Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-020-09761-x

Frankenstein’s Daughters: on the Rising Trend of Women’s

Body Horror in Contemporary Fiction

Melanie Rapoport1

Published online: 19 October 2020

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020

Abstract
In recent years, works of fiction written by women examining selfhood and the
Other in relation to women’s physical bodies have been brought to the forefront of
literary pop culture. From Carmen Maria Machado’s National Book Award-nomi-
nated short fiction collection Her Body and Other Parties to “Cat Person,” the short
story by Kristen Roupenian that “broke the internet” in December of 2017, readers
can’t seem to get enough of stories and works that openly examine women’s rela-
tionships with their bodies and how these bodies operate within our world. However,
the women in these works often don’t quite inhabit our world. By projecting ele-
ments of the supernatural and the uncanny onto fictional worlds and the women that
inhabit them, female writers are taking the opportunity to use horror fiction to ele-
vate conversations surrounding woman- and selfhood, using the discomfort evoked
by body horror to demystify and normalize discussions surrounding women’s bodies
and their natural functions previously considered grotesque.

Keywords Body horror · Horror fiction · Female adolescence · Women’s literature ·

Selfhood

Introduction

The human body has long been used as a subject on which to project thoughts of
fear, desire, disgust, and curiosity. Throughout history, the body has been seen as
sacred and repulsive, fascinating and frightening. Horror, and specifically horror of
the body, is nothing new, and has found a home for decades in film and literature.
While body horror has only been recognized as an official subgenre within the last
several decades, its origins in literature can be traced back to at least the early nine-
teenth century. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a prime example, and perhaps one of
the very first examples, of body horror. While Shelley’s novel focuses on the horror

* Melanie Rapoport
melrapo@optonline.net
1
Pace University, New York, USA

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
620 Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633

happening to her male characters, the text brings up traditionally female-centric

themes such as reproduction, sexuality, transformation, and the identity of the Other.
The topic of body horror as it relates to women’s bodies appears to be experienc-
ing an increase in popularity, specifically in contemporary fiction, and when exam-
ining conversations and works surrounding these bodies throughout history, it is not
difficult to understand why. Contemporary and experimental or speculative fiction
is a veritable literary playground in which authors can experiment with horror, the
female form, and issues surrounding women’s bodies and bodily autonomy.
This rising trend, often paired with the element of the supernatural or the
uncanny, is not merely a fleeting moment in the current publishing market; instead,
it is a statement, a place to experiment with and openly discuss what has for so long
been hidden and viewed as taboo: the topic of women’s bodies in all states, from
puberty to sexuality to childbirth. In short, these works focus on the act of super-
naturalizing women’s bodies in order to naturalize them.

Defining Body Horror as a Subgenre

When examining the topic of body horror as a literary genre, it is important first to
understand what body horror is. Most commonly referred to in film theory, the term
can be traced back to its first use, the hyphenated Body-horror, by film critic Philip
Brophy in his 1983 essay “Horrality: The Textuality of the Contemporary Hor-
ror Film.” Brophy’s essay discusses the golden-age of contemporary horror films,
including the then-ground-breaking films Alien and The Thing, and states “The
Thing (1982) took to its logical limit the Body-horror that was initiated in Alien
(1979) with that infamous scene where the alien bursts out of a crew member’s
stomach” [1]. Yet while this gives a concrete example of body horror, it does not
give true definition to the term itself.
Literary critics have attempted to examine and define the term, and while critic
Xavier Aldana Reyes acknowledges that body horror is “one of the loosest and most
ill-defined terms” in gothic and literary horror studies, his definition is as follows:
“The general understanding seems to be that, if a text generates fear from abnormal
states of corporeality, or from an attack upon the body, we might find ourselves in
front of an instance of body horror” [2]. Furthermore, author Lucy Taylor attempts
to define body horror in an essay written for Nightmare Magazine titled “Body Hor-
ror: What’s Really Under Your Skin?” (2018), identifying the term as anything fea-
turing “graphic violations of the human body… a subgenre that’s up close and per-
sonal, arguably the most viscerally disturbing type of horror” [3].
These definitions bring attention to several key words often used when discussing
body horror. Perhaps most crucial is Taylor’s definition of body horror as a subgenre
of horror, distinguishable from psychological horror, occult horror, gore, and so on.
The 2012 anthology The Mammoth Book of Body Horror further breaks down body
horror as falling into three categories; these include anxieties surrounding transfor-
mation, mutation, and contagion [4]. These terms in relation to bodies would also
appear to meet Xavier Aldana Reyes’ definition and use of the phrases abnormal
states of corporeality, and attacks upon the body.

13
Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633 621

Despite the fact that body horror appears to be a relatively new subgenre of horror
on film, body horror has been exhibited in literary works since at least the Victorian
Era. One of the earliest identifiable cases of body horror in text is Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein. A groundbreaking novel at the time of its publication, Frankenstein
examined questions of morality, mortality, and the uncanny. The reliance on the
uncanny and the ambiguity of the story’s true villain lend an element of horror to
Shelley’s tale, but it is the undermining of the idealized human body that Victor
imagines, in contrast to the grotesque, that truly brings this terror to life.
Since the publication of Frankenstein, there has been no shortage of examples of
body horror in literature. From writings about werewolves and ghastly, involuntary
transformation to H.P. Lovecraft’s science fiction and short stories, body horror is by
no means a relatively new concept within literary works, despite its varying defini-
tions across film and literary publications.

