Monster, She Wrote

by Lisa Kröger

  Lauren Beukes is often compared with the American writer Gillian Flynn, whose novel Gone Girl (Crown Publishing Group, 2012) became a hit and was adapted by Reese Witherspoon’s production company into a successful film, starring Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck. In the book, Flynn upends the familiar plot of a victimized woman and masterfully hides details from both her readers and her main characters so that no one is who they seem to be. She tackled killers, and the trauma that their surviving victims must endure for years to come, in her previous novels Sharp Objects (Shaye Areheart Books, 2006) and Dark Places (Shaye Areheart Books, 2009). These were adapted, for television and film, respectively; the HBO miniseries adaptation of Sharp Objects, starring Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson, is a masterpiece of Southern Gothic and family horror.

  Another honorable mention in Flynn’s oeuvre is the Edgar Award winning novella The Grownup (Crown Publishing Group, 2015), which is her take on a ghost story with a Gothic flair. Fans of the Victorian ghost story will recognize familiar elements such as an old manor house, characters with secrets, and psychics reading auras. But as in her other work, Flynn pushes the boundaries of identity, exploring who we are on the inside versus who we present to the world.

  Caroline Kepnes, like Joyce Carol Oates, defies the confines of genre, and she’s one of our favorite authors on this list. Her debut novel You (Atria, 2014) is a thriller that is equal parts charming, terrifying, and compelling. Joe Goldberg is a seemingly average bookstore clerk who just can’t help but fall in love with a woman who comes into his shop one day. He’s a romantic, but the kind that stalks and sometimes kills, too. Stephen King called the novel “totally original,” saying that Kepnes is “a little Ira Levin, a little Patricia Highsmith” with “plenty of serious snark.” King even named one of his characters Olive Kepnes in Gwendy’s Button Box (Cemetery Dance Publications, 2017), a novella that he wrote with Richard Chizmar. Joe Goldberg’s story was continued in the sequel Hidden Bodies (Atria, 2016) and was recently adapted for television on the Lifetime network and later picked up by Netflix.

  Other standouts in the killer subgenre are Stephanie Perkins’s There’s Someone Inside Your House (Dutton Penguin, 2017) and Jessica Knoll’s Luckiest Girl Alive (Simon and Schuster, 2015). Both books involve characters hiding dark pasts and even darker secrets. A recent favorite is newcomer Dot Hutchison, who writes in the tradition of Thomas Harris and his infamous serial killer Hannibal Lecter. In The Butterfly Garden (Thomas and Mercer, 2016), the first book in her Collector series, Hutchison creates a unique killer, named the Gardener, who collects beautiful young women, tattoos butterfly wings on them, and keeps them in his enclosed garden until they turn eighteen. Then he “preserves” them in glass cases. The story’s plot is unique, but what makes Hutchison an author to watch is the care she gives to the Gardener’s victims. The women have rich lives, told in achingly beautiful detail, and Hutchison writes about their relationships with each other with impressive empathy. The novel introduces readers to FBI agents Brandon Eddison and Victor Hanoverian, whose stories continue in later installments in the Collector series. Roses of May (Thomas and Mercer, 2017) sees the agents tracking a new killer who leaves dead women in cemeteries surrounded by beautiful flowers. The third book, The Summer Children (Thomas and Mercer, 2018), offers another heart-pounding FBI chase. This time a child shows up at an agent’s apartment and claims that an angel killed his parents.

  In Nigerian author Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut novel, My Sister, the Serial Killer (Doubleday, 2018), Korede is a great older sibling, always there to help her baby sister Ayoola dispose of dead bodies. And there seem to be a lot of them. Ayoola apparently has horrible luck; all of her boyfriends end up dying. The plot tightens, however, when Ayoola sets her sights on a man that Korede secretly loves. The book is fun and irreverent but still gut-punches readers with emotion.

