Why "Penny Dreadful" Should Be Your Favorite Feminist TV Show
Showtime's short-lived Gothic horror series Penny Dreadful was one of the most feminist TV shows ever on air. Heres why:
1. Introduction for Newbies
Penny Dreadful premiered in 2014, lasting for three seasons before being cancelled in 2016. The show was series creator John Logan’s first project created for television, having found his success in screenwriting exclusively for films such as Gladiator (2000), The Aviator (2004), Sweeney Todd (2007), and many more. Logan helmed the teleplays for twenty-four episodes of his series. Only two other writers are credited as series writing staff, each only having written two episodes each, Andrew Hinderaker and Krysty Wilson-Cairns. During Penny Dreadful’s promotion in 2014, it was hailed and marketed as Showtime’s first exploration into the genre of horror for television, armed with presentations of blood, violence and sex. More precisely, Penny Dreadful delves into Victorian Gothic horror, taking the basis of its storylines from Victorian and Gothic fiction literature. The show’s central plot revolves around a group of unlikely anti-heroes who investigate supernatural forces in Victorian London – from which the show titled is aptly derived . While the series recreates already existing narratives from 19th century settings, gender and sexual representations are created within a realm of the contemporary. Through multiple narrative and aesthetic components, such as fractured masculinity, subversion of Victorian ideals, the destruction of heteronormativity, and other thematic techniques, Penny Dreadful achieves a heightened and more complex sense of female representation and politics, encouraging varied and multifaceted themes and female characters that reject the habitual stereotypes of literary women.
2. Source Material
Penny Dreadful’s most concentrated narrative source is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, while also basing characters and storylines off of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Grey, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Elements from these literatures convalesce in the series and result in intertwining storylines and character trajectories. Penny Dreadful not only uses Bram Stokers Dracula for its narrative constructs and characters, it uses its gender structure and representation as a model to subvert in a more contemporary realization of Victorian London, doing away with the patriarchal hierarchal origin. Stokers 1891 publication, undoubtedly his most popular and prolific, creates the notorious Count Dracula through a tale of female capture and the goal oriented structural narrative of their treacherous rescue. The novels two main female characters come in the form of Harker’s fiancée Mina Murray and her friend Lucy Westenra, who both become influenced by Dracula when he is brought to London aboard a cargo ship. The three men of the novel, Jonathan Harker, Dr. John Seward, and Dr. Van Helsing must save the women before they are tainted with Dracula’s impurity. Lucy completes her vampiric transformation and is killed by her suitor Dr. John Seward by plunging a stake into her body. Jonathan is able to save Mina before her transformation is complete, making him the successful Victorian male suitor. Dracula acts as a prototypical Victorian text, displaying the model values that were prescribed to female and male characters in a patriarchal social world. Women are taken under the possession of men and must be saved by the male hero, who also doubles as her mate or suitor. Women have stereotypical dual presentations as either the virgin, or the whore . Mina takes on the role of virgin or Madonna, never making her full transition to vampire, saved by her husband and restored to her purity. Lucy takes on the role of whore, making a full transition to undead vampire and only regaining savior through a phallic and masculine imposed death. Lauren Rocha’s essay, “Angel in the House, Devil in the City: Explorations of Gender in Dracula and Penny Dreadful” explores this opposing relationship between two different sexually rooted mediums. Penny Dreadful takes these constructs and subverts them, making their mere existence a presentation that is up for a self-conscious debate. A key aspect of the reversal of these preconceived constructs is the destruction of the heroically successful male savoir. Male characters in Penny Dreadful are unable to save the women that are under their possession as mates or daughters. Penny Dreadful removes the character of Mina’s fiancé Jonathan Harker and focuses on the relationship between two women, Mina and Vanessa, their relationship as disconnected sisters and the bond that no one else shares in the series.
