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Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women
How an ancient myth about a sexually voracious, baby-slaying, loudmouthed demoness became the defining misogynistic archetype of Western civilization
For as long as human societies have been telling stories, the patriarchy has felt threatened by women. In this book, Eleanor Johnson provides an engaging cultural history of a figure she calls the “monstrous bitch,” the notorious female who has haunted the patriarchal imagination for centuries, feared for her sexual promiscuity, her exercise of reproductive agency and control, and her outspoken way of contesting patriarchal power.
In a narrative brimming with insight, Johnson traces the origins of female monstrosity to the demoness Lamashtu of ancient Mesopotamia, showing how this infanticidal, hypersexual, loudmouthed monster appears in different guises throughout history. In classical Greece, she reemerges as the sorceress Medea, the child-devouring monster Lamia, and the vengeful Furies. In the medieval and early modern periods, she is an oversexed, baby-slaying, spellcasting witch; in the Romantic and Victorian eras, a vampiress; and in the modern age of psychoanalysis, a mental patient. After this longue durée history, Johnson shows how monstrous bitchery has been challenged and reinterpreted in contemporary cinematic popular culture, becoming an expression of heroism and resistance in films like The Exorcist, The Hunger, and Species. She demonstrates how deeply embedded the roots of misogyny have become, and why it is more critical today than ever that we expose and address them.
An irreverent look at a pervasive trope that runs through four thousand years of Western culture, Monstrous Bitch reveals that while representations of the powerful woman have evolved over time, the fear and demonization of her remains the same.
For as long as human societies have been telling stories, the patriarchy has felt threatened by women. In this book, Eleanor Johnson provides an engaging cultural history of a figure she calls the “monstrous bitch,” the notorious female who has haunted the patriarchal imagination for centuries, feared for her sexual promiscuity, her exercise of reproductive agency and control, and her outspoken way of contesting patriarchal power.
In a narrative brimming with insight, Johnson traces the origins of female monstrosity to the demoness Lamashtu of ancient Mesopotamia, showing how this infanticidal, hypersexual, loudmouthed monster appears in different guises throughout history. In classical Greece, she reemerges as the sorceress Medea, the child-devouring monster Lamia, and the vengeful Furies. In the medieval and early modern periods, she is an oversexed, baby-slaying, spellcasting witch; in the Romantic and Victorian eras, a vampiress; and in the modern age of psychoanalysis, a mental patient. After this longue durée history, Johnson shows how monstrous bitchery has been challenged and reinterpreted in contemporary cinematic popular culture, becoming an expression of heroism and resistance in films like The Exorcist, The Hunger, and Species. She demonstrates how deeply embedded the roots of misogyny have become, and why it is more critical today than ever that we expose and address them.
An irreverent look at a pervasive trope that runs through four thousand years of Western culture, Monstrous Bitch reveals that while representations of the powerful woman have evolved over time, the fear and demonization of her remains the same.
344 pages, Hardcover
First published October 6, 2026
About the author
Eleanor Johnson
55 books116 followersProfessor Johnson specializes in late medieval literature and culture. Her first book, Practicing Literary Theory in the Late Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve, was published in 2013 (Chicago). Her second book, Dramatizing Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama, was published in 2018 (Chicago). Her Third book, Waste and the Wasters, about ecosystemic thought in medieval England, came out in 2023 (Chicago). Her newest book, Scream with Me, on horror films in the 1970s, is forthcoming with Atria Books in 2025. She is also the Poetry Section editor at Public Books
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
A phenomenal feminist history of monstrous women, from ancient Mesopotamian baby-eating demonesses to Demi Moore in The Substance. I was obsessed from the first page of the introduction, and I still can't stop talking about this book. I want the cover as a tattoo. Everyone I know is getting Monstrous Bitch for Christmas this year. Eleanor Johnson, you genius!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Vampires, demons, and witches, oh my! Johnson knocks it out of the park with this book, seamlessly weaving a web that connects ancient Mesopotamian goddesses to your favorite horror films of today. It's a book that exposes the laziness of patriarchal storytelling: this bitch isn't new, she's just got new packaging.
October 19, 2026
My full review is available here: https://prairiefoxreads.blogspot.com/...
Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women
By Eleanor Johnson
Genre: Nonfiction / Cultural History / Feminist Studies / Mythology
Publication Year: 2026
My Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5)
Why Are Powerful Women So Often Called Monsters?
