How has the Gothic in the 20th century deployed the ‘abject’ to challenge and/or reinforce societal misogyny?

By Hannah Dwyer

Abjection is the state of being cast off, separated from norms and rules, especially on the measure of society and morality. So, abjection has been used commonly to analyse popular cultural narratives of horror, and/ or it’s projection of discriminatory behaviour establishing misogyny in characters and themes. Julia Kristeva explained in her 1980 book The Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, the “abject is not an object facing me, which I name or imagine… the abject has only one quality of the object- that of being opposed to I”; this abjection that opposes us causes such visceral revulsion. Yet, it isn’t some vile visible thing in front you that you can just close your eyes to escape from; the abject is a deep-rooted physical rejection of the opposed. Imogen Tyler perceives Kristeva’s work the “abject is a concept that describes all that is repulsive and fascinating about bodies and, particular, those aspects of bodily experience that unsettle bodily integrity: death, decay, fluids, orifices, sex, defecation, vomiting, illness, menstruation, pregnancy and childbirth”[1]; all of which can be associated with the female body. The abject can be used to challenge and/or reinforce societal misogyny as the female body- and what comes out of it- generally creates a repulsive reaction. There are two books, which later get adapted to the screen, that deploy the abject to challenge or reinforce societal misogyny in the twentieth-century, Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. The former focusing on the societal female expectation of giving life to challenge societal misogyny and the latter fixating on a possessed prepubescence girl to reinforce it. Both are two significant milestones in a female’s life where their body changes and produces bodily fluids that is often looked upon with disgust. However, the abject in these two gothic books is used in very different ways so that it can respond to societal misogyny. Ira Levin uses a more nuanced use of the abject to challenge the societal misogynistic views around the housewife, childbirth and motherhood. In contrast, William Peter Blatty is more confrontational with his use of the abject, in some instances weaponizing it, to reinforce the misogynist views surrounding the turning point of when a girl becomes a woman and when innocence and naivety transforms to desire. I will be examining on how these respected books – and their films- used the abject in response to societal misogyny.

The 1960s was a time of change and possibility, when new futures were imagined through civil rights and global decolonization, anti-war, labour, counterculture, and new left movements (Echols 2002)[2]. America witnessed the second wave of feminism and the birth of the National Organization for Women (NOW). The group were essential for ensuing women’s equality: enforcement of laws banning employment discrimination; maternity leave rights; child-care centres for working mothers; tax deductions for child-care expenses; equal and unsegregated education; and equal job-training opportunities for poor women. Increasing numbers of “women entered the workforce, got divorced, or never got married, and many dealt with husbands who were struggling with rapidly outmoded masculinities” (Gee and Jackson 2017)[3]. Two other points stirred enormous controversy: one demanded immediate passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution to ensure equality of rights, regardless of sex; the other demanded greater access to contraception and abortion. In 1965, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission allowed women to gain access to jobs in every corner of the U.S; divorce laws were liberalized, and an employer could not fire a pregnant woman. Yet, it would take until the early 1970s for the ruling of Row v. Wade (1973) which the US Supreme court ruled in favour of legalized abortion. Betty Friedan wrote in her book The Feminine Mystiquethat there was “a strange stirring, as sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States”[4]. It was once perceived that for women “could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their femininity”[5] and yet the polished housewife was suffering. Ira Levin’s 1967 horror novel was published amid this significant change in societal norms for women. Now, just because women were giving the chance to change the previous patriarchal and misogynistic structure that confined them to restrained and passive roles in society, this doesn’t mean that it was hugely accepted or wanted. Presently just as meaningful as Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. Levin uses the abject to highlight the misogynistic societal views surrounding women at the time with the titled character Rosemary and the women who came before her.