3. Feminist Visual Style
The series places importance in the creation of diverse female characters not only through character storylines and narrative trajectories but also through visual presentation and stylistic choices. Penny Dreadful presents the aesthetically imperfect Victorian female as normal, having each character not comply with the aesthetic traditions and requirements of acceptable female beautification and perfection. Vanessa Ives is presented through out the majority of the show with a mirrored internal and exterior imperfection. She is internally disturbed, tortured and at unrest for a large portion of the shows narrative and her visual appearance mirrors such, with dark, sunken eyes, red, blotchy, even sometimes bloodied skin, greasy and unkempt hair, without any beauty make-up. There is no emphasis on presenting Vanessa, or Eva Green for that matter with make up to ease her appearance, there is honesty displayed in the shows unflinching depiction of an imperfect female that does not place her importance in her visual presentation to the world. Brona Croft is gravely ill with consumption for more than half of her storyline, and again, there is emphasis in showing her descent into sickness and how that would affect her appearance. Later when she is recreated into Lily, Lily proudly displays her large and deep scars on her chest that are the one flaw that keep her from becoming such an ‘ideal’ woman. Patti LuPone’s dual characters also embrace this sensibility. Her character of Joan Clayton discards the ideal visual femininity, embracing an androgynous aesthetic that does not impede her strength as a character and later carries the same visual refusal of feminine beauty, in her reprisal as Dr. Seward. Although period pieces and Victorian settings in film and television usually tend to exploit the vulnerability of women through depictions of rape as mere details of the time period, however, Penny Dreadful deviates from this tradition, displaying no on screen depictions of rape. The series also deviates from the American television tradition of limiting male nudity by showing repeated instances of full frontal male nudity. Male nudity is not limited to traditional male characters, Proteus, Victor Frankenstein’s undead creation is seen fully nude while a corpse and reanimated. Dorian Gray’s season two love interest, Angelique, is a transgender female and is seen fully nude in an unconventional portrayal of unique femininity.
4. Female Characters: Vanessa Ives
Penny Dreadful’s main character of Vanessa Ives, played by Eva Green, is easily identified as the strongest member of the ant-heroic group. Vanessa is also, one of, if not, the most complex character in the series. Her agency is clearly displayed within the pilot episode, as moves freely and easily around every male character that she interacts with. Her introduction to Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett) gives the viewer a clear indication of what Vanessa’s character can do. She immediately asserts dominance over Ethan, who is purposed to be a typical masculine American man. Within less than two minutes, Vanessa emasculates Ethan to the point of manipulation, and leaves with exactly what she came for, a worker. Vanessa stands as the only character who is able and who is powerful enough to save Mina, a task that had been deemed for a man. Dracula only houses women as victims and men as saviors, yet in Penny Dreadful, it is the women who do the saving and the men who are unable to fulfill this duty. But Vanessa’s confidence and strength is not one sided, her character has many variables that make her a flawed human being. She is not the love interest, the victim, or the captured, she is in fact one of the monsters and with this dark connotation comes a portion of her agency. The first season of the series dispenses Vanessa, and Mina’s, backstory, where we learn the source of Vanessa’s powers. A demon had sought Vanessa out since her childhood, as a result of Vanessa’s deviation from traditional Victorian femininity. Vanessa was interested in death and sex, practicing taxidermy on large birds of prey, unlike her childhood counterpart Mina, who appeared the model sprout for femininity. The demon begins to approach her, and Vanessa feels an influence, and breaks the bond of sisterhood with Mina by engaging in sexual intercourse with Mina’s intended husband. While it may seem that the demon along with the sexual encounter triggered Vanessa’s following psychological breakdown and submission to the demon, it is the trauma of losing the female bond and love shared with Mina that shatters Vanessa. The demon, who only appears in the form of men, attempts to use Vanessa as a man would, for sexual and reproductive purposes. The demon acts as Vanessa’s male suitor, a man who aims to control her sexuality, body and father her children, as he repeatedly calls her “Mother” and “Mother of Evil”. She is targeted by the demon for her rejection of Stoker’s idea of this stereotypical virginal young white Victorian woman. Vanessa’s agency lies within the dangerous and dark aspect of her character, something that had always been within her but had been manipulated by negative male forces. The series clearly reinforces this fact, as Vanessa visits a priest for clarity and advice on separation from the darkness, to which the priest replies, “If you have been touched by the demon, it’s like being touched by the backhand of God. It makes you sacred, in a way. It makes you unique. There’s a kind of glory, the glory of suffering. Here’s my question: do you really want to be normal?” Here lies Vanessa’s agency and in the upcoming season two, it will resurface to continually save others. The roles are reversed again in season two, and it is Sir Malcolm Murray who must be saved. As the other men attempt to save him, they fail and Vanessa, alone, is the only character who successfully saves all the men from the female villain, Madame Kali.
