To this end, following Freud, she closely describes Medusa as a prominent example: by looking upon her face (which is vagina-like), men become stiff. Creed notes that the monstrous feminine is nothing new, but that depictions of this sort are present in classical mythology and the Bible.Bates) and terrifying womb and vagina-like environments or creatures.Īudrey II in Little Shop of Horrors Notes & Quotes Creed additionally builds off of Freud’s concept of castration anxieties and the myth of the vagina dentata by claiming that the masculine fear of the mother (because she appears to be castrated) also helps to create the monstrous feminine through castrating mother characters (i.e.: Mrs. The female body constantly challenges the destroys the boundaries set up between inside/outside, and living/dead. She argues, using Kristeva’s notion of abjection, that the monster-ization of women occurs because of women’s close proximity to the abject: especially through menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth. ThesisĬultures that exist within patriarchal societies contain mythology and folklore that present feminine qualities and anatomy as innately monstrous. For my oral exam list, I chose to focus on the first section of her book, “Part I: Faces of the Monstrous-Feminine,” which provides both a definition and foundation for the term “monstrous-feminine,” as well as provide a number of examples, including the archaic mother, the possessed girl, the monstrous womb, the vampire, and the witch. Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous-Feminine (1993) is a must-read for anyone interested in the female monsters (and female monstrosity) present in the modern horror film.

Barbara creed the monstrous feminine