On Dead Girls and Feminism in Horror

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It’s a familiar scene.

Aglow with a post-coital sheen, the girl tucks a sheet delicately (modestly) over her chest as she smokes a cigarette, her disheveled, masculine partner hiking up his too-tight jeans just in front of the partially closed door. Her name is Tammy or Tonya or Trisha, something cute, but by this point you’ve already forgotten it because what matters is that she’s done The Thing, which means sometime in the next few minutes, or the next few pages, she’s going to die.

Or how about this one—

She’s a good girl, kind and obedient and virginal, which is why she’s found herself ensconced in a courtship with an older, mysterious man. After a small wedding ceremony, she is swept into the gray, empty halls of his ancestral home and spends the next hundred or so pages haunted by his mistakes.

Or this one—

It’s pitch-black outside and the girl is running for her life. She did something stupid, like answer the phone or the door and while part of you is urging her on, a few choice words hurled at the screen because you would never have done what she did, another part of you hums with anticipation for the moment the knife glints in the light of a single streetlamp before it plunges between her perfect shoulders.

Classic.

And, if we’re honest, a little problematic.

In Dead Girls, a book of essays about the American obsession with killing women on screen, Alice Bolin writes, “The [girl]’s body is a neutral arena on which to work out male problems.” In this instance she was referring more directly to crime dramas, but I think it applies to what we think of as “classic” horror, too.

Tammy or Tonya or Trisha is murdered because the (male) killer is so overcome by his faults and jealousies he takes it out on coeds having too much fun. Our gothic heroine is terrorized by her husband’s dead wives not because of anything she’s done or didn’t do, but because she was beautiful and pure and available, and the girl running for her life doesn’t stand a chance, because there is something tantalizing about a woman in trouble. We tell ourselves we want her to outsmart the killer, to make the right decisions based on a lifetime of warnings against dangerous men, but that wouldn’t be as fun.

It’s not that to be considered feminist horror novels and films can’t allow for women to die. The difference between dead girls and feminist horror, I believe, is this: dead girls are women abused in a voyeuristic way, their deaths or traumas two-dimensional, whereas feminist horror allows women to crawl out of their own victimhood and presents a story about the complexities of female terror. Faced with a point of no return, it allows the women in these stories to confront the tropes of dead girls, to be an active player with agency in these problematic situations.

FEMALE TERROR

There’s a popular true crime podcast called My Favorite Murder. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. You may even be part of their “fan cult,” or own a t-shirt or keychain with one of their catch phrases on it—

Stay sexy, don’t get murdered.

Call your dad, you’re in a cult.

Fuck politeness.

Fun, right?

Except these stick-it-to-the-patriarchy anthems grew from stories of female terror. Fuck politeness is exciting to slap on your laptop, but every woman knows that if a man—especially one who is taller, older, or more intimidating than you—asks you a question, you answer politely. You don’t shoot him a dirty look or ignore him, because he might just be the type of guy to wait for you outside of the coffee shop, to follow you to your car, to your house, to break in and murder you in your own living room, and all because he felt slighted. Because you were rude. Because you didn’t give him the attention he thought he deserved.

As female-identifying people, we’re taught to be aware of our surroundings. To carry some kind of weapon, like a knife, pepper spray, or an adorable cat-ear shaped brass knuckle meant for gouging out eyes and to know how to use them. We’re told to look under our cars and in the back seats before we get in, to lock the door the moment we’re safely inside. If there’s a flyer or other debris on your windshield, drive away, and then flick the debris off with your windshield wipers. Don’t go out in an unfamiliar area at night. Don’t talk to strange men (but don’t be rude). Check under your hotel room bed and in the bathroom. Buy a chain-block for the door. Don’t answer the door (but don’t be rude). Wear clothing that covers your body. Don’t flirt (but don’t be rude). Don’t leave your drink with anyone. Don’t accept drinks from anyone (but don’t be rude).

Sometimes, when I’m waiting for a guy friend to walk me to my car after a night out, I scroll through TikTok, looking for laughs. There is one video that has made the rounds in which the voice-over says, “What do you yell when you’re in trouble?” And then, after a short pause for the watcher to answer, “If you said help, you’re a man.”

Because the correct answer is, of course, “Fire.”

If you yell fire, the calvary will come running.

