The Monstrous Feminine

in Literature and Art

Cindy Sherman, "Untitled, #341E"

"The female is as it were a deformed male."

--Aristotle

"Distinguished women . . . are as exceptional as any

monstrosity . . . for example a gorilla with two heads."

--Le Bon (1879)

"Sir, a woman's composing music is like a dog walking on his hind

legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all."

--Cecil Gray (1928)

"It was certainly an odd monster that one made up by reading the

historians first and the poets afterwards--[woman as] a worm winged like

an eagle; the spirit of life and beauty in a kitchen chopping up suet."

--Virginia Woolf (1929)

"Wouldn't the worst be, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated, that they

have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to

change its meaning? You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her.

And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing."

--Hélène Cixous (1976)

Essays on Gender and Pop Culture

The Bodybuilding Grotesque--good introductory essay on monstrous female bodies.

Abject Appeal and the Monstrous Feminine in Lady Gaga’s selffashioned persona ‘Mother Monster’--analysis of Lady Gag's constructed image.

Carousel of Genders--Smelik's essay on gender performance in pop culture (Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc.)

Judith Butler, Gender Trouble--short biography, interview, links. Gender Matters page (Landow site), with links to Butler's theories; see especially The Relation of Gender Theory and Semiological Theory, with links at bottom of screen. Nealon's Theory that Matters, a review of Butler's Bodies that Matter.

The Monstrous Feminine: Stereotyping against the Grain--excellent introduction to Barbara Creed's theory of the "monstrous feminine" in mythology, psychoanalysis, and film.

Monstrous Feminine in Myth and Literature

"Medusa"

Medusa

• Medusa in Myth and Literary History--excellent student paper.
• The Serpent-Haired Queen Medusa (Sovereign Female Wisdom)--excellent student discussion.
• Images: Athena with Medusa aegis, on a vase; Medusa Running; Large stone head of Medusa; Medusa Painting--by Ruben; Cellini's Perseus holding the head of Medusa; Carravaggio's Medusa; and Delville's Medusa.
• Poems: Medusa--Louise Bogan's poem; The Muse as Medusa--May Sarton's poem (scroll down the page to find the poem); and Medusa, the Women of Perseus--Ann Stanton's poem;
• The Laugh of Medusa--famous essay by Hélène Cixous
• Hélène Cixous--introductory biography with some critical comments on her famous "Medusa" essay.
• The Laugh of Medusa: A Textural Analysis.
• Laugh of Medusa--click on all 9 icons for 9 themes developed by Cixous.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

• Frankenstein-- e-text.
• The Last Man--e-text of complete novel, along with related materials.
• The Mortal Immortal--e-text of this story, along with related materials.
• Body Parts that Matter: Frankenstein, or the Modern Cyborg--excellent article by Robert Anderson.
• The Monster Speaks: Mary Shelley's Novel--scholarly article.
• "An Issue of Monstrous Desire": Frankenstein and Obstetrics--scholarly article.
• What is a Monster? (According to Frankenstein)--scholarly article.
• The Matrushka Monster of Feminist Criticism--scholarly article.
• Horror's Twin: Mary Shelley's Monstrous Eve--scholarly article.
• Bearing Demons: Frankenstein's Circumvention of the Maternal--scholarly article.
• My Monster/My Self--scholarly article.
• My Hideous Progeny--scholarly article.
• Monsters and Madwomen: Changing Female Gothic--scholarly article.
• The Monster Within: The Alien Self in Jane Eyre and Frankenstein--scholarly article.

Shelley Jackson

• Shelley Jackson--biography.
• Patchwork Girl by Mary Shelley and herself--comments on the hypertext and where/how to get access to it.
• Patchwork Girl Overview (Landow site)--many subcategories to explore. See especially Stitching Together Narrative, Sexuality, Self--a short introduction; Wunderkammer: A Hyper-Cabinet--comments on Patchwork Girl; and Patchwork Girl Links--student commentary.
• Stitch Bitch: The Hypertext Author As Cyborg-Femme Narrator--biography and interview with Shelley.
• Growing Intimate With Monsters: Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl and the Gothic Nature of Hypertext--scholarly article.
• Frank Baum's The Patchwork Girl of Oz--e-text.
• Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl-scholarly essay from Postmodern Culture (don't get too bogged down in the opening section if you are a novice to hypertext).
• 'my body'--a Wunderkammer (Shelly Jackson)--another hypertext.
• Queen Bees and the Hum of the Hive--the future of feminist criticism?
• Body Parts that Matter:  Frankenstein or the Modern Cyborg--Anderson's scholarly article.

Angela Carter

• Angela Carter--biography.
• Carter biography with key themes in her novels summarized.
• Tall Tales and Brief Lives--Nights at the Circus as meta-narrative; scholarly essay by Brian Finney.
• Angela Carter--excellent overview/analysis of Carter's fiction, including Nights at the Circus.
• The Black Venus--scholarly article on the title story of this collection about Duval and Baudelaire.  Pegasos on Baudelaire offers some background for "Black Venus."
• Feminine Freakishness: Carnivalesque Bodies in Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus--scholarly article.
• The Ravished Reader:  Allegory in Carter's Nights at the Circus--Kristiansen's thesis.
  
  
• Poetry by William Butler Yeats: Yeats' Leda and the Swan, Yeats' Second Coming, Circus Animals Desertion.
• Paintings: Correggio) and Boucher's Leda and the Swan; read about Picasso's Harlequin. Another Harlequin. Here is Picasso's At the Lapin Agile (cabaret frequented by artists).

