Date of Completion

12-6-2025

Degree Type

Honors Thesis

Discipline

English (ENGL)

First Advisor

Alexandra Neel

Abstract

Male European authors began to transcribe fairy tales around the early 17th century, altering them to moralize readers and reinforce social norms despite the fact that women originally crafted these stories to circulate covert or taboo information under the guise of entertainment. Centuries later, authors including Angela Carter and Carmen María Machado reimagine fairy tales to assert women’s authorship of the ancient stories and reframe deviant women as tragic heroes rather than condemned damsels. In this paper, I demonstrate how in both The Bloody Chamber and “The Husband Stitch,” Carter and Machado radically reclaim the age-old tradition of female oral storytelling using elements of the female gothic and gynaehorror to explore the female body as a site of resistance and oppression. These authors present bodily subjugation through both an exploration of pregnancy and sexuality as well as radical experimentation with style and form, ultimately bending genre and convention to convey the female experience. I argue that the parallels between the two authors – though products of different generations, national origins, races, and sexualities – expose how the incorporation of gothic, horror, and fairy tale elements enables the warping of reality and transgression of the normative boundaries of space, time, perspective, and knowing. Additionally, I expose how both authors articulate the inarticulable of female experiences through the use of magic, ghosts, werewolves, and witches, making the unreal the most real of all.

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Available for download on Monday, February 12, 2029

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