[Book Review] ‘Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women, 1890–1940’

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This review originally appeared in Dead Reckonings and has been reprinted with the permission of the author.

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Think of weird fiction and, probably without even realizing it, you will think of one thing: men. Whether it’s H. P. Lovecraft’s tentacled monstrosities, the decadent necromancies of Clark Ashton Smith or Algernon Blackwood’s eerie eco-horror, the canon of weird fiction, like many human endeavors, is dominated by male practitioners. Even now, when we have women like Camilla Grudova, Nadia Bulkin, or Laura Mauro writing excellent weird fiction, the horror and related shelves of mainstream booksellers are still filled with multiple editions of works by the same dead white men. The implication is clear; women are newcomers to the genre, dabblers in a field already well-ploughed.

Which makes Melissa Edmundson’s anthology of early weird tales by women, from the first half of the 20th century and before, all the more timely and necessary. 

There’s a bitter irony that, as Edmundson points out in her introduction, “women have long been associated with having supernatural powers and intuitive connections with the natural or supernatural worlds,” yet this association is often seen, at least by men, as sinister or downright malevolent. Equally, while women might be considered creative, they are rarely seen as, or perhaps more accurately rarely allowed to be, innovative. Edmundson tells us that “the prevailing attitude of critics and the public in this period routinely denied women creative agency and asserted that women relied on adapting stories written by men in order to have their own work published.” Women’s Weird seeks to reject this attitude by showing how women not only “moved beyond the traditional ghost story,” blending their own, unique concerns into the weird form, but did so independently of men—sometimes ahead of them.

This is shown most clearly in Mary Cholmondley’s “Let Loose.” Cholmondley’s tale is that of a keenly naive academic releasing an ancient evil from its prison in an “exceedingly dank” ossuary crypt, the story slowly building to a chilling and brutal climax. Without knowing any better, based on these narrative elements, a reader would likely assume the story owes a huge debt to the eerie work of M. R. James. Yet, as Edmundson reminds us, “Let Loose” was first published in 1890, fourteen years before James’s Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Similarly, “Unseen-Unfeared” by Francis Stevens recounts the delirious experiences of Blaisdale and his meeting with an eccentric doctor who, through the means of a lamp-like device and a South American “membrane,” reveals the presence of previously-unseen beings; “a huge, repulsive starfish,” “centipedal things” and “sausage-shaped translucent horrors.” This is immediately reminiscent of the “great inky, jellyfish monstrosities” revealed by Crawford Tillinghast’s “detestable electrical machine” in Lovecraft’s “From Beyond.” Yet “Unseen-Unfeared” was published in 1919 whereas “From Beyond” was written in 1920 and only published in 1934.

The content of the stories in Women’s Weird, and the intent behind that content, is also powerfully different from the more male-dominated weird canon. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Giant Wisteria,” published the year before The Yellow Wall-Paper, uses a mere dozen pages to subtly investigate the persistent undermining of female agency by patriarchal systems. “The Haunted Saucepan,” by Margery Lawrence, updates the traditional witch’s cauldron into a modern domestic setting while also criticizing the male, condescending attitude towards traditionally female tasks.

My favorite story from the anthology’s thirteen tales is perhaps Mary Butt’s “With Or Without Buttons.” This blends all the elements of the weird—familiar objects made eerily unfamiliar, a force that reaches from beyond accepted reality and the rapid loss of human control over events—into a dream-like, lyrical prose; “With every door and every window open, the old house was no more than a frame, a set of screens to display night, midsummer, perfume, the threaded stillness, the stars strung together, their spears glancing, penetrating an earth breathing silently, a female power asleep.” The contrast between ordinary and extra-ordinary events, the prosaic concern for decorum as that decorum is being corroded into panic, is masterful. Women’s gloves, a symbol of delicacy and distance, become harbingers of a malevolent will. Scent bottles spray not sweet odors but repellent, mold-laced fumes. I found this a deeply affecting work and one that ended the anthology leaving me keen to search out more from both the authors included and their peers.

I should mention also the excellent presentation of this book by Handheld Press. The clean design, Edmundson’s excellent introductory essay, a bibliography and a very useful glossary all make this anthology stand out beyond peer works, even without consideration of its content.

Women’s Weird is a valuable, important work in the study of weird writing. It is a powerful reminder that, despite what we may be told, artists and artworks are rarely lost but rather become forgotten, or even actively suppressed, when they don’t fit the narratives of dominant cultural frameworks. Thankfully, we have scholars like Melissa Edmundson reminding us that this writing still exists and showing how it is still relevant today.

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Article written by Dan Pietersen

Daniel Pietersen is the editor of I Am Stone: The Gothic Weird Tales of R. Murray Gilchrist, part of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. He is a recurring guest lecturer for “The Last Tuesday Society” and the “Romancing the Gothic” project, where he produces an ongoing series on Haunted Houses and related topics. He has also contributed criticism and reviews to publications like Dead Reckonings, Revenant and Horror Homeroom. Daniel lives in a very old house in a very old town and is slowly becoming very old himself. He occasionally appears on social media as @pietersender.

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