The Lamb

Lucy Rose joins the ranks of many authors who blend fairy tale/folklore elements (like archetypes, tone, symbols, settings, and plot points) with horror to explore feminist themes. Angela Carter is often considered the pioneer of this genre with The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, and other notable entries include Eyes, Guts, Throat, Bones by Moira Fowley-Doyle, Bunny by Mona Award, and Follow Me to Ground by Sue Rainsford. 

Known informally as “femgore” (feminist gore), the genre uses horror-movie and folklore tropes to address the complex relationship between feminine desire, women’s anxiety about their bodies, and patriarchy. Exploitative tropes like women’s bodies as the site of male violence are inverted so that women are both the perpetrators and victims of gore. In Mona Awad’s Bunny, a clique of young men magically transforms animals into “drafts,” or “darlings,” often males they can court, before the drafts disintegrate, while in Monika Kim’s The Eyes are the Best Part, a teenager dreams of eating the eyes of the man who has supplanted her father.

The horror genre is also used to explore fears around motherhood and childbirth.