Supernatural Mothers and Wombs of Discontent
Exploring Horror's Deviant Reproductions
Supernatural Mothers and Wombs of Discontent
Exploring Horror's Deviant Reproductions
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Description
This volume offers readers a dedicated examination of supernatural motherhood as it intersects with horror in diverse contexts as a contribution to growing research into the monstrous feminine and gynae horror.
Contributors examine the womb and the mother as separate sources of supernatural reproduction in horror film, television, and literature to argue that reproduction and the supernatural go hand in hand and that the alchemy of pregnancy and birth offers a myriad critical possibilities in horror. Part one opens with an examination of the challenges both to power and of power that the witch figure represents before turning to the mother as othered in the face of supernatural reproduction. Part two then turns to the womb, examining more closely its role in gynae horror and its relationship to the abject. The volume brings these two parts together from a variety of perspectives to interrogate motherhood as an expression of systemic power relations, with the supernatural functioning as a foil against which the social construction of birth, birthing, and motherhood may be reconsidered.
Table of Contents
Ruth Barratt-Peacock (University of Siegen, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany; University of Huddersfield, UK)
Part I: Supernatural Mothers
Section 1: Witches
1. WandaVision: When Horror (Re)frames Magical Motherhood
Ruth Barratt-Peacock (University of Siegen, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany; University of Huddersfield, UK)
2. The Witch as Anti-Mother in Eggers's The Witch
Mark Henderson (University, Country)
3. Ceridwen: Welch Witch and Goddess of Rebirth and Transformation
Rachael Harris (University, Country)
4. Grotesque Grandmothers and the Disenchanted Witch: Reckoning with Reproductivity and Rural Horror in Ti West's X
Mathew Moore (University, Country)
Section 2: M/Others
5. M/othering and the Abject in Molly Cochran's The Third Magic
Radhia Flah Gaich (University, Country)
6. Magical Vulnerability and Vulnerable Magic: The Witch (M)Other in Salman Rushdie's Victory City
Sreelakshmy Mohan (University, Country)
7. Fangs and Phalluses: The Barren, Pregnant Vampire
Evie Kendal (University, Country)
8. Magic, Desire, and Motherhood in Queer Fiction
Audrey T. Heffers (University, Country)
Part II: Wombs and Their Progeny
Section 3: Loss and Abjection
9. Wombs of Discontent: Unveiling Gender Abjection through Dolls in Lucky McKee's May
Amylou Ahava (University, Country)
10. Miscarriage in Contemporary Film: Visualizing the Unseen through the Horror Scene
Katherine Cottle (University, Country)
Section 4: Gynae Horror
11. A Haunting Healing in Toni Morrison's Beloved
Jeff Ambrose (University, Country)
12. Gynae Horror in Select Hindi Cinema: The Womb as The Element of Horror
Shrenya Soni (University, Country)
13. The Powers of Horror in David Cronenberg's The Brood (1979): Between Maternal Parthenogenesis and an Asexual Reproduction of the Feminine
Callum Bradley (University, Country)
Conclusion
Ruth Barratt-Peacock (University of Siegen, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany; University of Huddersfield, UK)
Index
Product details
| Published | 01 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Hardback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Extent | 224 |
| ISBN | 9798216365716 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 10 bw illus |
| Dimensions | 229 x 152 mm |
| Series | Research in Horror Studies |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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