Female Killers Crave Power, Not Superpowers: The Incognizant Gendered Approach to Writing a Female Killer

Awarded to Marelle Jenkins for work submitted in Fall 2023 to Dr. Bryanna Licciardi in ENGL 2020: Themes in Literature and Culture

Most girls and women must constantly defend themselves against real world violence and they don’t have or need the crutch of special powers to do it. We are conditioned to be ever aware and use our intellect to outsmart attackers before they’ve even struck. It begins before kindergarten with our mothers telling us to never to go off alone with another adult, even if we know them. Then, as we age, we are told to give creepy men fake phone numbers so we wouldn’t upset them by simply saying, “No, thank you.” Along with our driver’s licenses, we are also given Mace on keychains and told to park near streetlights. As women get older, we’re told to watch our drinks and to be aware of our surroundings, in case someone is following us. We have learned that we must always look at men with a critical eye to try to sense their potentially nefarious intentions before they’ve been spoken out loud. On the other hand, men are generally not aware of this vigilance that women keep every day. This may also be the reason why some male authors are ignorant to how a woman could tire of victim mentality. Alternatively, it may also be a reason why female authors make the small leap of imagination to create female characters who stop predicting when they will become victimized and take the sinister turn into becoming the victimizers themselves. That is why, when it comes to the horror and thriller genres, female writers tend to create smart and cunning female killers who exist in real world settings, whereas most male writers create emotion driven female killers with supernatural gifts that they’re seemingly out of control of.

A female authored example of this is the conniving and murderous Amy Elliot from Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl. Amy convinces readers through her meticulously kept journal entries that she is being abused and potentially killed by her husband. She weaves a story so believable and detailed that she has readers completely on her side, until she suddenly flips the script and writes, “I hope you liked Diary Amy. She was meant to be likable. Meant for someone like you to like her” (Flynn 237). And we, the readers, realize that she has been playing us during the first half of the book, even implying that we are stupid for believing her so far. She exposes her husband for the wrongs he has committed against her as she lets dominoes of her maniacal plan fall. Amy has become tired of being the soft, agreeable wife who is being trampled on by her self-serving husband. While in control and with no emotions, she successfully frames him for her faked murder, as she becomes a murderer in the process. She is calculating, organized, and above all, she is extremely intelligent. She knows that when women go missing or get murdered the first suspect is always the husband.

As a woman, Amy understands the biggest threat to a woman’s life is in her own home. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Of the estimated 4,970 female victims of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in 2021, data reported by law enforcement agencies indicate that 34% were killed by an intimate partner” (Smith). This statistic shows why the police look at Amy’s husband first. Flynn’s Amy combines this real-world knowledge with extensive planning and hiding behind blind spots created by gender stereotypes to set up her course of action. She doesn’t need a supernatural gift to frame her husband and become a scot-free murderer; she just needs her air-tight plan. Her scheme is so meticulous that even though she goes off script, she still gets away with everything. She knows that, according to the US FBI, only 24% of murders are committed by women (“FBI Release”). Amy knows they would hardly suspect a female of

murder. At the end of the book, readers are left with many feelings towards Amy. Flynn’s Amy has left your ears ringing with the shock of coming to terms with the knowledge that she wasn’t a victim at all, but she was the assassin. You absolutely fear her and her malicious power. But there’s also a twinkle of respect and awe. She is someone who has become a real-life anti-hero for downtrodden women and a tangible fear for cheating husbands and boyfriends everywhere.

Because men do not grow up with the same type of hypervigilant conditioning, it tends to come across in the way they create female villains. Interestingly, many male writers put their female killers into the paranormal realm and give them gifts they are seemingly out of control of. The best example of this is Stephen King’s Carrie. King creates Carrie White, a plain, abused girl to be pitied. King describes Carrie with overt, unnecessary sexual tones and animalistic descriptions. These disparaging descriptions leave readers feeling like Carrie is powerless and pathetic. She only becomes formidable when, after one final humiliation at her school prom, she uses her newly discovered telekinesis power to murder over 400 people and burn most of her town to the ground. The moment starts with, “She rolled over on her back, eyes staring wildly at the stars from her painted face. She was forgetting (! THE POWER !) It was time to teach them a lesson” (King 231). Though she had been practicing her supernatural power, here Carrie suddenly remembers she has powers and that she is going to use them to exact her revenge.