Why Female‑Written and Female Centered Stories are the Perfect

Setting for Body Horror

Even in stories that do not deal directly with the visceral descriptions of bodily hor-
ror, stories surrounding women and their bodies often tend to include elements of
the supernatural as an excuse to write about the otherwise natural functions of the
body such as desire, sex, menstruation, etc. Women’s voices have for centuries been
censored and silenced on all manner of topics, from the personal to the political.
Even medical concerns, often relating to menstrual pain and denoting underlying
medical issues, are trivialized and normalized, written off as mere dramatics.
When it comes to writing the experiences of women, stories of their bodies turn-
ing against themselves and their claims being explained away as hysterical female
ramblings act as the perfect setup for horror stories. “The idea that we’d fabricate
a story about our body being abused is far more believable than the story itself,”
writes author Rachel Eve Moulton in an article for LitHub, “Our bodies are the hor-
ror show. The ghosts we see are not real” [5]. Is it not easier, then, to simply write
off these claims from women about their own bodies as radical fiction?
An example of this trivialization is exhibited in Miriam Toews 2019 novel
Women Talking. Based on true events that occurred between 2005 and 2009, the
novel follows a group of Mennonite women as they decide how to take action after
discovering that over the course of several years they’d been drugged and sexually
assaulted in the night by male members of their community. Toews introduces her
novel with an author’s note, and states the following:
Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia […] many
girls and women would wake in the morning feeling drowsy and in pain, their
bodies bruised and bleeding, having been attacked in the night. The attacks
were attributed to ghosts and demons. Some members of the community felt
the women were being made to suffer by God or Satan for their sins; many
accused the women of lying for attention or to cover up adultery [6].

13
622 Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633

The initial reaction from the community, in which the women are blamed for their
own attacks while other members accuse ghosts, demons, or supernatural deities,
further contributes to the idea that some members of society would sooner blame the
supernatural than their own fellows when it comes to hearing the pleas of women.
The idea that women could be seen as sexual beings, and, further, the fact that their
bodies could be subject to something as horrendous as rape, is easier to attribute to
temptation and supernatural punishment than the deeds of men.
While actual body horror, not just the supernatural implications of it, has been a
subgenre of literary horror for decades, contemporary works of fiction are provid-
ing new ways of presenting bodily horror, specifically within works written by and
about women. The idea of the monstrous female is not a recently conceived one,
and this view of women as monsters, existing outside the realm of the natural, as
being labeled as Other, lends an element of fear to the feminine. However, position-
ing women as something to be feared because of what they are, or what their bodies
can do, also lends an element of power and agency to the female body.
The feminine form in general is an excellent starting point on which to inflict hor-
ror, specifically supernatural and body horror. Author Lucy Taylor writes that the
feminine “provides a wealth of possibilities for body horror: menstruation, lactation,
the terrors of childbirth, even suppressed female fury against a misogynistic cul-
ture” [3]. But it is within fiction, with its limitless possibilities that allow authors to
explore genre and go beyond the natural, that these instances of female body horror
thrive.
“I think that writing about women goes hand in hand with horror writing,” writes
Julia Armfield in a 2019 article for Publisher’s Weekly, appropriately titled “Body
Horror and the Female Body” [7]. “The female body is a nexus of pain almost by
design, but it is also potentially monstrous—an object traditionally subjugated, both
for its presumed weakness and its presumed threat” [7]. Armfield explores these
themes of horror and the feminine in her 2019 short story collection salt slow.
The focus on female bodies, and the candor with which Armfield writes of nor-
mal female bodily functions—“We are all of us peculiar; frizzy-haired and sweaty in
our woolen blazers, smelling thickly of the things girls come to smell of when they
are removed from the company of men” (p. 5) [8]—and not so normal ones—“My
skin starts to slip off my bones with a heaviness of sheer relief” (p. 17) [8]—cre-
ates a juxtaposition between the natural functions of the female body and these new,
supernatural events happening to them. And Armfield is hardly the first in the genre
to do this.
Another example of women’s body horror presents itself in the short fiction col-
lection Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado. In Machado’s
pieces, all of which are told from a female point of view, we see a new take on
the classic horror folktale “The Green Ribbon”, here titled “The Husband Stitch.”
Machado takes the old tale of a woman who lives her whole life with a green ribbon
tied around her neck, only to reveal it was keeping her severed head connected to
her body at the end of the tale, and completely rewrites the story into an allegory of
female agency and bodily autonomy.
The horror in Machado’s version of the story comes not from its inevitable end-
ing, but from the fact that throughout the story the female narrator is constantly

