Monstrosising infertility : supernatural barren females in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer

The representation of an infertile woman as a monster has been long present in the cultural history of the world. The inability to bear children was well established as one of the main characteristics in the construction of the monstrous female already in ancient times and the Middle Ages. Although it is occasionally argued that the figure of the infertile woman has lost its monstrous face in the contemporary culture of the West, it does not seem to be so. This chapter considers the notions of (in)fertility in the famous Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer as determining the construction of monstrous and human femininities. While Barbara Creed places sexuality as the key to understand the monstrous in the feminine, Meyer’s saga takes it one step further, narrowing the sexuality factor to the inability of giving birth to a child. In consequence, infertile females are constructed as abject, monstrous and transgressors as theorised by Barbara Creed, Christine Bousfield, Julia Kristeva and Linda H. McGuire. Fertility and motherhood, on the other hand, are depicted as thoroughly human