  Another recent entry to the subgenre is Jane Steele (Penguin Random House, 2017) by Lyndsay Faye, about a Victorian-era orphan who finds a home in an English manor house. It sounds like a Gothic novel, but the title character is no one’s victim; in fact, Jane is the one with a murderous secret in her past. Cosmopolitan magazine described the book as “Jane Eyre gets a dose of Dexter,” and Faye even includes a riff on Charlotte Brontë’s famous line: “Reader, I murdered him.” Trust us, this one is a fun read.

  Conclusion

  In profiling the authors in this book, we have described, discussed, and admired women who, as Carmen Maria Machado described it, used horror and the weird to be transgressive, to push against the status quo. These genres of fiction are instruments with which women writers can shake up society and prod readers in an uncomfortable direction, to an unfamiliar space where our anxieties and fears run free. But this is also a space where strength emerges. Women experience horrors in everyday life; the eerie and the terrifying become tools for these writers to call attention to the dangers: frayed family relationships, domestic abuse, body image issues, mental health concerns, bigotry, oppression.

  It’s no surprise that women’s fiction focuses on voice and visibility. Women might be told to be quiet, but they still speak up. They might be made invisible, but they still are present. They might be hunted, but they can also be the hunter. Horror fiction shows us that sometimes the things that break us really can make us stronger.

  The future of horror and other dark fiction is bright. And as women continue to persist and innovate in the telling of these stories, it’s clear that the future is female.

  What We Mean When We Talk About Horror

  Horror as genre is notoriously difficult to define; it bleeds into other kinds of stories. It’s the rebel genre. For one person, horror may refer to a page-turner about a serial killer. Someone else may envision a supernatural story full of dread and terror. And a third person may use the term interchangeably with thriller or dark fantasy. To avoid confusion, here are our definitions for key terms used throughout this book.

  Cosmic horror: Tales in which ordinary people are faced with a force so big, so otherworldly, that they must accept that they are insignificant in the greater universe. If you’ve read anything by H. P. Lovecraft, you’ve read cosmic horror.

  Gothic: Gothic literature has several subgenres; Southern Gothic and Gothic romance are two examples. Unless otherwise stated, assume we refer to Gothic horror, which usually involves a young woman caught up in conflict when a troubled past comes back to haunt the present. Typically the narrative offers a crumbling manor home and a few ghosts.

  Horror: We use this term broadly. If it scares, if it horrifies, if it causes the creepy-crawlies, then to us it is horror. Horror fiction can involve supernatural elements, but it doesn’t always.

  Penny dreadful: Also called a sixpenny or penny blood, the penny dreadful was a book printed on cheap paper meant for mass distribution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Often they contained Gothic and horror tales.

  Pulps: These were cheaply printed magazines that introduced readers to a range of stories, usually science fiction or horror. Think of them as the twentieth-century version of penny dreadfuls. The term pulps also refers to the cheaply printed paperback books of the 1970s and ’80s.

  Speculative fiction: This type of literature imagines a world that could be. It is closely related to science fiction but is a broader category that includes fiction with fantastic elements not drawn from a science-based premise. The term is often applied to the work of writers who incorporate several different genres into one tale.

  Terror: We rely on Ann Radcliffe’s definition (see her profile in Part One): Horror has the effect of a bomb; it completely destroys the reader, or tries to. Terror, on the other hand, makes readers feel more alive, by bringing them to the edge of a cliff without pushing them over.

  Thriller: In our experience, authors use this term when they don’t want to be pigeonholed by the term horror. There is a difference, however. Horror is about the emotions
readers feel as they experience a story, usually through empathy with the protagonist. A thriller relies on plot devices, like a metaphorical ticking clock, to elicit a response.

  Weird fiction: This is a notoriously tricky genre to define. Stories in this category often contain elements of the supernatural, but not always. The weird tale goes beyond just a “ghost haunting a home” story and turns the supernatural into something unexplainable. The tension in the weird tale, like cosmic horror, is the sense of dread that results when an ordinary protagonist confronts the unknowable.

  Part One: The Founding Mothers

  1. Known among the upper-class circles as “Mad Madge”: Scholars debate when Cavendish was bestowed this nickname. We could not find evidence that the name was used during her lifetime; by the nineteenth century, however, the name was frequently used. See Katie Whitaker, Mad Madge: The Life of Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

  2. Her nipples, which she had thoughtfully painted red: This incident occurred on April 11, 1667, at a performance of The Humorous Lovers. See Mona Narain, “Notorious Celebrity: Margaret Cavendish and the Spectacle of Fame,” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association 42, no. 2 (2009), 69–95.