13
Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633 623

fighting off the advances of her otherwise loving husband in his attempts to undo her
ribbon. The horror Machado inflicts on her readers comes not from the actual bodily
horror and uncanniness implied in the tale; instead it can be attributed to the very
real issues of female oppression, objectification, and lack of autonomy. Other tales
in Her Body and Other Parties focus on issues regarding women’s bodies, including
sex and sexuality, body image, motherhood, and more. These themes only set the
scene for what can potentially become horrific tales surrounding women and their
bodies; but the unnatural element in these stories only serves to heighten the natural
everyday horrors women face.
There is a certain amount of liberation that comes with writing about the mon-
strous female, and works of contemporary fiction further explore this reclamation of
analyzing the female body in so much detail. In an article for Bustle, Amber Sparks
interviewed author Sarah Rose Etter, author of the speculative fiction novel The
Book of X, about a woman born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot.
Of Etter’s writing, Sparks notes “There is body horror, but defiance, too” [9]. Etter
elaborates, discussing the everyday routines of her novel’s character paired with the
surrealism she experiences due to her condition. “Those elements [the routine] are
part of what makes her empathetic. It evolved into a grotesque because if it weren’t a
grotesque, it would just be a horror show about the female body” [9].
And who wants to read about the everyday anatomy of the female? Periods, preg-
nancies, weight gain, sex—the taboo functions that for so long women have been
told not to broach? Instead, authors like Armfield, Machado, Etter and more amplify
these female bodies until they’re almost unrecognizable. At times, their ghastly
descriptions of transformations and mutations have the potential to cause such vis-
ceral discomfort in readers that the idea of menstruation or lactation seems mun-
dane. You thought that periods were gross? these women seem to be saying, Let me
show you how terrifying women’s bodies can be.

Examples of Women’s Body Horror in Contemporary Literature

Puberty

Times of transformation can act as perfect settings for instances of horror. Transfor-
mation can be horrifying in and of itself; transformation for a young woman even
more so. And what could present a better meeting place of transformation, fear, and
bodily horror than female adolescence? Menstruation has often been depicted as an
event that inspires horror, presenting women as weak or fearful beings as well as
beings to be feared. From archaic cultural myths to horror films that use menstrua-
tion as a catalyst for manifestation of power such as Carrie (1976), menstruation
and its associations is shrouded in negativity, secrecy, and shame [10]. However,
themes of pubescence and the open discussion of female menstruation are frequently
featured in recent works of female-written fiction. Candidly examining the topic of
the menstruating adolescent in fiction opens discussion about the effect that this
transformation has on young women, and demystifies a previously taboo topic in the
wake of the elevated levels of body horror.

13
624 Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633

Menstruation and the ideologies surrounding it has, for centuries, carried an

almost exclusively negative connotation. When women do choose to discuss such
matters as their menstrual cycles, it is often done indirectly, using nonspecific
expressions or innuendo. Additionally, public health and sex education courses
within schools frequently fail young women, with menstruation is only briefly
touched upon in sex ed courses.
An example of this lack of discussion is examined in “Mantis,” a short fiction
piece published in Julia Armfield’s debut short story collection salt slow. (2019).
“Mantis” follows a teenage girl with what appears to be a severe skin condition,
pieces of skin peeling and flaking off almost constantly and, sometimes, painfully.
Her mother offers little explanation for her condition other than that “it’s heredi-
tary,” that the women in their families suffer “difficult puberties” [8].
The nameless narrator attends an all-girls Catholic school, and in describing
her classmates and their collective adolescence states: “We are all of us peculiar;
frizzy-haired and sweaty in our woolen blazers, smelling thickly of the things girls
come to smell of when they are removed from the company of men” (pp. 4–5) [8].
This description of such distinctly female qualities, the appearances and scents and
desires that come with maturation, is a direct look at what it is to unabashedly exam-
ine femininity and pubescence without shaming, mystifying, or ambiguizing it.
The narrator goes on to briefly describe her school’s sex education course: “At
school, we watch videos about our changing bodies—censored Health and Safety
movies from the 1970 s, heavy on abstracted metaphors and light on biology” (p. 5)
[8]. This description of sex education is not unrealistic, as schools across the coun-
try and across the world often fail and fail again when it comes to teaching proper,
uncensored sexual education.
Armfield, however, writes with candor about the experiences her character in
“Mantis” has with her own period as well as those she notices of her peers:
I do bleed, though there is a difference in the color and texture, a difference in
the pullings and scrapings of my hips. I have thought about asking about this
after one of our Health and Safety videos, though these are not usually ses-
sions with much recourse for questioning. (p. 2) [8]
The open discussion of such personal bodily functions and descriptions may at first
strike some readers as shocking or unnecessary; however this then begs the ques-
tion of why something so natural and universal to those who menstruate is viewed
as shameful or discomforting in the first place. Additionally, the narrator’s con-
fusion and curiosity about her own body and what counts as “normal” but being
afraid or feeling prohibited to ask questions without invoking discomfort between
parties speaks to society’s current stance on women’s bodies and attitudes towards
menstruation.
While at its core “Mantis” is a story about female adolescence, the narrator’s
ultimate pubescent transformation far surpasses any supposed discomfort or dis-
gust associated with something as ordinary as menstruation. At the story’s climax,
the narrator, whose dead skin is now sloughing off her body in sheets, finds herself
alone with a boy. As they go to kiss, the narrator comes to understand her mother’s
cryptic statements involving the women in their family being “late bloomers.”