A gothic trope of the past repeating itself like this ever present haunting of trauma occurs in Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, this is done through the short-lived character Terry. In the novel, Terry is a fleeting character that is gone before we, like Rosemary and Guy, can remember her full name. Kristeva explains that abjection can be a natural reaction to something wrong as “the spasms and vomiting protect me [as] the repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage, and muck”[6]. It’s a natural bodily reaction to force out what should not be in our bodies and Terry is the first to describe this natural response in Rosemary’s Baby. We learn through her that the Castevets picked her up from the street where Terry was “starving and on dope” and doing things she’s so ashamed of she could “throw up just thinking about them”[7]. Here is the first example of where the abject is used to challenge the misogynist societal views in a subtle way that get misconstrued at first glance as reinforcing them. For the time, Terry was this sexual deviant that the more conservative inclined was afraid off. Her past actions of sexual fluidity and openness causes her to feel physically sick as if she wants to expel them from her body. Therefore, it could be seen that the abject is being used to reinforce societal misogyny; however, Terry’s act of suicide where she jumps from the window of the building, breaking her bones and exposing her blood to the world as a rejection of keeping the devil’s child is Terry’s act of bodily autonomy. The graphic description of finding Terry on the sidewalk “watching the sky with one eye, half of her face gone to red pulp”[8], is illustrative of Terry rejection of societal misogyny. Terry wasn’t going to just follow in the societal expectation where she would be the loving mother, instead Terry took control and ended it. Terry is Rosemary’s predecessor who escaped Rosemary’s inevitable fate by killing herself. Terry in the end used the abject to escape the monogynic societal views but Rosemary didn’t. We knew that Rosemary wouldn’t abject the devils child as we were given clues when Rosemary and Guy came home to find Terry dead on the sidewalk as “she kept her mouth tightly closed, afraid she might vomit.”[9] If Terry is the victim of the cult before Rosemary, then Rosemary’s refusal to be sick at the sight of Terry’s dead body is the foreshadowing of Rosemary’s compliance to continuing the pregnancy when all signs urged her to end it. Rosemary forcefully opposes Kristeva’s explanation of the abject being used as a protection to the body to get rid of what does not belong so she can remain as the perfect woman/ wife in this scene and perfect mother later in the book. Yet, this is also an example of how the abject (or lack off) is a way of challenging societal misogyny, as we the reader desperately want Rosemary to reject the societal misogynist views of the time of being the submissive housewife and mother and get rid of the devil’s baby. The reader wants Rosemary to take autonomy of her body when she knows that something is wrong with the pregnancy instead of listening to dominate male characters, like her husband.

At first glance, Rosemary was living this American woman’s dream of decorating the perfect apartment and then being allowed to become a mother upon Guy’s acceptance. Yet, at what cost? As Freidan explains in The Feminine Mystique, the housewife had “found true feminine fulfilment” as she was “free to choose automobiles, clothes, appliances, supermarkets; she had everything that a woman ever dreamed”[10]. Rosemary’s Baby is a rejection of these forced upon expectation on women and mothers using abjection. The most notably example is Rosemary’s pregnancy, as Velerius states that Rosemary’s Baby is a “story of violence, deceit and misappropriation of a woman’s body by people she trusts that makes pregnancy a Gothic spectacle.”[11] When pregnant “the pain grew worse, grew so grinding that something shut down in Rosemary- some centre of resistance and remembered well-being- and she stopped reacting to pain even in her thoughts.”[12]The baby is described as a parasite that has latched on to Rosemary. Relatedly, for Kristeva, pregnancy itself is being ‘taken over by an unknown and even hostile stranger”[13]. Almost like the act of pregnancy is a way women reject the abjection of this force that lives in their womb that literally sucks the nutrients out of them. Rich rationalises the female reproduction as conventionally assigned “malign occult’ influences the vulnerable to or “emanating evil” and the painful contractions and labour connotates ideas of domination over the female body[14]. Both agree that pregnancy has associations with possession. InRosemary's Baby, the heroine's discomforts are consistency minimized, as though "pain, like love, [were] embedded in the ideology of motherhood" (Rich). Guy ignores her ailments, and Dr. Sapirstein implies that they are psychosomatic as “no pregnancy was ever exactly like the ones described in the books.”[15]Rosemary is surrounded by men telling her that her pregnancy is fine and that she and her baby are fine. Though Guy and Dr. Saperstein have “devious reasons for slighting Rosemary's grievances, most doctors and husbands ostensibly do not”[16].It wasn’t until Rosemary’s females came to see her, we’re we given an outside opinion from the female’s perspective. Expectedly, all of Rosemary’s female friends told her that “pain like that is a warning that something isn’t right”[17]. It’s the female perspective of the pregnancy and the response of urging Rosemary to go against the societal norms and end the pregnancy which demonstrations a challenge of societal misogyny. The only characters that are mirroring the readers thoughts are female which illustrates the feminist debate of women having bodily autonomy that was happening at the time; so, Rosemary’s Baby is just articulating this “charged public debate on abortion with a literary and cinematic tradition of horror”[18](Valerius). Therefore, Rosemary’s Baby the novel challenges societal misogyny through the horror of pregnancy.