  3. Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist, called her “mad, conceited and ridiculous”: See Diary and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys volume 8, October 1, 1667–August 15, 1668 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1901).

  4. It earned Radcliffe three shillings: Radcliffe’s first book sale probably earned her the equivalent of one day’s wages for a “skilled tradesman,” according to the British National Archives online currency converter (nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter). She sold her fourth book for nearly 333 times that much, or what would have been a decent yearly salary at the time.

  5. Sir Walter Scott, the Marquis de Sade, and even Edgar Allan Poe have cited her influence: Scott called Radcliffe a “mighty enchantress.” See Rictor Norton, Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe (New York: Bloomsbury, 1999).

  6. “Terror and horror are so far opposite”: Radcliffe published her ideas on horror and terror in “On the Supernatural in Poetry,” New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal 16, no. 1 (February 1826), 145–152.

  7. She was still considered “the daughter of William Godwin” or “the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley”: An 1851 obituary of Mary Shelley describes her as daughter and wife twice before mentioning any of her literary works. “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,” International Monthly Magazine of Literature, Science, and Art 3, no. 1 (April–July 1851), 16–18.

  8. Mary Shelley kept her husband Percy’s heart: Although this story is well documented, as far back as 1885, critics suggested it may not be true and that Mary may have held on to Percy’s calcified liver, which would have been more likely than the heart to survive cremation. “Possibly Not Shelley’s Heart,” New York Times, June 28, 1885.

  9. Best-selling hit for Minerva Press: Prior to the 1790s, it was socially unacceptable for a woman to pursue a career of any kind, particularly one in writing or the arts. Few women even received an education. Mary Wollstonecraft (mother of Mary Shelley) advocated for girls to be afforded the same education as boys, and her efforts changed popular opinion ever so slightly—at least enough to make it possible for later women like Regina Maria Roche to pursue writing professionally, rather than as a recreational dalliance. Minerva Press, named for the Greek goddess of wisdom, was one of the largest publishers of fiction between 1790 and 1820, with a large catalogue of women writers. Though it wasn’t launched specifically to publish work by women, simply by serving the market Minerva Press became the largest purveyor of both Gothic fiction and fiction written by women. London bookseller William Lane founded the press in 1780, and when Lane retired, the publishing company was overseen by Anthony King Newman, who eventually changed the name to A. K. Newman and Co.

  10. Born Mary Clayton around 1746: See Dale Townsend, ed., Manfroné: Or, The One-Handed Monk (Richmond, VA: Valancourt Books, 2007). In his afterword, Townshend explores who the real Mary Anne Radcliffe might have been.

  11. Her father, John King, was a Jewish money broker: For more on Dacre’s fascinating father, see Todd M. Endelman’s article in the journal of the Association for Jewish Studies. “The Checkered Career of ‘Jew’ King: A Study in Anglo-Jewish Social History,” AJS Review 7–8 (1983), 69–100.

  Part Two: Haunting Tales

  1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one devotee: Doyle was a vocal supporter of spiritualism while other celebrities—including, famously, Doyle’s friend, the magician Harry Houdini—were outspoken skeptics. For more on Doyle, see Daniel Stashower, Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (Henry Holt and Co., 1999).

  2. And in 1865 bought a house: Gaskell had intended to keep the Hampton home, called the Lawn, as a retirement surprise for her husband, but she died that same year before she could tell him. See Mrs. Ellis H. Chadwick, Mrs. Gaskell: Haunts, Homes and Stories (London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1913), 302.

  3. Fierce defender of women’s rights: Among other things, Amelia Edwards signed the 1866 Women’s Suffrage Petition, which can be viewed online on the United Kingdom parliamentary archives (parliament.uk).

  4. A place of pilgrimage for the LGBTQ community: See Paddy Dinham, “Grave of Victorian author who was buried alongside her female partner is given listed status in new campaign to recognize gay history,” Daily Mail, September 27, 2016.