13
Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633 625

My skin starts to slip off my bones with a heaviness of sheer relief and the
shell beneath is something like my Mother’s; the hard, pale surface of unblem-
ishable cold. My teeth drop, my wig slips, and I am something else entirely. A
suddenness of mandibles and curving neck, sliding into lateral position, long
hands that bend straight down as if in inverted prayer […] I flex my arms and
raise myself a little higher as the last of my skin falls down unheeded to the
bathroom floor. (p. 17–18) [8]
This graphic description of the narrator fully transforming into something less than
human signals the completion of her adolescent transformation. While sex is often
seen as a symbolic act of entering adulthood, the narrator in “Mantis” does not end
the story or her adolescence by losing her virginity, but instead by undergoing a
self-mutation. Additionally, the surrealness of the story’s climax adds a new level
of horror to a style of writing that has perhaps already evoked discomfort or shock
from certain readers. This violent shedding of skin and detailed description of ana-
tomical transformation might perhaps put some in the position of questioning how
they could have thought something as mundane as menstrual blood could be uncom-
fortable in the first place.
“Mantis” is not the only story in salt slow. that focuses on teenage girls and trans-
formation during formative years. “Formerly Feral,” focuses on a young girl and the
changes she undergoes, in terms of her body and her lifestyle, as she grows older
in the company of her new stepsister, who happens to be a wolf. At first confused,
and then resentful of this new family member, the narrator is hesitant to bond with
her new “sibling.” However, as she becomes fonder of her new family member, she
adopts more and more of Helen’s wolfish traits as Helen continues to be dressed in
human clothes and treated by the narrator’s stepmother as a proper daughter.
While there is no explicit horror in “Formerly Feral,” there is a near-constant
sense of surreal uncanniness. The strange and unsettling behaviors and attitudes of
the narrator, juxtaposed with the everyday horrors she experiences while becoming
a young woman (periods, bullying, harassment, unwanted male advances) put these
issues into even sharper relief. Helen, the wolf, is used as both a foil and a parallel
for the narrator—Helen will never be a real girl the way the stepmother wants her to,
and this is made clear as both Helen and the narrator mature; yet as Helen ages and
grows more aggressive, territorial, dirtier, so does the narrator. “She is turning into a
woman,” writes Armfield in an article on her writing for Publisher’s Weekly, “She is
turning into a monster; the two things are one and the same” [7].
Julia Armfield is hardly the first author, or even the most recent, to use the experi-
ences of teenage girls as a setting in which to foster body horror. Naturally, young
adult literature almost exclusively focuses on individuals experiencing transforma-
tions of all kinds, not solely physical. Rory Power, however, chooses to focus heavily
on physical transformation in her young adult novel Wilder Girls (2019). The novel
takes place at a remote all-girls boarding school, where the student body has been
quarantined indefinitely due to the outbreak of a mysterious disease that has killed
off all but two teachers and left no one immune.
The true horror reveals itself in the effects that the disease, dubbed the Tox, has
on those that survive it. The story’s main character, Hetty, describes herself and the

13
626 Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633

other affected students as “sick and strange, and we don’t know why. Things burst-
ing out of us, bits missing, and pieces sloughing off, and then we harden and smooth
over” (p. 2–3) [11]. Based on this description alone, this would not be an unrealistic
description of any normal teenager’s adolescent years, especially those that men-
struate. However, the Tox delivers a much more unnatural horror that soon becomes
apparent. Manifesting differently in each girl, the Tox hits each student with periodic
“flare-ups” that leave them with different physical abnormalities. Hetty describes
what she witnessed during her friend Byatt’s most recent flare-up, and how Byatt
was changed by the Tox:
She doesn’t look any different- just a sore throat and that serrated ridge of bone
down her back, bits of it peeking through her skin— but I remember every
second of it. How she bled through our old mattress until it dripped onto the
floorboards beneath our bunk. How she looked more confused than anything
as the skin over her spine split open. (p. 13) [11]
Power’s novel is filled with dozens more horrific descriptions, all affecting to girls
ranging in age from eleven to eighteen. The body horror described in Wilder Girls is
not for the faint hearted, and has the potential to make readers so uncomfortable that
they find themselves longing for tame descriptions of sexual discovery or something
as mundane as first periods.

Sexuality, Desire and Eroticism

While adolescent girls and women provide ample opportunities for authors to exper-
iment with body horror, as women mature and discover their own sexuality, so,
too, may authors discover new ways of examining female bodies and horror. Like
puberty and menstruation, women’s sexuality and sexual experiences have often
been overlooked and underrepresented in cultural conversation. Similarly, women’s
sexual experiences are often only alluded to or censored when they are mentioned
at all, especially when referring to first time experiences, with terms like “deflower-
ing,” and “popping the cherry.”
Early American literature spawned an entire subgenre of women’s fiction focus-
ing on the topic of women’s desires with the seduction novel; but even within these
novels, sex was almost never explicitly mentioned on the page, and today’s female
readers of novels like Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple or Edith Wharton’s The
House of Mirth, are likely to be extremely frustrated with these stories that act as
cautionary tales for young women whose sexual escapades are almost always fol-
lowed by their social downfall and oftentimes their death.
Even pornography and its graphic displays of women engaging in sexual activ-
ity often portrays women in a passive role designed to satisfy the male gaze. In the
1999 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” famed film critic Laura Mul-
vey discusses women’s portrayal on film and in visual narratives and notes that “in
a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between
active/male and passive/female” [12].