Some books explore history.
Others reveal the stories hidden beneath history.
In Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women, Eleanor Johnson examines one of Western culture's most persistent archetypes: the woman whose independence, sexuality, intelligence, anger, or power renders her "monstrous" in the eyes of society.
The title is deliberately provocative.
The scholarship beneath it is equally ambitious.
Tracing a single cultural figure across more than four thousand years of mythology, literature, religion, folklore, medicine, and popular culture, Johnson argues that Western civilization has repeatedly created and re-created the same female monster in different forms. Whether portrayed as a demon, witch, seductress, vampiress, madwoman, or alien predator, the underlying fears remain remarkably consistent.
This is not simply a history of fictional monsters.
It is a history of cultural anxieties.
Of who has been permitted power.
And who has been punished for seeking it.
From Ancient Demoness to Modern Antihero
The book begins with Lamashtu, an ancient Mesopotamian demoness associated with infant death, unruly sexuality, and social disorder.
From there, Johnson follows the evolution of this figure through centuries of Western storytelling.
The journey is fascinating.
Ancient Greece gives us Medea, Lamia, and the Furies.
The medieval world gives us witches.
The nineteenth century gives us dangerous women whose desires threaten social order.
Twentieth-century psychology transforms the monster into the pathological woman.
Contemporary horror and science fiction reinvent her yet again.
What impressed me most was Johnson's ability to connect seemingly unrelated figures across time. The specific details change.
The fear remains remarkably familiar.
Again and again, women who reject obedience, claim sexual autonomy, challenge authority, or refuse traditional roles become objects of suspicion and horror.
The mythology provides the framework.
The cultural analysis provides the insight.
A Public Health Perspective: Stigma and Social Control
From a public health perspective, Monstrous Bitch offers a compelling examination of how stigma functions within societies.
Modern public health increasingly recognizes that cultural narratives influence health outcomes. Stereotypes can affect opportunities, social inclusion, political participation, reproductive rights, and access to resources. They shape not only how people are viewed but how they view themselves.
Johnson's analysis demonstrates how archetypes can become tools of social regulation.
The "monstrous" woman often represents behavior society seeks to discourage.
Sexual autonomy.
Anger.
Independence.
Ambition.
Resistance.
By repeatedly associating these traits with danger and disorder, cultural narratives reinforce existing power structures.
What I appreciated most was the book's attention to continuity.
The forms of stigma evolve.
The underlying mechanisms often do not.
As someone with a public health background, I found the discussion particularly relevant because it highlights how cultural beliefs can influence lived experiences across centuries.
Looking Through an Analytic Lens
What impressed me most about Monstrous Bitch is its scope.
Johnson moves comfortably between mythology, literature, religion, psychoanalysis, film studies, and cultural criticism. The result is a work that feels interdisciplinary without becoming unfocused.
Her central argument is both simple and powerful.
Western culture repeatedly invents female monsters, but the characteristics that make them frightening remain surprisingly stable.
The woman who refuses submission.
The woman who controls her own reproduction.
The woman who speaks too loudly.
The woman who seeks power.
The woman who cannot be contained.
Johnson demonstrates how these fears migrate across historical periods, adapting to new contexts while preserving familiar themes.
Particularly fascinating is the book's exploration of modern horror cinema, where figures once portrayed exclusively as villains increasingly emerge as complex protagonists or symbols of resistance.
The monster, in some cases, has become the hero.
That transformation gives the book much of its contemporary relevance.
Reading This Book as a Woman in Midlife
Some nonfiction books provide information.
Others offer a new lens through which to view the world.
Monstrous Bitch belongs firmly in the second category.
As a woman in midlife, I found myself repeatedly reflecting on how often women throughout history have been criticized for qualities that are admired in men.
Assertiveness becomes aggression.
Confidence becomes arrogance.
Self-determination becomes selfishness.
Johnson's work places these observations within a broader historical context.
The book repeatedly asks readers to consider who benefits when certain types of women are portrayed as threatening.
Why do particular fears persist?
What do they reveal about society rather than the women themselves?
These questions are thought-provoking, sometimes uncomfortable, and often illuminating.
More than once, I found myself rethinking characters and stories I had encountered for years without fully considering the cultural assumptions embedded within them.
That is one of the highest compliments I can give a work of cultural criticism.