In the film, that was released in 1968, the abject is more obviously visibly disturbing. From the late 1960s, women in horror films have had a lot on their plates as “when their children weren’t possessed by demons, they were grappling with sexual harassment and satanic cults.”[19] Films like Rosemary’s Baby, “highlighted persistent and competing anxieties emerging with second wave feminism about what it meant to be liberated.[20] As a film, Rosemary's Baby was arguably “the last great triumph of the horror genre in its classic form before slashers, send-ups, and torture took over the asylum”[21] (Sterritt). It emerged during the breaking up of Hollywood compromise around censorship, as a result movies “broke taboos, permitted swearing, were increasingly frank in their depiction of sex and violence, and were ready to forego or subvert the standing traditions of narrative coherence”[22] (Newton). The scene where Rosemary is drugged by the cult and raped by the devil is layered in this dream-like state of American values. In the book, the conception is described as an unending act that was a mixture of pain and pleasure:

“He slipped his hand under her buttocks, raised them, lodged his hardness against her, and pushed it powerfully in. bigger he was than always; painfully, wonderfully big… brutally, rhythmically, he drove his new hugeness.”[23]

The descriptive words of “powerfully”, “wonderfully big” and “brutally” add to the contradictory feelings towards female pleasure from the perspective of a female. In the film we practise voyeurism of Rosemary’s rape becoming a witness and just as an active participant to the event as the members of the cult. We see the ‘devil’ draw shapes in red blood to contrast on her pale body. The act is done upon Rosemary and as onlookers we can only cringe at the sight.

[24]

(Conception scene in Rosemary’s Baby feat. Mia Farrow. Directed by Roman Polanski)

Often when a film scene holds a particularly real image of terror then “little boys and grown men make it a point of honour to look, while little girls and grown women cover their eyes or hide behind the shoulders of their dates.”[25] There are excellent reasons for this refusal of the woman to look, especially when she is “often asked to bear witness to her own powerlessness in the face of rape, mutilation, and murder.”[26] Women do not wish to see a very realistic threat on screen that could potentially happen to them in real life, whereas males are more accepting of these scenes because more often than not the man is the violator not the violated. This could incline some viewers to be encouraged to victim-blame Rosemary’s character when she is coerced by a satanic cult: “She likes sex, and would like a little more,” and though she grew up Catholic, “she doesn’t miss God at all” (Levin, as cited in Munn and Willoughby 2018, 21)[27]. While “scholars and film critics have pointed out the increasing agency that Rosemary establishes as the story unfolds” (Eyrenci 2013, 73).[28] For example, “she cuts her hair into a short pixie-crop, to Guy’s dismay – the power dynamic in the couple’s relationship makes them an apt illustration of patriarchy”[29]. It’s a juxtaposition with Rosmery’s submissiveness at the beginning of the film as well as Farrow’s depiction of Rosemary is at “first child-like and naive, and her petite frame, playfulness, and hyper-femininity reinforce this depiction.”[30] Rosemary does try to gain back control of the situation, the more masculine hair cut is an symbolic attempt of Rosemary trying to break the stereotypical image of the ideal woman, wife and mother. Just after, Rosemary tries to see another doctor of her choosing to try gain back some control of her body but is trapped and manipulated again by the male characters in the book.

[31]

(Labour scene in Rosemary’s Baby feat. Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer. Directed by Roman Polanski)

The film is certainly an exaggerated take on childbirth, but it is also “a skewed "documentary" of the societal and personal turmoil that has regularly attended female reproduction.”[32] The arrival of the baby is one of the most troubling scenes in the film. As Rosemary goes through the motions of birth and finally going through the process of abjection of the child, a “hallucinatory sequence unfolds in which a coven of witches gag her, tie her down, sedate her, and deliver her of a male child whom they spirit away.”[33] On one hand, the scene can be read as a dramatization of a traditional home birth. On the other, the birth scene “superimposes upon that historical site the malevolent mythology of witchcraft: the notion of midwives as satanic, as stealing babies for the devil.”[34] Both the book and the film show reproductive labour as “various kinds of work – mental, manual, and emotional – aimed at providing the historically and socially, as well as biologically, defined care necessary to maintain existing life and to reproduce the next generation”[35] (Laslett and Brenner). By turning childbirth into a horrifying scene, pregnancy and childbirth become an evil forced expectation on women so that they can dutifully take their place in the misogynistic patriarchal society. The reader wants Rosemary to protest her husband wishes and reject what society expects from her and come into her own power and take control of her body; therefore, Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby uses the abject to challenge societal misogyny.

