Horror Literature through History

by Matt Cardin

  Early 1900s

  Texts: “The White People,” “The Willows,” “The Wendigo,” “The Man Whom the Trees Loved,” “The Shunned House,” “The Colour out of Space”

  Events:

  •1905: Formation of the Bureau of Forestry

  1950s/1960s

  Texts: The Birds (short story and film), Silent Spring, The Night of the Grizzly

  Events:

  •1964: Wilderness Act

  •1968: Publication of The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich

  •1969: Santa Barbara oil spill

  1970s

  Texts: Jaws (novel and film) Willard, Night of the Lepus, Grizzly, Tarantulas, Tentacles, Piranha, The Swarm, etc.

  Events:

  •1970: Formation of EPA

  •1970: Clean Air Act

  •1971: Formation of Greenpeace

  •1972: Clean Water Act

  •1973: Endangered Species Act

  •1979: Nuclear meltdown of Three Mile Island

  1980s

  Texts: Cujo, The Rats, The Ceremonies, Croaked, Little Shop of Horrors

  Events:

  •1980: World population hits 4.5 billion.

  •1982: Nuclear Waste Policy Act

  •1985: Evidence confirms hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica.

  •1988: NASA warns Congress about global warming.

  •1989: Exxon Valdez oil spill

  1990s

  Texts: Outbreak, Aberration, Sphere, Bats, Lake Placid

  Events:

  •1990: Oil Pollution Act

  •1990: Pollution Prevention Act

  •1996: Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act

  •1997: Kyoto Protocol is signed by 38 industrialized nations

  2000s

  Texts: Seeders, Uprooted, The Last Winter, The Happening, Birdemic, Cloverfield, The Thaw, The Bay

  Events:

  •2001: President George W. Bush refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol.

  •2006: The documentary An Inconvenient Truth is released.

  •2007: Energy Independence and Security Act

  •2010: Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill

  •2014: IPCC release a devastating report promising dire environmental consequences if leading economies do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately.

  •2016: The Paris Agreement, within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, is signed by 193 UNFCCC member nations.

  It is this cinematic background that illuminates the intriguing and less well-known subject of eco-horror literature. When examining eco-horror themes in a literary context, the parameters are much broader than those in the discussion of film. The horror of nature has been depicted since the very beginning of literature with Gilgamesh (ca. 2100 BCE) and has continued as a dominant theme throughout the human traditions of myths, fairy tales, and countless other literary narratives. Most relevantly, it has held a consistently prominent place in Gothic and horror literature, right from the outset. The emphasis on truly sublime landscapes is central to many of the classic Gothic novels: vast terrains of ice, mountains, and forest create the awesome and eerie ambience in such classic texts as The Castle of Otranto (1764), The Monk (1796), Frankenstein (1818), and Dracula (1897). This extends beyond the European Gothic and into the American Gothic, where the darkness of the natural world is equally prevalent, while the image of the fearsome forest, inspired by inherited fears of the New World wilderness, is even more dominant. This is seen, for example, in the works of writers such as Charles Brockden Brown and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Indeed, critics such as Lisa Kröger have convincingly argued that the trope of the “Deep Dark Forest” is so recurrent that it is as much a central tenet of the Gothic text as the castle, crypt, or convent.