Strengths and Limitations
The book's greatest strength is its ambitious synthesis.
Johnson successfully connects thousands of years of storytelling without oversimplifying the cultural differences between historical periods. The argument remains coherent while accommodating significant complexity.
The writing is another notable achievement. Despite engaging with sophisticated theoretical ideas, the prose remains accessible, lively, and often witty.
The discussions of mythology and horror are particularly engaging, making the book appealing to both academic and general readers.
At times, the breadth of the project means certain historical examples receive less detailed treatment than some readers might prefer. Entire eras and traditions must occasionally be addressed relatively quickly in order to sustain the book's broader argument.
For me, however, the expansive scope was part of its appeal.
The patterns become visible precisely because Johnson takes such a long view.
Final Thoughts
Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women is a fascinating and thought-provoking work of cultural history that examines how female power has been imagined, feared, and demonized across millennia.
Eleanor Johnson has crafted an engaging study that blends mythology, feminism, history, literature, and popular culture into a compelling exploration of one of Western culture's most enduring archetypes. By tracing the evolution of the "monstrous woman," she reveals not only changing cultural values but also the remarkable persistence of certain anxieties.
Readers interested in mythology, feminist scholarship, cultural criticism, history, and horror studies will find much to admire here. Book clubs and discussion groups, in particular, will discover abundant material for conversation about power, gender, storytelling, and social change.
What lingered with me after finishing was not any single monster.
It was the realization that the monsters kept changing names.
Lamashtu.
Medea.
The witch.
The vampiress.
The madwoman.
Yet the fear beneath them remained strikingly familiar.
Monstrous Bitch reminds us that stories do more than entertain.
They reveal what societies fear.
And sometimes what societies fear most is a woman who refuses to stay in the role she has been assigned.
Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5)
Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women
By Eleanor Johnson
Genre: Nonfiction / Cultural History / Feminist Studies / Mythology
Publication Year: 2026
My Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5)
Why Are Powerful Women So Often Called Monsters?
Some books explore history.
Others reveal the stories hidden beneath history.
In Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women, Eleanor Johnson examines one of Western culture's most persistent archetypes: the woman whose independence, sexuality, intelligence, anger, or power renders her "monstrous" in the eyes of society.
The title is deliberately provocative.
The scholarship beneath it is equally ambitious.
Tracing a single cultural figure across more than four thousand years of mythology, literature, religion, folklore, medicine, and popular culture, Johnson argues that Western civilization has repeatedly created and re-created the same female monster in different forms. Whether portrayed as a demon, witch, seductress, vampiress, madwoman, or alien predator, the underlying fears remain remarkably consistent.
This is not simply a history of fictional monsters.
It is a history of cultural anxieties.
Of who has been permitted power.
And who has been punished for seeking it.
From Ancient Demoness to Modern Antihero
The book begins with Lamashtu, an ancient Mesopotamian demoness associated with infant death, unruly sexuality, and social disorder.
From there, Johnson follows the evolution of this figure through centuries of Western storytelling.
The journey is fascinating.
Ancient Greece gives us Medea, Lamia, and the Furies.
The medieval world gives us witches.
The nineteenth century gives us dangerous women whose desires threaten social order.
Twentieth-century psychology transforms the monster into the pathological woman.
Contemporary horror and science fiction reinvent her yet again.
What impressed me most was Johnson's ability to connect seemingly unrelated figures across time. The specific details change.
The fear remains remarkably familiar.
Again and again, women who reject obedience, claim sexual autonomy, challenge authority, or refuse traditional roles become objects of suspicion and horror.
The mythology provides the framework.
The cultural analysis provides the insight.
A Public Health Perspective: Stigma and Social Control
From a public health perspective, Monstrous Bitch offers a compelling examination of how stigma functions within societies.
Modern public health increasingly recognizes that cultural narratives influence health outcomes. Stereotypes can affect opportunities, social inclusion, political participation, reproductive rights, and access to resources. They shape not only how people are viewed but how they view themselves.
Johnson's analysis demonstrates how archetypes can become tools of social regulation.
The "monstrous" woman often represents behavior society seeks to discourage.
Sexual autonomy.
Anger.
Independence.
Ambition.
Resistance.
By repeatedly associating these traits with danger and disorder, cultural narratives reinforce existing power structures.
What I appreciated most was the book's attention to continuity.
The forms of stigma evolve.
The underlying mechanisms often do not.