  5. Author Henry James: See Carl J. Weber, “Henry James and his Tiger-Cat,” PMLA 68, no. 4 (September 1953), 683. Weber includes in his article the majority of a letter by Henry James to his brother William, in which he says about Lee, “There is a great second-rate element in her first-rateness.”

  6. Edith Newbold Jones: The saying “keeping up with the Joneses” was coined about Wharton’s family. Her father, George Frederic Jones, was an affluent real-estate mogul in New York City, and everyone who was anyone aspired to be like their family.

  7. Anxiety and hallucinations that plagued her into early adulthood: In a biographical fragment she called “My Life and I,” Wharton wrote: “When I came to myself, it was to enter a world haunted by formless fears. I had been a naturally fearless child; now I lived in a state of chronic fear.” Cynthia Wolff, ed., Edith Wharton: Novellas and Other Writings (New York: Library of America, 1990).

  Part Three: Cult of the Occult

  1. Belief system called Thelema: Many books have been written on this complex philosophy begun by Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s own The Law Is for All: An Extended Commentary on the Book of the Law (Phoenix: Falcon Press, 1983) explores the text on which Thelema is based. The website Thelema.org lists many free resources on the belief system.

  2. Moved to a new home: Some time before Bowen’s marriage in 1912—the exact year isn’t known—she and her family moved to a house near “the cricket grounds at Lord’s” in London; see Bowen’s autobiography, The Debate Continues: Being the Autobiography of Marjorie Bowen (London: William Heinemann, 1939), 155. Bowen’s sister, her Nana, and the men who worked in and around the house all firmly believed that the unusual events were spectral in nature; Bowen’s mother was initially skeptical, but soon both she and Bowen were experiencing unexplained phenomena, like disembodied moans and lights flashing on the stairs.

  3. The J. K. Rowling of her day: Beth Rodgers makes this comparison in “LT Meade, the JK Rowling of her day, remembered 100 years on,” Irish Times, October 26, 2014. This article provided much of the biographical information on Meade.

  4. Adapted for six silent films: The Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) lists entries for the films adapted from the Askews’ work: The Folly of Desire (1915), The Pleydell Mystery (1916), God’s Clay (1919), Testimony (1920), John Heriot’s Wife (1920), and Under the Lash (1921).

  5. Brought us a number of modern characters and stories: Two great occult detectives of modern fiction are John Constantine and Carl Kolchak. Constantine was a damaged magician
in DC Comics stories created by Alan Moore; Keanu Reeves portrayed him on the silver screen in 2005, and Matt Ryan has portrayed him in television series on NBC and the CW. Kolchak was a reporter who investigated the supernatural in Kolchak: The Night Stalker, a television series launched in 1974, starring Darren McGavin. Spin-off television movies and comics followed; the TV series was revived, as Night Stalker, in 2005 starring Stuart Townsend.

  6. published a disclaimer: See Daniel Delis Hill, Advertising to the American Woman, 1900–1999 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002), 78.

  7. “The malice of inanimate objects”: M. R. James detailed this theory, that seemingly inanimate objects sometimes choose to cause people harm, in a story of the same name, which was republished in the collection The Haunted Doll’s House and Other Ghost Stories (New York: Penguin, 2006), 201–5.

  8. the Ghost Club: More information on this still-active group is available on their website (ghostclub.org.uk); see also Peter Hoskin, “Ghost Club: Yeats’s and Dickens’s Secret Society of Spirits,” Paris Review, October 31, 2017.

  Part Four: The Women Who Wrote the Pulps

  1. Some pulps survive today: Though much early-twentieth-century pulp fiction has been lost, digital technology has helped collectors preserve some stories and covers and share them with a modern audience. Good online sources include the Pulp Magazines Project (pulpmags.org), the Pulp Magazine Archive (archive.org/details/pulpmagazinearchive), ThePulp.net, and the blog Tellers of Weird Tales (tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com). In addition, thanks to the expiration of early copyright laws, some pulp stories are in the public domain.