Carrie fits nicely into gender stereotyping as soon as King ties her budding telekinetic powers to starting her first period. This connection between the two implies that she is going on a hormonal rampage, or even hysterics. King’s description of her is that she is reactionary and susceptible to allowing her emotions to take over. During her killing spree, she has no plan– just gleeful rage. Unlike Amy’ planned violence, Carrie’s murders are sloppy, unorganized, and readers recognize there’s no chance that she will get away with her rampage. Throughout the

novel, her character displays little intelligence and no physical strength, nothing that offers readers a sense of empowerment for Carrie. Ultimately, Carrie succumbs to injuries sustained during her destructive rampage. She dies crying out for her mother like an abandoned child. This death leaves readers reminded that she’s just a young woman and we should be left fearing her telekinetic powers rather than Carrie, herself. In her pitiful death, King’s Carrie becomes merely a conduit rather than a force to be reckoned with.

When an author creates female characters who act purely from their emotions with unstable supernatural powers it further pushes them into gender stereotypes. Yet, when these emotionless female killers are kept in the real world it makes them play on our real fears. Female killers who aren’t ruled by their emotions become doubly devious as they are not only killers but they’re also doing it devoid of sympathy, which is unlike the typical ideation of women. To see a woman carry out such heinous acts without a flinch of emotion takes them out of the normal human experience. That lack of emotion creates the image of power and control that you only sense when someone is truly unhinged and disconnected from humanity. This gives legitimacy to these killers that the fictitious supernatural realm lacks. Carrie nor Amy are good people, but unlike Carrie, Amy is a whole person who ultimately gains our respect and fear. But because Flynn has walked back to her car alone, through a dark parking lot, with her keys between her fingers as a makeshift weapon, she has felt what it takes to stare down the thing your mother told you to fear the most and, instead, created Amy who laughs in its face.

Works Cited

Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl. Crown Publishing Group, 2012.

King, Stephen. Carrie. Anchor Books, 1974.

Smith, Erica L. “Just the Stats: Female Murder Victims and Victim-Offender Relationship, 2021.” Bureau of Justice Statistics. Dec. 2022. https://bjs.ojp.gov/female-murder-victims- and-victim-offender-relationship-2021.

“FBI Releases 2020 Incident-Based Data.” FBI.gov. 6 Dec. 2021. https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2020-incident-based-data.

Learning to Crawl: Analysis of Patriarchal Abuse as Metaphor in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Awarded to Mandy Walker for work submitted in Spring 2023 to Dr. Sheila Otto in ENGL 2030: The Experience of Literature

I first read “The Yellow Wallpaper” in English class my junior year of high school. At the time, I found it to be melodramatic and trite: why was this chick going on and on and ON about the freaking wallpaper? Revisiting it at forty-seven has given me new appreciation for Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s seminal work. Perhaps it took me another three decades of living with chronic depression. Maybe it was becoming a wife and mother that changed my point of view. It could be simply existing in the world as a woman well into middle age. Undeniably, forty-seven-year-old Me appreciates how masterfully she uses the symbol of the “…repellant, almost revolting… smouldering unclean” (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper 1428) paper lining the walls of her protagonist’s maritally mandated hellscape. The wallpaper stands brilliant proxy for the character’s increasingly fragile mental state, her (almost entirely unconscious) struggle against confinement and infantilization, and her eventual acquiescence to the patriarchal strictures that doom her.

In the first scenes, we encounter the narrator via diary entries, furtively written in stolen moments while she begins a medically prescribed sojourn to a rented estate in the country. Her husband has leased it as a sort of convalescent home, where she’s expected to recover from a “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency…” (1425). It’s quickly revealed this is not by her choice—neither the home nor the treatment plan. Not even the room she is assigned. In fact, the diary is her act of rebellion, her confidante behind her doctor-husband’s back and against his express orders. The narrator states:

I take phosphates or phosphites — whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to ” work ” until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. (1425)