  The two main elements of the eco-horror text as outlined above—the revenge of nature and the focus on an ecocentric perspective—have been utilized, both subtly and explicitly, by many of the most esteemed authors of the horror genre. Recently, there has been some discussion of the environmental themes to be found in the works of H. P. Lovecraft. In particular, stories of his such as “The Colour out of Space” (1927) and “The Shunned House” (1924) have been retrospectively read in light of fears of widespread pollution. The Day of the Triffids (1951) has been read as the epitome of “plant horror” (a subset of eco-horror). A key figure, due to his somewhat unique position as both nature and horror writer, is Algernon Blackwood. In his infamous tale “The Willows” (1907), two men fatally underestimate the majesty of nature and are consequently terrorized by the trees that surround them; in “The Temptation of the Clay” (1912), a man is horribly punished for viewing the natural world in material terms; in “The Transfer” (1912), human greed is rewarded by an all too literal demonstration of nature’s voracious appetite; and in “The Man Whom the Trees Loved” (1912), the imagined “union” between humans and nature is made truly monstrous. T. E. D. Klein has strong elements of eco-horror in his fiction, too, as for example in The Ceremonies (1984). Here, the main antagonist is aligned firmly with nature, and the protagonist, Jeremy, seems to be truly endangered only when he disrespects the natural environment. He poisons small creatures and bugs with insecticide and later—in a pure moment of eco-horror revenge—is slowly poisoned himself by the same insecticide, which is used in his food. Many “obvious” examples of eco-horror literature can also be found in literary examples of animal horror, including such classic texts as James Herbert’s The Rats (1982) and Stephen King’s Cujo (1981). (In fact, many examples can be found throughout King’s work, such as the haunted hedge in 1977’s The Shining). It is also important to note that two of the most infamous eco-horror films of all time, The Birds and Jaws, each originated as horror literature: Daphne du Maurier wrote the short story “The Birds” in 1952, and Peter Benchley wrote Jaws in 1974. There is more symbiosis between eco-horror film and eco-horror literature than many might first imagine.

  Currently, the genre of eco-horror is still dominated primarily by filmic texts such as The Bay (2006), The Happening (2008), and The Last Winter (2012). These recent films carry a very different tone from what might be considered the “classic” eco-horror films of the 1970s. Instead of giant insects, mutant rats, and killer sharks, the threat of nature is shown to be much more insidious and pervasive; it is now often nature itself that is depicted as the collective and malevolent force, turning unanimously on a transgressive and now unwelcome humankind. This is representative of an increasing sense that humans have severed themselves from the natural world, which they are consciously—and continually—destroying. In this battle of humans vs. nature, it is clear that people, collectively, are the monsters.

  When it comes to the place of contemporary eco-horror literature, the emphasis is not so much on the production of new books (although there are interesting examples to be pointed to, such as Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy) but on the attention that horror literature is now receiving within the context of eco-horror themes. Indeed, there has been a general increase in academic interest in visions of nature and environment in fiction. This has, significantly, resulted in the birth of the “ecoGothic,” which is firmly related to (and at times imbricated with) eco-horror. However, this term refers not to a genre of text but to the means of its deconstruction: in other words, the ecoGothic is the heading under which ecocritical and environmental themes may be interrogated within horror fictions. Eco-horror texts have always provided an important social and political commentary on environmental issues, but now—in a time when humans have affected everything in nature, from the ozone layer down—they are more relevant and essential than ever before. This is only emphasized by the fact that humans are, as Anil Narine credibly attests, collectively experiencing “eco-trauma”: a state in which people are so terrified by the overwhelming seriousness of environmental issues that they paradoxically deal with these fears not only by ignoring them, but by actively repressing them (Narine 2015). It is more important than
ever, therefore, to examine in detail the texts in which these fears may still find expression.

  Elizabeth Parker

  See also: The Gothic Literary Tradition; Horror Literature and Science Fiction; Part Three, Reference Entries: Blackwood, Algernon; The Ceremonies; “The Colour out of Space”; Forbidden Knowledge or Power; Lovecraft, H. P.; Mad Scientist; The Rats; The Sublime; “The Willows.”

  Further Reading

  Gambin, Lee. 2012. Massacred by Mother Nature: Exploring the Natural Horror Film. Baltimore, MD: Midnight Marquee Press.

  Hillard, Tom J. 2009. “‘Deep into the Darkness Peering’: An Essay on Gothic Nature.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment (ISLE) 16, no. 4 (Autumn): 685–695.

  Muir, John Kenneth. 2007. Horror Films of the 1970s. London: McFarland.