Saartjie Baartman, the "Hottentot Venus"

Saartjie's Story

• Coming Home--good introduction
• Saartjie Baartman, The Hottentot Venus--includes drawings.
• Exhibiting "Others" in the West--The Hottentot Venus
• Displaying Sara Baartman, the 'Hottentot Venus'--a longer, more detailed discussion of her life and the implications.
• Saartjie Baartman, The Hottentot Venus.
• Sarah "Saartjie" Baartman: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus.
• Sarah Baartman, at rest at last--news article.
• Saartjie's return restores our common dignity.
• Burying Sara Baartman: Commemoration, Memory and Historical Ethics
• The Sable Venus on the Middle Passage: Images of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

"Hottentot Venus 2000," photo by
Lyle Ashton Harris and Renee Valerie Cox

Saartjie as Image and Theatre

• Renee Cox/Lyle Ashton Harris, Hottentot Venus 2000--includes commentary. For a contrast, see Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus (with commentary).
• Spectacle of Hottentot Venus--by Women of Substance
• The Politics of Black Sexuality in Classic Blues--scholarly discussion placing the display of Baartman in the minstrel through the blues singer tradition of black performers.
• Dark Histories, Bright Revisions: Writing the Black Female Body--the heavier dark body in poetry and photography.
• Fashizblack Magazine Feature--images of black female beauty.
• Suzan-Lori Park's Venus--drama reviews and production photos (my drama website)

Cult of True Womanhood vs Deviant Bodies

• The Cult of True Womanhood--generous excerpt from this classic essay by Barbara Welter.
• Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood--introductory essay based on Barbara Welter's thesis.
• Bodies, Pedagogies, and the Buddha--excellent scholarly paper on the "gaze" as constructing sexuality; includes excellent definition of the postmodern concept of "gaze"--with references to Foucault's "deviant bodies" and to the Hottentot Venus.
• From Freaks to Goddesses--book review by Martin of Thomson's Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American culture and Literature. Excellent review of a book with a fascinating thesis that can be applied to the "monstrous feminine" on this web page.

Post-Modern Women Artists

Cindy Sherman

• Biography. See also images. See also two reviews of the MoMA Exhibition: Cindy Sherman's Masquerade Ball and Masquerading and High Society at Cindy Sherman's MoMA Retrospective.
• Gregory Volk on Cindy Sherman at Metro Pictures--discussion of some monster images.
• Monstrous Feminine--Cindy Sherman image through Ridley Scott's Alien image.
• Understanding Abjection: An Analysis of the Monstrous-Feminine in the Art of Cindy Sherman--excellent analysis; see two images at the bottom of the page.
• The Phantasmagoria of the Female Body: The Work of Cindy Sherman--analysis of the range of Sherman's images.
• Complete Untitled Film Stills (MoMA Exhibition 1997)--comments on her artwork.
• Collected Film stills and other untitled photos, 1979-1995.
• Museum of Modern Art's Cindy Sherman Exhibition--information about the exhibition.

"The Broken Column" by Frida Kahlo

Frieda Kahlo

• Frida Kahlo: A Tribute (alternate tribute). Excellent site when it is working. Includes biography, art images, and diary entries. Also view paintings 1 and paintings 2, and her self-portraits 1, self-portraits 2, and self-portraits 3 (click on the "empty" boxes). NOTE: Some of the thumbnail links are out of order, but try the one above or below because these are some of the clearer images on the web.
• More Kahlo paintings/essays--my Art Tours web page.
• Plath's poetry--see my Women's Poetry web page. (NOTE: Critics often compare both Sherman's art and Kahlo's art to Plath's poetry.)

GuerrilaGirls

• Guerilla Girls--unorthodox and hilarious; you'll never view art the same!

Cinema and Cyborgs

Alien Film Series

Alien: Movie Review.

Alien--thorough description of all phases of this movie.

Alien and the Monstrous-Feminine by Barbara Creed--excellent application of Creed's thesis to the first Alien film.

Gothic Tradition in Alien and Blade Runner --excerpt from the Fred Botting study.

Monstrous Mothers--selection about the film Alien from the book Alien Constructions.

Alien Queens and Monstrous Machines: The Conflagrationof the Out-of-Control Female and Robotic Body--scholarly article on the monstrous feminine in the Alien films and the Transformer films.

Alien Resurrection--scholarly article.

The Monstrous Feminine in Cinema

The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis--introduction and Chap. 1 from this important book.

Monsters as (Uncanny) Metaphors: Freud, Lakoff, and the Representation of Monstrosity in Cinematic Horror --psychoanalytic explanation of how and why the monstrous in movies evokes "horror." Long and rather detailed, but highly informative.

Crush and Sweetie: Female Grotesque in Two Contemporary Australasian Films--scholarly study.

Brazen Brides, Grotesque Daughters, Treacherous Mothers: Women's Funny Business in Australian Cinema from Sweetie to Holy Smoke--Collins' article on women's cinema.

A Vampiric Relation to Feminism: The Monstrous-Feminine in Whitley Strieber’s and Anne Rice’s Gothic Fiction--scholarly essay of the vampire image.

Cyber-Bodies

Donna Harraway, The Promises of Monsters:  A Regnerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others--essay on "nature" and cyborgs

He, She, or It: The Cyborg De-constructs Gender--scholarly essay on Marge Piercy's futuristic novel.

Body Parts That Matter: Frankenstein, or The Modern Cyborg?--scholarly essay.

Cyberpunk Women of Neuromancer, The Matrix, and Blade Runner--analysis of these popular movies.

Cyborg: Engineering the Body Electric--advertising blurb.

The Cyborg--a number of helpful links.

Rosi Braidotti, Cyberfeminism with a Difference--good essay on the post-modern cyber-body as parody and parodic repetition.

Painting in left & right margins: detail from

'Quarrel of Oberon and Titania' and detail from 'Quarrel'

by Joseph Noel Paton

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Updated:  10-10-12