Thus, Gilman presents the character as someone suffering-but-hopeful, exhibiting signs of mental illness but generally engaged with her predicament and actively working towards recovery. She has agency. She’s game to try this “rest” cure and has an affectionate (if naïve) propensity to bend to her husband’s will. However, unspoken resentment is already bubbling through. The high-handed way men in her life are simultaneously dismissive and reactionary in regard to her mental health seems to nettle (her brother is another misogynistic doctor). Faced with such apparent concern from these learned men—who purport to love her and want only her return to health—the narrator is persuaded to try things their way. She ignores or suppresses any feelings of opposition to the plan: “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?..” (1425). Her spouse does not even allow her to choose the room in which she is to stay. He ignores her request to bunk in one of the light, airy rooms downstairs. Instead, he mandates she reside in a cavernous space on the second floor that had once been a nursery (The plot hints mightily this space was once another hapless person’s makeshift prison). Immediately, unspoken resentment is transferred to the room’s wallpaper: “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long” (1429).

Two weeks later, we see she’s begun to slide a little further into mental illness. Largely abandoned by her husband, she’s left to brood all day, isolated in a room she dislikes while he tends to “serious” illnesses. She could even write if she wants; no one is there to police her, but her environment has started to take its toll. She’s begun to internalize her own victimization. The narrator experiences frustration and resentment at being literally and figuratively ignored, but every time those thoughts manifest, they’re followed by self-recrimination for making too much of her own suffering and guilt for not being a better wife and mother. Her feelings about the room at large serve as an illustration of this crippling dichotomy. Gilman has her gamely trying to look only at the positives of the “…airy and comfortable room,” (1429) but now her hidden frustration at every opinion batted away or request ignored has truly locked in on the wallpaper. The husband initially says he will change it but ultimately balks, telling her “…nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (1431). She’s willing to concede his other points, but her will has not yet been totally broken. She becomes hyper-focused on the paper as the source of her mental unrest. It has begun to symbolize her feelings of rage, impotency, and despair.

There are other things in the room that cause her discomfort, but the wallpaper has now become not just aesthetically unpleasing but potentially threatening. She speaks of the furniture being mismatched, the floors and walls damaged (again hinting the narrator is not the room’s first inmate) but claims to feel no real resentment about them. The wallpaper, however, she describes in sinister tones, beginning to ascribe it an identity. As she relates:

This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. (1433)

As the story progresses, we see the protagonist narrator slowly begin to lose her mind in earnest. The confinement, abandonment, and infantilization by everyone in her sphere has eroded her confidence in her own judgment to the point that she eventually becomes uninterested in even trying to advocate for herself, increasingly fearful of the world outside the room. This change is mirrored in her view of the wallpaper; no longer is it an abomination, it’s become her source of entertainment, fascination, and even security. As she withdraws from the world around her, the wallpaper completes its metamorphosis into a symbol of her rage and self-loathing. Gilman has her imagining a mysterious woman trapped inside it, or possibly many women. Its hideous appearance, seeming contradictions in its pattern, and damage from being torn over and over are an obvious metaphor for all the ugliness and rage she’s feeling inside, the parts of herself she’s been forced to repress in a life where she’s now been stripped of all independence. The people who should love her most have colluded to make her doubt her own desires—both in their importance and seemliness—to the extent that she’s anthropomorphically transferred them to the monster living in the walls. This is confirmed in the last few lines of the story, when she’s become in her own mind the “escaped” Woman in the Wall, crawling like an animal on the floor.

When asked to relate why she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” for literary journal The Forerunner several years after the story’s initial publication, Gilman confessed her own mental health struggle and how the advice of one leading (male) expert at the time almost led to her own break with reality. In “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman stated:

This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to “live as domestic a life as far as possible,” to “have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,” and “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again” as long as I lived. (266)

The difference between her and the poor protagonist in “Wallpaper” comes down to Charlotte Perkins Gilman refusing to bend her own formidable intelligence and free will to the dictates of others. She refused to give up her intellectual pursuits or ignore the dictates of her own reason.

As someone who’s had a male doctor look her in the face during a terrifying bout of clinical depression and say, “This is just who you are now. Take these pills and accept it.” I can appreciate the strength and determination it takes to throw off societally ingrained conditioning in a battle for your life, especially when your own brain colludes with the patriarchy to making you doubt your instincts for self-preservation. The narrator’s rage, frustration, guilt, and despair are all exquisitely familiar. In recent years, the 131-year-old story’s influence has made headlines in the world of visual arts. Renowned Kenyan-American artist Kehinde Wiley cited it as inspiration for his February 2022 show at the William Morris Gallery in East London, where the eponymous hue is the background in a series of portraits of African American women in defiant, evocative power poses. In an article reviewing the show for The Guardian, University of Reading Professor of Victorian Culture Gail Marshall is quoted as saying “‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ speaks directly to our #MeToo moment…” (Hughes). Approaching a century and a half anniversary of initial publication, Gilman’s sinister wall covering continues to resonate with any woman—any person—who’s ever felt imprisoned by societal expectations.

