Female Identity in Contemporary Fictional Purgatorial Worlds

Simon Bacon is an independent scholar working in Poland. He has previously edited works such as Gothic: A Reader, Horror: A Companion and Monsters: A Companion. Previous monographs include Becoming Vampire, Dracula as Absolute Other, Eco-Vampires, Vampires From Another World, and Unhallowed Ground.

This collection examines fictional horrors very like those that women face every day in the real world to illuminate how we got to where we are and, more importantly, where we may end up, offering up hope through engagement with models of survival, resistance, and victory.

• List of IllustrationsNotes on Contributors Acknowledgements Prologue, Simon Bacon Introduction, Simon BaconPart One: Purgatorial Space1. Miasma Theory, Particular Matter and Modern Horror, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock2. Between Hell and Hel: Gender, History and Nature in Subterranean Spaces, Elana Gomel3. La Llorona Hauntings: Storytelling Feminicide at the Purgatorial Mexico/US Border, Cristina Santos and Sarah Revilla-SanchezPart Two: Daughters, Mothers, Trauma4. “I Lost All Hope of Going Up the Hill”: Silent Hill as a Female Specific Inferno, Dawn Stobbart5. “Mother Is God in the Eyes of a Child”: Doppelgängers, Punishment, and Maternal Otherworlds in Silent Hill and Triangle, Catherine Pugh6. Pray and Obey: The Horror (and Purgatory) of Religious Fundamentalism, Nicola YoungPart Three: Female Development in Purgatorial Spaces7. The New Eden? The Female-Centered Purgatorial Space of Dollhouse, Erin Giannini8. The Vampire in the Attic: Constructing Monstrous Female Identities in Liminal, Purgatorial Spaces, Taryn Tavener-Smith9. “Into the Further We Go”: Exploring Gender, World-Building, and the Return of the Fantastic in the Insidious Franchise, Mark Richard Adams10. Coded Outcry: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985 and 2017-Present) and The Testaments (2019), Gina WiskerPart Four: Spaces of Female Resistance 11. Of Monstrous Spaces: Female Identity in American Horror Story: Murder House and American Horror Story: Hotel, Pembe Gözde Erdogan12. “This Time I’ll Get It Right”: Female Coming-of-Age Within Purgatorial Time Loops, Shawn Edrei13. The Trauma We Inherit: Sister Night, Black Female Identity, and the Parallel Rachel Purgatory of Watchmen, Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.14. “We’re Human Too, You Know”: Tethered Journeys and Shadowed Struggles in Jordan Peele’s Us (2019), Nancy Johnson-HuntIndex