Dark Motherhood: Gothicizing Medicalized Maternity in Gynaehorror

Abstract

This study theorizes gynaehorror as a critical discourse at the intersection of American Gothic studies and medical humanities, examining how the subgenre gothicizes medicalized maternity to expose institutional architectures of reproductive surveillance, pathology, and control. Drawing from American Gothic traditions, it identifies three recurring tropes—the persecuted woman, the tyrannical authority, and the haunted body—as a methodological framework for close analysis of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1974), and David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979), mapping the convergence of gender, power, and embodiment in representations of reproductive trauma. These tropes culminate in dark motherhood—a conceptual and representational mode that emerges in response to scientific motherhood, reframing maternal monstrosity as a product of medical paternalism. Borrowing its nomenclature from scientific discourse, where “dark” denotes forces that shape reality yet evade legibility, dark motherhood refers to the institutional attempt to codify, contain, and colonize the maternal body. Informed by theories from Michel Foucault, Maria Mies, Carolyn Merchant, Julia Kristeva, Barbara Creed, and others, the study merges film analysis with contemporary case studies in obstetric violence, iatrogenic harm, and fertility fraud, reaffirming gynaehorror’s urgency in a biopolitical climate marked by renewed threats to reproductive freedom across America.