13
Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633 627

But open discussions and depictions of women’s desire and eroticism has the
potential to empower, if only these oppressive views and male-centric narratives
are discarded. In a response to Second Wave Feminists debating the oppressive atti-
tudes of pornography in 1978, Audre Lorde penned an essay titled “The Uses of the
Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” in which she separates the erotic from its cultural mis-
uses, and calls for a re-examination of the erotic as a source of autonomy.
“Women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by
virtue of its [the erotic’s] existence,” writes Lorde, acknowledging the cultural atti-
tudes towards women and embracing displays of sexuality or eroticism, “We have
been raised to fear the yes within ourselves” [13].
Writers of contemporary feminist horror, however, have the ability to give readers
much more to fear than women embracing their erotic power. While many of these
stories center on themes of women’s sexuality and desire, and openly detail their
sexual experiences and thoughts about them, they also often go beyond the realm
of what could be deemed normal desires, or even far-fetched fantasies, and into the
realm of the uncanny or the grotesque.
Several of the stories in Her Body and Other Parties feature women in various
horrific situations, and their desires and sexual encounters often play large parts in
these narratives. The collection’s first story, “The Husband Stitch,” begins with the
following lines: “In the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how
things are done, but this is how I am going to do them” [14]. Immediately Machado
asserts her female character’s autonomy over her own desires, and as such over her
own body, and continues to do so as the story progresses.
“The Husband Stitch” is a contemporary retelling of the classic horror story “The
Green Ribbon,” which ends with the female character removing the green ribbon
tied around her neck and revealing it was the only thing holding her severed head
in place. It is not Carmen Maria Machado’s exploration into the uncanny that adds
a discomfiting or horrific element to the story, but the narrator’s lack of autonomy
when it comes to her body. The narrator expresses her enduring love for her part-
ner, yet as she details their relationship over the course of her life, he never ceases
his attempts to remove her ribbon despite her adamant protests. “The ribbon is not
a secret,” she tells her husband at one point “it’s just mine.” (p. 21) [14] The rib-
bon acts as a literal, physical metaphor for women’s autonomy in Machado’s story;
however in the world Machado creates, it appears that every woman is born with a
ribbon on some part of their body, a symbol indicating that their bodies are never
entirely their own or without limits.
When the narrator makes the decision to let her husband untie her ribbon, she
does so wearily, worn down after years of his trying attempts. Despite her supposed
autonomy and freedom when it comes to sex, despite the power she feels it gives
her, and the power it would potentially give her in a normal world, in this world she
comes to realize she never held any real power at all, and therein lies the horror.
Multiple stories in Machado’s collection use sex as a major theme in these tales
often depicting the everyday horror of being a woman. “Difficult At Parties” fol-
lows one woman recovering from rape, who finds that she can no longer hear her
own internal dialogue, but can hear the internal dialogue of actors in pornographic
videos. She watches dozens of adult films over and over again in an attempt to

13
628 Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633

rediscover her own interiority after her trauma, watching porn not out of desire or
shame or for a partner’s pleasure, but as an unconventional way of coping.
Of her stories and writing style, Machado says in an interview that there is “no
doubt that we’re culturally more comfortable with men writing explicitly about sex
than women” [15]. She also asks:
Where are the women writing and publishing novels and stories that are full
of explicit sex that aren’t being marketed as erotica or woman’s fiction or
romance […] where women and their bodies and stories are centered and, you
know, alive? I want to read about that. I also want to write about that [15].
While Machado’s fiction subtly touches on women’s body horror and relies on the
uncanny to lend a sense of discomfort to her stories, various authors exhibit no
qualms about facing the strange and grotesque head-on when it comes to women’s
desires. One of the more unique examples recently published is “Biter,” a story fea-
tured in Kristen Roupenian’s debut short fiction collection You Know You Want This
(2019). “Biter,” features no direct or explicit sexual content, but this does not mean
that it doesn’t include elements of eroticism or the taboo. When discussing body
horror and sexuality, author Lucy Taylor states in her article for Nightmare Maga-
zine “Body horror also toys with its more socially acceptable cousin, desire, which
can lead to grotesque attempts to close the gap between one body and another” [3].
The desire to “close the gap” in “Biter,” is not a desire for sex, however; in
Roupenian’s story, the main character Ellie has an almost erotic fixation on biting
people for no reason other than her own pleasure. While some may find themselves
indulging in sexual fantasies involving classmates or colleagues, Ellie “indulge[s]
in daydreams in which she stalk[s] her coworkers around the office, biting them”
(p. 216) [16]. When she finds herself with a new boss, Ellie’s colleagues frequently
whisper to one another about his good looks and easy charm. When it comes to
Ellie’s opinion on him, though, her feelings differ: “Ellie didn’t want to have sex
with Corey Allen. Ellie wanted to bite him.” (p. 217) [16]
Ellie’s fixation on biting is also given an element of eroticism due to the fact that
she knows it is inherently wrong. In writing a character with a socially unaccepta-
ble desire that she must refrain from acting on, Ellie’s biting does not seem all that
different from regular female expressions of desire and arousal. “Her entire exist-
ence” writes Roupenian, “was premised on the idea that pursuing pleasure was less
important than avoiding pain” (p. 216–217) [16]. Pain in this case can be viewed as
emotional rejection or social ostracization.
Ellie does end up fulfilling her desire and biting Corey Allen. When her boss tries
to sexually assault her at work with no one around to see, Ellie seizes her chance:
She opened her mouth and lunged for the mound of his cheekbone, which
crunched spectacularly beneath her teeth. The bite was everything she’d
dreamed of. Corey shrieked, and flailed, and clawed at her, but she did not
let go; instead, she snapped her head back and forth, three times, like a dog
inflicting a death shake, and bit off a chunk of his face. […] Ellie spat a wad of
his skin from her mouth, wiping his blood from her lips with the back of her
hand. (p. 224)]

