Gender and horror

In the horror genre there are lots of debates of how the women are portrayed. They used to be portrayed as weak and waiting for help from a male presence, and being nothing but helpless and powerless without it. But as the times are changing and feminism becoming more present in the modern society, the approach on women's roles became to evolve and finally to be reconsidered, even in the slightest. Even though today women are portrayed as having their "revenge" because they have been shown in more powerful roles, not only playing the "victim" role, (Donahue 2014) there still exists gender inequality in the distribution of the powerful roles.

From the Victorian times up to the present century, women have been neglected in the horror and gothic literature, theatre, film etc. and were attributed weaker roles or roles in which they were depending on a man. Even if they had more powerful roles, they were still limited in a wolrd where all that mattered was how their bodies look and not what they feel of think. "One cultural tradition, older than Victorians but nonetheless proeminent within the late nineteenth century, identifies women as entities defined by and entrapped within their bodies, in contrast to the man, who is governed by rationality and capable of transcending the fact of his embodiment. In nineteenth century social medicine in particular, women were theorized as incomplete human subjects.[...] They possess the intellectual qualities that distinguish Man from brute only in the most limited and imperfect sense" (Hurley 1997).

No wonder that nowadays horror literature and film still perpetuate the idea that women are still not capable of being in a powerful position - the roots of horror as a genre is in the Victorian times and some of the mentalities are not so easily changeable.

Although these are some sad facts, the idea that the world is continuously changing doesn't bother me at all. Maybe there will be some good changes in the end, who knows?

References:

• Donahue, A.T. (2014) Women in horror: The revenge. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/commentisfree/2014/oct/17/women-in-horror-the-revenge (Accessed: 6 March 2016).
• Hurley, K., Hurley and Beer, G. (1997) The gothic body: Sexuality, materialism, and degeneration at the fin de siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.