Erin Harrington is Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at The University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Introduction: mapping the gynaehorrific imaginary

Defining gynaehorror

Gynaehorror from virginity to menopause

Gynaehorror in context

Gynaehorror as convention and challenge

1. Roses and thorns: virgins, vagina dentata, and the monstrosity of female sexuality

Defining virginity

Virginity in horror film

The virgin's other: vagina dentata

Imag(in)ing the vagina

Vagina dentata in horror

A different sort of Teeth: reframing vagina dentata

Heteronormative horrors

2. The lady vanishes: pregnancy, abortion and subjectivity

Framing pregnant subjectivity

Keeping house: female corporeality in horror

Home invasions

Vessels and environments

Foetal visibility and the dissolution of the female subject

Inside: competing subjects

Abortion and taboo

'Pro-life' and Pro-life

3. Not of woman born: mad science, reproductive technology and the reconfiguration of the subject

Science, culture and masculinity

'Mad science' and men making life

Fearing science

Mad scientists and madwomen

Re-gendering mad science in Splice

Brave new worlds: cyborg futures and female subjectivity

4. The monstrous-maternal: negotiating discourses of motherhood

Psychoanalytic discourses of motherhood

The legacy of Mrs Bates: Norma, Thelma and Nola

Essential and ideal motherhood

Motherhood as instinct and imperative

The legal implications of transgressive motherhood

Millennial mothering and the horror of the single mother

States of Grace: competing discourses of motherhood

Monstrous motherhood

5. Living deaths, menstrual monsters and hagsploitation: horror and/of the abject barren body

The abject barren body

Menstrual horror

The horror of menopause

Ageing women in cinema

Psychobiddies, grande dames and horrific harridans

The ageing woman as (American) horror story

Afterword: monstrous miscarriages and uncanny births