13
Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633 629

Ellie still deems the moment worth it, thinking that despite the consequences, “at
least she’d have this memory for the rest of her life” (p. 224) [16]. However, a cow-
orker sees the entire event transpire, and when she approaches Ellie she does not
admonish her, but comes to her defense, pinning Corey Allen as an abuser who
attempted assault, and Ellie defending herself.
This turn of events essentially flips the narrative in which women are frequently
discredited when describing their cases of sexual assault or must work relentlessly
to prove their claims. Additionally, it ignores the outdated structure of a woman’s
fulfilled desires preceding her inevitable downfall. The 2017 critical essay “Embrace
Your Monstrous Flesh: On Women’s Bodies in Horror” by Rebecca Harkins-Cross
examines this trend of writing the monstrous woman as both victimized and com-
ing to her own rescue when indulging in carnal pleasures, writing “Now the victim-
hero controls the gaze. Where previously she was subjected to the lecherous looks
of a sleazy truck driver or a geriatric patient at the hospital, she is now the one who
stares” [17]. The monstrous body, or monstrous mind, allows Ellie, Machado’s char-
acters, and all other women reclaiming their sexual power in horror fiction to “dis-
rupt the patriarchal gaze,” according to Harkins-Cross, “reclaiming its power as her
own” [17].

Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood

The idea of the monstrous mother is not a new one. From the association of repro-
duction with sin in Renaissance Europe to the trope of the wicked stepmother, repro-
duction, childbirth, and motherhood have all been cast in a negative light for cen-
turies. While pregnancy can be a joyous, celebratory occasion for many, there is
still a sense of underlying risk, anxiety, and terror, and pregnancy itself is as real an
example of women’s body horror as any fictional one, from the processes of gesta-
tion to lactation. Fiction presents opportunities to take the bodily and psychological
horrors that accompany pregnancy and amplify them, turning a natural process into
something otherworldly and utterly horrifying. By using horror fiction to heighten
the anxieties surrounding pregnancy and childbirth, the authors crafting these sce-
narios open up the discussion and examine difficult topics surrounding them such
as rape, autonomy, and agency, often bringing in elements of the supernatural or the
uncanny while doing so.
Modern medicine has made increasing strides over the years in terms of women’s
comfort and survival rates during pregnancy. Decades of statistical research has seen
a decrease in maternal mortality rates in developed countries, and the current mater-
nal mortality rate in America is less than one percent [18]. However, this does not
mean that pregnancy today is entirely without risk or something to fear.
Female writers of speculative and genre fiction touch on these topics often,
and the added element of horror in many works often serves to elevate these
risks. One of the more memorable examples in recent years is Stephanie Meyer’s
Breaking Dawn (2008), the fourth and final installment in the phenomenally suc-
cessful Twilight saga. Meyer’s novels focus on human teenager Bella Swan, who
falls in love with and marries a vampire. In the world of the novels, such a match

13
630 Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633

has never been seen before, and even more unprecedented is the fetus that Bella
finds growing inside her during her honeymoon.
Bella goes through a rapidly accelerated pregnancy; she can feel the fetus
moving inside her just two weeks after its conception, and her fully formed
baby essentially gnaws its way out of her womb at just under two months. The
birth scene is described in detail, and includes vivid descriptions of Bella vom-
iting up fountains of blood, bruises blooming beneath her distended belly like
ink splotches, and bones crunching and snapping as she’s overcome by her half-
human, half-vampire fetus’s intense strength and the childbirth very nearly kills
her:
Another shattering crack inside her body, the loudest yet… Her legs, which
had been curled up in agony, now went limp, sprawling out in an unnatural
way. “Her spine,” [Edward] choked in horror. (p. 231) [19]
In an essay for The Hairpin, professor Sarah Blackwood writes about Bella’s
character throughout the Twilight series, and notes that, despite the fantastical
element of Meyer’s world, her description of pregnancy isn’t far off from that of
reality:
Bella’s gestation of the half-human, half-vampire fetus proceeds along
nightmare-dream logic that will be familiar to anyone who has ever been
pregnant: the fetus grows at alarming speed, impels Bella to unusual behav-
iors (in this case, drinking gallons of blood via cup and straw), and ulti-
mately threatens to tear the girl apart from inside out. I want to reiterate
here: this is not that unrealistic a representation of gestation and birth [20].
Blackwood goes on to discuss her own pregnancy, the type that “would have
killed a woman a hundred years ago,” in which her baby had to be “cut by a team
of doctors from [her] body, which in turn responded by hemorrhaging massive
amounts of blood” [20]. Blackwood’s experience and, apparently, Bella’s expe-
rience of a horrific, life-threatening childbirth are perhaps not as unrealistic as
readers might believe.
Additionally, an element of the pregnancy in Breaking Dawn that makes it so
unique is the fact that the series is written for and about young adults; rarely do
books in the young adult category focus on stories of pregnancy or birth, despite
the fact that so much of young adult fiction is aimed at teenage girls. “Perhaps in
the name of empowerment and feminism,” writes Blackwood, “we have omitted a
major aspect of women’s lives from the very narratives through which girls come
to deepen their understanding of how to live in the world” [20]. Meyer’s novels
subvert this idea of omitting sex and pregnancy in young adult fiction by writing
about a teenage girl undergoing a somewhat normal adolescent experience while
still managing to conform to a standard marriage plot that is very much not the
norm for a young adult novel. What makes Twilight so unique is the fact that it
tells teenage girls that it is okay to feel desire and want sex, and to get married
and have a child, while also stressing that these could all be potentially danger-
ous endeavors. Bella’s pregnancy in Breaking Dawn is both an assurance and a

