Creed argues that the development of technology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has allowed people to experiment with reality and time, and disassociate one's self from their own reality, as well as challenge ideas of "fixed personal identity". Another prominent monstrous figure that Creed discusses in her work is Greek mythology's Medusa and her severed head. Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall). The ‘primal uncanny’, as Creed looks at, was firstly discussed in Freud's work as just the ‘uncanny’ that linked to ideas of psychoanalysis and castration. Creed reflects back to the Renaissance where the uterus is depicted in connotation with evil and the devil.

We consider “wicked witches” like the Stepmother in Snow White, who might also be an educated childless woman, against mothers like Mrs Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho, who betray their role as perfect carer. The reproductive system within horror movies is often depicted as monstrous, for example, the 1979 film Alien clearly depicts this theory.Barbara Creed frequently mentions in her work that horror movies play on this fear of the vagina dentata and even include it visually in films, through enormous toothed monsters or aliens, to settings such as dark and narrow hallways, deadly traps and doors, and spaceships such as that in Alien. With close reference to a number of classic horror films including the Alien trilogy, The Exorcist and Psycho , Creed analyses the seven `faces' of the monstrous-feminine: archaic mother, monstrous womb, vampire, witch, possessed body, monstrous mother and castrator.

This updated edition includes a new section examining contemporary feminist horror films in relation to nonhuman theory. So one of the faces of the Monstrous Feminine, therefore, is the "femme castratrice", or female castrator. Throughout the book, Creed observes how women are positioned as victims within the horror film genre, and challenges this overriding patriarchal and one-dimensional understanding of women.She has taught at the University of Cambridge, UCL, Birkbeck and the University of London, and her work explores fairy tales, horror and collective storytelling. Creed first considers women as Vampires in such films as Dracula (1992) and The Hunger (1983), wherein she discusses the image of the ‘archaic mother’ with the female vampire being ‘mother’ and her lover or victim as ‘child’ whom she promises eternal life to. In this, "lack" signifies the female, wherein male monsters are identified as abject, lacking; ultimately feminine. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report.

Barbara Creed has published a multitude of material on gender and horror, including: The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism.

Sigmund Freud's works on psychoanalysis theorizes that women once had penises, and are themselves castrated, resulting in the formation of female genitalia, and due to this "penis envy", seek to castrate men of their penises to make them as lacking as women. In The Monstrous-Feminine Barbara Creed challenges this patriarchal view by arguing that the prototype of all definitions of the monstrous is the female reproductive body. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.

We’ll also work through the maiden-mother-crone tripartite division of women, inviting attendees to discuss whether such labels are useful or damning.

This updated edition, which includes entirely new chapters, interrogates the concept in contemporary contexts through a range of diverse films directed by women, and through the exploration of recent progressive social movements. Taking place during the week of International Women’s Day 2022, this online day course takes Creed’s work as a starting point, alongside the psychoanalytic theories of Kristeva and Freud. It would make no difference whether the child was born in a matriarchy or a patriachy, because the development of the psyche occurs long before any sort of patriarchal indoctrination could ever occur. Abjection, or Why Freud Introduces the Phallus: Identification, Castration Theory, and the Logic of Fetishism". Medusa is a mythological creature whose stare can turn people to stone, particularly men, and who has a head covered in snakes, which Creed argues is a deadly symbol of the vagina dentata.