The Feminine Other: Monsters and Magic in Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Monsters are perceived as humanity’s enemy that should be eradicated. However, based on Jeffrey Cohen’s Monster Theory (1997), monsters play an important role in understanding humanity’s fears and anxieties. Monstrosity hinges upon the binary opposition of the Self and the Other, in which the Other is seen as a threat to the Self. With this in mind, this article addresses the female monsters of two medieval texts: Beowulf and Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. This paper aims to examine the female monsters, Grendel’s mother and Morgan the Fay, as a cultural reference to unravel the patriarchal anxieties of the time. Grendel’s mother represents a threat to the homosocial hierarchal bonds of Medieval society. Meanwhile, Morgan the Fay signifies danger to knighthood, chivalry, and courtly romance. At the same time, this paper also aims to continue the critical analysis and literature of the female characters in both texts with a heavy emphasis on their Otherness.

“There Is More to Me Than Just Hunger”: Female Monsters and Liminal Spaces in Monstress and Pretty Deadly

This chapter analyzes the power of liminality that forces readers to identify with the transgressive ‘other.’ For the important female characters in the two comic books Monstress and Pretty Deadly, liminality and the abject are paradoxically sources of their power as revealed in their relationship to profanity, blood, and boundary crossing. While these female characters are undoubtedly situated as monsters because their liminal, abject natures, they are also the protagonists, and so the reader is compelled to identify with monstrosity. Because the celebrated creators of these comics, Marjorie Liu and Kelly Sue DeConnick, have voices in the wider U.S. cultural context, there is powerful potential in their choices to call readers to examine their own relationship to the abject and thus to challenge assumptions of social normalcy.

Death Wears a Dress

In many parts of Asia, female ghosts play an interesting role in how the supernatural is imagined and constructed. Whether she be the pontianak who waits for her victim by the side of the road, or the mother or lover who returns for revenge, the female ghost is often characterised as treading the line between agency and oppression. On one hand, she is an autonomous character who seeks justice on her own terms; on another, she is usually reduced to a victim of violence while she is alive, and her agency is only granted in death… in the transformation of her identity from victim to villain.Death Wears a Dress is a collection of poems inspired by numerous female “monsters” central to Asian folklore, many of whom continue to reincarnate through horror films, pop culture and social media. Through poetic verse, I hope to centralise, re-imagine and humanise the experiences, emotions, desires, fears and regrets of these fictitious women in an effort to unearth possible insights about gender, power, longing and justice.Death Wears A Dress is being written with the support of Singapore’s National Arts Council’s Creation Grant.

Female Monsters: Figuring Female Transgression in Jennifer's Body (2009) and The Witch (2013)

This paper aimed to examine the depiction of the monstrous feminine in two horror flms, 2009’s Jennifer’s Bodyand 2015’s The Witch, by investigating how horror flms confront transgression through the construction of woman as a monstrous fgure in the story. The theory of abjection proposed by Julia Kristeva and of the monstrous feminine by Barbara Creed were used in the analysis. The main data were taken from these two flms, focusing on the characterization and narrative aspects. It was found that the depiction of the monstrous feminine in both flms was through the use of monstrous acts and images. The way in which these flms constructed monstrosity indicates female transgression of patriarchal boundaries, specifcally on the issue of gender identity and religiosity. The transgression emphasizes that there is no absolute identity, and thus boundaries are disrupted due to this fluid identity

Female Monsters: Figuring Female Transgression in Jennifer's Body (2009) and The Witch (2013)

This paper aimed to examine the depiction of the monstrous feminine in two horror flms, 2009’s Jennifer’s Bodyand 2015’s The Witch, by investigating how horror flms confront transgression through the construction of woman as a monstrous fgure in the story. The theory of abjection proposed by Julia Kristeva and of the monstrous feminine by Barbara Creed were used in the analysis. The main data were taken from these two flms, focusing on the characterization and narrative aspects. It was found that the depiction of the monstrous feminine in both flms was through the use of monstrous acts and images. The way in which these flms constructed monstrosity indicates female transgression of patriarchal boundaries, specifcally on the issue of gender identity and religiosity. The transgression emphasizes that there is no absolute identity, and thus boundaries are disrupted due to this fluid identity

Bodies of Excess

The final chapter deals with recurring motifs that resist categorization, motifs which can be understood as excessive or abject. From the streetwalking sex workers known as panpan, to the shape-shifting female monsters of the horror genre, this chapter considers the affective impacts of representations of the female Other. Excessive star personae such as that of Kyō Machiko are analysed alongside characterizations drawn from myth and legend to demonstrate that the female Other is a recurring trope throughout literature, film, and even journalism. The final section considers the excessive abject icon as a representation of the sublime. Case studies include Women of the Night (Yoru no onnatachi, Mizoguchi Kenji, 1948), White Beast (Shiroi yajū, Naruse Mikio, 1950) and Gate of Flesh (Nikutai no mon, Suzuki Seijun, 1964).