Like Rosemary’s Baby, William Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971) has a child that is seen as an “epitome of conflicts in society, and which constitutes a threat to the ideology depicted”[36]. In fact, both films were “financially and critically successful, establishing the genre of cinematic occult horror”[37]. The public was fascinated in seeing the horror that was surrounded by women and their part in creating the horror. The Exorcist was written during a period of radical social change in the United States. Cardin explains that the “civil rights movement, feminist activism, and anti–Vietnam War peace protests formed its backdrop and are implicated in the plot, as Regan’s actress mother is playing the lead role in a film about student activism on the campus of Georgetown University when Regan’s possession occurs.”[38] Blatty’s novel of satanic supernatural horror came in the wake of the popular success of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and Roman Polanski’s even more successful film (1973). However, the two novels are drastically different even though they both concern themselves with the female body and its connection to societal misogyny. Levin’s is “urbane, often sardonic, and satirical of, among other things, religious irrationalism and middle-class materialism”; whereas Blatty “eschews liberal irony in favour of emotional immediacy, spiritual intensity, and an emphasis on visceral body horror, anticipating much of what would come during the mass market “horror boom” that followed in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s”[39](Cardin). Especially as the “youth culture dominated this era, with its tastes in music, fashion, art; its celebration of free love, use of mind- altering drugs, and back-to-nature communal-living philosophy.”[40] It was a revolution of American values that completely contrasted with the era that preceded it. When you combine this new wave of thinking with the collapse of the Production Code, the content of films changed dramatically which allowed the abject to be used in horror films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. Now, “graphic sex, violence, and lawlessness could now be freely portrayed with no one depicted as suffering any consequences for such acts.”[41] Hence, production companies and directors were given the space to showcase the abjection of the female body. The female body can now be used to highlight horrified the misogynist view that society had on it. Particularly, when Creed stated, “abjection is constructed as a rebellion of filthy, lustful, carnal, female flesh.”[42] So, it was a perfect time for the abject to be used to challenge and/or reinforce societal norms.

The Exorcist is another novel that has used the abject in relation to the female body and it’s done in parallel of exhibiting the dynamic of a mother-daughter relationship that is then infiltrated by a satanic presence. The satanic presence in the family home in The Exorcist is presented differently to how Levin displayed it in Rosemary’s Baby; this is not surprising as “like demons and minor devils, the representation of the supreme demon, Satan, is often unstable and variable” but still is “influenced by a Christian theology”[43] (Cardin). However, the book does the opposite to Levin’s novel and reinforces societal misogyny by turning the female body as a vulnerable vessel that is open to evil as a reflection of the social climate at the time. Blatty intendedThe Exorcist as a Christian novel. A religion that acquires women to respect the men in their lives and tells “wives, submit yourselves to your own husband as you to the lord”[44]. Blatty was “deeply disturbed by the rising nihilism of secularized Western culture in the mid-twentieth century, and his driving ambition in writing The Exorcist was to convey to a jaded, despairing, and disillusioned modern public a sense of the horror of demonic evil, in the hope that this would automatically convey an accompanying emotional sense of the obverse: the existence of angels and God and eternal life, and what these would entail”[45].The Exorcist tries to reinforce societal misogyny in the wake of second-wave feminism. Furthermore, the Blatty’s novel also reflects the “conservative and Christian anxieties about the rising popularity of “New Age” and occult spiritual beliefs and practices, causally implicated as Regan is shown innocently experimenting with a Ouija board prior to her possession.”[46] Both the novel and the film “suggestively link this experimentation to Regan’s adolescent sexuality; it is her playing (Ouija) with herself that seems to trigger her possession”[47]; all of which she did on her own without the supervision of her mother. Chris, being Regan’s mother, she is automatically responsible to keep her alive and well; she is responsible for the monster that Regan becomes. The possession allows The Exorcist to present a “child villain while preserving the dominant, romantic image of the child we know and love” and the “demon inhabits the child’s body, contorting it to its perverse desires, but does not (one hopes) irrevocably contaminate it”[48](Lennard). It’s Regan’s mother who points out “I’m telling you that thing upstairs is not my daughter” showing that the “notions of the innocent, nostalgic child have achieved oppressive weight and haunting power.”[49] This is done so that Regan can remain as the innocent victim of cruel circumstances which all could have been prevented if Chris was a traditional mother rather than a working, single mother. So, Regan becomes the “symptomatic of children’s transmissive power in any society, its role in maintaining (and potentially upsetting) dominant ideologies”[50]. The battling of ideologies at the time was between the previous societal misogynistic view of women and the ideas from the second-wave feminists. By presenting Chris as the guilty mother who allowed her child to become possessed by a demon because she wasn’t at home looking after her, The Exorcist reinforces the concept that societal misogyny norms should be in place.

