Ghosts, goblins, your teacher moving the deadline earlier, all equally scary phenomenon’s the mortal humans of this world fear. Yet taking the cake for most skin-crawling is the lack of recognition for female authors of the horror genre. Almost anyone can name off iconic gothic authors such as Edgar Allen Poe or even Nathanial Hawthorne, yet the ghoulish gals typically get swept under the dusty, haunted rug. The history of horror is rich with imaginative and anxiety provoking women and deserves to be showcased.
From a small town in Connecticut comes a poet fighting for social reform. Charlotte Perkins Gilman came from poverty, fatherless and penniless, moving from school to school seven times over. With the abandonment from her father and a mother who couldn’t support her, Gilman was sent to live with her father’s aunts: Isabella Beecher Hooker, Cathrine Beecher, and that none other than Harriet Beecher Stowe. Raised from a suffragist, an educationalist, and the author of one of the most renowned books on societal reform Uncle Tom’s Cabin is almost forced to breed someone of greatness. Gilman’s magnum opus The Yellow Wallpaper tells the real-time experience of a woman sent to an institution and her journal entries while staying there, her mind slowly deteriorating throughout the piece. Not only does the short story give a horrific insight into this woman’s psyche, it brings awareness to the unsavory culture of the time, a true feminist piece of literature.
Gothic literature is not only limited to white women, throughout the era during and after slavery, were rising tales of experiences in slavery. Harriet Ann Jacobs is the proud owner of one of these stories, after achieving freedom from moving to New York she took it upon herself to write her experiences. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl mixes gothic elements with the yet another new genre, The Slave Narrative. Her book is included in the abolitionist movement, yet another female writer pushing for social reform.
The year is 1797, the air and pavement are damp with morning, afternoon, evening, and nightly rain—the scene is Somers Town Britain. Author of The Vindication of the Rights of a Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, is having her first daughter alongside her anarchy driven philosopher, William Godwin. Coming from a renowned feminist author and anarchist, it’s no wonder Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley later went on to invent her own literary genre. The name Frankenstein is not one sullied or unspoken, from merely being the winner of a ghost story contest to being the first classic Science Fiction novel.
Mary Shelley revolutionized women in literature, but without others following in her steps it almost goes to waste. Expanding one’s knowledge on more than its well-spread facts or merely its origin benefits more than one thinks and often breeds further independent thought and opinion. Be sure to pick up a Horror book or Movie with a female author or director this Halloween.