Vile Women: Female Evil in Fact, Fiction and Mythology

Is the evil that women do, and the evil with which they are accused, always one and the same? How might female evil, real, assumed, or appropriated confound gendered expectation and challenge patriarchal assumptions? What strategies have women deployed to confront the persistent gendering of evil actions? Informed by studies in history, the arts and theory, each contribution in Vile Women: Challenging Representations of Female Evil in Fact, Fiction and Mythology seeks to address these and other related issues by exploring a range of historical, mythological and fictional figures of female evil. On the one hand, the volume reveals female figures who themselves challenge patriarchal ideals of femininity through their aberrant ways, and, on the other, it challenges representations of women that construct and label non-normative female behaviour as evil.