5. Female Characters: Brona Croft
The character of Brona Croft, played by Billie Piper, emerges in the first season of the series as the love interest for Ethan Chandler. Brona breaks the typecast of a 19th century prostitute, rejecting cultural attitudes from imposition. From the introduction of her character in the second episode of the show’s first season entitled Séance, her confidence, directness, charm and unabashed self-assurance of her chosen profession. Brona is an active, sexual being that defies the stereotypes of passive female mate. She pursues Ethan as much as he pursues her, and their relationship is rooted within mutual equality, being direct in her flirtatious approaches and enjoying their sexual encounters. Brona does not feel shame on behalf of her prostitution and Ethan makes no assumptions on her character. He does not feel the need to save her from this profession by marriage or other means, only to help pay for medication for her terminal case of consumption. In Séance, we are not only introduced to Brona’s agency characteristically, but also sexually. Dorian Gray hires Brona as a pornographic model for photography in his home. Before they engage in sexual intercourse, Dorian asks for Brona’s permission. After she verbally agrees, Brona is the agent of the sexual encounter, taking Dorian’s hands and placing them on areas of her body that she chooses. Just as characters don’t shame Brona, the show doesn’t shame her either, positioning Brona in her area of prostitution as an agent of control.
6. Lily and the feminist idea of 'Misandry'
(Spoilers) Later in the series, after her illness proves to be terminal, Brona is reanimated and recreated into Lily by Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Harry Treadaway). Lily’s reason for undead conception is rooted in the misogynistic outlook of Stoker’s Dracula. John Clare (Rory Kinnear), Victor Frankenstein’s first revived creation comes back to him, demanding a female mate for companionship. He tells Victor he is owed a female mate as reprisal, and that no man should be without one. Victor revives the deceased Brona into Lily to fulfill this request for John. Lily is meant to be shaped and molded into a perfect mate for John, like an animated puppet, to accompany him without objection and fulfill his need for sexual and romantic expression. While Victor’s first two creations, which are male, are revived without much brain function or knowledge, Lily, Victor’s first female victim, does. Frankenstein teaches her how to be a proper woman, what is expected of her as a female in modern Victorian patriarchal society. At the end of season two, we learn Lily’s docile and submissive appeal after revival was just an act, and she is much smarter than Victor or John, or we for that matter, accounted for. Victorian patriarchy once again crumbles and cannot sustain the male characters dominance over the women. She understands her intended role as a submissive companion, merely created for John’s male pleasure as his mate. She takes back her own freedom and rejects Victor’s and John’s envisioned role for her. In season three, Lily becomes another victim of this male induced medical form of female obedience and submission of power. Lily assumes her power from her artificial inception, and she becomes more powerful than the men who surround her. Lily, having prior knowledge and memory of Brona’s past abuses and profession as a prostitute, adopts the more controversial and violent form of feminist, misandry. Lily aims to shift the unequal power of the patriarchal society towards women and withdraw men from certain freedoms and in some cases, their lives. To what she calls a war, Lily creates an army of women, most if not all are prostitutes, who agree with her cause and assume their power over the men who once sought to control or demean them.
