Horror and evil have been concepts for centuries in real life as well as in literature and films. The source of evil has repeatedly been portrayed in living creatures who have been named monsters, whose origin most likely derives from Latin monstrum: horrifying character, beast, prodigy. (Nordstedts 1998). We are all familiar with stereotypical monsters such as Dracula and Frankenstein ,but when it comes to the notion of female monsters our knowledge seems more vague. Gender definition is thus apparent within the field of monsters and the traditional male monsters seem to be more prominently significant than female monsters. The male monster's strong masculine characteristics may be the reason for this.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the gendered monster, and in particular female monsters as reflections of culture and society. The source material will be mythology (Medusa), literature (Sula and Beloved) and films (Metropolis, The Terminator and Dracula). These works were chosen because they contain different kinds of female monsters from different time periods which gives a general picture of the female monsters portrayed. In order to structure the paper, I will discuss these works under four headings: The general notion of a monster, Outer appearance; Disordered Bodies and Sexual Lusts, Inner Qualities; Dual Personality and desperation, and Technology; Machines and Cyborgs. 

Accordning to Rosi Braidotti, a professor of women’s studies, "[Monsters] represent the in-between, the mixed, the ambivalent as implied in the ancient Greek root of the word "monsters", teras, which means both horrible and wonderful" (www.stumptuous.com/grotesque.html).With this statement I want to emphasize the difficulties with deciding whether or not a character is actually a monster.

The hybrid qualities within monsters can be located in novels like Sula and Beloved where the reader is in the position of weighing up the characters, trying to figure out whether to feel disgust or pity for the so-called monsters in the novels. These characters will be discussed later in more detail, but at this stage I will focus on the more general notion of female monsters and its contribution to our culture.

There are various stereotypical female monsters to be discovered within history, literature and films. However, the most salient features among female monsters are:

The overly sexual female                  (e.g. Vampires)

The unattractive female                (e.g The gorgon Medusa)

The bad mother /Stepmother         (e.g. Sethe in the novel

The female with dual personality   (e.g. in the novel Sula)

The supernatural female               (e.g. in the film Species)

Barbara Creed claims that: "the horror film is populated by female monsters, many of which seem to have evolved from images that haunted the dreams, myths and artistic practices of our forebears many centuries ago"(http://www.othervoice.org/1.3/sschneider/monsters.html) On basis of her claims, I will continue my essay by analyzing the notion of a female monster within Greek Mythology, the unattractive and intelligent monster Medusa. Medusa is actually a borderline case between inner qualities (intelligence) and outer appearance (her body), but I have chosen to concentrate on her outer appearance since her 'monstrosity' mainly is due to her body.

Women’s bodies have for generations been the center of many people’s apprehensions. Back in the nineteenth century women’s bodies were seen as a dark continent in an alien world, especially when it came to re-production. According to a nineteenth-century neurospecialist, Dr. S. W. Mitchell, "misplaced ovaries" caused a "great deal of trouble" to women’s health. (http://borg.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/WILLA/fall95/Murton.html).

His obvious ignorance of biology was not exceptional for that time. As early as 500 AC, in Greek mythology, a woman called Medusa was exposed to the same kind of ignorance. 

Medusa was a woman with a divergent look. Her hair consisted of snakes, she had a dreadful face and a look that turned people to stone and above all she had her ‘magical’ blood (menstruation). "Primitive folk believed that the look of a menstruating woman could turn a man to stone" (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/classes/finALp.html). All the above mentioned features were connected with the ancient menstrual taboo, and with the notion of a monster.

It was not only her appearance that was looked upon with superstition and gave her the reputation of being a monster. Medusa was seen as a woman who possessed female wisdom, and since intelligence is often connected with evil her wisdom along with her natural force, her creative powers, and her powers of destruction and regeneration were seen as pure evil. "She was made into a horrid, ugly monster" (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/classes/finALp.html). Abnormal looks and power made a woman into a monster.

As a result of the loss of power among men, Medusa's wisdom and the competence of other women in general along with women's natural attributes became subordinated to male dominance. The specific gender roles between men and women gained ground. Women were now "prescribed the role of virgin, wife and mother. As virgin, proof of his[the male] fatherhood is confirmed. As mother, she is the nurse of his [the male’s] children. And as wife she is in devoted service of her man" (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/classes/finALp.html).

The notion of Medusa as a monster in Greek mythology is thus based on the facts that she did not have an appealing appearance and that she did not live according to the prescriptions made by the men in order to dominate. If these attributes applies to female monsters today, many of us would be interpreted as monsters since biology has its ways with us women (menstruation) and since the boundaries of gender roles are more or less starting to fade. As a result of the fading of gender roles, it is nowadays hard to say that one gender is more monstrous than the other. It was easier in the past when distinct boundaries could be found.