Similarly to Rosemary’s Baby, we are faced with a female battling a demonic possession that has infiltrated their body and its symbolic connection to a mother- child relationships through abjection. In Rosemary’s Babywe witness Rosemary, arguably, trying her best to not dispel the devil foetus inside her like the ‘good’ mother-to-be and goes against her natural instincts of abjection to satire the common viewpoints of the misogynist society at the time. In The Exorcist, we focus on Regan’s possession and how she too doesn’t abject the demon force inside but, not from a lack of trying. Regan begs for her mother’s help, but Chris is unsuccessful. Mother-child relationships are important in terms of abjection as in Kristeva’s work Power of Horror, she argues that all individuals experience abjection at birth as we break away from our mother and she sees “the mother-child relation as one marked by conflict: the child struggles to break free but the mother is reluctant to release it.”[51] In the child’s attempt to break away, “the mother becomes an abject; thus, in this context, where the child struggles to become a separate subject, abjection becomes “a precondition of narcissism””[52]. In a way, Kristeva is trying to explore the different ways in which abjection, as a source of horror, works within the patriarchal societies as a means of separating the human from the non-human. Creed believes that that the problem with Kristeva’s theory- particularly for feminists - is that “she never makes clear her position on the oppression of women”, as her “moves uneasily between explanation of, and justification for, the formation of human societies based on the subordination of women.”[53] Therefore, it’s hard to relate Kristeva’s theory to a symbolic feminist character like Chris, who herself is an abjection of misogynistic society. Yet, we can still look at the mother-daughter relationship through Kristeva’s theory within The Exorcist. This is done through this motherly fear of one’s child fully separating themselves from their mother as Regan enters puberty and becoming her own woman. “Regan that angel”[54]. Regan is described at the beginning of the novel and film this sweet, doting daughter to a working single mother. Over time, Chris noticed:

“a sudden and dramatic change in her daughter’s behaviour and disposition. Insomnia. Quarrelsome. Fits of temper. Kicked things. Threw things. Screams. Wouldn’t eat”[55].

Outside the horror film world, these actions would just be considered normal behaviour for a young women going through puberty, but we are seeing it happen to ‘new’ family of the time. Chris is the symbolic ‘new woman’ being a single working mother. The novel is setting up the concept that this mother does not have the ability to raise and protect her child alone which is reiteration of misogynist societal views. One interesting quote from the beginning of the book is when it reads- “the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of that what followed”[56]. It echoes the idea that the real cause of this horror was the fact that the mother wasn’t present in her child’s life to protect her child from evil, which is just highlights that the novel is reinforcing societal misogyny norms.

As discussed, the 1970s experienced a renewed interest in all things occult, including possession, witchcraft, and Satanism. While this interest did “not necessarily lead to a widespread resurgence in the belief and practice of demonology”, it nevertheless “had a noticeable effect on the popular culture produced during this period, much of which dealt explicitly with supernatural topics”[57] (Olson and Reinard). The film adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel The Exorcist capitalized on the social, cultural, and spiritual confusion of the time and rode this wave of interest in the supernatural. At the same time, “it offered viewers a sense of hope, because it positioned Roman Catholic beliefs as the antidote to the creeping secularism that threatened to overtake society.”[58] The Exorcist does this by weaponizing the abject to make the audience fear new social change and urge them to return to traditional religious beliefs; this is done through Regan’s puberty and developing sexuality being conflated with “disorder and monstrosity, with Regan spewing foul words, bile, piss, blood and vomit”[59] (Croft). An example of this monstrosity is when Regan masturbates with the crucifix and then proceeds to grab her mother’s head and force it to her mutilated genitals to act out oral sex. In the novel the scene reads as such:

“Chris rushed at the bed grasping blindly at the crucifix while her features contorted infernally, Regan flared up at her in a fury and, reaching out a hand, clutching Chris’s hair and, powerfully yanking her head down, firmly pressed Chris is face against her vagina smearing it with blood.”[60]

The list structure that Blatty uses in the book to describe this particularly horror scene builds on the readers repulsion and in the film, it demands the onlooker to feel sick to the stomach. It symbolises Regans complete rejection of her mother. In the film, the use of close ups is used to force the viewer to witness the horror as they are not allowed to look way from the abject and instead, we must face it with complete repulsion. Consequently, we become nauseated by Regan’s period, that signifies the beginning of her womanhood, and we fear it as Regans puberty becomes a horror event.