7. The Institutionalization of Progressive Women
The series not only places female characters as agents of feminist ideals and gendered variability, but also inserts gender discussions and feminist themes directly into multiple narratives. Vanessa’s possession and propels the series into another gendered storyline, where Vanessa is forced into a women’s psychiatric facility. Here, the series introduces the theme of the exploitation of medicine to control and punish powerful, transgressive women. Vanessa is misdiagnosed, beaten, tortured and surgically manipulated by male doctors who aim to cure her of a supposed mental illness that she does not carry. This plot line acts as a literal metaphor for the scientific punishment of women through Vanessa, who embodies the male fear of ‘unrestrained’ female sexuality and power and diverts from boundaries of societal structures. With her head shaved to an androgynous frame, Vanessa is stripped mentally and physically of her agency by the male doctors while they penetrate her mind with long surgical drills. Prior to her forced admittance to the female asylum, Vanessa had deviated from the expectations of Victorian femininity by engaging in sexual intercourse before marriage and therefore disgraced her family’s name. Vanessa is left crippled by the male intervention and supervision, and female aids to come in the series narrative are the ones who provide actual prospects of help for Vanessa. In season three, Lily becomes another victim of this male induced medical form of female obedience and submission of power. She's captured by men who aim to cure her of her progressivism and independence, wanting to create her into a docile, quiet and acceptable image of a woman. These men, Dorian and Victor, who once loved her when they were able to control her, decide to capture her against her will to forcibly perform a restrictive medical procedure. In season three’s eighth episode Perpetual Night, Victor explains to a chained Lily the reasoning behind her capture, which inherently mimics Priegal’s explanation exactly, telling her, “we’re going to make you healthy, take away all your anger and pain and replace them with something much better – calm, poise, serenity. We’re going to make you into a proper woman.” This storyline replicates the exact motivations for medical and psychological female institutionalization. Lily was successfully collapsing any and all male assertion over her and therefore, broke the confines of acceptable femininity, resulting in her capture and punishment. Both storylines mirror their source inspiration, the notion that medicine lead by the male dominant structure aims to control, possess or punish the transgressive and divergent woman. Penny Dreadful also chooses recast and replaces certain and central male characters with female characters instead, producing an inclusion and another inversion of the classic Gothic tale. One of Dracula’s central male characters is Dr. John Seward, Lucy Westenra’s eventual fatal savior and psychiatric doctor in the asylum where some of Dracula’s minions reside. In Penny Dreadful, Dr. Florence Seward, played ferociously by Patti LuPone, who becomes a female savior to Vanessa, replaces him. In season three, Vanessa’s quest to find Dracula is aided not by a Dr. Van Helsing, but by a female expert, Dr. Catriona Hartdegen. Catriona matches, if not exceeds, Dr. Van Helsing’s knowledge and battle of vampirism, while also displaying unflinching control and strength in her personal life as well.
8. Masculinity
The Victorian male is pretty much the pinnacle of idealistic masculinity. As displayed in Dracula, male characters are the possessors of agency which enables them to act as the driving forces for progression and are able to enact upon, rather then the female characters who are passive and acted upon. Rocha connects the masculine agency with this idea of self-control and composure. Male characters in Dracula have no definable flaws, traumas, faults; they act with self-control and independence and succeed in their quest. Penny Dreadful takes this concept of masculine origin and challenges it, by reversing the character traits and placing men within the lines of peril. Central to this argument is the converging main plot; while Mina must be saved in Dracula to validate this protective masculinity in its structure, Mina cannot be saved in Penny Dreadful, which reinforces not only the failures of the male duty but the overall failure of a patriarchal Victorian society. Male characters are unable to function autonomously, Vanessa is not only the arc that propels the narrative forward, but is the strongest member of the anti-hero group and they cannot defeat any villain without her. Self-discipline, as displayed in Dracula, inhabits the cornerstone of male character strength. Penny Dreadful’s male characters are unable to carry self-discipline, as Bram Stoker would have created them and wholly unable to function autonomously. Sir Malcolm carries no self discipline as a male character, he was routinely unfaithful to his wife, made a career built upon abandoning his family, let his son die alone in Africa after becoming ill, and lost self-control himself with Madame Kali and instantly succumbed to her. He was repeatedly unsuccessful in finding any trace of his daughter Mina after her abduction, and only when Vanessa came to help him did they finally catch her trail. Ethan, although is initially and superficially presented as the ideal masculine form, he inhabits the basic failures. Ethan’s curse of lycanthropy and his inability to control his body and his actions depletes any notion of self-control or discipline. Ethan is repeatedly unable to save the women he loves, unable to save the helpless victims of his monstrosity when he turns into a werewolf and, with his inability to reverse his cursed form; unable to save himself. Victor Frankenstein has no self-discipline, which is the immediate source for his downfall. He is unable to function normally or independently, and relies heavily upon the use of dead bodies as a source of comfort and a misplaced God-complex. His intense bond with his only male ‘creations’ reflects a modern reading of Frankenstein as emasculated, underlying homosexual themes. Even the undead John Clare is a failure as a man; he is unable to complete his masculine duty in finding a woman and relies on Victor to help him. When Victor recreates a mate for him, he is unable to make her his possession and instead, she overpowers him.
