Women can be monsters too. From snake-haired Medusa to the horrifying mama-alien of the Alien movies, female monsters have often embodied male fears of women’s unchecked power. So it makes sense that women writers and artists have been changing the perspective on these archetypes. In her 2022 book Women and Other Monsters, Jess Zimmerman explores how the archetypal women monsters from ancient Greece illuminate women’s experiences now.
And some recent horror and fantasy novels play with the woman-as-monster trope in a way that doesn’t just make them more sympathetic—they recast old stereotypes as a way to allow women to claim their monstrous power.
Theodora Goss’s Athena Club trilogy does this on a meta-level, putting the focus on the daughters of such iconic characters as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, H. G. Wells’s Dr. Moreau, Victor Frankenstein, and more. Set in Victorian England and Europe, the three novels follow a band of young women, fictional heirs of the generation of mad monster-creating scientists from over a century ago, as they go on mystery-solving adventures.
Each character deals with her inheritance differently: Justine Frankenstein, created abnormally tall and strong by her “father” Victor Frankenstein, is haunted by his abandonment; in contrast, Catherine Moreau, a human created from a puma, feels no ambivalence about using her animal strength, agility, and capacity for violence. The analytical Mary Jekyll, the most “normal” of the group, comes to develop a wary but meaningful sisterly relationship with Diana Hyde, a wild child fathered by Jekyll’s alter ego.
Forging bonds of friendship, they all learn to accept and use their unusual powers to their own benefit. The Athena Club’s transgressive adventures (leading to economic freedom!), give agency to the women in ways they couldn’t have expected in the straitlaced Victorian era. They even argue over the telling of their story, underlining the sense of it as a kind of playful thought experiment.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia‘s The Daughter of Dr. Moreau overlaps with Goss’s cat-woman character, expanding on the original Island of Dr. Moreau in a more serious vein. Moreno reimagines Moreau’s island as an isolated hacienda in Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula in the 1870s. Here, the scientist’s daughter undergoes a slow awakening, beginning as the coddled only child who worships her charismatic father, her only friends the hybrid human-animal monsters he has bred.
As she struggles with her growing desire for romance and autonomy, Carlota eventually comes to accept her own monstrous power. Subplots around the Mexican peasants’ oppression and struggle for liberation add thematic resonance to this retelling.
A number of recent YA novels have also shown a willingness to explore a darker sense of self for their protagonists—evidence that teen readers are ready to engage with dark or morally ambivalent characters. Two of my favorites are Melissa Bashardoust’s Girl Serpent Thorn, and Traci Chee’s A Thousand Steps into Night. Both of them go beyond the Western fairy-tale and monster canons: Girl Serpent Thorn takes place in a world that’s informed by Persian history and stories, and Traci Chee’s A Thousand Steps into Night draws on a rich brew of traditional Japanese folk tales.
At the start of Girl Serpent Thorn, Princess Soraya is confined to a walled palace garden, having been cursed at birth with a poisonous touch. Though at first she shrinks away to protect the people around her, Soraya’s self-abnegation falls away as she learns the truth of her own history and of the divs, the powerful monstrous spirits who are part of it—allowing her to claim her own power.
In A Thousand Steps into Night, Miuko, a girl whose loudness and clumsiness has already made her a bit of an outcast in her village, is kissed by a shaoha—a female demon—cursing her to become one herself. As her skin gradually turns a deep, demonic shade of indigo, she finds herself embracing her new impulses to do violence. Her human and demon-selves clash within her, each one trying to get the upper hand. She realizes she needs to kill in order to stay alive and be able to save her companion, but then she would lose her humanity.
Both these novels allow their young-woman protagonists to weigh the consequences of doing monstrous things, face their darker selves, and make their own complex decisions. Stories like this remind us how thin the veil can be that separates being a monster from being human.
Read more:
Women and Other Monsters by Jess Zimmerman
The Athena Club series by Theodora Goss (The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl)
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Girl Serpent Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
A Thousand Steps into Night by Traci Chee
My brother has been working on a painting of the rape of Medusa by Poseidon. I feel sorry for her after thinking of her in the past as just a monster who deserved to be decapitated by Perseus in Hawthorne’s Tanglewood Tales.
Wow! I thought this image of Medusa had some pathos. It’s a bronze piece found in Pompeii. I’ve always been fascinated by Medusa too.
I love this bronze relief, Miriam! So beautiful, with such a frightened look emanating from her riveting eyes.
And I could not agree more about the pathos embedded at the very root of the Gorgon myth. There were three of them, but Medusa was the only mortal—which singles her out as by far the most interesting. The Renaissance portrait by Cellini is one of many that reveals a hauntingly beautiful presence.
Of course, as in many myths, there are variants to Medusa’s tale, but Hesiod, and much later Ovid, relate the most unforgettable account —of a mortal girl preyed upon by gods who are typically cold, hard and uncaring.
The comely Medusa is raped by Poseidon, who lures her to the temple of Athena in order to inflict his outrage, thereby desecrating the goddess’s shrine . In some accounts Medusa is actually a priestess of of Athens.
Anyhow, after discovering the desecration, instead of visiting rage upon the powerful sea god and earth-shaker, Athena punishes the victim, Medusa, which is of course the careless, godly thing to do! She turns Medusa’s hair to snakes, and makes it so the innocent priestess will turn anyone who sees her face turn to stone,
Later on, Athena will instruct the hero Perseus to kill the innocent Medusa and bring her head back to the goddess of wisdom and valor, so that she can embed it in her shield. This story also has variants, but in some, Perseus uses the head as a weapon himself.
Call me nutty, but I even wonder if Medusa and her sisters might be deserving subjects for, dare I say it, a musical!
I mean, if a pulpy (not quite trashy, but close) silent flick such as Phantom on the Opera might be elevated to serious stage fare (not among my favorites, I confess!), why not this, perhaps the most horrific and ine of the wildest of Greek myths?
Very interesting, Miriam! I’ve been thinking a lot about monsters recently, and this gives me additional food for thought.
Thanks, David! Sounds interesting!
Thanks, Arthur! Yes, I think with Wicked, the intent was to make the Wicked Witch more sympathetic—that’s another aspect of this reimagining phase we’re in, that I didn’t go into. (A recent book I really liked that does that is John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society.) These books are more about integrating the feared, monstrous other into a more whole, powerful self, if that makes sense.
Yes, it makes a lot of sense, Miriam. Although I have yet to read these books, it sounds to me as if the monstrous others are being integrated into a more powerful — and, if I read you correctly—a more fearsome self. Sounds more than a little bit frightening!
It is frightening and exciting, I think. Hopefully it’s like when Jungian psychology talks about integrating the shadow self.
Yes, it makes a lot of sense, Miriam. It sounds to me as if the monstrous others are being integrated into a more powerful — and, if I read you correctly—a more fearsome self. Sounds more than a little bit frightening!
Do I understand you correctly, Miriam?
What a great review of some great-sounding literature! My own mind went immediately to WICKED: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West — which of course is based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — as a fabulous journey into other perspectives on long-accepted stereotypes. He also write Mirror, Mirror — which does something similar to the tale of Snow White. The literature you review sounds different in intent, of course, taking a more feminist and less contrarian angle — and perhaps, if I understand you correctly, being more accepting of the monstrosity in its lead characters.