A Monster Romance Deep Dive

Summary

The video argues that monster romance appeals to many women because it uses the monster to explore experiences that conventional romance and horror often suppress: being treated as an outsider, having desires that society condemns, and accepting parts of oneself considered strange or “monstrous.” The narrator organizes the discussion around three overlapping roles for the monster: the other, the object of desire, and a mirror of the woman herself.

1. How monster romance changes the traditional horror gaze

The narrator draws on feminist film theory to explain a contrast between classic horror and modern monster romance:

• Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze” describes how mainstream cinema often presents women as passive objects of visual pleasure for heterosexual men.
• Linda Williams’s “When the Woman Looks” examines how horror can give women little to identify with beyond images of female victimization. When a woman looks at a monster, her gaze is often framed as fearful and punished by the story.
• Williams also identifies a potential connection between women and monsters: both are treated as threatening “others” by patriarchal systems of looking and power. In the narrator’s reading, their difference from conventional masculinity can imply a kind of power rather than simply a lack.

Classic horror often punishes both figures: women are terrorized, while monsters are destroyed. Monster romance changes that pattern by letting the woman look at, desire, and sometimes understand the monster without being punished for doing so.

2. The monster as “other”

A frequent starting point for these stories is a heroine who is herself an outsider or who lives in a restrictive society. The monster’s outsider status helps her recognize her own.

• Beauty and the Beast is presented as the archetypal example. Belle is isolated within her family and pursued by men who disregard her wishes. Her kindness and willingness to see beyond the Beast’s appearance distinguish her from the people around her.
• The narrator connects this pattern to characters such as Lisa in Lisa Frankenstein, Elisa in The Shape of Water, Sookie in True Blood, Bella in Twilight, and Kim in Edward Scissorhands. Their isolation, differences, or restrictive surroundings help explain why they might connect with a monster.
• In Edward Scissorhands, Kim recognizes Edward’s kindness despite his frightening appearance and the town’s changing attitude toward him.
• In Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Elizabeth responds to the creature with compassion, unlike Victor, whose actions reveal him as the more monstrous figure.
• In Warm Bodies—called My Boyfriend Is a Zombie in the subtitles—Julie’s bond with R is linked to the return of his speech, heartbeat, and humanity.

Across these examples, the romance depends on the heroine seeing a person where others see only a monster. The narrator also points out that a transformation into a handsome human can complicate this idea. In Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête, the Beast’s transformation resembles Avenant, the man who pursued Belle, making the conventional “happy ending” feel less satisfying. The narrator invokes the reportedly famous reaction attributed to Greta Garbo: “Give me back my beast.”

3. The monster as a vehicle for female desire

The monster can give stories a way to express sexual desire, fear, repression, or shame.

• Vampire stories often use biting and the exchange of blood as sexual metaphors. In Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Lucy’s sexual openness is associated with her vampirism and eventual punishment, reflecting the film’s Victorian setting and repressive sexual attitudes.
• The narrator reads Mina’s attraction to Dracula as a possible expression of repressed desire, although she dislikes the reincarnation-of-a-lost-lover trope in general.
• In Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, the narrator interprets Orlok less as a straightforward romantic partner than as a manifestation of Ellen’s conflicted feelings about her sexuality. Their connection begins with pleasure but becomes frightening and painful; Orlok’s appetite turns Ellen’s desires into something she fears and feels ashamed of. Her relationship with Thomas represents a wish for conventional marriage, while the film suggests that he must accept the parts of her desire she considers monstrous.
• The narrator sees the ending of Nosferatu as deliberately open to interpretation. Ellen’s sacrifice may be read as tragic, but also as a form of acceptance and defiance: she chooses how to confront Orlok and appears, in the narrator’s reading, more at peace with herself.
• Twilight offers a comparatively safe, restrained framework for young viewers to explore attraction. Edward’s need to restrain himself, the couple’s delayed sexual relationship, and Bella’s wish to become a vampire all link desire to the story’s supernatural premise. The narrator notes the series’ abstinence-oriented background but argues that Bella is not ultimately shamed or punished simply for wanting Edward.
• In Lisa Frankenstein, Lisa’s relationship with the creature serves as a coming-of-age exploration of sexuality. As she helps create the body she desires, the monster becomes both a romantic partner and a means of expressing anger toward people who have harmed her.

4. The monster as a mirror

Some films suggest that the monster is not only a separate being but also a reflection of the heroine’s identity, suppressed feelings, or inner life.

• In Your Monster, the monster encourages Laura to find her voice, pursue ambition, and stop accepting mistreatment. The ending suggests that he may be a manifestation of her repressed emotions. Laura’s acceptance of him represents her acceptance of anger, confidence, pleasure, and self-love—qualities often discouraged in women.
• In The Shape of Water, the amphibious man reflects Elisa’s experiences of isolation and being treated as less than fully human. Both are unable to speak conventionally, are separated from family, and are objectified by men and institutions.
• The film’s use of color helps express Elisa’s movement away from conformity: the government facility’s turquoise palette represents rigid social norms, while red enters her wardrobe as her relationship with the creature grows.
• The narrator connects the creature’s conflict with Strickland to a challenge to patriarchal, white, heterosexual authority. Elisa’s friends Giles and Zelda also recognize the creature’s situation through their own experiences of marginalization.
• The film’s final transformation—where Elisa develops gills and survives underwater with the creature—reinforces the possibility that they share a deeper connection. For the narrator, the film shows that what society calls a deficiency or difference can also be a source of power.

5. The genre’s unresolved gap: monster women

The narrator notes that most of the examples discussed pair a human woman with a male monster. Female monsters are much less common as romantic leads, especially when they are visibly grotesque rather than conventionally beautiful.

• Some stories feature two monsters, including Bones and All, Only Lovers Left Alive, and The Bride.
• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night features a female vampire, but the narrator sees it primarily as a story of female revenge rather than romance.
• When female monsters fall in love with human men, they are often vampires, mermaids, or witches whose appearances remain largely human and conventionally attractive.

The video presents this imbalance as untapped potential. If the monster represents experiences of difference and social exclusion, a monster woman could offer a powerful way to explore those experiences from another angle. The narrator leaves open the question of what it would mean for a human man to accept a female monster as fully as the women in these stories accept their monstrous partners.

Speakers and sources featured

Speaker

• Molly, also known as Girly Soup — the video’s narrator and analyst. She identifies the interpretations as her own.

Theorists and other cited sources

• Linda Williams — “When the Woman Looks” (1984), on women, monsters, and looking in horror.
• Laura Mulvey — “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), on the male gaze.
• Sigmund Freud — referenced in the discussion of castration anxiety.
• Greta Garbo — cited through the reported reaction, “Give me back my beast.”
• Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve — author of the original Beauty and the Beast fairy tale.

Films and series discussed or referenced

• Lisa Frankenstein
• Your Monster
• Nosferatu (1922) and Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu
• Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein
• Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride
• Twilight
• Beauty and the Beast (Disney, 1991)
• La Belle et la Bête (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
• Edward Scissorhands
• True Blood
• The Shape of Water
• Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)
• Warm Bodies (referred to as My Boyfriend Is a Zombie in the subtitles)
• Bones and All
• Only Lovers Left Alive
• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
• Creature from the Black Lagoon