As someone with a public health background, I found the discussion particularly relevant because it highlights how cultural beliefs can influence lived experiences across centuries.
Looking Through an Analytic Lens
What impressed me most about Monstrous Bitch is its scope.
Johnson moves comfortably between mythology, literature, religion, psychoanalysis, film studies, and cultural criticism. The result is a work that feels interdisciplinary without becoming unfocused.
Her central argument is both simple and powerful.
Western culture repeatedly invents female monsters, but the characteristics that make them frightening remain surprisingly stable.
The woman who refuses submission.
The woman who controls her own reproduction.
The woman who speaks too loudly.
The woman who seeks power.
The woman who cannot be contained.
Johnson demonstrates how these fears migrate across historical periods, adapting to new contexts while preserving familiar themes.
Particularly fascinating is the book's exploration of modern horror cinema, where figures once portrayed exclusively as villains increasingly emerge as complex protagonists or symbols of resistance.
The monster, in some cases, has become the hero.
That transformation gives the book much of its contemporary relevance.
Reading This Book as a Woman in Midlife
Some nonfiction books provide information.
Others offer a new lens through which to view the world.
Monstrous Bitch belongs firmly in the second category.
As a woman in midlife, I found myself repeatedly reflecting on how often women throughout history have been criticized for qualities that are admired in men.
Assertiveness becomes aggression.
Confidence becomes arrogance.
Self-determination becomes selfishness.
Johnson's work places these observations within a broader historical context.
The book repeatedly asks readers to consider who benefits when certain types of women are portrayed as threatening.
Why do particular fears persist?
What do they reveal about society rather than the women themselves?
These questions are thought-provoking, sometimes uncomfortable, and often illuminating.
More than once, I found myself rethinking characters and stories I had encountered for years without fully considering the cultural assumptions embedded within them.
That is one of the highest compliments I can give a work of cultural criticism.
Strengths and Limitations
The book's greatest strength is its ambitious synthesis.
Johnson successfully connects thousands of years of storytelling without oversimplifying the cultural differences between historical periods. The argument remains coherent while accommodating significant complexity.
The writing is another notable achievement. Despite engaging with sophisticated theoretical ideas, the prose remains accessible, lively, and often witty.
The discussions of mythology and horror are particularly engaging, making the book appealing to both academic and general readers.
At times, the breadth of the project means certain historical examples receive less detailed treatment than some readers might prefer. Entire eras and traditions must occasionally be addressed relatively quickly in order to sustain the book's broader argument.
For me, however, the expansive scope was part of its appeal.
The patterns become visible precisely because Johnson takes such a long view.
Final Thoughts
Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women is a fascinating and thought-provoking work of cultural history that examines how female power has been imagined, feared, and demonized across millennia.
Eleanor Johnson has crafted an engaging study that blends mythology, feminism, history, literature, and popular culture into a compelling exploration of one of Western culture's most enduring archetypes. By tracing the evolution of the "monstrous woman," she reveals not only changing cultural values but also the remarkable persistence of certain anxieties.
Readers interested in mythology, feminist scholarship, cultural criticism, history, and horror studies will find much to admire here. Book clubs and discussion groups, in particular, will discover abundant material for conversation about power, gender, storytelling, and social change.
What lingered with me after finishing was not any single monster.
It was the realization that the monsters kept changing names.
Lamashtu.
Medea.
The witch.
The vampiress.
The madwoman.
Yet the fear beneath them remained strikingly familiar.
Monstrous Bitch reminds us that stories do more than entertain.
They reveal what societies fear.
And sometimes what societies fear most is a woman who refuses to stay in the role she has been assigned.
Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5)
October 20, 2026
A mediocre bourgeois liberal take on the vicissitudes of the struggle.for women's rights in the last 4000 years, seen through the lens of history and art.
October 20, 2026
DRC from Edelweiss+
I took Johnson’s Early Horror class, which closely followed this book’s argument, and I loved getting to read the final product after seeing her work through the ideas in lecture format. The evolution of the archetype was so fascinating to see, and I also am glad to have a host of books and movies to add to my list as a lover of monstrous bitches in all times, places, and formats.
I took Johnson’s Early Horror class, which closely followed this book’s argument, and I loved getting to read the final product after seeing her work through the ideas in lecture format. The evolution of the archetype was so fascinating to see, and I also am glad to have a host of books and movies to add to my list as a lover of monstrous bitches in all times, places, and formats.