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(Stabbing of the Vagina Scene with a Crucifix feat. Linda Blair. Directed by William Friedkin.)

[62]

(Face covered in blood scene feat. Ellen Brustyn Linda Blair. Directed by William Friedkin.)

Also, by “situating a rebellious preteen girl on the verge of adolescence at the centre of its narrative, The Exorcist played on the fears and anxieties that plagued an audience already exhausted from confronting the oncoming obsolescence of their own deeply held values and beliefs.”[63] Additionally, Olson and Reinhard The Exorcist positions Regan’s rebellion as “both abnormal and monstrous particularly with regard to her increasingly brazen attitude toward her own sexuality”[64]. Peter Biskind made a similar observation about the film saying it represents a “male nightmare of female puberty”, and it associates “emergent female sexuality with demonic possession in an effort to reflect widespread societal disgust regarding female bodily functions like menstruation”[65]. Making the scene above create such a repulsive reaction from the viewer as societal norms is to find female bodily fluids – especially menstruation- disgusting, shameful and should be kept hidden. Again, Regan’s possession occurs around the same time she enters puberty which as Creed describes a time when “adolescent sexual desires find shape and expression” which explains why her behaviour becomes increasingly “unladylike” and “aggressively sexual”[66]. Successfully, Blatty’s novel and Friedkin’s film reinforces societal misogyny by implying that the female body, and its functions, are repulsive and should be kept hidden from public discourse.

Moreover, the novel and the film focus on the body of a prepubescent girl and how it is reacting to the possession of Pazuzu through sick, bile, blood, urine and excrement, all examples of the abject. What makes Regan body nauseating is because it “upsets the boundary between childhood and sexuality”[67]. Yet, all hope is not lost for Regan as “Father Karras intervenes and restores order through an act of male violence, which in turn absolves Regan of committing the “sin of adolescent sexuality and allows her to re-enter the patriarchal order”[68]. Violence against Regan’s body occurs in two different ways. Firstly, the violent physical abuse against Regan’s physical body during her possession by the demon. Regan’s body is repeatedly “pulled up and slapped violently down”[69] in her bed as the demon takes control of her. Secondly, the violent fight that break out between Regan and Father Karras during the exorcism. It shows that violence is the “only way to stop change and restore order, thus calming the fears of those who seek to maintain the patriarchal status quo”[70] as it fights against the second-wave feminism that was occurring at the time. The Exorcistdemonstrates the “female monstrousness” and the struggle of “the male order to control the woman whose perversity is expressed though her rebellious body”[71]. Therefore, the treatment of Regan’s body in the novel and the film is a symbolic act of trying to reinforce societal misogyny. Also, Karras and Merrin are “destroyed by the uncontainable power that is feminine sexuality” whilst “Regan lives to ride off into an uncertain future with her mother”[72]. The two godly men manage to repress Regan’s “burgeoning sexuality and rebellious nature”[73]. It’s presenting the idea of “Catholic grace--powered by Christ--ultimately breaks through the dark”[74]. Yet the ambiguous ending suggests there could be a re-emergence at any time; thus, implying that “the threat of second-wave feminism always lurks in the shadows.”[75] The Exorcist is a warning of the constant potential threat that second-wave feminism has on the patriarchal structure within society, like it is an evil beast that prowls around patriarchal societal norms, so that it can reinforce societal misogyny.

In conclusion, the abjection when the individual fails to respect the social law and therefore the individual is a hypocrite, a liar, a traitor. As explained in this essay, the abject can used to either challenge societal misogyny or reinforces it. Ira Levin used the abject to challenge societal misogyny in Rosemary’s Baby by turning pregnancy into a gothic experience which urges the audience to urge Rosemary to abject the baby and reject the image of the perfect wife and mother. In contrast, William Blatty is more confrontational when using the abject to reinforces societal misogyny- at times weaponizes it- in his novel The Exorcist. Blatty’s novel The Exorcist was published just 4 years after Rosemary’s Baby; so, Betty was commenting on the same issues surrounding female autonomy and the misogynist societal views around it as Levin. Both writers successfully used the female body as the abject to societal as a response to the social climate and to express their opposing view. What both Levin and Blatty can agree on is that it is very easy for the onlooker to see the female body as this non-human entity on which horrific acts can be done upon on it.

Bibliography

Primary Texts

· Blatty, W, P. 2011. The Exorcist: 40th Anniversary Edition. New York, Harper,.

