Transgressing Genre and Gender: Masculinities and (Post) Feminism in Neo-Gothic Narratives

Abstract

This chapter discusses two neo-Gothic films - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) and Byzantium (2012) - as well as the novel and the play on which the films are based, tracing these stories’ engagement with masculinity and femininity. Both stories depict women’s continuing struggle with limiting roles and a world of endemic violence against them, while the films also enter highly ambiguous territory by becoming complicit in recreating commodified female characters catering to the male gaze, even as they ostensibly subvert patriarchal oppression. Both films engage with the dangers of hegemonic masculinity and its institutionalization, contest the romantic view of the male monster, and question the role of the hero. Studying how these contemporary reimaginations of classic texts show the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first centuries in conversation, this chapter provides a nuanced view of the usefulness but also the ambiguity of popular cinematic monster narratives in contributing to the ongoing discourse around gender roles and oppression.