9. Destruction of the horrible 'American Western Man"
Season three continues the inversion of the masculine ideal, moving the setting from traditionally patriarchal Victorian London, to the rugged masculine setting of the American west. Season three introduces the destruction of the masculine American western, of which such ideals of masculinity arise, like the characters of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Along with London, Penny Dreadful’s men cannot survive in this world of the typical male Western. The western setting is also filled with the series’ definition of men, without self-discipline or control, therefore making them the opposite of the masculine ideal along with no western societal structure to house them, and results in their demise.
10. Female and Male Sexuality
The masculine male conception as well as the diversity in female characters also influences how sexuality is perceived. Penny Dreadful uses these themes to aid with its departure from Victorian sexual politics. Dennis Shafer’s essay “Nosferatu Revisited: Monstrous Female Agency in Penny Dreadful” examines the sexual politics of the Victorian setting. Shafer attributes the heterosexual binary and heteronormativity as the constant binding structure that forms Victorian societal representations. Heteronormativity is the only presentation, and the foundation is a proper and Christian heterosexual coupling, as can be seen in Stoker’s Dracula. While these source texts follow heteronormativity and gender relations strictly by societal expectations, Penny Dreadful seems to navigate away from the rigidity of these expectations, assigning every main character a deviation from heteronormativity or traditional couplings. Vanessa is a heterosexual female, but she has a special connection, even love story, with Mina. She assumes the role of Mina’s love interest and fiancé Jonathan Harker in her passionate search for Mina, taking on this traditional role of male romantic savior. In Season one’s fifth episode, aptly titled, Closer Than Sisters, the love between Vanessa and Mina is shown from beginning in childhood. Vanessa begins to hate Mina for her desire to be in love and marrying a man, sharing her lament in having to share Mina’s affection. She later tells Mina in a letter, “I love you enough to kill you.” Vanessa’s relationships with Dorian Gray and Ethan are unsustainable and ultimately destructive. Dr. Victor Frankenstein breaks from traditional coupling, as he only loves his undead subjects and forms an intense, potentially homosexual bond with his second subject, and then with Lily. Sir Malcolm breaks the sanctity of Victorian Christian marriage by continuously committing adultery with Vanessa’s mother. In the second season, Sir Malcolm carries on an affair with a witch, Madame Kali, certainly not a traditional Christian coupling. Penny Dreadful makes a serious shift from heteronormativity by introducing a rather taboo
representation, the bisexual man. In Michaela Meyer’s article, “Representing Bisexuality on Television: The Case for Intersectional Hybrids,” Meyer explains the predominating representation of bisexuality in television characters, stating “representations of bisexuality have increased in the early part of the 21st century, but they follow a typical narrative pattern: women are more frequently represented as bisexual than men.” (Meyer, 366). Meyer also states that these bisexual characters are most typically non-white, in addition to being female. The depiction of bisexuality is widely more accepted upon female characters. A possible destruction of masculinity could arise if there is a representation of a bisexual male character, and the acceptance of female sexual relationships in American media is aided by the presentation of titillating lesbian sexual depictions. Penny Dreadful nonetheless, chooses to reverse the norm, making its two central male white characters bisexual. Dorian Grey is immediately presented as our first bisexual male character. While the novel does imply Dorian’s promiscuity with many individuals, Penny Dreadful explicitly displays Dorian’s bisexuality clearly without compromise. Gay sex, alongside lesbian sex is explicitly displayed in season one for Dorian’s introduction. In season two, Dorian also carries on a relationship with a transgendered female character named Angelique (Johnny Beauchamp, gender is fluid for Dorian and a characteristic that is not generally seen in male characters. Even more surprisingly, the series self-consciously flips another gender expectation with Ethan Chandler. Ethan is purported to be the white, masculine male the show needs to sustain a viable Victorian story. However in Season one’s fourth episode, Demimonde, Ethan is revealed as bisexual and has a sexual encounter with Dorian Gray.