Did Not Finish
October 30, 2026So much potential wasted. I DNF'd after the first chapter.
Repetitive. Oddly not academic. This book is so focused on one subject that is lacks broader context to make it's case.
Repetitive. Oddly not academic. This book is so focused on one subject that is lacks broader context to make it's case.
October 31, 2026
I expected a certain level of unseriousness from the title alone, but I also thought the author would have been able to make funnier jokes than “Tiamat should have had social media”.
Despite bringing up some interesting texts, and working with the indisputable fact that the portrayals of many of these figures are misogynistic, Johnson commits the schoolboy error (or, perhaps more accurately, mid-to-late twentieth-century error; I was entirely unsurprised to see the many citations from articles written in the 80s) of amalgamating the diverse folkloric and religious traditions of different cultures into one universal ideology; thus, Euripides’ Medea is the natural descendant of Lamashtu in her telling, even though she herself highlights the important differences between them. Johnson’s attempts to flatten the evolution of monstrous female figures extends to overusing the term “infanticide”, even when the deaths are not of babies. Some of the figures’ other characteristics, like Lamashtu causing fevers, are downplayed to better make her case. More problems arise from her myopically interpreting everything through the lens of an eternal patriarchy (she frequently capitalizes “patriarchy”, apparently to portray it as an active agent), with the explicit intent of using the history of mythological female monstrosity to defend women’s rights and determine how patriarchy arises. Because of this, she reaches a lot in her analyses, sometimes quite spectacularly– one notable instance being the linking of Lamashtu to modern American abortion debates. She also ignores other commonly discussed origins for the “monstrous bitch” figure, such as being a soothing mechanism for the tragedies that often befell premodern people– it’s not your fault you had a miscarriage or your baby suddenly died, it was a demon.
While Johnson views patriarchy as being an agentic force, one notable group that emerges from this book with little agency is women. It is clear that she is much more comfortable in the present than the past– and, as such, the chapters on movies are the best and make the strongest cases for historical continuity, although they’re still not free of error, as her take on the ending of The Witch shows– and historical context is often missing, reducing discussion of women’s lives to ideology instead of reality. In fact, her bitter tone, while partially justified given the subject matter, makes me wonder if she even likes history, despite being a historian; this is made even worse by the fact that the movie chapters show that her main issue with the “monstrous bitch” archetype isn’t that she exists, but that she wasn’t being girlbossified enough. While she emphasizes that these mythological figures were not real, when real women appear in the book it is often for the purpose of making reductive, oversimplified, and sometimes downright wrong statements about their status (in the ancient Rome chapter, for instance, the main text never mentions that patria potestas applied equally to sons and daughters, a fear of lesbians that legislation does not show is assumed, and Erichtho is discussed as though she were the main villain of the Pharsalia, when Lucan really wanted to strike fear into his readers’ hearts via autocracy and the monstrous Caesar). While Lamashtu is positioned as the precursor of every other figure in the book, non-western cultures are promptly abandoned after her chapter, save for a frankly embarrassing postscript about Enheduanna that compares her to modern pro-choice activists and attributes the fact that American high schools aren’t teaching the (disputed) works of an ancient Mesopotamian poet to a patriarchal conspiracy. One of the attributes of the “monstrous bitch” that makes her so dangerous is said to be her voice, but Johnson is uninterested in the fact that many accusers of witches were women and girls whose voices were heard and believed. Even though it pops up so often, that the female monsters primarily attack women and children instead of adult men never gets in the way of her patriarchy thesis; the role that women may have played in spreading these legends is left unprobed. Johnson has an irritating (and troubling) tendency to call the killing of babies and children “reproductive crimes”, even “reproductive power”, and is unconcerned about the reality that many people, both mothers and fathers, would have grieved the deaths of their children as personal losses, not just the loss of property or patrilineal inheritance transmission. It’s hard to believe that premodern women would empathize more with the monster who kills babies than the mother whose baby was killed.
Ultimately, this book can be recommended to people wanting to discover new plays and movies to read and watch, and perhaps for mythology novices who have never heard of many of these figures, but it is not a history of women, terrifying or otherwise.