  Narine, Anil. 2015. Eco-trauma Cinema. London: Routledge.

  Smith, Andrew, and William Hughes, eds. 2013. EcoGothic. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

  Tabas, Brad. 2015. “Dark Places: Ecology, Place, and the Metaphysics of Horror.” Miranda 11. https://miranda.revues.org/7012.

  GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND THE MONSTERS OF

  LITERARY HORROR

  From its inception, horror has offered an ambivalent space for the construction and exploration of gender and sexuality. On the one hand, anxieties about gender roles and sexuality are cast off onto the monsters of horror fiction and social norms are constructed through the “othering” of “deviations” and “perversity.” On the other hand, horror also provides a space for the expression of transgressions of sexual and social norms. Hence, for example, the vampire’s long history as a figure of both repulsion and fascination, of fear and desire. In terms of its critical reception and history, horror is a literary form split along gender lines, often conceived of by critics as comprising two distinct traditions. At the “feminine” pole lies “Gothic Romance,” which includes the novels of Ann Radcliffe in the eighteenth century as well as the “paranormal romance” of the twenty-first. This “feminine” form is characterized by stories of monstrous (yet desirable) male antagonists, of the incarceration and flight of the heroine, and the struggle over the control and possession of her body and property. At the “masculine” end of the pole lies the horror tradition inaugurated by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which includes works that blend adventure, science fiction, and body horror, such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). Fred Botting suggests that this tradition contrasts with its feminine counterpart because it “subordinat[es] love adventure” and “licens[es] more ‘masculine’ tendencies towards power and violence” (Botting 2008, 11). Botting’s delineation of these two gendered traditions also reveals the way in which the “masculine” form (characterized by its transgression and violence) has been critically valued to the detriment of the “feminine.” The latter is often seen as conservative and clichéd, and Botting dismisses it accordingly as an “embourgeoisif[ied]” form traceable “through the Brontës, Collins, Corelli, du Maurier and the host of popular romantic fictions packaged as ‘Harlequins’, ‘Gothics’, ‘Mills and Boon’ . . . and on” (Botting 2008, 11). However, it is not so easy to delineate a “feminine” tradition from a “masculine” tradition in horror, nor should either be valued over the other as a space in which ideas of gender and sexuality are constructed and critiqued.

  Horror provides an interface for the traversing and crossing of such gender boundaries as those drawn in critical accounts of the form. As Judith Halberstam’s study of monstrosity shows, horror narratives never “turn so neatly around gender identifications” (Halberstam 1995, 18). In its exploration of sexuality, perversity, and monstrosity, horror provides a space for the negotiation of the extremes of ideas about gender, often revealing the constructed and fluid nature of gender in the process. Feminist scholars have noted the way that horror can express frustration with the lot of women and is able to critique the polarization of women through binary sexual categories such as virgin and whore, victim and monster. Yet, horror can also reinforce gender stereotypes and express misogyny, pathologizing women who fail to conform. For example, Barbara Creed’s study of horror film argues that the “monstrous feminine” expresses “male fears” about female sexuality (Creed 1993, 7). Thus, horror is always ambivalent; it is not simply a patriarchal and oppressive space, but nor is it easily recuperable by feminist politics. The afterlives of horror literature’s most enduring monsters reveal this ambivalence. Frankenstein’s monster, the vampire, and the werewolf are all sites of monstrosity that continue to negotiate between the extreme poles of masculinity and femininity and offer a fantasy space for the expression of anxieties and desires surrounding sexuality.

  The monsters of horror literature have often been read as ciphers for “perverse” sexuality and non-normative gender identities, the expulsion of their monstrous otherness serving to reinforce social norms. However, the long literary afterlives of Frankenstein’s monster, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and the werewolves of Victorian horror fiction in numerous rewritings and adaptations show how the monster has served as a way of negotiating and celebrating aspects of gender and sexual identity not often given expression in mainstream culture and society.

  Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is cited by critics as the inception of a masculine horror tradition (as above in Botting’s 2008 Gothic Romanced) and the beginning of a female tradition (as in Ellen Moers’s 1978 essay in which she coins the term “Female Gothic”). The novel explores both a repressive feminine sphere of domesticity and a masculine sphere of scientific discovery. Yet, as Moers insists, the relationship between its male antiheroes is an exploration of the trauma (and failure) of motherhood as much as it is of Promethean rebellion. The birth of Frankenstein’s monster reimagines the birth myth through the images of body horror, and the death of Frankenstein’s own mother looms large both in his decision to create his creature and to destroy its female mate. In this latter episode in particular, the novel registers anxieties about the power of generation. Frankenstein refuses to make the monster a mate for fear that together they will produce a “race of devils” (Shelley 1992, 170). It is the sexual reproductive power of the female monster that Victor fears most, suggesting that any female monster may be “ten thousand times more malignant than her mate” (Shelley 1992, 170). Marie Mulvey-Roberts argues that through Victor’s brutal destruction of the monster, Frankenstein exposes the violent misogyny of fears about female sexuality (Mulvey-Roberts 2016, 111). The idea that Frankenstein explores the cultural construction of “monstrous” female sexuality has a long afterlife in twentieth-century horror film, notably in works such as Alien (1979).

  Drawing on this influence, feminist writers have found Frankenstein a rich text for adaptation and rewriting. Shelley Jackson’s hypertext revision of the novel, Patchwork Girl (1995), reassembles the fragmented female monster and imagines a narrative for each body part, giving voice to the female monster so brutally silenced in the original. In a more recent rewriting of the novel, Chris Priestley considers the construction of masculinity and links the destruction of the monster’s mate thematically to another act of misogynist violence in nineteenth-century literature, the murder of Nancy in Dickens’s Oliver Twist (1839). Priestley’s Mister Creecher (2011) pairs the monster with a young Bill Sykes in an exploration of how masculine violence is culturally and socially produced. Frankenstein has also been read as a queer text into which might be read the repression of homosexual desire. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick describes the novel as “a tableau of two men chasing each other across the landscape,” their relationship ambiguously amorous and/or murderous (Sedgwick 1986, ix–x). The queer subtext of the novel is developed in Kate Horsley’s recent novelistic adaptation, The Monster’s Wife (2014), which focuses on the friendship and desire between two young women, one of whom is taken by Frankenstein for his experiments. It is the bond between two female protagonists that is foregrounded here, and the antagoni
sm between Shelley’s male antiheroes plays out in the background of Horsley’s novel.

  Whereas the sexual appetites of Frankenstein’s monster are denied, those of the vampire run rampant in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. Stoker’s predatory Count Dracula represents a perverse sexual desire that disturbs middle-class systems of marriage and offspring and passes as a contagion to his victims. Though most famous of the vampires of horror literature, Dracula was not the first and is predated by J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla by twenty-five years. In Carmilla (1872) Le Fanu depicts a more sympathetic vampire whose lesbian desire for her friend Laura comprises the text, rather than the subtext, of the story. Stoker’s tale acts as a corrective to Le Fanu’s, recasting the vampire as male (and so placing sexual agency in the realm of masculine virility) and violently punishing the count’s female progeny for their perverse manifestations of sexual appetite. The most obvious recipient of Stoker’s punitive violence is Lucy Westenra, who is staked, decapitated, and has her mouth stuffed with garlic by the three men who had previously competed for her affections. As a vampire, Lucy is able to express sexual appetites and refuse the confining structures of bourgeois femininity. When the “Crew of Light,” as Christopher Craft has characterized them (Craft 1984, 130) encounter her in Kingstead cemetery, she callously throws aside a child she has fed from and makes overt advances to the waiting men. This scene reveals what Gina Wisker notes is typical of female vampires: they are able to critique and problematize received notions of femininity, but negotiate a constant tension between punishment and celebration of their transgressions (Wisker 2016, 150).