· Levin, I. 2011. Rosemary's Baby: Introduction by Chuck Palanhiuk. United Kingdom: Little, Brown Book Group.

Films

· The Exorcist, 22:00 04/11/2021, BBC4,https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/000C8046?bcast=135577603 (Accessed 30 Nov 2024)

· Rosemary’s Baby, 23:10 30/01/2012, FilmFour, 160 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/00CEDB86?bcast=78266681 (Accessed 30 Nov 2024)

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· Creed, B., 1986. Horror and the monstrous-feminine: An imaginary abjection. Screen, 27(1), pp.44-71.

· Creed, B., 2015. The monstrous-feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis. Routledge.

· Crofts, P., 2015. Monstrous bodily excess in The Exorcist as a supplement to law's accounts of culpability. Griffith Law Review, 24(3), pp.372-394.

· Echols, A., 2002. Shaky ground: The sixties and its aftershocks. Columbia University Press.

· Eyrenci, D., 2013. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) USA Director Roman Polanski Runtime 136 minutes Blu-ray USA, 2012. Film Matters, 4(1), pp.73-73.

· Fischer, L., 1992. Birth Traumas: Parturition and Horror in" Rosemary's Baby". Cinema Journal, 31(3), pp.3-18.

· Friedan, B., 2021. The Feminine Mystique: The classic that sparked a feminist revolution. Thread.

· Gee, S. and Jackson, S., 2017. Sport, promotional culture and the crisis of masculinity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

· James, K., 1979. The holy bible. Ephesians 5:22-33

· Kline, J., 2018. Fleeing from and fighting with The Exorcist. Jung Journal, 12(2), pp.10-25.

· Kristeva, J., 2024. Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. Columbia University Press.

· Lennard, D., 2014. Bad seeds and holy terrors: the child villains of horror film. SUNY Press.

· Munn, J, and Willoughby, B. 2018. This Is No Dream: The Making of Rosemary’s Baby. London: Reel Art Press.

· Newton, M., 2020. Rosemary's baby. The Pledge. Bloomsbury Publishing.

· Olson, C.J. and Reinhard, C.D., 2016. Possessed Women, Haunted States: Cultural Tensions in Exorcism Cinema. Lexington Books.

· Rich, A., 2021. Of woman born: Motherhood as experience and institution. WW Norton & Company.

· Ripatrazone, N., 2017. 'Rosemary's Baby'and'The Exorcist': A Devotion to Hope Amid the Horror. America, 217(8), pp.42-47.

· Sterritt, D., 2013. Rosemary's Baby.

· Tyler, I., 2009. Against abjection. Feminist theory, 10(1), pp.77-98.

· Valerius, K., 2005. " Rosemary's Baby", Gothic Pregnancy, and Fetal Subjects. College Literature, pp.116-135.

· Williams, L. When the Woman Looks in Grant, B.K. ed., 2015. The Dread of Difference, Gender and the Horror Film. University of Texas Press.

[1] Tyler, I., 2009. Against abjection. Feminist theory, 10(1), pp.77-98.

[2] Echols, A., 2002. Shaky ground: The sixties and its aftershocks. Columbia University Press.

[3] Gee, S. and Jackson, S., 2017. Sport, promotional culture and the crisis of masculinity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

[4] Friedan, B., 2021. The Feminine Mystique: The classic that sparked a feminist revolution. Thread. P.15

[5] Ibid, Friedan, B., 2021

[6] Ibid, Kristeva, J., 2024

[7]Levin, I. 2011. Rosemary's Baby: Introduction by Chuck Palanhiuk. United Kingdom: Little, Brown Book Group. P.28

[8] Ibid, Levin, I. 2011P.33

[9] Ibid, Levin, I. 2011P.33

[10] Ibid, Friedan, B., 2021. P.18

[11] Valerius, K., 2005. " Rosemary's Baby", Gothic Pregnancy, and Fetal Subjects. College Literature, pp.116-135.

[12] Ibid, Levin, I. 2011P.131

[13] Ibid, Kristeva, J., 2024

[14] Rich, A., 2021. Of woman born: Motherhood as experience and institution. WW Norton & Company.

[15] Ibid, Levin, I. 2011P.107

[16] Creed, B., 1986. Horror and the monstrous-feminine: An imaginary abjection. Screen, 27(1), pp.44-71.

[17] Ibid, Levin, I. 2011P.141

[18] Ibid, Valerius, K., 2005.

[19] Brady, M.J., 2024. Mother Trouble: Mediations of White Maternal Angst after Second Wave Feminism. University of Toronto Press.

