Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers

by Sady Doyle

  2 “I don’t think there was”: Christine Spine, “Chicks Dig Scary Movies,” Entertainment Weekly, July 24, 2009, http://ew.com/article/2009/07/24/chicks-dig-scary-movies/.

  3 “I actually thought that”: Ibid.

  4 It’s easy to recite: “Victims of Sexual Violence: Statistics,” RAINN, https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence; “Children and Teens: Statistics,” RAINN, https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens.

  5 “females ages 16–19”: “Children and Teens,” RAINN.

  6 “young women between”: “Dating Abuse Statistics,” Love Is Respect, http://www.loveisrespect.org/resources/dating-violence-statistics/.

  7 “Fire Walk With Me”: Owen Gleiberman, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” Entertainment Weekly, September 11, 1992, http://ew.com/article/1992/09/11/twin-peaks-fire-walk-me/.

  8 One 2010 survey found: Diana Yates, “Women, More Than Men, Choose True Crime over Other Violent Non-Fiction,” Illinois News Bureau, February 15, 2010, https://news.illinois.edu/blog/view/6367/205718.

  9 “one night I left”: Anna Dorn, “Why Are Women Obsessed with True Crime?” The Hairpin, May 2, 2017, https://www.thehairpin.com/2017/05/why-are-women-obsessed-with-true-crime/.

  10 The Denver Post reported: Karen Auge, “Evidence Voluminous but Tricky,” The Denver Post, October 14, 1999, http://extras.denverpost.com/news/ram1014k.htm.

  11 Someone had left: “Slain Girl’s Dad Got Bonus Equal to Ransom Demand,” Chicago Tribune, January 22, 1997, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-01-22-9701230020-story.html.

  12 “contribut[ing] in any way”: “Prosecutor: DNA Clears JonBenet Ramsey’s Family,” Associated Press, July 9, 2008, https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/07/09/prosecutor-dna-clears-jonbenet-ramseys-family/.

  13 “women were particularly”: Andrea Marks, “How a True Crime Podcast Became a Mental Health Support Group,” The Atlantic, February 21, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/02/the-true-crime-podcast-turned-mental-health-support-group/517200/.

  14 “Strange Superstition of Long”: “Vampires in New England,” New York World, February 2, 1896, https://web.archive.org/web/20110708073611/http://blooferland.com/drc/images/NYWorld.rtf.

  15 “Locomotor Ataxy 6 Months”: “100 Years Ago Today: The Death of Bram Stoker,” OUP blog, April 20, 2017, https://blog.oup.com/2012/04/bram-stoker-death-centenary-dracula/.

  16 “Why can’t they let”: Bram Stoker, Dracula (Salt Lake City, UT: Project Gutenberg Ebook, 2013), p. 140.

  17 “I wish I were”: Ibid., p. 132.

  18 “The silver light”: Ibid., p. 211.

  19 “She was, if possible”: Ibid., p. 451.

  20 “It made me shudder”: Ibid., p. 453.

  21 “nightmare”: Ibid., pp. 475, 482.

  22 “It will be a blessed”: Ibid., p. 484.

  23 “The body shook”: Ibid., pp. 486–87.

  24 “Come to me, Arthur”: Ibid.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1 “people speak of”: Angela Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (New York: Viking, 2000), p. 48.

  2 “She was not my wife”: Michael McCarthy, Five Years in Ireland, 1895–1900 (1901), as quoted at Library Ireland, http://www.libraryireland.com/articles/Burning-Bridget-Cleary/.

  3 “take it, you [bitch]”: Ibid.

  4 “Bridget Boland, wife of”: Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p. 91.

  5 “seemed to be wild”: Lisa Spangenberg, “Bridget Cleary: Fairy Intrusion in Nineteenth Century Ireland,” Celtic Studies Resources, October 13, 2007, http://www.digitalmedievalist.com/2007/10/13/bridget-cleary-fairy-intrusion-in-nineteenth-century-ireland/.

  6 “Your mother used to”: Ibid.

  7 “I said, ‘Mike’ ”: Ibid.

  8 “oh, Han, Han”: Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary, p. 122.

  9 “She’s not my wife”: Ibid., p. 124.

  10 It may have been mental: Dr. Dermot Walsh, “Burning of Bridget Cleary,” The Irish Times, August 28, 1999, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/burning-of-bridget-cleary-1.221362.