Works Cited

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature: The Human Experience: Reading and Writing, edited by Richard Abcarian, et al., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2018, pp.1424-1462.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper?’.” Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, vol. 17, no. 4, 2011, p. 265.

Hughes, Kathryn. “House of Horror: The Poisonous Power of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 7 Feb. 2020, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/feb/07/charlotte-perkins-gilman-yellow-wallpaper-strangeness-classic-short-story-exhibition.

Pleasure vs. Pain: The Surrealistic Horrors of Abuse

Awarded to Adeline Allison for work submitted in Spring 2023 to Dr. Bryanna Licciardi in ENGL 2020: Themes in Literature and Culture

Upon first reading of Clive Barker’s popular novella The Hellbound Heart, the plot seems detached from reality. Right out the gate, the audience meets Frank Cotton, who is on the verge of discovering a world beyond his own: a bizarre bell rings and gradually becomes unbearably loud. Darkness overtakes the room and the walls reduce to dust only to reform again within seconds. And, of course, the “sexless” creatures marked with horrifying scars and hooks known as Cenobites are summoned (Barker 9). Hellbound Heart can be easily marked down as pure fiction, a classic in the horror genre. But, by peeling back the thick fog of terrifying surrealism, readers will discover true horrors that surpass any amount of Barker’s body modifications and gore due to one simple reason: the painful realness of abusive relationships. And this isn’t just real; it’s everywhere. Millions of people experience abuse every single year in the United States alone (“National Coalition Against Domestic Violence”). Looking below the surface, the varying use of perspectives, relationships, and symbolism makes it easy to see that Barker’s novella also effectively functions as a story on domestic violence, the dangers of trauma bonding, and final empowerment in a life post-abuse.

To understand The Hellbound Heart in such a way, there must be a basic understanding of domestic violence. The National Domestic Violence Hotline states, “Domestic violence (also referred to as intimate partner violence (IPV), dating abuse, or relationship abuse) is a pattern of behaviors used by one partner to maintain power and control over another partner in an intimate relationship.” Abuse can manifest as “behaviors that physically harm, intimidate, manipulate or control a partner, or otherwise force them to behave in ways they don’t want to, including through physical violence, threats, emotional abuse, or financial control” (“National Domestic Violence Hotline”). As a concept, abuse appears simple enough: a narcissist’s way of establishing power over their victim as a means of selfishly serving themself. However, reducing it to this can demonstrate a dangerous mindset that displaces the blame from the perpetrator onto the victim and inevitably leads to the question, “Why don’t they just leave?” The exact manipulation tactics and how they work as a unit in a specific time frame are incredibly complex and individualistic, further isolating the victim and trapping them into sometimes life-threatening situations. Barker has an incredible ability to not only accurately depict what an abusive relationship can look like, but to also utilize pacing and perspectives in a manner that makes the audience truly experience the broad range of emotions, both as an outside onlooker and as the victim. He creates an overall message of pleasure versus pain by exploring both ends of the spectrum and everything in between.

The basis of the plot remains fairly straightforward due to the limited setting (most of the action takes place in a single household) and limited characters: common man Rory, cold wife Julia, friend/admirer Kirsty, and brother Frank. It can be argued, however, that the story is about a singular relationship: the abuser’s persona and his real identity, as well as the victim’s manipulated outlook and her real identity. Let’s look closely at the brothers from the perspective of them being opposite sides of the same character. Rory is on one side: the charming, dependable man who loves his wife. He has very little depth and isn’t terribly interesting, lacks meaningful connection with anyone, and acts almost more as a prop that those around him react to. He values image and a positive reputation. He is the mask of Frank’s much more sinister inner workings. Frank is Rory’s true self, a narcissist whose only concern is pleasure and the pursuit of it. Frank apathetically sacrifices his entire life for the promise of fleeting sexual gratification and dissolvement of his quickly established boredom with the physical world. He is a master manipulator that knows how to get what he wants, even if that means directly destroying others in the process. When the brothers are combined as one entity, they display an abuser’s classic act of deception that invokes charm and denial at the surface and harmful behavior beneath it.

