Comments on: Where are the monsters?

Question: Where are the monsters?

steinwald — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 06:55:06 -0800

I'm looking for female monsters. Mythological, literary, cultural, etc... So far, I've got: Medusa Grendel's Mother Witches

By: Tomorrowful

Tomorrowful — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 06:57:39 -0800

Harpies.
Banshees.
Scylla & Charybdis, I think.
Sirens.

By: biffa

biffa — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:00:29 -0800

Succubi

By: amro

amro — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:00:38 -0800

Furies, Keres, Hydra.

By: bifter

bifter — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:00:50 -0800

Succubi

By: rmless

rmless — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:03:16 -0800

Hariti

By: edgeways

edgeways — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:04:15 -0800

Babba Yagga (who is a witch, but a specifically named one)

By: ReiToei

ReiToei — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:04:54 -0800

Bride of Dracula/Frankenstein
Succubus
The 'bitch' alien at the end of Aliens
Zhora replicant from Bladerunner
Cathy Lee Gifford

By: yeti

yeti — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:05:16 -0800

Grindylows

By: ReiToei

ReiToei — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:06:15 -0800

Also, Valkyrie

By: howfar

howfar — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:06:22 -0800

Lady Bracknell, Importance of Being Earnest? "A monster without being a myth, which is rather unfair".

Could be worse, I nearly said Maggie Thatcher.

By: edgeways

edgeways — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:09:11 -0800

Charybdis, Chimera (are most often female), Scylla, mermaids

By: howfar

howfar — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:11:14 -0800

But thinking about it, Dr Who could be a rich source of female monsters. I remember the "Haemovores" from the Sylvester McCoy era were quite scary (I was 7 though, so who knows?). The new episodes have had a couple too. Cassandra (the talking piece of skin) and the lady-cat nurse/torturer things, maybe others. Might be a resource.

By: yeti

yeti — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:11:36 -0800

Zoe

By: fire&wings

fire&wings — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:12:24 -0800

Grotbags
Amy Winehouse
Scary Spice

By: thelongcon

thelongcon — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:12:38 -0800

Dryads and nymphs

By: Terminal Verbosity

Terminal Verbosity — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:17:10 -0800

Ursula.

By: spitbull

spitbull — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:23:42 -0800

The mama beast in Alien, the one Sigourney Weaver has a catfight with.

By: cuddles.mcsnuggy

cuddles.mcsnuggy — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:25:19 -0800

Lol -- Cathy Lee Gifford & Amy Winehouse (I just came in here to say that).

May She not strike me down; but the Goddess Kali can seem a bit irritable and, well, monstrous at times. But only when She has a good reason of course. Bonus: She has a lot of arms and wears severed bodyparts & bones as fashion accessories.

By: doozer_ex_machina

doozer_ex_machina — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:27:28 -0800

Witches seems like a fairly generic term for 'evil' women. Could you not consider the witches from Macbeth distinct from the with in Hansel and Gretel? And the Queen from Snow White?

By: aught

aught — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:31:43 -0800

The Greek version of the sphinx was female (e.g. the sphinx whose riddle Oedipus solved).

By: willpie

willpie — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:31:53 -0800

IIRC, the sphinx that Oedipus encountered was female.

By: JeremiahBritt

JeremiahBritt — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:32:13 -0800

My favorite female monster I only came across once, in an old and battered book of fairy tales that I have since lost. I even asked English professors that specialized in folk lore about it and they had no idea what I was talking about.

The Woodwife is a creature that comforts woodsmen far from their homes and their wives. Late at night she will come to them, beautiful and quiet, and satisfy their earthly needs. The woodsman has to be careful not to look in her eyes, because through them he will see only the stars above. For the woodwife is but a shell, a half-husk pretending to be whole like bark stripped from the tree. A hollow front.

The story I read about the woodwife also warned about what creatures might be hiding behind the "skin", or wearing it, to take the man's seed. At the end of the tale I think the woodsman's wife followed him in the woods and saw the act. She went behind the woodwife to kill it, but she saw her husband's eyes filled with lust, and so she killed herself. The woodsman discovered her hanging from a tree back home and never went back into the woods. I think. It's been a long time since I read it.

By: ReiToei

ReiToei — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:32:41 -0800

Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist

By: Nightwind

Nightwind — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:43:17 -0800

Baba Yaga. She's a kind of witch-like (flying) creature that "dwells in a "cabin on chicken legs with no windows and no doors".

By: howfar

howfar — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:44:38 -0800

In similar vein to the Woodwife - La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

By: solotoro

solotoro — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:48:26 -0800

Also, Valkyrie

The Valkyrie weren't really monsters, were they?

The Graea might count. They were sisters to the Gorgons (one of whom, Medusa, you include in your list).

The Monstropedia may be useful in your quest.

By: bru

bru — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:50:20 -0800

Cruella de Vil.

The step-mother in Snow White.

In Hervé Bazin's Viper in the Fist (1948), the main protagonist is a monstruous mother nicknamed Folcoche by her kids. Folcoche = folle (crazy) + cochonne (sow). There was a movie in 2004.

The Ogre Queen in Sleeping Beauty (see "Part two").

Marie-Anne Houde, another step-mother in Aurore, L'Enfant Martyre.

By: tomsk

tomsk — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:51:31 -0800

Lilith.
Lorelei (probably comes under the heading of Sirens).
Shub-Niggurath has "a thousand young", and is considered female by some.