  11 “a man catches a fairy”: W. Y. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1911), p. 165.

  12 “that he must not strike”: Ibid.

  13 “I will stay gladly”: The Mabinogion, trans. Lady Charlotte Guest (Salt Lake City: Project Gutenberg EBook, 2002), p. 377.

  14 “all were in some way”: S. Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005), p. 268.

  15 “serpent”: Ibid.

  16 “To pose Woman is”: Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957), p. 253.

  17 “smooth-lipp’d serpent”: John Keats, Lamia (Salt Lake City, UT: Project Gutenberg EBook, 2013), pp. 6–7. First published 1820.

  18 “the tender-person’d”: Ibid., p. 31.

  19 “[e]yed like a peacock”: Ibid., p. 6.

  20 “Like one that shuddered”: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Christabel,” Poetry Foundation, 1800, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43971/christabel.

  21 “A snake’s small eye”: Ibid.

  22 “the unwashed balls”: Aristophanes, Peace: The Complete Greek Drama, vol. 2, ed. Eugene O’Neill, Jr., (New York: Random House, 1938; 421 BC), http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0038.

  23 “depicts ‘the Lamia’ ”: “The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents (1968),” Public Domain Review, https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-history-of-four-footed-beasts-and-serpents-1658./

  24 “acquires (in various disreputable ways)”: Nina Taunton, The Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture (New York: Routledge, 2017), https://books.google.com/books?id=ueJADgAAQBAJ&pg=PT182&lpg=PT182&dq=succubus+devil+change+gender&source=bl&ots=ytak_Q9Okv&sig=elUYKmiT7tFDE7Mu7Ku8fKSov_w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjK-pK-xNrXAhVNkeAKHUtMB7YQ6AEITDAH#v=onepage&q=change%20sex&f=false. First published 2000.

  25 “the cobbled-together”: Elena Rose (writing as Little Light), “The Seam of Skin and Scales,” Taking Steps, January 15, 2007, http://takingsteps.blogspot.com/2007/01/seam-of-skin-and-scales.html.

  26 “When we see serial killer”: Mey Rude, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Trans Woman? On Horror and Transfemininity,” Autostraddle, October 8, 2013, https://www.autostraddle.com/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-trans-woman-on-horror-and-transfemininity-198212/.

  27 “on average, one to two”: Maggie Astor, “Violence Against Transgender People on the Rise, Advocates Say,” The New York Times, November 9, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/us/transgender-women-killed.html.

  28 “I don’t think most”: Meredith Talusan, “The First Murdered Trans Woman I Mourned,” BuzzFeed, November 20, 2015, https://www.buzzfeed.com/meredithtalusan/the-first-murdered-trans-woman-i-mourned.

  29 Trans women; sex workers: “NISVS: An Overview of 2010 Findings on Victimization by Sexual Orientation,” The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, CDC, https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/cdc_nisvs_victimization_final-a.pdf.

  30 The convictions of Alexander: Victoria Law, “How Many Women Are in Prison for Defending Themselves Against Domestic Violence?” Bitch Magazine, September 16, 2014, https://www.bitchmedia.org/post/women-in-prison-for-fighting-back-against-domestic-abuse-ray-rice.

  31 And black women: “Incarcerated Women and Girls,” The Sentencing Project, May 10, 2018, https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/incarcerated-women-and-girls/.

  32 Another victim, Richard Mallory: Sean Somerville, “Wuornos’ 1st Victim a Sex Offender,” Orlando Sentinel, October 14, 1992, http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1992-10-14/news/9210140403_1_mallory-wuornos-defense-attorneys.

  33 “I’ve gotta fight”: Nick Broomfield, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, (streaming
USA: DEJ Productions, 1992).

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1 “You’ve got a beautiful”: Scott Peterson: An American Murder Mystery, season 1, episode 1, aired in 2017 on Investigation Discovery.

  2 “I’d asked if he”: Ibid.

  3 “We do Laci Peterson”: Maureen Orth, “A Made-for-Tabloid Murder,” Vanity Fair, August 2003, https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2003/08/laci200308.

  4 “no different than”: “In an Instant: The Story of Laci Peterson,” 20/20, aired in 2017 on ABC.

  5 “Do you really expect”: Ibid.

  6 “There has been for”: Reva B. Siegel, “Civil Rights Reform in Historical Perspective: Regulating Marital Violence,” in Redefining Equality, ed. Neil Devins and Davison M. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 36.

