The Female of the Species: Cultural Constructions of Evil, Women and the Feminine

From Alien Queens to prostitutes, 'phallic' mothers to child-murderers, evil women proliferate across cultural productions that span millennia. This collection explores the perennial question of 'evil' and its relationship to women and femininity. Taking as their starting points material as diverse as Greek mythology, nineteenth-century medical texts, Elizabethan drama and contemporary cartoons, and informed by various theoretical perspectives, the authors scrutinise the construction of the feminine as evil, and vice versa