Rosemary’s Baby is NOT a Domestic Horror Story!

But one of my favorite little factoids in the whole world is one of my favorite little connections is the connection between female authors and the horror genre.

And I think about this a lot, I think on a macro level, um, when you think about the horror genre, obviously you have the, the giants of the horror genre.

And of course there are men, of course, you're going to throw out names like Alfred Hitchcock and you're going to throw out names like Stephen King, but really the birth of horror belongs to feminists.

And if you trace back the history of horror authorship, yes, of course you're going to find men, but the driving force were always female authors, like always.

And so years ago when we did our character studies through each wave of feminism, I chose to focus on the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley and, Because I was just learning about how influential she was, particularly her mother was really the first feminist by name, Mary Wollstonecraft.

And...

Then she wrote Frankenstein, which was a rebirth of a genre.

It was more like a bend in the river.

Because in the 16 and 1700s, women were writing ghost stories.

And it was primarily women.

It was women who invented the ghost story.

And if you think about it, it makes so much sense to me because it's like, If you've been married to a man for any amount of time, you already know that they move through the world with much less fear.

Much less fear than women do.

It is not surprising in any way that women... have more fanciful imaginations of the horrible things that could happen to them because we are just moving through the world in much more danger than the men are.

We're more vulnerable.

The little squeak in the floorboard Is maybe more of a danger sign to us.

Yes.

And, you know, honestly, rightly so, like really honestly, like rightly so.

We are the weaker sex.

And so it just is not.

I

have thought about even just like in terms of vulnerability, like you can be like you can be strong.

You can, you know, hit your strength training.

You can be an athlete.

But I'm even thinking like, you know, as I walk through a parking lot with two kids and noticeably pregnant, it's like I'm a different classification.