The History of Mermaids, Sea Spirits & Women

Mermaids and sea creatures of various kinds have existed in legends and myths from coastal areas all over the world. They are often, though not always, female, and their gender also performs an ambiguous role in relation to human models of femininity, womanhood, and heterosexuality; mermaids, selkies, and female sea creatures can uncannily be familiar and unfamiliar, charming and repulsive, caring and deadly. 

While the female sea spirits’ elusiveness is in common with many supernatural monsters, it also reflects a double set of anxieties about Women and Nature, and, particularly, the marine world, where both resist definition and control by patriarchal and western anthropocentric frames of mind.

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Dr Monica Germanà is a Reader in Gothic and Contemporary Studies at the University of Westminster and co-president of the International Gothic Association. She is a leading authority on the Gothic imagination - particularly the ways gender, identity, and the uncanny intersect in literature and culture. Her pioneering first monograph, Scottish Women's Gothic and Fantastic Writing (2010), broke new ground in the field, and her work continues to shape how we understand the darker currents running beneath storytelling across the centuries. If anyone can take you from ancient sea goddess to modern mermaid mythology - and make it utterly gripping along the way - it's her.

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