SIAH PGR Seminar Series | "I Thought I’d Found my Purpose (or at Least a Hobby)”: Representations of Female Serial Killers in the Contemporary Victorian Gothic, Alyssa-Caroline Burnette Event

Abstract

Through critical analysis of the television series American Horror Story: Coven (2013) and film Crimson Peak (2015), my research interrogates the representation of violent Victorian-era women as seen in the characters of Delphine La Laurie, a serial killer and socialite in 1834 New Orleans and Lucille Sharpe, an heiress and serial killer who operates in Cumbria in 1887.

I argue that, without straying from Victorian conventions or literary tropes, both texts attempt to subvert the stereotype of passive female victim by allowing Delphine and Lucille to reclaim a sense of agency. By telling their stories from a female perspective and inviting viewers to become intimately acquainted with the factors of misogyny and child abuse which shaped them, the texts advocate a new way of reading violent Victorian-era women.

Because these texts depict Victorian stories through a modern-day visual medium, I posit that these films have created a new genre called "the contemporary Victorian Gothic" and that they present a fresh and original way of engaging with the forgotten female serial killers of the nineteenth century.