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kestrellI've been working on this project to create a list of 100 women writers of horror and supernatural fiction, which has already climbed to something more approximating 110. The first 50 or so are listed in basically historical order, from the gothics of the late 1700s to the works of the early 1990s, with the second part focusing on contemporary writers and being listed alphabetically.
Part of my motivation was to materially demonstrate that there is an unbroken line of women writers who have contributed significantly to the genre of horror. Another motivation was to try to discover possible threads, reoccuring themes or subjects.
The former is fascinating because it shows how women writers who came along later would respond to the influence of writers who came before: Radcliffe influenced Shelley, Joan Aiken influenced Kelly Link, Sarah Orne Jewett infleunced all sorts of writers (including Willa Cather) and was herself influenced by Vernon Lee, and Vernon Lee probably gave Henry James some of the ideas which he adopted regarding the psychology of ghost stories.
As for themes and subjects: from the time Clara Reeve wrote _The Old English Baron_ (1777), these women writers represented the best and brightest, women often very openly committed to women's rights and the rights of other groups who often had no public voice in the society.. To some degree, the ghosts of women and the various records of crimes against women created a secret history that women maintained in a public medium, but could always dismiss as a mere fiction, an entertainment. The characters who show up again and again include: the vengeful father, the suffocating lover, the demon lover, the guardian, the ghost who comes from the past to warn or hint at some terrible secret, often the violence committed toward a woman or a child. With _Jane Eyre_ comes the madwoman, and with Leonora Carrington's "The Debutante" comes the young girl whose double (later assimilated into her own dark side) was the wild animal, often a wolf.
I'll post the first half of the list after this post.
Part of my motivation was to materially demonstrate that there is an unbroken line of women writers who have contributed significantly to the genre of horror. Another motivation was to try to discover possible threads, reoccuring themes or subjects.
The former is fascinating because it shows how women writers who came along later would respond to the influence of writers who came before: Radcliffe influenced Shelley, Joan Aiken influenced Kelly Link, Sarah Orne Jewett infleunced all sorts of writers (including Willa Cather) and was herself influenced by Vernon Lee, and Vernon Lee probably gave Henry James some of the ideas which he adopted regarding the psychology of ghost stories.
As for themes and subjects: from the time Clara Reeve wrote _The Old English Baron_ (1777), these women writers represented the best and brightest, women often very openly committed to women's rights and the rights of other groups who often had no public voice in the society.. To some degree, the ghosts of women and the various records of crimes against women created a secret history that women maintained in a public medium, but could always dismiss as a mere fiction, an entertainment. The characters who show up again and again include: the vengeful father, the suffocating lover, the demon lover, the guardian, the ghost who comes from the past to warn or hint at some terrible secret, often the violence committed toward a woman or a child. With _Jane Eyre_ comes the madwoman, and with Leonora Carrington's "The Debutante" comes the young girl whose double (later assimilated into her own dark side) was the wild animal, often a wolf.
I'll post the first half of the list after this post.
