Barbara Creed
Part 1
FACES OF THE MONSTROUS-FEMININE: ABJECTION AND THE MATERNAL
Introduction
The horror film is populated by female monsters, many of which seem to have evolved from images that haunted the dreams, myths and artistic practices of our forebears many centuries ago. The female monster, or monstrous-feminine, wears many faces: the amoral primeval mother (Aliens, 1986); vampire (The Hunger, 1983); witch (Carrie, 1976); woman as monstrous womb (The Brood, 1979); woman as bleeding wound (Dressed to Kill, 1980); woman as possessed body (The Exorcist, 1973); the castrating mother (Psycho, 1960); woman as beautiful but deadly killer (Basic Instinct, 1992); aged psychopath (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, 1962); the monstrous girl-boy (A Reflection of Fear, 1973); woman as non-human animal (Cat People, 1942); woman as life-in-death (Life-force, 1985); woman as the deadly femme castratrice (I Spit On Your Grave, 1978).
Although a great deal has been written about the horror film, very little of that work has discussed the representation of woman-as-monster.
Instead, emphasis has been on woman as victim of the (mainly male) monster. Why has woman-as-monster been neglected in feminist theory and in virtually all significant theoretical analyses of the popular horror film?
After all, this image is hardly new.
All human societies have a conception of the monstrous-feminine, of what it is about woman that is shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject.
Freud linked man’s fear of woman to his infantile belief that the mother is castrated. ‘Probably no male human being is spared the fright of castration at the sight of a female genital’, Freud wrote in his paper, ‘Fetishism’ in 1927 (p. 154). Joseph Campbell, in The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, drew attention to woman as castrator and witch.
There is a motif occurring in certain primitive mythologies, as well as in modern surrealist painting and neurotic dream, which is known to folklore as ‘the toothed vagina’ – the vagina that castrates. And a counterpart, the other way, is the so-called ‘phallic mother,’ a motif perfectly illustrated in the long fingers and nose of the witch.
(Campbell, 1976, 73)
As well as its expression in surrealist art (see illustrations), the myth of the vagina dentata is extremely prevalent. Despite local variations, the myth generally states that women are terrifying because they have teeth in their vaginas and that the women must be tamed or the teeth somehow removed or softened – usually by a hero figure – before intercourse can safely take place.
The witch, of course, is a familiar female monster; she is invariably represented as an old, ugly crone who is capable of monstrous acts. During the European witch trials of recent history she was accused of the most hideous crimes: cannibalism, murder, castration of male victims, and the advent of natural disasters such as storms, fires and the plague. Most societies also have myths about the female vampire, a creature who sucks the blood of helpless, often willing, victims and transforms them into her own kind.
Classical mythology, too, was populated with gendered monsters, many of which were female.
The Sirens of classical mythology were described as enormous birds with the heads of women. They used their magical songs to lure sailors close to shore in order to drive the sailors’ ships into hidden reefs. The Sirens then ate their helpless victims.
The Medusa and her two sisters also presented a terrifying sight. They had huge heads, their hair consisted of writhing serpents, their teeth were as long as boars’ tusks and they flew through the air on golden wings. Men unfortunate enough to look upon the Medusa with her evil eye were immediately turned to stone.
In classical times, pendants and other jewellery depicting the Medusa s frightening appearance were frequently worn to ward off evil spirits, and warriors painted the female genitals on their shields in order to terrify the enemy.
Freud takes up this point in his short essay, ‘Medusa’s head’:
If Medusa’s head takes the place of a representation of the female genitals, or rather if it isolates their horrifying effects from their pleasure-giving ones, it may be recalled that displaying the genitals is familiar in other connections as an apotropaic act. What arouses horror in oneself will produce the same effect upon the enemy against whom one is seeking to defend oneself. We read in Rabelais of how the Devil took flight when the woman showed him her vulva.
(p. 274)
It is not by accident that Freud linked the sight of the Medusa to the equally horrifying sight of the mother’s genitals, for the concept of the monstrous-feminine, as constructed within/by a patriarchal and phallocentric ideology, is related intimately to the problem of sexual difference and castration.
If we accept Freud’s interpretation that the ‘Medusa’s head takes the place of a representation of the female genitals’, we can see that the Medusan myth is mediated by a narrative about the difference of female sexuality as a difference which is grounded in monstrousness and which invokes castration anxiety in the male spectator.
“The sight of the Medusa’s head makes the spectator stiff with terror, turns him to stone.’ The irony of this was not lost on Freud, who pointed out that becoming stiff also means having an erection. “Thus in the original situation it offers consolation to the spectator: he is still in possession of a penis, and the stiffening reassures him of the fact’ (ibid., 273).
One wonders if the experience of horror – of viewing the horror film – causes similar alterations in the body of the modern male spectator. And what of other phrases that are used by both male and female viewers – phrases such as: ‘It scared the shit out of me’; It made me feel sick’; ‘It gave me the creeps’? What is the relationship between physical states, bodily wastes (even if metaphoric ones) and the horrific – in particular, the monstrous-feminine?
I have used the term ‘monstrous-feminine’ as the term ‘female monster’ implies a simple reversal of “male monster’. The reasons why the monstrous-feminine horrifies her audience are quite different from the reasons why the male monster horrifies his audience. A new term is needed to specify these differences. As with all other stereotypes of the feminine, from virgin to whore, she is defined in terms of her sexuality. The phrase “monstrous-feminine’ emphasizes the importance of gender in the construction of her monstrosity.
Before discussing the questions raised above, it is relevant to consider the various ways in which theorists and critics have approached the question of woman as monster in popular film. In general, they have adopted one of the following approaches: simply discussed female monstrosity
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