11. The series masters the theme of duality
Multiple actors play dual roles, always with an important connection to each other. Characters who might not have a dual individual have duality within themselves, their own body or persona is halved, or they find a dual partner or other half within another character in the series. Vanessa’s persona is halved, separated by her own perceptions of lightness and darkness, good and the bad. However, she needs these two diverse and incorporative aspects to her character to survive, and it interim houses her strength and agency. As she states at the end of season one, the darkness lives within her, and whether she chooses to realize that it propels her agency or casts it astray, the two forms of Bram Stokers restrictive women, work in combination within Vanessa to create a flawed and distinct character. At the second season’s finale episode, And They Were Enemies, we see this duality become full and visually realized, as Vanessa looks at a ventriloquist puppet made in her exact image. Before she vanquishes the evil force housed within her miniature recreation, Vanessa exclaims, “you have no power to tempt me, I have faced more cruel eyes than yours” to which the doll replies, “then face mine, face yourself, know yourself.” Here Vanessa’s duality is showcased through a literal clash between her opposing but also corresponding selves. Vanessa also finds duality through her best friend Mina Harker. While being constantly adjoined as children, the series denotes their mirrored contrary images of each other from this early age. In every way, aesthetic and internally, Mina and Vanessa are opposites. Mina has blonde hair, Vanessa has black hair, Mina loves the gentile animals, and Vanessa is only interested in dangerous animals of prey. As Mina becomes engaged, Vanessa begins to see their differences and “mourns” for Mina, who encouraged her own “loss of self” for marrying off and taking her husbands name. Yet, even Vanessa comes to realize, during her growth into an adult, they are two parts of a whole that cannot survive without each other. After Vanessa’s betrayal, both women are wholly separated, which results in both if their dual destruction. Vanessa’s mental stability is weakened by this loss and men both human and spiritual abuse her. Mina is no longer surrounded by the protection of Vanessa, and is captured by vampires and held ransom, and it is only Vanessa, her other half, who is capable of finding her. Penny Dreadful’s other major female character Brona finds duality quite literally through Lily, as she is the revival of the deceased Brona remade living by Victor and played by the same actress, Billie Piper. Despite the same facial features, they seem to be two completely different individuals; yet, they are inherently still the same person. Lily can remember all of Brona’s past and memories as they share the same brain. For the majority of the third season, Lily refers to her past as Brona’s past, refusing to acknowledge it could ever happen to her. Lily repels her previous, or other self as Brona, and seems to embody the antithesis of Brona, creating a war against any life that could resemble Brona’s. But towards the end of the series, after her capture by Victor and Dorian, she tells Victor not to continue with the procedure because she does not want to lose her memories. She no longer refers to them as Brona’s memories, she accepts them as her own, and along with the joy and the pain they bring both women.
12. PATTI FREAKING LUPONE PEOPLE
In season two, Vanessa recounts a memory of when she encountered and received aid from a witch in the countryside by the name of Joan Clayton, nicknamed ‘The Cut-Wife’, a play on mid-wife, as she was known for administering abortions to women in the neighboring town. Patti LuPone plays the role of Joan, and she reprises a role as Joan’s relative descendant, Dr. Florence Seward, in season three. Like Lily and Brona, both Dr. Seward and Joan have the visual mirroring by being played by the same actress. Their duality arises through two main components. They play direct opposites from each other in profession and personal belief, Joan finds healing and answers within the spiritual world and Dr. Seward conversely, with medical research and application. These two character unite, and become one, within their dedication and help with Vanessa’s tortured soul. Both give her guidance and genuinely aim to help her. This transformation between two characters has a specific added intention with the casting of Patti LuPone, who not only plays both characters similarly, but also creates another kind of transformation between character and actor and its implied transferal of traits. Such casting is not unique to Penny Dreadful, Glenn Close’s casting in the drama Damages (2007-2012) as well as Viola Davis in ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder (2014-), is strategic. This casting results in the transferal of character-actor perception, Patti LuPone’s tough, outsized New York persona is infused into both of her characters. As both women, she never softens her seriousness, with no appearance of sentimentality, mothering or smiling. LuPone creates both Joan and Dr. Seward with powerful intensity that is unforgiving and unapologetic. There is no emotional sentiment, or female nurturing; she aims to help Vanessa with her extensive knowledge and skills in both realms of expertise.
