The Vampire in the Attic: Constructing Monstrous Female Identities in Liminal, Purgatorial Spaces

Citation

Tavener-Smith T (2023) The Vampire in the Attic: Constructing Monstrous Female Identities in Liminal, Purgatorial Spaces [The Vampire in the Attic Constructing Monstrous Female Identities in Liminal, Purgatorial Spaces]. In: Bacon S (ed.) Female Identity in Contemporary Fictional Purgatorial Worlds. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/female-identity-in-contemporary-fictional-purgatorial-worlds-9781350227033/

Abstract
This chapter is concerned with the liminality associated with the purgatorial elements evident in Slade House in relation to Norah’s monstrous-feminine identity. Although the term “liminality” originated with the French folklorist Arnold Van Gennep (2013), the anthropologist Victor Turner reformulated this theory as a framework to evaluate the practices of rites of passage carried out by tribes in Central Africa (1992: 48). As Turner points out, Van Gennep’s theory outlined three stages in this transition: “separation; margin (or limen); and reaggregation” (Ibid.). While the first and last stages are easily understood as the separation of initiates from society and later their reintegration into the social group during the process of transition, Turner argues that the “more interesting problem is provided by the middle (marginal) or liminal phase” (1992: 49). Turner’s special interest is in the limen as a “threshold”, or space of “midtransition”, a condition of being “be-twixt and between established states” (Ibid.). Those who find themselves in this in-between space are known as liminaries who “evade ordinary cognitive classification [...] for they are not this or that, here or there, one thing or the other” (Ibid.). Turner observes the “invisibility” characteristic of liminality, arguing that it is a paradoxical condition: “being both this and that” (Ibid., original emphasis). In The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory (2013), Maria del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren argue that Turner’s theory of liminality, despite its original anthropological focus, is strongly relevant in its application to literature. As I argue in this chapter, Turner’s theory of liminality informs the vampiric, monstrous-feminine identity in Mitchell’s novel. This identity then, is associated with the “margin” (Turner 1992: 48) as it may be likened to a state that establishes itself as being both “be-twixt and between” (1992: 49): vampires are both human and monster.