ipl-logo

The Horrors Of The Female Body In Monster House

883 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Representation of women in horror films

Home Sweet Home: Exploring the Horrors of the Female Body in Monster House The architecture of the “haunted house” centers on the uncanny, distorting the familiarity of an entity while still encompassing the original characteristics that make it familiar to the human eye. It is this landmark of horror that terrorizes a group of kids, D.J, Jenny, and Chowder in the 2006 animated film Monster House as they attempt to make sense of the supernatural elements that surround the house. And yet the house is not a house, but the embodied spirit of the owner’s — Mr. Nebbercracker’s — deceased wife: Constance. In the throes of their investigation, the kids learn that the house is alive along with the land it is built on, possessing human organs, eyes, …show more content…

In her monstrous form, Constance protects the house and Mr. Nebbercracker by eating any individual who sets foot on the property with her slithery tongue and splintered wood teeth. However, the feminine nature of the house is first implied by Jenny when she points out the uvula which Chowder mistakes for the uterus, seemingly grossed out (Monster House 53:58-53:22). Thus, a close connection is formed between monstrosity and female reproductive bodily functions. The ‘grotesque’ bodily structure of women in this sense produces the monstrous, as it wards off the male individual: it is a site dedicated to evil. As Creed mentions, “the notion of the castrated woman is a phantasy intended to ameliorate man’s real fear of what women might do to him… specifically, he fears that woman could castrate him both psychically and in a sense physically” (Creed 6). Although Constance was previously humiliated for her appetite and large appearance, she utilizes consumption as a weapon to revolt against the higher order, that is, to emasculate men. Constance innately abjects humanity and embraces the monstrous

Show More
Related

Manny Bella Case Summary

1090 Words | 5 Pages

Manny and Bella started a business in Kent Street and named it Honest House Sales Australian Company, a name that was already registered by another company running a website and a retail outlet in Perth. They declined from registering the company and business name. As such, the couple has breached copyrights and intellectual property rights of another company. Therefore, the Australian securities and investment commission, ASIC has a right to sue them to relinquish use of the business name as well as register their business with the ASIC in the right manner. Moreover, the business owners in Perth may also sue Manny and Bella for infringement of intellectual property.

Read More

Objectification In Frankenstein

1453 Words | 6 Pages

Allusions to Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in Shelley’s Frankenstein. Mary Wollstonecraft is widely accepted as one of the mothers of Feminism. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, her most famous book, Wollstonecraft identifies many of the key issues concerning feminist ideology. Her daughter, Mary Shelly, was undoubtedly influenced by her mother’s feminist ideology. Many parts of the feminist ideology Shelley presents in her famous novel Frankenstein.

Read More

How Does Harper Lee Use Symbols In To Kill A Mockingbird

1200 Words | 5 Pages

Their home is known to be mysterious, creepy, and haunted, “Inside the house lived a malevolent Phantom. People said he

Read More

Bonnie Mann's Two Harms Of Creepliness

648 Words | 3 Pages

Bonnie Mann examines four possible roles men play regarding sexual harassment: creepers, flirts, heroes, and allies. Mann describes two harms of creepiness, the first one is time theft. Human relation requires time and patience, which is something the creeper is not interested in. Once he sexualizes the encounter, he steals time by already having decided what the encounter is before the woman has even said a word. By doing this, he has reduced the complexity of the encounter and it no longer matters what the woman wants, the creeper has already decided based on his own desires and his sense of sexual entitlement.

Read More

Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: Towards A Feminist Figure Of Humanity?

1075 Words | 5 Pages

In the award winning article, “Passages in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: Towards a Feminist Figure of Humanity?” Cynthia Pon addresses masculinity and feminism in terms of conventions, ideals, and practices (Pon, 33). She focused on whether Mary Shelly's work as a writer opened the way to a feminist figure of humanity like Donna Haraway argued. The article has a pre-notion that the audience has read Frankenstein and Haraway's article. Pon has a slight bias, due to her passion as a feminist writer.

Read More

Examples Of Patriarchy In Frankenstein

1317 Words | 6 Pages

Morgan Boyd Ms. Coke English 12 Honors 20 March 2023 Feminism in Frankenstein Patriarchies are one of the most common, yet inequitable societies that are “acceptable” of mankind. Male dominated societies are predominant throughout the past and present and oftentimes under this authority women are exploited and oppressed. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley delves into patriarchy and portrays how women fit into this social system. Women are important to the story but are not present.

