Autumnal Equinox 2003

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NONFICTION

"The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it." -- Dr. Johnson

n the past, women played a small but significant role in the creation of horror fiction. Ann Radcliff and Jane Austin introduced the Gothic novel to fans of dark suspense, and even more important, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein gave us a look at the motivation of her creation, a monster made, not by its own choosing, but by another's greed and ambition, a theme that transcends the limitations of genre and establishes it firmly in literature where it belongs.

The Brontes, Louisa May Alcott, and Daphne Du Maurier made notable contributions to the field, as later did Phyllis Whitney, Mary Stewart and others. A host of writers of Gothic romance created dark atmospheric fiction while keeping the leading lady at the mercy of both the villain and the whims of the powerful male hero.

For too long women occupied a secondary place in both society and in the horror profession. In the movies, the beautiful, but too often helpless -- and brainless -- leading lady fell victim to the monster, setting the stage for a daring rescue by the dashing hero. The endangered female reigned supreme in characters played by Fay Wray (who can forget King Kong?). And even the heroines of the Universal films Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula's Daughter and She-Wolf of London took a backseat to their male counterparts in their related and much more famous movies.

Yet as women's role in society changed, as women became more empowered in real life, slowly but surely movies and literature began to reflect the change as well. In 1959, Shirley Jackson gave us Eleanor in The Haunting of Hill House, and in 1972, Stephen King wrote the unforgettable Carrie, neither heroines by most definitions, and yet they were women who took control of their own destinies. And a new breed of women of horror began to emerge.

Writers like Anne Rice convinced the reading public that women could not only take charge of their own lives, they could influence the lives of others by being as daringly villainous or as courageously heroic as their male counterparts. And some of them, such as Rice and Joyce Carol Oates, like Mary Shelley before them, built their stories on universal themes that lifted their work out of the wasteland of cloned novels and bad B-movies that had given horror a bad name. These writers set the genre on the long, hard road to respectability.

But despite the successes of a few courageous women writers, horror continued to be primarily a man's domain. Somehow it seemed unbecoming for women to take on unpleasant or grotesque subjects, and the attitude, seldom stated but nevertheless real, was that women couldn't write horror as well as their male counterparts.

Slowly a new breed of women writers like Elizabeth Massie, Charlee Jacob and Diana Barron emerged to defy conviction, and fortunately a few of the smaller, innovative publishers like Leisure, Delirium Books and Berkley began to take notice. The result brought an infusion of new blood, new vitality and diversity to the realm of horror fiction.

Horror is more than an emotion or a genre governed by connect-the-dots plotlines; horror is a condition, as anyone who has ever lived in a terrifying situation can attest. The wife who kisses her husband goodbye as he leaves for work, only to hear on television two hours later that his office building has been destroyed by a terrorist attack, the man who comes home drunk night after night to beat his wife and children, the little black child in the rural South who watches helplessly as his father is dragged outside and hanged because of the color of his skin is no less the stuff of horror than slimy monsters shambling through the dark. Dark fiction, told by women writers or from women's viewpoints, brings a new and valid dimension to the work.

But why would women -- or anyone at all, for that matter, want to write about such atrocities? The answer is that while we are entertainers, we are also storytellers, and as difficult as it may be to believe, we often have little conscious choice in the subjects we are drawn to. And even more important, terrors need to be dragged out of the closet and examined in the clear light of day to help people understand both the motivations and the consequences and perhaps to help prevent these acts from being repeated. I believe that the best horror fiction serves to reveal the real world we live in, to show us that problems can be overcome and personal victories can be achieved despite the odds against us.

If we accept the definition of horror as parable or allegory or an often thinly disguised reflection of the world around us, the prominence of women in horror, both as writers and as characters reflected in the stories we write, becomes even more important. The time has come to shine the spotlight on this often overlooked segment of the field of dark fiction.

The best stories today feature not only men, but women as both heroines and villains, strong women with the will to overcome obstacles and change their destinies, women who reflect the many facets of the female character, whether good or evil. The time has come to celebrate the women of horror.