[20] Ibid, Brady, M.J., 2024

[21] Sterritt, D., 2013. Rosemary's Baby.

[22] Newton, M., 2020. Rosemary's baby. The Pledge. Bloomsbury Publishing.

[23] Ibid, Levin, I. 2011P.82

[24]Rosemary’s Baby, 23:10 30/01/2012, Film Four, 160 mins. https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/00CEDB86?bcast=78266681 (Accessed 30 Nov 2024) Time: 52:00 minutes

[25] Williams, L. When the Woman Looks in Grant, B.K. ed., 2015. The Dread of Difference, Gender and the Horror Film. University of Texas Press.

[26] Ibid, Williams, L. When the Woman Looks in Grant, B.K. ed., 2015

[27] Munn, J, and Willoughby, B. 2018. This Is No Dream: The Making of Rosemary’s Baby. London: Reel Art Press.

[28] Eyrenci, D., 2013. Rosemary’s Baby (1968) USA Director Roman Polanski Runtime 136 minutes Blu-ray USA, 2012. Film Matters, 4(1), pp.73-73.

[29] ibid, Brady, M.J., 2024.

[30] Brady, M.J., 2024.

[31] ibid, Rosemary’s Baby, 23:10 30/01/2012, Film Four, 2:12:32 minutes

[32] Fischer, L., 1992. Birth Traumas: Parturition and Horror in" Rosemary's Baby". Cinema Journal, 31(3), pp.3-18.

[33] ibid, Fischer, L., 1992

[34] ibid, Fischer, L., 1992

[35] ibid, Brady, M.J., 2024.

[36]Britton, A., 2008. Britton on Film: The Complete Film Criticism of Andrew Britton. Wayne State University Press.

[37] Cardin, M. ed., 2017. Horror Literature through History: An Encyclopedia of the Stories That Speak to Our Deepest Fears [2 volumes]. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

[38] ibid, Cardin, M. ed., 2017.

[39] ibid, Cardin, M. ed., 2017.

[40] Kline, J., 2018. Fleeing from and fighting with The Exorcist. Jung Journal, 12(2), pp.10-25.

[41] ibid, Kline, J., 2018

[42] Creed, B., 2015. The monstrous-feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis. Routledge.

[43] ibid, Cardin, M. ed., 2017.

[44] James, K., 1979. The holy bible. Ephesians 5:22-33

[45] ibid, Cardin, M. ed., 2017.

[46] ibid, Cardin, M. ed., 2017.

[47] ibid, Cardin, M. ed., 2017.

[48] Lennard, D., 2014. Bad seeds and holy terrors: the child villains of horror film. SUNY Press.

[49] Ibid, Lennard, D., 2014.

[50] Ibid, Lennard, D., 2014.

[51] ibid Kristeva, J., 2024.

[52] ibid Kristeva, J., 2024.

[53] ibid, Creed, B., 1986.

[54] Blatty, W, P. 2011. The Exorcist: 40th Anniversary Edition. New York, Harper,.P. 13

[55] Ibid, Blatty, W, P, P.54

[56] Ibid, Blatty, W, P, P.9

[57] Olson, C.J. and Reinhard, C.D., 2016. Possessed Women, Haunted States: Cultural Tensions in Exorcism Cinema. Lexington Books.

[58] Ibid, Olson, C.J. and Reinhard, C.D., 2016.

[59] Crofts, P., 2015. Monstrous bodily excess in The Exorcist as a supplement to law's accounts of culpability. Griffith Law Review, 24(3), pp.372-394.

[60] Ibid, Blatty, W, P. 205

[61] The Exorcist, 22:00 04/11/2021, BBC4,https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/000C8046?bcast=135577603 (Accessed 30 Nov 2024) 1:11:42 minutes

[62] ibid, The Exorcist, 22:00 04/11/2021, BBC41:11:59 minutes

[63] ibid, Olson, C.J. and Reinhard, C.D., 2016.

[64] ibid, Olson, C.J. and Reinhard, C.D., 2016.

[65] Biskind, P., 1999. Easy riders raging bulls: How the sex-drugs-and rock'n roll generation saved Hollywood. Simon and Schuster.

[66] ibid, Creed, B., 2015.

[67] ibid, Olson, C.J. and Reinhard, C.D., 2016.

[68] ibid, Olson, C.J. and Reinhard, C.D., 2016.

[69] ibid, Crofts, P., 2015

[70] ibid, Olson, C.J. and Reinhard, C.D., 2016.

[71] ibid, Creed, B., 2015.