Banshees, Hags, and Changelings

Irish folklore is replete with images of the monstrous feminine. The wandering witch, the wailing banshee, the mysterious changeling and others recur throughout folktales and have become well-known through contemporary depictions in books and on screens. In the wake of recent feminist thinking, online movements, and revelations of gender-based violence in state institutions such as the Magdalene Laundries, women writers in Ireland and abroad have found new ways to adapt this folklore, addressing the underlying tensions inherent to these stories and reevaluating traditional myths.

In Banshees, Hags, and Changelings, Molly Ferguson examines how women writers and the recent cultural feminist reckoning in Ireland allow for a reappraisal of the subjects of these folktales and the anxieties they address. Exploring contemporary works, with attention paid to examples in science fiction and YA literature, Ferguson identifies the cultural processing of trauma resulting from gender-based violence through reconsiderations of the monstrous and the tensions that lie beneath each tale.

Author Biography

Molly Ferguson is an associate professor of English and affiliate faculty member in women’s and gender studies at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.