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Femininity and Agency in Young Adult Horror Fiction June Pulliam Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]

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Femininity and Agency in Young Adult Horror Fiction June Pulliam Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Jpullia@Lsu.Edu Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2010 Monstrous bodies: femininity and agency in Young Adult horror fiction June Pulliam Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Pulliam, June, "Monstrous bodies: femininity and agency in Young Adult horror fiction" (2010). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 259. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/259 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. MONSTROUS BODIES: FEMININITY AND AGENCY IN YOUNG ADULT HORROR FICTION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by June Pulliam B. A., Louisiana State University, 1984 M. A., Louisiana State University, 1987 August 2010 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my family for their patience as I completed this dissertation. In particular I would like to thank my husband Anthony Fonseca for suggesting titles that were of use to me and for reading my drafts. I would also like to express my heart-felt gratitude to Professors Malcolm Richardson, Michelle Massé and Robin Roberts for their confidence in my ability to embark on my program of study. Professors Jacqueline Bach, Steven Bickmore and Sue Weinstein have all been instrumental in the development of my understanding of Young Adult fiction. Professors Joshua Gunn and John Protevi are also deserving of my thanks for enhancing my understanding of the uncanny and of Michel Foucault. And finally, I wish to express my most sincere appreciation to Professor Robin Roberts for her patient midwifery of this dissertation. My labor was lengthy, and the end product would have been stillborn if not for her assistance and encouragement. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. iv Chapters Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter 1: Subversive Spirits: Resistance and the Uncanny in the Young Adult Ghost Story………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 18 Chapter 2: Blood and Bitches: Sexual Politics and the Female Lycanthrope in Young Adult Fiction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 46 Chapter 3: “An Ye Harm None, Do as Ye Will”: Magic, Gender and Agency in Young Adult Narratives of Witchcraft………………………………………………………………………………………….. 75 Conclusion: Monsters Are a Girl’s Best Friend…………………………………………………………. 103 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 108 Vita……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 122 iii Abstract Young Adult horror fiction with female protagonists presents sympathetically the untenable situation of adolescent girls within society whereby they are increasingly pressured to embody a doll-like feminine ideal that deprives them of voice and agency. In Young Adult horror fiction, the monstrous Other problematizes what is presented to girls as “normal” and “natural” feminine behavior. As a double with a difference, the monstrous Other is an iteration of femininity whose similarity to the original implies the possibility of resisting restrictive gender roles. Because in Young Adult horror fiction the monstrous Other is nearly always a sympathetic character, it is fairly easy for the reader or viewer to identify with this character and thereby formulate her own strategies to resisting a restrictive gender role. Monstrous Bodies: Femininity and Agency in Young Adult Horror Fiction examines three types of monstrous Others, each offering a different model of resistance to feminine subordination. In Chapter 1, the figure of the ghost reacquaints girls with strengths they have repressed in order to be conventionally feminine. The teen female werewolves in Chapter 2 refuse restrictive gender roles by accepting as strong and beautiful the parts of themselves that are at odds with normative femininity. And in Chapter 3, teen witches resist subordination when they can view the world holistically and so reject their cultures’ hierarchal and oppressive model of knowledge. Young Adult horror fiction does not simply reproduce through the form of the monstrous Other sexist ideas about women. Rather, Young Adult horror fiction uses these tropes of horror to deconstruct sexist ideas about women’s supposed essential nature which have been used to justify feminine subordination. In this way, Young Adult horror fiction differs from mainstream horror fiction, which is as likely to affirm sexist ideas about women (as well as racist ideas about non-whites) as it is to challenge these ideas. iv Introduction Young Adult horror fiction provides an important site for exploring representation and resistance to restrictive gender roles for young women. Both horror and Young Adult fiction are genres that have received little critical attention. Through an analysis of gender in representative texts, this dissertation will demonstrate that both genres merit critical analysis, and that Young Adult horror fiction in particular deserves feminist scholarly inquiry because it uniquely explores the process by which teen girls become gendered subjects. The form of the monstrous Other in Young Adult horror fiction does not simply reproduce sexist ideas about women. Rather, Young Adult horror fiction uses the tropes horror to deconstruct sexist ideas about women’s supposed essential nature which have been used to justify feminine subordination. In this way, Young Adult horror fiction differs from mainstream horror fiction, which is as likely to affirm sexist ideas about women (as well as racist ideas about non-whites) as it is to challenge these ideas. Horror fiction can be defined as work “that contains a monster of some type and . often *though not always+ has the effect of scaring the reader” (Fonseca and Pulliam 3) and may contain supernatural elements such as ghosts, vampires, werewolves or characters with magical powers. The Horror Writers Association defines horror as having only one true requirement: “that it elicit an emotional reaction that provokes some aspect of fear or dread” (“Horror Writers Association”). In Horror Fiction: An Introduction, Gina Wisker defines the genre as embodying “what is paradoxically both desired and feared, dramatizing that which is normally unthinkable, unnameable, indefinable, and repressed” (8). Horror fiction has its roots in the gothic, which dates back to 1674 with the publication of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.1 In my study of Young Adult horror fiction and gender, I examine works whose female protagonists have supernatural abilities. These abilities are horrifying because they dramatize what is normally “unthinkable, unnameable, indefinable, and repressed.” A defining quality of the horror genre has been its emphasis on difference, specifically sexual difference. For example, the werewolf as a type of monster is masculine in that the creature’s hirsutism and appetites for sex, food and violence are all extreme versions of normative masculinity. The witch as type of monster, on the other hand, is feminine in that her connection to the natural world links her to some traits of stereotypical femininity. Also, most 1 Horror fiction has its roots in the gothic, a type of fiction characterized by an atmosphere of mystery and terror. These elements are present in the first work of gothic fiction ever published, Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto. The success of Walpole’s novel spawned the publication of other works of gothic fiction including Ann Radcliff’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Gothic fiction would continue to be popular into the nineteenth century, when the work of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne would prefigure contemporary horror fiction (Fonseca and Pulliam 13). However, the horror genre with its pantheon of monsters would not emerge in its contemporary form until the 1930s, where it flourished in pulp magazines, film and horror comics. Universal Studios’ horror films defined the images of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein monster, Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, the mummy (The Mummy 1932) and the werewolf (The Werewolf of London 1935). The figure of the zombie as a rotting corpse who lives beyond the grave that we are most familiar with emerged from the pulp magazines and horror comics. In the 1950s, writers such as Richard Matheson incorporated into horror elements of speculative fiction in works such The Incredible Shrinking Man and I Am Legend. 1 witches are represented as female. In his introduction to The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film, Barry Keith Grant argues that horror film is always “preoccupied with issues of sexual difference and gender” (1). Grant views horror as a genre that is “useful in addressing dilemmas of difference” (9), particularly today, when “gender roles are being tested, challenged and redefined everywhere (11). Grant’s observations about the horror film also apply to the wider category of horror fiction, which includes films and graphic novels as well as literary
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