  7 “better to draw the curtain”: Ibid., p. 37.

  8 “would be disturbed by”: Ibid.

  9 To this day: “Statistics,” National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, https://ncadv.org/statistics.

  10 The NCADV defines “severe”: Ibid.

  11 Fifty-five percent of: Olga Khazan, “Nearly Half of All Murdered Women Are Killed by Romantic Partners,” The Atlantic, July 20, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/07/homicides-women/534306/.

  12 Even mass shootings: “Mass Shootings in the United States: 2009–2016,” Everytown for Gun Safety, April 11, 2017, https://everytownresearch.org/reports/mass-shootings-analysis/.

  13 “Our trust in men”: Chelsea G. Summers, “Love in a Time of True Crime,” Medium, June 11, 2018, https://medium.com/s/trustissues/love-in-a-time-of-true-crime-94a1f20aa1b4.

  14 Between 2001 and 2012: Katie Sanders, “Steinem: More Women Killed By Partners Since 9/11 Than Deaths from Attacks, Ensuing Wars,” PolitiFact, October 7, 2014, https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/oct/07/gloria-steinem/steinem-more-women-killed-partners-911-deaths-atta/.

  15 “the most popular”: Ellen Moers, “Female Gothic,” in Literary Women: The Great Writers, KNARF Project, University of Pennsylvania Department of English, http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articles/moers.html.

  16 “With his left hand”: Bram Stoker, Dracula (Salt Lake City, UT: Project Gutenberg EBook, 2013), p. 635. First published 1837.

  17 “women love bad boys”: Dark Tourist, season 1, episode 3, “United States,” aired January 20, 2018, on Netflix.

  18 “He didn’t enjoy”: Ibid.

  19 “refused to travel without”: Nina Auerbach, Daphne du Maurier: Haunted Heiress (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), p. 41.

  20 “You are almost as”: Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 2013), p. 58. First published 1938.

  21 “She had all the courage”: Ibid., p. 272.

  22 “I knew him as”: Ibid., p. 76.

  23 “I do hope you”: Ibid., p. 199.

  24 “he’s never seemed”: Ibid., p. 112.

  25 “gave you the feeling”: Ibid., p. 174.

  26 “certain malformation of”: Ibid., p. 413.

  27 “ ‘That’s right, my dear’ ”: Ibid., p. 273.

  28 “It’s people like me”: Karen Krizanovich, “Uncovering the Duality of Daphne du Maurier,” The Telegraph, June 1, 2017, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/my-cousin-rachel/daphne-du-maurier-personal-life/.

  29 “I shall live as”: du Maurier, Rebecca, p. 275.

  30 According to the Pew: Kim Parker and Wendy Wang, “Modern Parenthood,” Pew Research Center, March 14, 2013, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/03/14/modern-parenthood-roles-of-moms-and-dads-converge-as-they-balance-work-and-family/?src=rss_main.

  31 In one Farleigh Dickinson: Dan Cassino, “Emasculation, Conservatism and the 2016 Election,” Contexts 17, no. 1 (2018): 48–53, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1536504218766551.

  32 A 2018 study found: Marta Murray-Close and Misty L. Heggeness, “Manning Up and Womaning Down: How Husbands and Wives Report Their Earnings When She Earns More,” The New York Times, July 17, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/upshot/when-wives-earn-more-than-husbands-neither-like-to-admit-it.html.

  33 Sociologist Lisa Wade: Lisa Wade, “Women Are Less Happy Than Men in Marriage But Society Pretends It Isn’t True,” Business Insider, January 8, 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/society-should-stop-pretending-marriage-makes-women-so-happy-2017-1.

  34 One 2017 survey by: Sarah Knapton, “Wives Become Less Stressed After Their Husbands Die, Study Finds,” The Telegraph, January 16, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/04/22/wives-become-less-stressed-after-their-husbands-die-study-finds/.

  35 “Just as God has”: Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), ch. 10. First published 1970.

  36 “bon vivant”: “In an Instant: The Laci Peterson Story.”

  37 “I’m so much happier”: Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl (New York: Broadway Books, 2014), p. 295.

  38 “I’m going to hide”: Ibid., p. 331.

  39 “She was clever”: du Maurier, Rebecca, p. 304.

  40 “I’ve actually felt sad”: Flynn, Gone Girl, p. 331.

  41 “Nick must be taught”: Ibid., p. 317.

