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Gender, Literature, and Art, Part IV



The Monstrous Feminine

in Literature and Art


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Untitled by Cindy Sherman



"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)




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Index



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The Female Gothic: Essays

The Gothic: Material for Study--excellent material. Click on any of the seven links listed at the bottom of the screen (also listed here): Introduction; Individual and Social Psychologies of the Gothic; The Female Gothic; The Gothic and the Supernatural; The Sublime and the Domestic; Gothic Drama; Annotated Bibliography. NOTE: Each section has multiple links to follow. Most of the examples are from Radcliffe and Lewis, but some are from Frankenstein.


Sublime Anxiety--very dramatic opening! Read The Gothic Family & the Outsider and then browse the rest of the exhibit.


Romantic Period: Literary Gothicism (Norton Topics Online)--helpful introduction. Good links to topics like Satanic and Byronic Gothic heroes; excerpts from well-known gothic literature.


Northrup Frye on Gothic Obsession--selected quotes by this well-known critic on gothic obsession/vampirism and on romance.


The Literary Gothic--the General Resources section has links to Essays (two interesting essays by Joyce Carol Oates) and Reviews (helpful reviews of recent book-length studies of the gothic).


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


Romantics Unbound: Gothic with a variety of useful links.


The Gothic Body--Botting's review of Hurley's and Schmitt's recent books on the "monstrosity of the past and the new monstrous forms beckoning from a posthuman future."



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Female Gothic Literature

Maria Edgeworth


Mary Wollstonecraft


Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley


Charlotte Bronte


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1840s Fashionable Hairstyle & Evening Dress,

with a tight-corset "imprisoning" the waist.



Other Gothic Narratives



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The Hottentot Venus

Saartjie's Story


Saartjie in Contemporary Film, Theatre, and Art

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Cult of True Womanhood vs Deviant Bodies



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Post-Modern Bodies: Essays

Feminist Body Theory--book review of women artists reimaging bodies and sexualities. Use as an idea-getter.


Tainted Trademarks of the Monstrous Feminine by Cynthia Lee Henthorn; see also Part II.


Writing the Body: Problematizing Cultural Studies, Postmodernism and Feminism's Relevance--book review of Kirby's Telling Flesh.


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


The Monstrous and the Grotesque: On the Politics of Excess in Women's Self Portraiture"--Meskimmon's article.


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Medusa [artist

unknown]

Cixous Essay: The Laugh of Medusa--e-text of the famous essay. Laugh of Medusa--click on all 9 icons for 9 themes developed by Cixous; Helene Cixous: The Laugh of Medusa--helpful summary of certain aspects of Cixous;  see also The Poethics of Helene Cixous--book review by Parker of Helene Cixous: Rootprints by Cixous and Calle-Gruber. For more on Medusa, see also Medusa in Myth and Literary History and the Freudian analysis in the first half of de Vos' essay To See or Not to See: The Ambiguity of Medusa . . . . For more on Cixous, see from "Sorties" in The Newly Born Woman.


Luce Irigaray--helpful summary


Foucault, long selections from Discipline and Punishment (Body of Condemned, etc.); see also The History of Sexuality--Ch 1 The incitement of discourse. Foucault links--helpful commentary. Here is an excellent virtual demonstration of a panopticon.


Baudrillard on the Web for links to excerpts from Jean Baudrillard's work and more


Barthes' Mythologies--lectures


Embodiments: An Introduction--journal article


Spectral Tattoo: Reconstructive Fictions--Herk's conference paper on corporeality and several authors including Winterson


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


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.


Judith Butler, Gender Trouble--short biography, interview, links; here is a good summary of some of Butler's ideas. 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.


Spilling All Over the Wide Fields of Our Passions--Lee-Lampshire's scholarly article on the gender theories of Butler and others.


The Politics of Sex and Gender--The Benhabib and Butler Debate--scholarly article by Webster (not for beginners).


Conflicted Love--scholarly essay by Olive; maternal body/nature vs culture/the place of the father; psychoanalytic approach.


Cyborg: Engineering the Body Electric--advertising blurb.


Cyberspace, Hypertext, and Critical Theory Overview (Landow site) and Hypertext Overview (Landow site)--begin with definitions of "hypertext." Here is Ideas of Body and Self--many links.


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


Identity and the Cyborg Body--Reid's essay


Metafiction--many good links defining terms


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.


The Beautiful (Broken) Woman's Body: Neuromancer as a Neo-Romantic Celebration of the Female Body in Pain"--graduate student scholarly paper




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Post-Modern Women Artists

Cindy Sherman


Frieda Kahlo



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The Broken Column by Frida Kahlo




Remedio Varos


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Creation of Birds by Remedio Varos



Judy Chicago


Other Contemporary Artists



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Women's Post-Modern Literature

Kathy Acker


Angela Carter


Shelley Jackson


Jeanette Winterson



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Other Resources

Feminist Theory (Showalter's 3 stages)

Queer Theory (Klages page)--good introductory summary of key ideas.

Feminism and Women's Studies--GREAT SITE




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Comments/suggestions: knichols@pittstate.edu

Updated:  7-10-03


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Painting in left & right margins: detail from

'Quarrel of Oberon and Titania' and detail from 'Quarrel' by Joseph Noel Paton