Doubles, Mirrors and Power: Is Female Sexuality Inherently Monstrous?’

What the paper proposes to do is take Jennifer’s Body as an example of a group of female-helmed films that challenge the long-standing assumptions of horror that depicts women as monstrous animals. The analysis will question some tropes and narrative devices that have been used by female filmmakers to subvert the idea of female monstrosity and to place it elsewhere in the film. First, a narrative analysis will look at how this film that has a sexually active protagonist challenges and destabilises the tropes of power and monstrosity that have long been aligned with the female character’s sexuality. Second, it will look at the use of doubles to suggest that by siding the narrative with the ‘evil double’ the films question assumptions of good and evil and offers something far more evil than female sexuality. Third, the analysis will focus on specific moments where the character looks at herself in the mirror to invite the audience to delve into her interiority, offering the Irigarayan curved speculum in place of the Lacanian mirror.