Creepy Little Girl

Abstract

The Creepy Little Girl is a subset of the Gothic Child and as such, she works differently from the evil child or the monstrous child in contemporary Gothic. Unlike the contradictions inherent in representations of the evil child whose presence is disruption and destruction, or the monstrous child who is dangerous, the Creepy Little Girl serves as a function of the Gothic: she is that figure through which the narrative is unsettled and the Gothic intrudes. The Creepy Little Girl is defined by her hypergendered position in the narratives in which she appears: as both ‘little’ and very much as ‘girl’. The little girl's presence in contemporary gothic narratives destabilises the familiar, the domestic, and the cute and that is the basis for the gothic unease that she engenders.