If the suppression of women in Greek mythology disappeared later on in history , it was reinforced in the nineteenth century in western culture where the definition of "feminine" consisted of both attraction and rejection, to be a goddess and grotesque and to be tamed and untamed. In contrast, "masculinity" was connected with the discipline of civilization. (www.nomadnet.org/massage5/dangerous/two.html) This illustrates the origin of the notion of modern gender roles in today’s society since discipline is still one of the main characteristics among men and since hybrid qualities are very much applicable in the lives of women. A woman should be attractive, but at the same time not too headstrong which can be seen as unattractive. A woman should be a goddess for the men to worship, but still have some grotesque sides within herself in order to show human characteristics. A woman should be obedient (tamed) but also rebellious (untamed) to some extent. 

The difficult balancing of these features has been acknowledge in literature as well as in films. Moving on to descriptions of more recent female monsters, I will introduce the notion of the female body as something obscure and sinful and return again to the subject of monstrous appearances.

The way the female body has been seen as sinful and impure is consistently illustrated in films and books. Braidotti draws a parallel between the female body and monsters: "the female body shares with the monster the privilege of bringing out a unique blend of fascination and horror" (www.stumptuous.com/grotesque.html). This ties quite neatly with the fact that: Women have a "propensity to tempt men sexually" (www.nomadnet.org/massage5/dangerous/two.html) and this propensity can be seen as both fascinating and ‘horrifying’; fascinating in that women can stir a man’s mind, and ‘horrifying’ to some people considering the weakening of male dominance that it may cause.

Female vampires are excellent examples of female monsters that use their bodies to tempt men sexually. The submission of these dark figures is often seen as erotic (Dougherty Nancy). In Dracula (1992), Jonathan Harker is on the verge of being seduced by three young and beautiful women, vampires, who actually do not say anything but lure him into danger simply with their bodies and by playing on his sexual attraction. In similar ways, male vampires also find their victims by using their sexuality, but their bodies are not exposed in the same way as the female vampires’ bodies are.

In Dracula, when Lucy becomes a vampire, she also becomes a travesty of wife, mother and Angel (the significant roles of women that I mentioned above)       (www.thecore.nus.edu.sg/landow/victor/bronte/cbronte/waller3.html)

As a result, she loses all her female qualities except her body, which in turn is the only female feature she has left. This features is however basically the most prominent feature in the portrayal of a female vampire and is therefore very easily acknowledged as a salient female characteristic. In my opinion, the female vampires’ erotic exposing of the their bodies is a way of making up for the other female features that they have lost when they became vampires; a way to symbolize that they are still females. To read more about Vampires, click here. 

Women with dual natures have caused suspicion among people, just like the overly sexual females. However, In contrast to the overly sexual females, this notion of duality of personality is mainly on psychical levels, not physical ones. This is the case in Toni Morrison’s novel "Sula", where Sula is thought of as a "ball-busting feminist monster" (http://www.english.uwosh.edu/scholarships/Shane_99_sample.html). Morrison’s intention with Sula’s character was that "Sula was to be the sort of woman who could be used by other people as the classic type of evil force" (http://www.cob.montevallo.edu/student/HatcherCL/SULA.HTM) She has achieved her goal. Morrison illustrate Sula’s evil sides really well in scenes when Sula for example drowns Chicken little (a little boy) and when she watches her own mother burn. When Sula returns to her home town in Medillion after years of living in another place, she possesses mainly traditionally male characteristics. Her lifestyle is very independent, she detests commitments, she does not care about small talk and she sleeps around with men she does not have any deeper feelings for. "When her partner disengaged himself , she looked up at him in wonder trying to recall his name" (Sula, p.123) Her way of expressing herself also shows typical male features. In An introduction to language and society,Trudgill says that women have a tendency to speak in a more "prestigious" way in order not to be thought of as sexually promiscuous (Trudgill p.73). However, more recent research than Trugill's has focused more on the networks of men and woman than prestigiousness. For example, women used to spend more time at home which exposed them less to collueges and more to radio and tv etc. As a result of the influence from e.g. media, the speech became more prestigious (media language).

Disregarding new research and only focusing on Trudgill's result, Sula's way of speaking her thoughts out loud and the fact that she does not see anything embarrassing in uttering a sexual word such as ‘fucking’ (Sula p.145) give rise to characteristics that can be found among males. In our society it is traditionally more acceptable for men to swear than for women (Trudgill p.69), but Sula uses both disrespect in her utterance "I need you to shut your mouth" (Sula p.92) and bad language "What the hell do I care about falling" (Sula p.93) Her masculine traits outweigh her femininity in this sense.

Despite all her male characteristics, I still see her as a female mainly in the way she uses words to reassure herself. It feels as though she needs some consolation that smooth her otherwise very dominant male characteristics. Her words in the end of the book (Sula p.146) made herself feel better and released her from some of the guilt she possibly felt because of her evil actions.

Sula’s gift of speech is a way for her to use her femininity. One of the male characters in Sula, Jude, once said that "she [Sula] stirred a man’s mind maybe, but not his body" (Sula p.104) He later ended up sleeping with her. Sula may not have the body to attract men, in contrast to the female vampires, but she surely had the speech to lure men into sleeping with her. This proves once again that ‘intelligence’ can be regarded as something monstrous, just as in the case of Medusa.

