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Tegan, Mary Beth and Matthew J. Costello. "A Woman is Being Side-Kicked: Gothic Superheroes and the Suppression of Female Autonomy Amid Feminism’s Second Wave." Gothic Studies 25. (2023): 261–79. Added by: joachim (12/4/23, 5:30 PM) Last edited by: joachim (12/4/23, 5:33 PM) |
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| Resource type: Journal Article Language: en: English Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0175 BibTeX citation key: Tegan2023 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: Gender, Horror, Sexuality, Superhero, Trauma, USA Creators: Costello, Tegan Collection: Gothic Studies |
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This essay examines the treatment of women in the Gothic superhero comics of the 1970s through the lens of Michelle Massé’s In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism and the Gothic (1992). While superhero texts generally neglected women even at the height of second-wave feminism, the Gothic superhero sub-genre goes even further, drawing on the regressive trope of the suffering woman to ‘side-kick’ female characters and deny their agency and autonomy. Exploring four female characters who share this fate, we examine their different responses to the Freudian beating fantasy enacted in their narrative arcs, delineating the high costs and limited gains of traumatised women who dream of triumph.
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