Now that the abuser has been identified, let’s examine Julia, the victim that is under the abuser’s control. Julia represents the unhealthy side of a victim’s mentality that disregards, and sometimes even engages in, the abuse. She doesn’t appear to have any morals, but she also doesn’t really have any desires. She bases her actions solely on how they relate to Frank, especially her killings. Julia had zero interest in murder before Frank. Still, when he “needed” her to save him, she acted uncharacteristically without much thought because of the pressure Frank’s dependency placed on her. This is known as trauma bonding, often associated with the well-known term “Stockholm syndrome” and its role within the cycle of abuse. Healing Tree founder and CEO Marissa Ghavami writes that trauma bonding symptoms include obsessing over those who have repeatedly hurt you, continuing to seek contact despite the destruction it causes, and giving everything only to receive nothing time and time again (Trauma Bonding Using Real Life Examples), all of which perfectly relate to Julia’s attachment to Frank. Trauma bonding often starts with a traumatic offense, for instance, when Frank raped Julia on her wedding night. Barker describes this scene almost dismissively, using basic literary choices that put readers in Julia’s mindset. Though the sexual encounter isn’t directly identified as rape, it does make some allusion to it: “The smooth exterior gave way to cruder stuff almost immediately. Their coupling had had in every regard but the matter of her acquiescence, all the aggression and the joylessness of rape” (Barker 35). Despite this being a very confusingly traumatic moment for Julia, the description is abruptly interrupted by how time had “sweetened” the memory (Barker 35). Common with victims of abuse, the mind creates a coping mechanism by tricking herself into believing that the violence was instead an act of passion and love. This moment spawned the initial unexplained and uncontrollable bond Julia formed with Frank. Trauma bonding is subtlety hinted at in chapter three with a new kind of eerie weight, with lines such as, “But there was something about the dark interior that gave her comfort,” which demonstrates how she became so accustomed to the trauma that any other treatment felt uncomfortable (Barker 38). This marks the beginning of a cycle between falsely identified love and unspeakable violence that would eventually destroy Julia.

Nothing Julia did was ever enough for Frank, either. No matter how many men she kills, Frank always needs more. Even when he is strong enough to do the killings himself, he increasingly demands, asking Julia to essentially grocery shop for him, and even requesting a “skin” (Barker 130). He promises Julia love in exchange for these acts and she is constantly trusting, despite never seeming to get any closer to her reward. He only takes and takes all that she offers even though readers are aware he feels a relationship with her isn’t “worth the hassle” (Barker 58). Here is how Kirsty and Julia’s characters intersect. Kirsty, our unassuming protagonist, becomes a beacon of hope in the darkness. She is the woman Julia was before experiencing trauma and she is the woman Julia is in life after trauma. In the beginning, she is presented as weak and almost desperate. We know little about her accomplishments and positive qualities. She is meek, insecure, and awkward. Like Julia, Kirsty clings to a man and sacrifices her time to serve him in ways he doesn’t do in return.

Towards the middle of the novella, perspectives shift from Julia over to Kirsty, who represents the victim’s true self beyond her violent circumstance (which she perpetuates by putting Julia in the prominent position of power that proves unsustainable). As Kirsty begins breaking through as the fighter, her strength begins to shine through in ways not previously shown. She gains the courage to investigate Julia’s odd behavior due to a gut feeling that something is wrong, which many victims experience not long after the “honeymoon” stage of the abusive cycle. It leads her to the discovery of Frank’s existence, which leads to Frank’s attack on her. Though horrified, she is also drawn to his voice, repeatedly putting herself in danger by hesitating an escape. She then mistakes him for Rory, as the identities of the brothers begin to merge: “‘What?’ said Rory’s voice” (Barker 120). Rory, at this point, almost entirely disappears from the narrative while Frank is increasingly dehumanized, being called “monster,” “thing,” and “it” (Barker 117). Kirsty is deeply conflicted and broken as everything she loves crumbles: “Never– not even in her most witless fantasies– had she anticipated that the arena would be a room she had walked past a dozen times, in a house where she had been happy, while outside the day went on as ever, gray on gray” (Barker 121). This scene depicts an experience victims of domestic violence face—when the abuser’s charm almost instantly fades into complete destruction causing emotional whiplash and denial: “‘This isn’t happening,’ she told herself aloud, but the beast only laughed” (Barker 121).