If you yell help, passersby will continue on their way, a shiver snaking down their backs. They’ve seen those horror movies and read those novels. They know what happens next and they don’t want any part.

Female terror is exhausting. It’s intimate and requires an incredible amount of knowledge and foresight and bravery to survive.

Why, then, does mainstream horror media perpetuate the idea that the women in their stories do not have this knowledge or foresight? Short answer—because it’s easy. The more complicated answer, though, is that feminist horror—stories in which women are more than just two-dimensional victims—has only recently clawed its way into the broader public eye.

It can be hard to spot the difference, especially in works that are similar to the stories and tropes we know. Let’s take a look at two similar works, side by side.

A COMPARISON

Edith Cushing is a good girl. She takes care of her father—a precocious man of means who dotes on Edith’s love of books because it’s the only way he knows how to manage a motherless daughter. She turns up her nose at frivolous things like parties and handsome young doctors, content to bury her head in her beloved volumes (never mind the ghost of her mother, haunting the halls outside her bedroom). That is, until Sir Thomas Sharpe enters her life, all sexy brooding swagger and ulterior motives.

I loved Crimson Peak. Between the exaggerated costumes, visceral aesthetic, and Jessica Chastain’s facial expressions, the 2015 film is a masterclass in what makes readers (and viewers) ache for the gothic. It is dark and moody, with string-tight tension and scenes you only watch through your fingers. But feminist? Not so much.

Though Edith appears to have some agency—it is her signature, after all, that is required for the Sharpe siblings to get their hands on her father’s money—apart from marrying the man she chooses for herself, Edith doesn’t do much. She is haunted by Mrs. Sharpes past, yes, and she gives in to her curiosity just enough to keep the plot moving, but the sins of her husband and sister-in-law would have been laid bare, with or without her meddling. Edith is almost hilariously inept at her subterfuge, a trait at odds with her precise and exacting behavior prior to marrying Thomas. That she (spoilers!) survives at all, is not due to her bravery or cunning, but her husband’s guilty conscience. Edith is little more than the vehicle for Thomas’s character development.

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling was, by the author’s own admission, influenced by Crimson Peak. The comparisons are easy to draw, from the gothic atmosphere to our studious heroine, but very early on, the paths diverge.

Jane Shoringfield is a woman who knows what she wants. Moreover, she’s a woman who knows what she needs to survive in a culture that hasn’t caught up to the idea that women exist as whole beings. What she needs, rather disappointingly, is a husband. Specifically, one that will be mutually beneficial in fulfilling a societal contract, while allowing her to be independent. After much time and research, she zeroes in on Dr. Augustine Lawrence. His one condition? She never visit his ancestral home, Lindridge Hall. Why? Well, the ghosts, of course.

And while the circumstances surrounding the hauntings are a reflection of the gothic genre—husband with questionable morals, a dead wife—unlike in Crimson Peak where things merely happen to Edith, Jane seeks out the supernatural, mostly to her detriment, but more importantly for her own use. To save herself by saving her husband, she must arm herself with magic that not only negates everything she thinks she knows about the world, she must do it without help, by breaking herself down with starvation and sleep deprivation, weakened. If we think of this as a metaphor for female terror, the magic is her cat-eared brass knuckles, which she must wield while barely conscious, against an impossible foe. She can either fight, or die.

And though at times it feels like Jane doesn’t have a choice, and that loyalty to her husband clouds her judgment, it is her desire for truth, whether it exonerates or damns him, that sets her apart from other gothic heroines. If she is going to die, it is going to be on her terms, and not by the hand of a deranged sister-in-law. The plot moves and bends so that Jane can grow and discover. Edith is a prop where Jane is a force, and that makes all the difference.

This is what I hoped to accomplish with They Drown Our Daughters. In my book, generations of women are faced with the possibility of insanity, of inevitable doom. The constant thrum of the ocean is a reminder of what is expected of them, of their powerlessness against an unseen force. Some succumb, but others aren’t as willing to die just because the past says they ought to.

And this, I think, is what the future holds for horror. Tammy or Tonya gleefully climbs out of bed and plants an axe in the middle of the would-be killer’s forehead. The virginal gothic heroine takes the estate from her husband, freeing the spirits of the women who came before her. The girl running for her life plants her feet in the mud and faces her pursuer with a bloody lip and a glint in her eye that promises the fight of a lifetime.

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