Supernatural Mothers and Wombs of Discontent

This volume offers readers a dedicated examination of supernatural motherhood as it intersects with horror in diverse contexts as a contribution to growing research into the monstrous feminine and gynae horror.

Contributors examine the womb and the mother as separate sources of supernatural reproduction in horror film, television, and literature to argue that reproduction and the supernatural go hand in hand and that the alchemy of pregnancy and birth offers a myriad critical possibilities in horror. Part one opens with an examination of the challenges both to power and of power that the witch figure represents before turning to the mother as othered in the face of supernatural reproduction. Part two then turns to the womb, examining more closely its role in gynae horror and its relationship to the abject. The volume brings these two parts together from a variety of perspectives to interrogate motherhood as an expression of systemic power relations, with the supernatural functioning as a foil against which the social construction of birth, birthing, and motherhood may be reconsidered.