Read More

Male Authority In We Have Always Lived In The Castle

1440 Words | 6 Pages

The novel writes that “She folded the grocery bag and put it with the others in the drawer, and set the library books on the shelf where they were going to stay forever” and “Constance worked in the kitchen, and it was a joy to watch her, moving beautifully in the sunlight, touching foods so softly” (Jackson, 2010, p. 21), Constance, as the primary caregiver for her sister and Uncle Julian, is usually responsible for cooking, cleaning, and other things in life. Instead of accepting the obligation to care for them as those traditional women are forced to do, she takes the initiative to take care of them, which challenges the traditional gender roles, which gives them independence as women in that society. The character of Constance shows the refusal of others to interfere with her arrangement of some things in the family, which challenges the traditional idea that women need male care. As the story develops in the novel, Constance does not seem to be as weak and passive as seen earlier, she is actually a completely different person who goes out of her way to do everything she can to protect her sister. Constance does a lot for Merricat, as the novel mentioned that "‘Here is treasure for you to bury,’ Constance used to say to me when I was small, giving me a penny, or a bright

Read More

Essay On Gender Roles In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

613 Words | 3 Pages

As per usual, advancements in a story are made through various literary elements, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein is of no exception. Though what sets this authors use of these elements apart is the effectiveness in which they are presented in what can be considered a prologue of sorts, the letters. As a foreshadowing to what may occur between characters of differing sexes, gender roles are established. For the development of the a main character, Robert Walton, season (a key factor in character development as discussed in the literary work To Read Like A Professor) is described in thorough detail by non other than Walton himself, as he also goes on to discuss his opinion on it. Gender roles remain an important developmental tool

Read More

Subasta By Fernanda Ampuero

582 Words | 3 Pages

Gender violence is a persistent problem in our society, affecting women of all ages and backgrounds. This reality presents a constant challenge for women, who are often limited in their ability to protect themselves and defend their integrity. María Fernanda Ampuero's short story "Subasta" explores the role of disgust and monstrosity as mechanisms of defense and resistance against male harassment. In this essay, I will analyze how the protagonist of the story uses disgust and monstrosity as tools of protection and resistance against male violence. Through the deliberate adoption of a repulsive and monstrous appearance, the protagonist in "Subasta" actively defies social expectations and asserts her autonomy, ultimately reclaiming her agency and safeguarding herself from the dangers she faces.

Read More

Women's Rights In Frankenstein

1494 Words | 6 Pages

In Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, Elizabeth, Caroline, and Justine represent a seemingly “perfect” woman. Mary Shelley ironically writes about each woman with a brief impersonal description of their status and relevance to the story. Elizabeth is presented to Victor as a object for his affection. Victor refers to his cousin as “My more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only” (Shelley 25).

Read More

Examples Of Feminist Theory In The Lawyer's Tale

845 Words | 4 Pages

This is the first example of how Constance opposes the feminist

Read More

Role Of Women In Frankenstein

977 Words | 4 Pages

The presentation of women in Frankenstein Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, first published in 1818, was written in a time period where society’s general opinion was that a woman’s role was predominately to be a loving, caring mother and a faithful, docile companion to her husband. This attitude is reflected in Shelley’s portrays of women in her novel as passive, self- sacrificing, loyal, and completely dependent on men. They are a means by which emotions are invoked within male characters and serve only as companions and beautiful possessions. Caroline Beaufort, mother of the protagonist Victor Frankenstein, is an example of the embodiment of this ideal. She is the wife of Alphonse Frankenstein and within the novel plays the role of a perfect daughter, wife, and mother.

Read More

Handmaid's Tale Literary Analysis

857 Words | 4 Pages

Margaret Atwood has seamlessly woven a tapestry of feminist elements - mainly regarding gender oppression - within her works. With that, using two of Atwood’s texts, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of The Flood, as the foundation for our literary research, we will be focusing on the commodification of the female flesh in both similar dystopian contexts. Commodification refers to the action or process of treating an object, or a person, as a raw material or product that can be bought and sold, or even treated as an object of which sovereignty can be held over by one. In both works, women are victimized and treated as sexual beings whose bodies and physical expressions can be freely used by the men who have power over them against their will. The two texts illustrate how society brings about the oppression of women and this exacerbates the commodification of women.

Read More

Grotesque Body Analysis

1259 Words | 6 Pages

She points to the deficiency of the Bakhtinian theory that fails to establish dialogism between the grotesque body and the female one. While explaining that although he relates the grotesque body to the images of womb, pregnancy and childbirth, he fails to recognize their close affinity to “to social relations of gender” (The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity 63). She condemns the Bakhtinian contradictory treatment of the female body, which simultaneously celebrates its generative and subversively debasing potential and abbreviates it to be a mere vessel to give new birth (RW 240). While trying to explain what “remains repressed and undeveloped” in her male counterpart, Russo points to the subversive potential of the female grotesque to overthrow the normative constraints on female actand look (Russo 63). “[D]efined […] in relation to the ideal, standard, or normative form” of the twentieth century, this work tends to argue that the female grotesque in contemporary age still has the power to create horror as it plays a fundamental role “to identity formation for both men and women as a space of risk and abjection” (Russo 12, Miles

Read More

The Negative Portrayal Of Education In Hip Hop Culture

220 Words | 1 Pages

Education is not portrayed in Hip Hop culture negatively. It is simply not portrayed in Hip Hop culture at all. And that is the problem with Hip Hop and education. Very rarely will you hear a rap artist talk about college and education. “I guess we’ll never know what Harvard gets us, but seeing my family have it all, took the place of that desire for diplomas on the wall” these are lyrics by platinum selling Hip Hop artist Drake.

Read More

More about The Horrors Of The Female Body In Monster House

Related Topics

Open Document