s character. Vanessa’s adult memories exist alongside a narration of the actual events of Vanessa’s sophomore year and a few of the years that follow. Because these narratives are juxtaposed, the reader can discern the many moments when Vanessa’s adult memory fails her. Vanessa’s idealization of the sexual abuse she sustained is contrasted with the gestures and emotions of a meaningful love affair, highlighting the damaging effects of sexual abuse on young people.
Vanessa’s unreliable memory causes her significant pain, but it is not a personal shortcoming that reveals a deficiency in Vanessa’s psyche. Rather, it is evidence of the power Strane was able to exert over her young and undeveloped person when he claimed to fall in love with a 15-year-old girl. Strane’s tendency to blame Vanessa for being such an attractive person has the double effect of passing on the responsibility of choice to Vanessa while also securing Vanessa’s affection and trust for his belief in her potential, a belief no other adult in Vanessa’s life can show her.
Several incidents that take place in Vanessa’s adult life jogs her unreliable memory and enables her to find the path to healing from the sexual trauma. Vanessa alludes to the Me-Too movement via news pieces that describe the fall of powerful men who have spent their careers taking advantage of younger, less powerful women. She speaks about these articles with her therapist Ruby, and Ruby’s validation and normalizing of the women’s rights to speak up gradually encourages Vanessa to face her own abuse story. As well, events that follow Taylor Birch’s online accusation of Strane, like the journalist’s request for an interview with Vanessa and the publication of the article about sexual assault, give Vanessa reason to question the version of events she has told herself. Finally, Vanessa becomes in touch with the disturbing feelings she experiences when she observes, as an adult, the ways grown men show sexual attention to underage. These incidents affect Vanessa deeply and encourage her to look at her past more accurately.
Abuse and Victimhood
Throughout much of the novel, Vanessa is unable to view herself as a victim because acknowledging the abuse she sustains taints the idea of love she needs and wants; her attitude toward victimhood and her refusal to understand her relationship with Strane as abusive are two of the several complexities that illuminate the theme of abuse and victimhood.
Vanessa’s resistance to the notion of victimhood denotes a resistance to the perception of herself as someone vulnerable; she much prefers Strane’s compliments of her strength and power over any suggestion that she might be fragile because they enable her to see herself as strong. Vanessa’s refusal to see herself as weak stems from her early commitment to a notion of self-reliance due to her troubled relationship with her mother. Because Vanessa cannot trust her mother to understand her and to accept her as she is, Vanessa seeks understanding and acceptance elsewhere; it is precisely Vanessa’s need and openness to the influence and adoration of others that attracts Strane. He can take advantage of Vanessa because she lacks stability and security, and his abuse is deft because he gives her the feedback she wants, which eventually makes him essential to her.
The author of the novel plays with the theme of abuse and victimhood when she makes it difficult for the reader to view Strane as a simple and straightforward villain. His character is also complex, and, at times, his attachment to Vanessa appears prolonged and intimate. He manipulates and deflects blame, but he also displays a neediness and dependence . Strane’s flaws open the reader to understand Vanessa’s point of view and to empathize with her confusion. On one hand, this makes the reader complicit in the abuse, simply by reading it and being entertained by it; on the other hand, the novel serves to enlighten readers about the effects an abuser like Strane can have on someone, and for how long.
Though Strane’s manipulative claims to powerlessness place some agency in Vanessa’s hands, they do not absolve him of the adult responsibility over the child he abuses. He is the adult in authority, and his power over Vanessa is undeniable. Vanessa, in search of an identity and a sense of confidence in herself, absorbs Strane’s compliments of her strength and power, believing herself to be the person of influence Strane needs to feel less alone in the world. The fact that Vanessa also receives something from Strane’s attention that she craves complicates the notion of Vanessa as a victim, and it is only with the help of a therapist that Vanessa can move forward.
The Power of Literature
The power of literature is an important theme of the novel. Much of the action of the novel takes place in an American literature class; the protagonist is a poet, and the antagonist is an English teacher. In addition,, Strane fills Vanessa’s internal world with literary references that have the combined effect of making their connection feel predestined. Some of his allusions are over a hundred years old while others are more recent, and they all work to give Vanessa the sense that their love story was written for them, by some of the most important writers in the history of literature. One long poem by Jonathan Swift has particular power: “Cadenus and Vanessa” is “about a young girl in love with her teacher” (87), and this work of literature inspired Strane to confess to Vanessa that it made him “start thinking about fate” (87).
Vanessa experiences the power of literature both as a writer and a reader. Vanessa is isolated from her peers at Browick, and she does not enjoy a close relationship with her parents. This sense of isolation means she is unable to voice her inner turmoil in conversation with others, so she writes about her emotional experiences in secret poems. When Strane shows an interest in her poetry, she feels that he is showing an interest in her; when he thinks carefully and offers thoughtful criticism of her work, she feels he is thinking of her and taking her seriously, something she longs for at a school where she feels like an outsider.
Strane also gives Vanessa more risqué poems and novels as part of his grooming process, earning her trust by speaking to her about sex, attraction, and love with the words of others. He gives Vanessa a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, ostensibly to normalize for Vanessa a love relationship between an older man and a girl. Ironically, Vanessa takes the words in the novel too seriously, and Strane chafes when Vanessa draws too many close comparisons between Strane and Humbert Humbert, implying Strane is a pedophile and ridiculing his desire for her to call him “Daddy” (133). Literature has the power to draw Vanessa to Strane, but it also has the power to unnerve Strane when it holds up a mirror to his person and his actions.
The power of literature is also at play when Vanessa goes to Atlantica College and forges a connection with another male English teacher, Henry Gould. Her astute observations, sharp writing skills, and willingness to show her expertise, despite the disapproval of her peers, wins Vanessa a special place in Henry’s life. She looks forward to becoming his assistant and to deepening their relationship, but when Henry refuses Vanessa’s seductive behaviors that Vanessa feels rebuffed. Her love of literature has been tainted by the abuse she experienced, and she cannot study the subject without being sexually linked to a mentor. As a result, she quits writing poetry, abandons her hopes of graduate school, and takes on a series of administrative jobs, losing a future in the field to the psychological effects of Strane’s abuse.