By: zadcat

zadcat — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:58:00 -0800

Shelob and her presumable ancestress Ungoliant.

Also the Moroccan water demon Aisha Qandisha is worth looking up, but I can't find a good reference at the moment.

By: walla

walla — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:59:38 -0800

The Sirens, who lured sailors to their deaths with their heavenly singing.

I don't know if these qualify as monsters or mere villainesses (sp?), but from Disney/Brothers Grimm, etc.: Cruella de Ville, Ursula from the Little Mermaid, Cinderella's evil stepmother, Snow White's evil stepmother, Sleeping Beauty's evil stepmother, who turns into a dragon (stepmothers get a bad rap), the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, the witch in Hansel and Gretel.

Wizard of Oz - the Wicked Witch of the West (was that the evil one? or was that the East?). The witches in Macbeth. I think this is very fertile ground.

By: walla

walla — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:04:54 -0800

JeremiahBritt - that is an amazing story. Now I want to track it down.

By: TedW

TedW — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:12:53 -0800

Elizabeth Bathory

By: Ted Maul

Ted Maul — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:16:59 -0800

Ted Hughes' Iron Woman perhaps?

Not an 'evil' monster, but certainly monstrous in some respects, and very female.

By: sephira

sephira — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:17:58 -0800

Echidna
Lamia
Maleficent
The Erinyes
Hecate (a dark goddess, not so much a monster)
Empusa

By: prophetsearcher

prophetsearcher — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:18:01 -0800

Lilith .

By: Gungho

Gungho — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:21:09 -0800

The dragon in Shreck. The 50 Foot Woman. Carrie?

By: sephira

sephira — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:25:17 -0800

Bradshaw? Cause I'd consider her a literary monster.

By: JeremiahBritt

JeremiahBritt — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:33:00 -0800

Also, more in the real world, Angel of Death serial "mercy" killer nurses, who "take the pain away" from patients. Similarly, any woman in a position as a caretaker who suffers from Münchhausen by Proxy.

By: Miko

Miko — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:37:12 -0800

Interesting - everybody remembers the Sirens, but where's the love for Circe, who was a fairly threatening sorceress? She ends up being helpful to Odysseus, but was a scary monster nonetheless (she turned his crew into pigs until she fell in love with O.)

Searching on "female monsters" produces some interesting women's studies essays on what makes female characters monstrous.

By: meeshell

meeshell — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:43:39 -0800

Has Species been mentioned?

By: iconomy

iconomy — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:44:19 -0800

Jenova - Final Fantasy VII (pop cultural).

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:44:59 -0800

Along with dryads, there's naiads.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:47:25 -0800

Chimera

By: otolith

otolith — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:49:57 -0800

Pamela Vorhees?

By: brujita

brujita — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:51:20 -0800

Veela turn hideous when pissed off...as did the snake/witch in C S Lewis' The Silver Chair.

By: otolith

otolith — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:51:55 -0800

Oops, that's Pamela Vorhees.

By: otolith

otolith — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:55:12 -0800

Also, the White Witch from the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

By: dagnyscott

dagnyscott — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:05:06 -0800

Onyxia from World of Warcraft is a female dragon.

Duessa from the Faerie Queene is a witch/sorceress.

By: corvine

corvine — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:09:53 -0800

A lot have already been mentioned, but Greek mythology is a rich vein to mine here.

Also the Morrigan?

By: vilcxjo_BLANKA

vilcxjo_BLANKA — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:19:03 -0800

Ann Coulter.

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:30:31 -0800

The Snow Queen from Hans Christian Andersen -- quite similar to the White Witch from the first of the Narnia books.

By: jamjam

jamjam — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:35:09 -0800

Nemesis
Diana as huntress; the Maenads
Xanthippe (Socrates' wife)
Sin (Satan's daughter in Paradise Lost)
Pandora
Eve
Lucretia Borgia (Pope Alexander VI's Daughter-- you have to wonder if papist-hater Milton was having his fun)
Lauri Dann
Lizzie Borden
Ishtar

By: hydrophonic

hydrophonic — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:02:17 -0800

The Lair of the White Worm

The vampires of southeast Asia tend to be female, and are occasionally featured in low-budget horror movies. Not to be missed is the Malay Penanggalan, who detaches her head and guts from her vinegar-soaked body and flies around looking for the blood of pregnant women to lap up with her long invisible tongue.

By: SansPoint

SansPoint — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:30:05 -0800

The Obakemono Project has a number of mythical Japanese monsters, including females, like Kerakeraonna.

By: amtho

amtho — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:46:25 -0800

Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Great song.

By: adamrice

adamrice — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:08:07 -0800

The Norns from Norse mythology. And the Graeae (gray sisters), similar to the Norns in Greek mythology, who had one tooth and one eye that they had to share between them.

By: breezeway

breezeway — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:28:38 -0800

Godzilla.

By: Lynsey

Lynsey — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:32:47 -0800

The Fates .

By: lgyre

lgyre — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 16:01:49 -0800

tiamat

By: ysabet

ysabet — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:12:31 -0800

Morgan le Fay, perhaps. Mermaids.

By: Fferret

Fferret — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:41:31 -0800

Harpies, succubi, Kali, The Ban Sidhe. Amaterasu Omikami, Lizzie Borden?

By: nax

nax — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:57:48 -0800

Echidna, Mother of Monsters

By: sculpin

sculpin — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:53:08 -0800

Along the banshee line, La Llorona.
Rusalka.
Rangda.
The Penanggalan.