This thesis explores the idea of the “monstrous-feminine,” or the idea that female monsters of television and film are linked to their femininity in a way that male monsters are not linked to their masculinity. Using the work of scholars such as Barbara Creed, Shelley Stamp Lindsey, and Jane M. Ussher, the thesis covers various facets of women’s lives as seen through the distorted lens of the monstrous. The character of Helena from the television show Orphan Black is used as a concrete example of the stages of the monstrous-feminine: the girl-child, menstruation and puberty, sexuality, and motherhood.

Denna uppsats har analyserat gestaltningen av det feminina som skräckinjagande i de två gotik- och skräckromanerna Bunny (2020) av Mona Awad och Cackle (2022) av Rachel Harrison. Den metod som har använts har varit en textnära läsning av novellerna och den teori som analysen har utgått ifrån har huvudsakligen varit Maria Margareta Österholms avhandling Ett flicklaboratorium i valda bitar – Skeva flickor i svenskspråkigprosa från 1980 till 2005 (2012) som behandlar Mary Russos begrepp gurlesken och dess olika former, Sandra M. Gilbert och Susan Gubars teori om den internaliserade manliga blicken i deras bok The madwoman in the attic, The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination (1979), och Yvonne Lefflers teori om skräckberättelsens förmåga att väcka känslor hos läsaren i hennes bok Horror As Pleasure (2000). Syftet var att undersöka hur romanerna förhåller sig till sammanflätningen av det skräckinjagande och det feminina. Analysen har visat att den internaliserade och objektifierande blicken på kvinnorna är en viktig del i hur de skräckinjagande elementen framställs både groteska och hotfulla – särskilt vid framställningen av det feminina och kvinnomonster. Jag behandlar i den avslutande diskussionen hur det feminint monstruösa i dessa två romaner har förskjutits till ett mittemellanförskap som förhåller sig till förmågan hos publiken att konceptualisera situationerna. / This thesis aims to analyze the figuration of the feminine as something horrifying in the two horror novels Bunny (2020) by Mona Awad and Cackle (2022) by Rachel Harrison. The method is a close reading of the novels and the main theory is based on Maria Margareta Österholms dissertation Ett flicklaboratorium i valda bitar – Skeva flickor i svenskspråkigprosa från 1980 till 2005 (2012), in which she investigates Mary Russo's concept of the gurlesque, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s theory about the internalized male gaze from their book The madwoman in the attic, The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination (1979), and Yvonne Leffler’s study Horror As Pleasure (2000), about the aesthetic premises of the horror story and its ability to transform unpleasant feelings into pleasurable horror and aesthetic enjoyment. My thesis aims to investigate how the relationship between the horrifying and the feminine is intertwined in the novels. The analysis has shown that the internalized and objectifying gaze has an important part in the grotesque and threatening aesthetics of the horror story – especially in the depiction of the feminine and female monsters. I argue that the feminine monstrous in these two novels has made a shift into an” in-between-relationship” which behaves differently depending on the audience's ability to conceptualize the situations that arise in the novels.

While the strategy of lending a voice to the monstrous is a well known aspect of Howard Phillips Lovecraft's works, the female monster is a notable exception to this case. In this thesis, I excavate a theory of female monstrosity through a reading of some of Lovecraft's most read stories and the agency of female characters that appears within. Comparing these female registers of monstrosity to their masculine counterpart, I develop a concept of female monstrosity manifested through categories of class, race and gender with the help of Judith Halberstams theories of monstrosity. Rather than treating these women as active characters, I argue that Lovecraft's inability to handle these monsters forces him to literally put them away – in attics, cellars, or boxes. These are the marginalized positions from which these women elaborate a monstrous form that transcends the boundaries of sex, gender, class and race. Here lurks a female monster, powerful, independent and evil, Lovecraft's treatment of which reveals his fear of its unfettered emergence. Thus Lovecraft’s narrative technique is broken by his own creation. Indeed, these women, in their reproductive capabilities and the monstrous motherhood they represent, are the true monsters of the Lovecraftian universe.