13
Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633 631

warning—often uncertain or frustrated by not knowing what she wants, she finds
certainty in her family; however, the process of pregnancy and birth do quite lit-
erally kill her—she just doesn’t stay dead.
While pregnancies are a common theme in women’s fiction and displays of body
horror, not all of the women undergoing them are as enthusiastic or dedicated Bella
Swan. In Julia Armfield’s short story collection, the titular piece, “Salt Slow,” is
told from the perspective of a pregnant young woman and her partner marooned on
a small rowboat in a flooded, post-apocalyptic world submerged underwater. Told
nonlinearly, between the present and flashbacks to when she and her partner first
started dating, it becomes clear that this is not their first pregnancy, and that the
previous one ended in a miscarriage. Armfield describes this as a “bloody horror in
her underwear… this catastrophic wringing out” (p. 178) [21]. The implication that
something is being “wrung out” of the woman lends a visceral, inanimate element to
both the fetus previously inside her and her body, as if both are nothing more than a
rag to be tossed aside.
It is made apparent that neither the woman nor her partner were planning for a
child, with neither realizing she is pregnant until after the world has been submerged
in water. Readers are reminded that the pregnancy in “Salt Slow” is not a normal
one, not just given the circumstances, but because of how the toxic waters the char-
acters now sail on are affecting the expectant mother, and perhaps her unborn child.
It is noted that the sea creatures and the birds that fly overhead are becoming unrec-
ognizably altered by this new world, but it is later made clear that the main character
is seeing changes to her body as well, although not the usual kind that are associated
with pregnancy. “Her feet are growing webbed, although they don’t talk about that.
Sometimes at night he takes his apple knife to the delicate membranes between her
toes, but they don’t talk about that, either” (p. 182) [21]. It is not made clear whether
the toxic wasteland is inflicting these changes, the fetus growing inside the woman,
or both.
Despite the fact that the pregnancy was not planned, and occurs in an un-ideal
circumstance, the character in “Salt Slow” has not attempted to terminate her second
pregnancy. If anything, she and her partner seem ambivalent about the birth of their
child. However, the actual birth leaves little room for any warm feeling:
When it finally comes, it comes out writhing and not right. Too long and too
thin and something less like legs and more like tentacles… As it shifts onto
its back, she notices its spine, the dark ridge of red along the center of its
body, and she remembers the shape that had bled out of her once before—the
almost-form of the thing she had not wanted inside her and hadn’t known how
to safeguard or mourn. (p. 186) [21]
Moments after the creature is born, it is implied that the main character’s partner
clubs it to death and tosses it overboard. However, at the story’s end, the character
notices a strange, large, and tentacled thing beneath the water’s surface, just under
her boat. Instead of shying from it, she reaches toward it, ignoring her partner’s pro-
tests and reaching to touch it, feeling a strange kinship with it.
The description of the creature’s birth and appearance is indeed a horrific scene
sure to induce nightmare scenarios for any expectant mother. However, Armfield’s

13
632 Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633

piece brings up several complex themes surrounding pregnancy and motherhood

that, despite the story’s dystopian setting, are recognizable to women readers that
have had any experience with or exposure to pregnancies, miscarriages, and birth.
The main character in “Salt Slow” is flawed, struggling to come to terms with
her pregnancy and the guilt she feels surrounding it; she feels guilty for not being
thrilled about becoming pregnant, she feels guilty for losing her first pregnancy, she
feels guilty for not feeling worse about it.
Additionally, she gives birth to something monstrous and inhuman, and it is ini-
tially thought that the environment she finds herself in is what contributes to this;
however, she notes “the shape that had bled out of her before—the almost-formed
thing” (p. 186) [21]. This description of her first fetus, prior to being exposed to
the toxic waters she now floats on, leaves room for ambiguity. It can be interpreted
that she is merely referring to her first fetus as something alien to her that she was
not ready to bear, but perfectly normal otherwise; or it can be read as her having
miscarried an earlier version of the monster she later fully birthed, implying that the
problem was with her and her body all along. The latter interpretation highlights the
societal idea of women being flawed or at fault for their miscarriages, their bodies
incapable of the function it was designed by nature to perform.
The themes that run throughout “Salt Slow” open up conversations not frequently
discussed in literature focusing on women and their bodies; Armfield’s writing on
the feelings that pregnant and miscarrying women may experience during these
processes is a novel take on the pregnancy narrative, specifically in speculative or
genre writing, where women are often subjected to painful or difficult pregnancies
that they are expected to simply endure without focusing on the ensuing traumas
the experience may result in. Armfield’s supernatural setting serves to heighten the
risks and emotions her pregnant main character is experiencing, while still making
her experience recognizable to readers who may be undergoing or have undergone
similar thought processes, or simply know to recognize them.

