Home is Where the Danger Lies: How Haunted Home Narratives Personify Violence Against Women

Gothic fiction is associated with death, drama, and fear, often combining doomed romance with villains, dark aesthetics, and gloomy mansions. In contrast, the “Suburban Gothic” features green lawns, friendly neighbors, and the promise of perfection. But that perfection is only on the surface. A significant theme of haunted home narratives is that, unlike conventional horror narratives, where the threat is external, danger often comes from within: if not from within the family, then from within the home itself. This appears to be a response to the fact that, for many women and children, the home is the most dangerous place. In haunted home narratives, women are frequently the recipients of violence, either from actual humans or from ghosts. In Sidney Furie’s The Entity, Barbara Hershey plays a woman who is repeatedly raped in her home by someone or something she cannot see. Despite her bruises, doctors refuse to believe her, a chilling reflection of how many real-life rape accusations are disbelieved. In “Return of the Return of the Repressed: Notes on the American Horror Film,” David Church writes that the violence against women in these narratives can be viewed as part of a “remasculinization throughout American cinema that can be read as a backlash against feminism.” Women may be gaining independence off screen, but at least in horror films, they can be put back in their place. This paper will examine the gendering of haunted home narratives and, in particular, the way women are repeatedly victimized and why