In the introduction of A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers, the anthology’s editor, Joyce Carol Oates, writes that women mythical figures such as “Scylla and Charybdis, Lamia, Chimera, Sphinx [are] nightmare creatures representing, to the affronted male gaze, the perversion of ‘femininity’: … the female who in her physical being repulses sexual desire.” These monsters have rejected their function in a patriarchal society as submissive and subordinate, creating distress for men accustomed to patriarchal rule. The 15 writers in A Darker Shade of Noir—including Elizabeth Hand, Margaret Atwood, and Aimee Bender—traverse categories (existential, grotesque, supernatural) to immerse us in the bodies and minds of women who reject cultural expectations. The characters also wrestle with their identities and fight for equality in a male-dominated society.
In “The Seventh Bride, or Female Curiosity,” Hand, a Catholic University graduate, writes a grisly version of the Bluebeard folktale. Hand’s telling is set in 19th-century London at the Royal Camden Theatre. Frotteur Georgie Pye plays Bluebeard in a stage production, and Livey is a late replacement as his seventh bride, a dangerous role because five actresses who previously worked with Georgie departed the theater in compromised conditions due to Georgie’s aggressive, unprofessional behavior. “Doris had left because she was with [Georgie’s] child,” Hand writes.
She creates a macabre scene where the director buys three (real) skeletons “from a resurrection man,” to represent half of Bluebeard’s six wives. One had a “marbled brown and black” leg bone; another had a glass eye, and the third was draped in a wedding dress. But it was “The sixth and last bride [that] terrified Livey more than the others combined. It resembled a real woman who had recently been alive.” Hand masterfully tackles all elements of a horror story with an eerie setting and using the subsequent friction between Georgie and Livey to drive the conflict.
Bender’s “Frank Jones” is a prime example of body horror. She sets her characters—four run-of-the-mill employees—in a basement computer lab where they toil away in a mundane existence. One of those laborers is Taylor Jones, a loner, who, in college, began ripping off skin tags from her hip and storing them in a cup until it was full. Inspired by an artist who fashioned a bird from his fingernails and glue, Taylor sews her skin tags into a “person-like shape with tag arms, and tag legs, tag head, about the size of [her] thumb.” She names her friend Frank Jones, as a tribute to Frankenstein. Forever the recluse, Taylor brings Frank Jones to work and places him on her coworkers’ desks, giving them nightmares. One coworker, however, is so inspired that he creates his own “hair creature.” Bender’s unforgettable and surreal tale meshes the supernatural with the quotidian to emphasize equality in the workplace and show just how boring our nine to five jobs can be.
In “The Chair of Tranquility (From The Diary of Mrs. Thomas Peele, Trenton, New Jersey, 1853),” Oates lends her storytelling skills to the collection. She writes, in diaristic prose, a terrifying tale about a woman (Mrs. Peele) whose husband checked her into an asylum because she was disfiguring her face. Her “beauty [however] was not [hers] to destroy… [it was] the possession of her husband,” Oates describes. In the asylum, “at all times, warm-wetted sheets” bound her just like the male-dominated society in which she lived. According to her journal, Mrs. Peele was secured to The Chair of Tranquility for an entire day and forced to obey chauvinistic edicts such as “I will not read for a period of 6 to 8 weeks. I will not write for a period of 6 to 8 weeks … I will not speak for a period of 6 to 8 weeks.” Mrs. Peele was also force-fed in the hope that she would bear an heir. According to historical records, real-life doctor Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) administered this type of “rest cure” for women who defied their female role in society, Oates write in the introduction. Her ability to fictionalize Mitchell’s madness is exceptional.
It is fitting that 15 of our most respected women authors write the stories collected in A Darker Shade of Noir because the body horror category, a subgenre of horror and fantasy, “speaks most powerfully to women and girls,” Oates writes in the introduction. Cloaked in these stories are themes of powerlessness and loss of identity like in Atwood’s “Metempsychosis, or The Journey of the Soul,” in which the protagonist shares her body with a snail, prompting the woman to audit her self-worth. A Dark Shade of Noir will appeal to a variety of readers, especially fans of gothic horror and supernatural authors like Brian Evenson and Shirley Jackson.
Akashic Books’ A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, comes out Sept. 5. akashicbooks.com. Hardcover, $29.95.
