There is an enduring fascination with the mother figure in horror movies. Popular contemporary examples like Hereditary, The Babadook, and Mother! are only the tip of the iceberg, inspired by a longstanding tradition of maternal subversion across decades of on-screen horror.
Since the dawn of cinema, horror films have sought to exploit traditional notions of maternity. They make the mother figure a monster, a harlot, or a psychopath, and audiences quiver in fear. If you consider the deeper function of horror—to confront and to expose—it’s hardly surprising that motherhood is a recurring theme: the mother figure is not only a staple of the nuclear family unit, but a staple of nature. If she doesn’t do her job (that is, if she fails the socio-political standards of her position) everything else falls apart.
This then begs the question: what are the socio-political standards of motherhood? And why are we so afraid of breaking them?
Horror films provide a unique lens through which to answer this very question. Only by facing the monstrous mother can we truly appreciate the underlying value, or expectation, she represents. In doing so, we come to realise that these values and expectations are not fixed. Horror films allow us to track the mother figure throughout the ages, capturing her in time, while simultaneously watching her adapt to shifting social tides. As far as most horror is concerned, motherhood personifies the domestic politics of its respective context and, inevitably, uses terror tactics to better unearth those politics.
DISCLAIMER: the following case study depicts Roman Polanski’s 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby. Before I proceed, I would like to clarify that any and all referencing to Polanski’s works is by no means an intended credit to his character, nor is it an oversight of his criminal conduct.
In the case of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the mother figure, Rosemary, both internalises and problematises the patriarch’s role within the family unit. More specifically, the application of patriarchal authority to standards of maternity. The film begins with Rosemary hoping to start a family with her husband, Guy. Little does she know, Guy has recently joined ranks with the local witches’ cult. He proceeds to trick his wife into conceiving Satan’s baby, turning her into a surrogate mother for the devil himself. Unsurprisingly, the pregnancy makes Rosemary incredibly ill, but no matter how much she insists something is wrong, Guy refuses her pleas for proper medical care. He keeps Rosemary in the dark about the true nature of her unborn baby and shuts down all of her attempts to seek help.
So, why doesn’t Rosemary leave him? Guy isn’t just a dismissive husband, he’s actively and consistently cruel. Meanwhile, Rosemary is the perfect 1960s housewife: kind, loving, beautiful, and continually eager to appease her husband’s wishes.
Within the social, political, and domestic spheres the film depicts, Guy’s command over Rosemary’s pregnancy is absolute. He is not only her husband, but the (supposed) father of her unborn child; this, by the standards of the film’s context, grants him complete control of the maternal experience. Rosemary remains loyal to his wishes even when Guy ignores her best interests by forcing her down a path of demonic surrogacy. By the time she fights back it’s too late, as she ultimately brings the devil’s baby to full term. As such, notions of maternity in Rosemary’s Baby seem to convey a distrust of patriarchal authority within domestic spaces, calling for mothers to hold faith in their own instincts. If Rosemary had trusted her gut and acted against her husband’s wishes sooner, she might have saved herself. But, with prevalent expectations of maternity being as they were, whereby the patriarch’s control completely supersedes the mother’s intuition, it is hardly surprising that Rosemary failed to escape her fate.
Familial patriarchy is not the only unreliable power in Rosemary’s Baby. There is an added concern for professional (or institutionalised) patriarchy whereby Rosemary’s obstetrician, Dr Sapirstein, is also a member of the witches’ cult. Unsurprisingly, Dr Sapirstein is far more interested in delivering Satan’s child than he is with treating Rosemary’s condition; he dismisses her health concerns as ‘perfectly normal’ and prescribes mysterious drugs and herbs to keep her compliant. There is even a scene where Rosemary sneaks away to see another doctor, but he too dismisses her—not out of any allegiance to the devil, but out of respect for Dr Sapirstein’s reputation and consequent rejection of Rosemary’s instincts.
By her second trimester, Rosemary is in constant pain and entirely dependent upon two unreliable patriarchs: her husband (the domestic patriarch) and her obstetrician (the institutional patriarch). Their methods may differ but their motivation is the same: in order to bring the devil’s spawn to full term, they must manipulate Rosemary into thinking she’s carrying a normal baby. But this falsification severs the fundamental intimacy between mother and child, consequently rupturing the very core of maternal possession. Case in point, Rosemary isn’t even allowed to see her baby until a week after it is born. Moreover, even as she speaks to her stomach and considers potential baby names— ‘Andrew, Susan, or Sarah’—the audience registers an unsettling disconnect. We can sense that something is wrong, and we desperately want Rosemary to sense it, too.
This forced disconnect between mother and child is where the audience’s fear really sets in. If we circle back to the mother figure as an archetype—staple of family, staple of nature—then Rosemary becomes a sort of anti-mother. By entrusting her maternal body to patriarchal control, she inadvertently facilitates Satan’s ascension; Rosemary becomes the dominant accessory to an unholy abomination of nature.
If we break all of that down, this is what we end up with: Rosemary’s Baby represents a socio-political context within which standards of maternity are dictated by patriarchal authorities. The film proceeds to suggest that this shouldn’t be the case, advocating instead for mothers to trust in their own intuition (lest they end up accidentally giving birth to the antichrist).
Of course, Rosemary’s Baby is only one example. The values identified by this film are not applicable to every other mother figure in every other horror film, but they do offer an interesting (if not limited) reflection of 20th-century expectations of maternity. Another great example is the original 1976 Carrie, within which the mother’s monstrosity is also derived from standards of patriarchal authority (specifically, her deceased husband). The domestic politics embodied by Carrie’s mother are similar to that Rosemary’s Baby, but the consequences differ. In Carrie, the mother follows her deceased husband’s abusive, overbearing standard of domesticity, which is precisely what drives Carrie’s tragic descent into villainy. Where Rosemary’s Baby warns of the separation between mother and child via patriarchal intervention, Carrie warns of the toxicity between mother and child when their relationship is governed by patriarchal standards.
The mother figure represents one of the most complex archetypes known to horror films. She is eternal, but evolving. She is a product of her context, but at the same time, an advocate for change. If we can understand why we are afraid of her, maybe we can also understand how we’ve come to value the women she represents.
Sophie Breeze is currently studying a Master of Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing at the University of Melbourne. She is very interested in contemporary feminist theory as the basis for her creative work.