Introduction: mapping the gynaehorrific imaginary
Defining gynaehorror
Gynaehorror from virginity to menopause
Gynaehorror in context
Gynaehorror as convention and challenge
1. Roses and thorns: virgins, vagina dentata, and the monstrosity of female sexuality
Defining virginity
Virginity in horror film
The virgin’s other: vagina dentata
Imag(in)ing the vagina
Vagina dentata in horror
A different sort of Teeth: reframing vagina dentata
Heteronormative horrors
2. The lady vanishes: pregnancy, abortion and subjectivity
Framing pregnant subjectivity
Keeping house: female corporeality in horror
Home invasions
Vessels and environments
Foetal visibility and the dissolution of the female subject
Inside: competing subjects
Abortion and taboo
‘Pro-life’ and Pro-life
3. Not of woman born: mad science, reproductive technology and the reconfiguration of the subject
Science, culture and masculinity
‘Mad science’ and men making life
Fearing science
Mad scientists and madwomen
Re-gendering mad science in Splice
Brave new worlds: cyborg futures and female subjectivity
4. The monstrous-maternal: negotiating discourses of motherhood
Psychoanalytic discourses of motherhood
The legacy of Mrs Bates: Norma, Thelma and Nola
Essential and ideal motherhood
Motherhood as instinct and imperative
The legal implications of transgressive motherhood
Millennial mothering and the horror of the single mother
States of Grace: competing discourses of motherhood
Monstrous motherhood
5. Living deaths, menstrual monsters and hagsploitation: horror and/of the abject barren body
The abject barren body
Menstrual horror
The horror of menopause
Ageing women in cinema
Psychobiddies, grande dames and horrific harridans
The ageing woman as (American) horror story
Afterword: monstrous miscarriages and uncanny births
Biography
Erin Harrington is Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at The University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
“it’s a fascinating and feminist look at gynaehorror, and one that’s highly recommended”
Octavia Cade, Strange Horizons
