Open Collections

Brown, Caroline

University of British Columbia

Studies of the monster and its role in Gothic literature often conflate monstrosity with queerness and femininity. Demonized female sexuality, queer and otherwise, has been explored within the context of Gothic literary studies, but the anxieties and challenges unique to the experience of queer girlhoods remain underexamined. The fairy tale, which both influenced and was influenced by the advent of the Gothic novel and youth literature, readily engages with the complexities of adolescent, monstrous sapphism and thus serves as an ideal case study of gay girl representation and experience within the larger Gothic genre. This thesis explores four different fairy-tale lineages (“Snow White,” “Rapunzel,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Little Red Riding Hood”) and their nuanced interconnections with specific monstrous archetypes (vampires, witches, hysterics, and werewolves, respectively). Recurrent themes, especially those related to the stigmatization of the queer, adolescent female body, are then placed within the larger historical context of formal folklore studies by way of a code and content analysis of the Aarne-Thomspon-Uther-Tale-Type Index (ATU) and Motif-Index of Folk-Literature—the two most significant bibliographic systems employed in folkloristics. I apply a blend of queer, feminist, and monster theories to examine sapphic fairy-tale adaptations, using second and third wave feminism as historical touchstones. Pulling heavily from concepts such as Julia Kristeva’s abjection and archaic motherhood, Barbara Creed’s monstrous-feminine, and Adrienne Rich’s lesbian continuum, this thesis attempts to carve out an understanding of the queer-girl monster, her unique situation, and what precisely constitutes her ever after.

Text

2025-06-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/91477

Children's Literature

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/