Near the end of their first week of the program, the Kenyon Review Young Writers must choose a genre session. If they want to focus on historical fiction, there’s a session for that. If they want to write plays or translate poems from the original French, there’s a session for that. If they want to imitate Jack Kerouac and dash off a frenzied draft of a novel, there’s a session for that, too.
And if they want to write monster stories, they climb the stairs to my classroom.
This time around, there are only girls in the horror narrative genre session. This surprises me. Now may very well be the time of the return of the slasher movie with expendable blondes full of red corn syrup. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” ended in 2003, and I couldn’t help worrying about the new girls in the scary stories. They may fight back in the dark, but will they win?
After one session with the ladies in the monster class, I’m less concerned and more curious about the strategies of female horror writers. Do they find different ways to unnerve their readers? Horror narratives provide bone-chilling ways to illustrate modern anxieties. You could, for example, stake the claim that the telling and re-telling of Dracula and other vampire stories reveal our attitudes about sex and women.
Oh, and that pun was intended. Get it? Stake!
Anyway, what do the monster stories written by women uncover about our fears? So far, the Young Writers in the monster session have created female protagonists who are fearless and cynical–women who are worried about their jobs and their parents, chicks who hate doing their laundry. There have been no bubbly ditzes stumbling around the forest. It’s scarier, after all, if the monster can destroy a woman who’s competent. Like we are.
Do these girls shy away from the violence? Hardly. After one two-hour session, the body count is inching closer to 100. One writer destroyed a department store with a squid monster. Another brought a werewolf into a car dealership… and he didn’t want a Hyundai.
There are only girls in the horror narrative class, and they are fearless, pushing through boundaries and experimenting with character in a world that values movies that mutilate women on screen. I’m not so worried, and I’m not surprised either. It’s about time, and I can’t wait to see how they will terrify the rest of us.