Despite bringing up some interesting texts, and working with the indisputable fact that the portrayals of many of these figures are misogynistic, Johnson commits the schoolboy error (or, perhaps more accurately, mid-to-late twentieth-century error; I was entirely unsurprised to see the many citations from articles written in the 80s) of amalgamating the diverse folkloric and religious traditions of different cultures into one universal ideology; thus, Euripides’ Medea is the natural descendant of Lamashtu in her telling, even though she herself highlights the important differences between them. Johnson’s attempts to flatten the evolution of monstrous female figures extends to overusing the term “infanticide”, even when the deaths are not of babies. Some of the figures’ other characteristics, like Lamashtu causing fevers, are downplayed to better make her case. More problems arise from her myopically interpreting everything through the lens of an eternal patriarchy (she frequently capitalizes “patriarchy”, apparently to portray it as an active agent), with the explicit intent of using the history of mythological female monstrosity to defend women’s rights and determine how patriarchy arises. Because of this, she reaches a lot in her analyses, sometimes quite spectacularly– one notable instance being the linking of Lamashtu to modern American abortion debates. She also ignores other commonly discussed origins for the “monstrous bitch” figure, such as being a soothing mechanism for the tragedies that often befell premodern people– it’s not your fault you had a miscarriage or your baby suddenly died, it was a demon.
While Johnson views patriarchy as being an agentic force, one notable group that emerges from this book with little agency is women. It is clear that she is much more comfortable in the present than the past– and, as such, the chapters on movies are the best and make the strongest cases for historical continuity, although they’re still not free of error, as her take on the ending of The Witch shows– and historical context is often missing, reducing discussion of women’s lives to ideology instead of reality. In fact, her bitter tone, while partially justified given the subject matter, makes me wonder if she even likes history, despite being a historian; this is made even worse by the fact that the movie chapters show that her main issue with the “monstrous bitch” archetype isn’t that she exists, but that she wasn’t being girlbossified enough. While she emphasizes that these mythological figures were not real, when real women appear in the book it is often for the purpose of making reductive, oversimplified, and sometimes downright wrong statements about their status (in the ancient Rome chapter, for instance, the main text never mentions that patria potestas applied equally to sons and daughters, a fear of lesbians that legislation does not show is assumed, and Erichtho is discussed as though she were the main villain of the Pharsalia, when Lucan really wanted to strike fear into his readers’ hearts via autocracy and the monstrous Caesar). While Lamashtu is positioned as the precursor of every other figure in the book, non-western cultures are promptly abandoned after her chapter, save for a frankly embarrassing postscript about Enheduanna that compares her to modern pro-choice activists and attributes the fact that American high schools aren’t teaching the (disputed) works of an ancient Mesopotamian poet to a patriarchal conspiracy. One of the attributes of the “monstrous bitch” that makes her so dangerous is said to be her voice, but Johnson is uninterested in the fact that many accusers of witches were women and girls whose voices were heard and believed. Even though it pops up so often, that the female monsters primarily attack women and children instead of adult men never gets in the way of her patriarchy thesis; the role that women may have played in spreading these legends is left unprobed. Johnson has an irritating (and troubling) tendency to call the killing of babies and children “reproductive crimes”, even “reproductive power”, and is unconcerned about the reality that many people, both mothers and fathers, would have grieved the deaths of their children as personal losses, not just the loss of property or patrilineal inheritance transmission. It’s hard to believe that premodern women would empathize more with the monster who kills babies than the mother whose baby was killed.
Ultimately, this book can be recommended to people wanting to discover new plays and movies to read and watch, and perhaps for mythology novices who have never heard of many of these figures, but it is not a history of women, terrifying or otherwise.
October 26, 2026
10/10
I’m really starting to love Eleanor Johnson’s books!!! I read Scream with me just last month and really enjoyed it and I think I enjoyed this one even more! So interesting and so much fun, if you have any interest in looking at history, myth, and folklore through a feminist lense this is a book for you!
I’m really starting to love Eleanor Johnson’s books!!! I read Scream with me just last month and really enjoyed it and I think I enjoyed this one even more! So interesting and so much fun, if you have any interest in looking at history, myth, and folklore through a feminist lense this is a book for you!
October 10, 2026
A fun read that I wish had a focus that expanded further beyond the Western tradition but nonetheless provides insightful to various archetypes constructed by Western patriarchy across millennia dealing with particular anxieties surrounding motherhood, reproduction, and bodily autonomy.
Did Not Finish
October 23, 2026Not the right book for my mood.
October 27, 2026
delicious
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