Conclusion

While female bodies and the ideologies and stigmas surrounding them have most
likely seen more abuse and degradation than celebration throughout cultural history,
female writers of contemporary fiction seem to be finding footing in a new subgenre,
one that amplifies the horror associated with the female body, not to lessen the hor-
ror or soften these ideas, but to embrace them and reclaim their power and narrative.
By writing about the female body and all its capabilities, both natural and super-
natural, these women are able to open up discussions surrounding what have previ-
ously been considered complex, scandalous, or private topics for no reason other
than stigma and prejudice. By incorporating elements of the supernatural into their
work, the “normal” bodily functions of women such as periods, pregnancy, mis-
carriages, and more that have been deemed socially uncouth are able to stand out
in greater relief and begin to become normalized topics of conversation surround-
ing women’s bodies and bodily autonomy. Should the body horror genre continue
to be explored, and should more of these stories by and about women be written

13
Publishing Research Quarterly (2020) 36:619–633 633

and published, there is no telling what sorts of conversations will be started on the
importance of women’s agency and autonomy, or what powerful, original stories
will emerge.

References
1. Brophy P. Horrality: the textuality of the contemporary horror film. Art Text 3;1983.
2. Reyes XA. Body horror. In: Body gothic: corporeal transgression in contemporary literature and
horror film. Cardiff: University of Wales Press; 2014, pp 52–74.
3. Taylor L. The H word: body horror-what’s really under your skin? Nightmare Mag, November 9,
2018. http://www.night​mare-magaz​ine.com/nonfi​ction​/the-h-word-body-horro​r-whats​-reall​y-under​
-your-skin/.
4. Kane P, O’Regan M. The mammoth book of body horror. Philadelphia: Running Press Book Pub-
lishers; 2012.
5. Moulton RE. On the haunted lives of girls and women. Literary Hub.
6. Toews M. Women talking: a novel. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing; 2020.
7. Armfield J. On body horror and the female body. PublishersWeekly.com. Publisher’s Weekly, Octo-
ber 4, 2019. https​://www.publi​shers​weekl​y.com/pw/by-topic​/indus​try-news/tip-sheet​/artic​le/81363​
-on-body-horro​r-the-femal​e-body.html.
8. Armfield J. “Mantis” in Salt slow: stories. New York: Flatiron Books; 2019.
9. Sparks A. This grotesque body horror novel is about womanhood, and it’s scarily relatable. Bustle,
July 26, 2019. https​://www.bustl​e.com/p/why-sarah​-rose-etter​-wrote​-a-grote​sque-body-horro​r-novel​
-about​-the-exper​ience​-of-woman​hood-18238​318.
10. Hennegan J, Sommer M, Tsui A. Missed opportunities: menstruation matters for family planning.
Int Perspect Sex Reprod Health. 2019;45:55–9. https​://doi.org/10.1363/45e79​19.
11. Power R. Wilder girls. New York: Delacorte Press; 2019.
12. Mulvey L. Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Vis Other Pleasures. 1989. https​://doi.
org/10.1007/978-1-349-19798​-9_3.
13. Lorde A. Uses of the erotic: The erotic as power. Tucson: Kore Press; 2000.
14. Machado CM. Her body and other parties. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press; 2017.
15. Bergman R. Alone and at the edge of everything: a conversation with Carmen Maria Machado.
Electric Literature, 15 Mar. 2019. https​://www.elect​ricli​terat​ure.com/alone​-and-at-the-edge-of-every​
thing​-a-conve​rsati​on-with-carme​n-maria​-macha​do/.
16. Roupenian K. You know you want this. New York: Gallery/Scout Press; 2019.
17. Harkins-Cross R. Embrace your monstrous flesh: on women’s bodies in horror. Literary Hub, April
11, 2019. https​://lithu​b.com/embra​ce-your-monst​rous-flesh​-on-women​s-bodie​s-in-horro​r/.
18. Horner A, Mulvey-Roberts M, Zlosnik S. The female gothic body. In: Women and the gothic: An
edinburgh companion. Edinburgh (GB): Edinburgh University Press; 2017, pp 106–19.
19. Meyer S. The twilight Saga: breaking dawn. New York: Little, Brown, and Co.; 2008.
20. Blackwood S. Our Bella, ourselves. The hairpin, November 16, 2011. https​://www.theha​irpin​
.com/2011/11/our-bella​-ourse​lves/.
21. Armfield J. Salt slow. In Salt slow: stories. New York: Flatiron Books; 2019.

Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

13