Another typical female feature that can also be shown in the character of Sula is her ability to cry (Sula p.62). However, what has to be taken into consideration here is that this happens before she goes away and is therefore not as salient as the above mentioned female characteristics that occurrs after her homecoming when she has adapted a more maculine way of behaving. 

Beloved is another novel by Toni Morrison about a so-called bad mother which I have written about in more detail in my literature essay. For this reason here I will just mention the main characteristics that makes Sethe, the ‘bad’ mother, a monster in the eyes of others, and also locate her feminine side. First, Sethe’s looks are not in her favour. She has ugly feet and her back looks bad (Beloved 1997, p.272). This once again proves the significance of bad looks as a monstrous characteristic.
Secondly, and most applicable to her monstrousness, is the deed she has committed- she has cut the throat of her own baby girl.

In contrast to the other female monsters I have analyzed, I feel no reason to question this woman’s feminine side since I feel that her action was unselfish and done to save her baby in a way. She did not want her baby to grow up to the same hell as she herself had experienced and thus she killed her in desperation. I cannot find any male characteristics within her character, except possibly her use of multiple negations (e.g. "I never touched no velvet" Beloved p. 33) which is a tendency that mostly males have in their speech since it signals lower class origin(and thus toughness) and since women in general have a tendency to speak as close to the norm as possible (Trudgill p 70). In spite of this, her use of multiple negations is most definitely a feature that applies more to the social class to which Sethe belongs (slaves) rather than to her actual gender.

In addition to the fictional female monsters analyzed, I will finally write about a new phenomenon in today’s society that is most likely going to have a huge influence on the portrayal of future monsters.

Using the new technology, people have started to create a new genre of monsters, namely machine monsters. Even though our highly modern technology such as computer animation etc. have only been available for a few decades, machine monsters have been around for generations.

In 1927, Fritz Lang produced a film, Metropolis, which introduced machine monsters to the world of film.

In Metropolis, a machine monster is created to look as if made of human tissue from a demure woman called Maria. Maria can be recognized as an early attempt to create a product which we nowadays call cyborgs. This evil man-machine is created in order to bring about a riot within the worker community in Metropolis. Even though the workers are unaware of the effect the riot will have on their society ,i.e. that the machines they worked on will flood the area and drown their children (http://www.persocom.com.br/brasilia/erika.htm) they listen to the robot who adopts a male idiom which the workers can identify with, and persuades the workers to riot.

The robot machine ,Maria, is portrayed as an "evil, lusty character unlike the pure, angelic, real Maria" (http://www.persocom.com.br/brasilia/erika.htm)

The way the robot is portrayed, with one eye open wider than the other, is also a way of strengthening the feeling of monstrousness that surrounds the robot (http://www.persocom.com.br/brasilia/erika.htm)

The identifying way of speaking to the workers in order to give rise the riot is not enough for this robot. In a last attempt to convince the workers, the robot plays on her feminine body and "gets up on stage and does a tempting nude Salome style dance" (http://www.persocom.com.br/brasilia/erika.htm). The otherwise decent girl-next-door look of the real Maria had now been changed into a more sensual and lascivious look. (http://us.imdb.com/Reviews/117/11750). The changing of Maria's looks was an attempt to lure the workers to a riot by playing on her very appealing, and highly feminine, characteristics , and it worked. The behavior of seduction goes back to what I mentioned before about the female vampires, that they teas and lure the opposite sex by acting out their sexual feminine characteristics.

The most obvious machine monster the last few decades is a new type of machine monster which has adopted the name cyborg. A cyborg is a "cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction" (http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~dmswitze/slonczewski/summerhawk.html) In spite of this hybrid of machine and organism, a gender definition is accurate, at least in the case of the machine incorporating human tissue. In The Terminator, the cyborg is represented by a male body and therefore automatically takes onthe role of a male. His characteristics however can be debated, consisting both female and male features, but that can be explained by the fact that " cyborgs are the technological infected with the human, the male infected with the female, the West infected with the non-West"(http://www.echonyc.com/%7Ewomen/Issue17/art-browning.html) A brief definition of the Terminator’s male and female characteristics can be found here.

Even though ‘human’ cyborgs are a good way of incorporating both male and female features and even though it has been argued that the cyborg has begun to destroy the oppressive hierarchies of gender, the gender issue still remains.

In conclusion, I find I have explored a very deeply rooted subject with its origin going way back in time. The gender roles discussed in today’s society are not something completely new, they have been there for generations. As long as monsters have been portrayed in history, there has been a distinction between the two genders even though characteristics of both genders can be found within the monsters. The notion of female monsters is most often based on their outer appearance (their bodies) or inner qualities (their intelligence or their disobedience to the roles of society). Attempts have been made in the last few decades to erase some of these boundaries in an attempt to get a more gender-free monster (e.g. the cyborgs), but we still find features within the monsters that pinpoint its gender, not just the way they look but also in the way they behave. As long as gender roles exist in society, monsters will be gendered.