  42 “If you can’t take”: Ibid., p. 321.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1 “Dream that my little”: Florence A. Thomas Marshall, The Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, vol. I (Salt Lake City, UT: Project Gutenberg EBook, 2011), http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37955/37955-h/37955-h.htm.

  2 “[I] stay at home”: Ibid.

  3 “the dead being alive”: Janet Todd, Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), ch. 33.

  4 “I saw—with shut eyes”: Mary Shelley, “Introduction to the 1831 Edition,” from The Original Frankenstein, ed. Charles Robinson (New York: Vintage Classics, 2008), p. 441.

  5 In Renaissance Italy: “Renaissance Childbirth,” Victoria and Albert Museum, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/r/renaissance-childbirth/.

  6 Even now, the World Health: “Maternal Mortality,” World Health Organization, February 16, 2018, http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mortality.

  7 In the United States: Nina Martin and Renee Montagne, “Black Mothers Keep Dying After Giving Birth. Shalon Irving’s Story Explains Why,” All Things Considered, December 7, 2017, https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/568948782/black-mothers-keep-dying-after-giving-birth-shalon-irvings-story-explains-why.

  8 “Ummu-Hubur [Tiamat]”: Anonymous, “Enuma Elish: The Epic of Creation,” excerpted from The Seven Tablets of Creation, trans. L. W. King, http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm.

  9 “Her courage was taken”: Ibid.

  10 “And God said”: Genesis 1:26 (King James Bible).

  11 “Darkness was on”: Genesis 1:1–2 (King James Bible).

  12 “Fierce Echidna”: Hesiod, Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1914), p. 141.

  13 “one Earth, the Mother”: Aleister Crowley, “Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church,” Thelema 101, http://www.thelema101.com/egc-cred.

  14 Medieval Christians believed: Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe, “Eve & Lilith,” Eve and the Identity of Women, 2000, http://witcombe.sbc.edu/eve-women/7evelilith.html.

  15 “a monster vile”: Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (Salt Lake City, UT: Project Gutenberg EBook, 2013), pp. 82–84. First published 1590.

  16 “According to Aisha Harris”: Aisha Harris, “Is Godzilla Male or Female?,” Slate, May 16, 2014, https://slate.com/culture/2014/05/godzilla-male-or-female-what-gender-is-the-movie-monster.html.

  17 “says that he”: Ibid.

  18 “Older art thou”: Aeschylus, The House of Atreus: Being the Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers, and the Furies, trans. E.D.A. Mor
shead (Salt Lake City, UT: Project Gutenberg EBook, 2018), p. 207. First published 1881.

  19 “Turn not, I pray”: Ibid., p. 206.

  20 “Remember: pregnancy is”: Andrea Long Chu, “Extreme Pregnancy,” Boston Review, Summer 2018, http://bostonreview.net/forum/all-reproduction-assisted/andrea-long-chu-extreme-pregnancy.

  21 “the founder of Rome”: Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 41.

  22 The galli themselves: Siobhan Ball, “The Chill Roman Priests Who Worshiped a Goddess and Castrated Themselves,” Broadly, November 10, 2017, https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/evbqyp/galli-chill-roman-priests-worshipped-cybele-castration.

  23 “the Roman Laws”: Asma, On Monsters, p. 41.

  24 “Some [children], though”: Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. Arthur Platt, book 4 (Australia: University of Adelaide, 2015), pt. 3, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/generation/book4.html.

  25 “nearly half of all”: Angela Garbes, Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy (New York: Harper Wave, 2018), ch. 1.

  26 “could prevent more than”: Nina Martin, “A Larger Role for Midwives Could Improve Deficient U.S. Care for Mothers and Babies,” ProPublica, February 22, 2018, https://www.propublica.org/article/midwives-study-maternal-neonatal-care.

  27 “had a horn on”: William Eamon, “The Monster of Ravenna,” April 11, 2011, http://williameamon.com/?p=707.

  28 “some great misfortune”: Ibid.

  29 “I saw a nursemaid”: Guy de Maupassant, “A Mother of Monsters,” The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant (Adelaide, Australia: University of Adelaide, 2016), https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/maupassant/guy/mother-of-monsters/. First published 1883.

  30 “While the body is”: Aristotle, Generation of Animals, book 2, pt. 4, https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/generation/book2.html.

  31 “the female is”: Ibid., book 2, pt. 3.

  32 “the first departure”: Ibid., book 4, pt. 3.