Thankfully, the power starts to fall into Kirsty’s lap as she harnesses her pain and moves from victim to survivor. She uses Frank’s obsession with his pleasure against him (represented by the LeMarchand’s box), outsmarting her way out of the house. The Hellbound Heart ends as it begins, only altering intentions. Frank created this mess due to his greed. Had he been content, the box would never have been opened, thus preventing the horrors. The Cenobites smell sweet to him. Though Kirsty similarly opens the box, it is in complete ignorance. In contrast to Frank, she fights for her survival, not her desires, returning readers to the theme of pleasure versus pain. Rory is consumed by Frank, becoming Frank’s botched and ever-withering new form. Kirsty is not fooled this time. To break from her pain, she must have “Rory” admit to the Cenobites that he is truly Frank. Here is where readers can see another connection to abusers. Abusers’ charisma is upheld amongst those outside of the relationship and therefore, often have positive reputations, which makes it incredibly difficult for the victim or their loved ones to see the situation objectively. Abusers use this to gaslight their partner, like when Frank says, “From now on… I’m Rory… And nobody’s ever going to know any better” (Barker 119). When Kirsty persists that he is not Rory, he responds, “‘We know that… but nobody else does…” (Barker 157). Sometimes it takes exposing the abuser for what they really are to the world and what better way to do so than having the abuser rat themself out? She is disgusted that he took Rory away from her, capturing that painful moment when a victim discovers the façade of their abuser: “Somehow the theft of Rory’s name was as unforgivable as stealing his skin; or so her grief told her. A skin was nothing… But a name? That was a spell, which summoned memories. She would not let Frank usurp it” (Barker 156). She tricks Frank into revealing to the world in his own words his real identity, releasing Kirsty from the spell and damning him back to the Cenobites’ realm.

Examining The Hellbound Heart in the context of domestic abuse opens doors to further interpretation of many finer details: how the recurring bells are seen both positively (wedding bells, school bells, doorbells) and negatively (a warning to fear); how it is too late for Kirsty to rescue Julia, abandoning her despite her helpless pleading; and how screams are often ambiguous between pleasure and pain, “an easy mistake to make” (Barker 115). The use of light in relation to the damp room is also a theme that becomes greatly significant in the context of abuse . The room transforms from complete darkness due to the opaque blinds, to dim with newspaper coverings, to transparency with the smashing of the window showing the timeline of the abuse breaking out of the locked and confined space. Ultimately, the public is exposed to the truth as it literally comes to light through the use of blinding daylight when Kirsty jumps from the window escaping Frank’s attack and then further with the impossibly bright fireworks when she returns with the cenobites. Finally, the house demonstrates the realities of pain—how it slowly leaks out of the private second-story room into the first floor, acting as the outside perception of their relationship.

Perhaps these finer details can only be picked up on by victims of abuse. Perhaps one must experience the horrors firsthand in order to understand the realities of it. All that matters is that, in the end, Kirsty finds redemption and solace, which is a necessary message for survivors… “She would wait and watch, as she always had watched and waited, hoping that such a puzzle would one day come to her. But if it failed to show itself, she would not grieve too deeply, for fear that the mending of broken hearts be a puzzle neither wit nor time had the skill to solve” (Barker 164). The heart may be dangerously hell bound, but it is also a savior in the end.

Works Cited

Barker, Clive. The Hellbound Heart. Harper, 2007.

Ghavami, Marissa. “Trauma Bonding Using Real Life Examples.” Reach Counseling, 2017, https://reachcounseling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Trauma-Bonding-Using-Real-Life-Examples-Marissa-Ghavami.pdf.

“National Domestic Violence Hotline.” The Hotline, 23 Feb. 2023, https://www.thehotline.org/.

“NCADV: National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.” The Nation’s Leading Grassroots Voice on Domestic Violence, https://ncadv.org/STATISTICS#:~:text=On%20average%2C%20nearly%2020%20people,10%20million%20women%20and%20men.