Event Title
'Period' Literature
Location
Diamond 343
Start Date
30-4-2015 1:40 PM
End Date
30-4-2015 2:25 PM
Project Type
Presentation
Description
This honors project works to prove there is a correlation between the construction of gothic monsters in eighteenth-century British literature and representations of the menstruating body in contemporary literature. By looking at such texts as Matthew Gregory Lewis's 'The Monk,' Charlotte Dacre's 'Zofloya,' and Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and comparing both the composition and symbolic meaning of monsters in these various texts, it becomes possible to see that the same eighteenth-century fears of female sexuality and bodily autonomy are still viewed as threats to social order, Stephen King's 'Carrie' and Judy Blume's 'Hey God, It's Me, Margaret' are prominent examples of the contemporary menstruating body in literature, and although it may seem incongruous to juxtapose these texts together with gothic melodrama, themes of secrecy, violence, and disorder are similarly represented in blood and bodily change in all these texts.
Faculty Sponsor
Sonja Thomas
Sponsoring Department
Colby College. Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program
CLAS Field of Study
Interdisciplinary Studies
Event Website
http://www.colby.edu/clas
ID
1003
'Period' Literature
Diamond 343
This honors project works to prove there is a correlation between the construction of gothic monsters in eighteenth-century British literature and representations of the menstruating body in contemporary literature. By looking at such texts as Matthew Gregory Lewis's 'The Monk,' Charlotte Dacre's 'Zofloya,' and Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and comparing both the composition and symbolic meaning of monsters in these various texts, it becomes possible to see that the same eighteenth-century fears of female sexuality and bodily autonomy are still viewed as threats to social order, Stephen King's 'Carrie' and Judy Blume's 'Hey God, It's Me, Margaret' are prominent examples of the contemporary menstruating body in literature, and although it may seem incongruous to juxtapose these texts together with gothic melodrama, themes of secrecy, violence, and disorder are similarly represented in blood and bodily change in all these texts.
https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/clas/2015/program/393