13. Women as "Mothers"
Penny Dreadful also fractures another female typecast, the female mother and the idea of mothering children. Rocha also discusses the theme of motherhood within Dracula, stating that the book presents the doomed female character Lucy Westenra as a “deviant mother… ‘who preys on working class children in order to demonize a particular form of inverted motherhood’…casting her as parasite attracted to youth.” (Rocha, 32). Penny Dreadful inhabits such inverted mother figures within Madame Kali (Helen McCrory), as a deviant witch mother, Joan Clayton (Patti LuPone), who becomes a mother figure to Vanessa without any inclination of feminine mothering and Vanessa herself, as the demon threatens to turn her into the “Mother of Evil.” If Vanessa had succumbed to the demon, she would have become the “Mother of Evil,” the very definition of inverted motherhood. Penny Dreadful continues Dracula’s creation of unsuccessful mother, not all women become mothers or even marry, and the mothers that do exist in the series are not sustained as successful. Children are the other half of this idea of female mothering and Penny Dreadful upends this ideal as well, creating a series saturated with lost children. Every child in the show has been taken or disassociated from their mother or both their parents and the family structure cannot exist in this Victorian setting and ruptures both the patriarchal and matriarchal. Mina becomes a lost child, desperately aims to be found by her father Sir Malcolm and Vanessa, her mother having already passed away. Ethan, without a living mother, evades the clutches of his father Jared Talbot, wishing to escape him and remain a lost child. Vanessa remains a lost child until her death in the series finale, having been torn away from her mother and family while being sought by the demon, which is also the cause of her mother’s immediate death. Brona is a lost child, having run away from her family and hometown. Her mother was another defunct mother structure, who aimed to force Brona back into the abusive relationship she was previously in. Later as Lily, she recounts the memory of having lost her baby after leaving the infant alone at home, where she passed from exposure to the cold. Brona herself is another unable mother. Lily serves as an adoptive mother to Justine (Jessica Barden) whom she rescues from an underground sex-slave network. Lily takes Justine in, and molds her as her own, teaching her the ways of the world, as she sees them. Despite her strength, motherhood transmits its inverted structure and Lily cannot save Justine. Justine becomes the future incarnation of Brona’s dead child, as Lily comes home from being held captive to find her dead in the cold, empty house.
14. Christianity and Religion
While these narrative contractions are stable constants in the shows thematic structure, one theme remains an unstable force, that of religion. Religion and Catholicism is a starkly heavy presence in Penny Dreadful. People believe in God and place immense faith within prayer, which is quite unusual in American programming. Vanessa counts on this notion, this definition of religion, that prayer and God can save her, but it proves to be not enough. In Penny Dreadful’s first episode, this fractured sense of religion arises within Vanessa’s instruction. Vanessa sits and prays in front of the cross that hangs in her sparse wall. A spider emerges from the cross and makes its way over to Vanessa, crawling up her arm and finding its place upon her hands formed in prayer. In many instances, the show uses religion as a suppression of Vanessa’s agency. Vanessa holds her power in her dual form of evil and virtuousness, yet she prays to suppress this darkness that she finds wicked until it ends in a catastrophic breakage. Vanessa is at her most controlled when she embraces her agency in the form of darkness, as we see in the finale of season two. Vanessa believes she will find God after she dies, but that doesn’t seem to ring true. In an interview with series show runner John Logan, he states, “the show for me has always been about a woman grappling with God and faith,” acknowledging that religion has an overarching, yet quite unsuccessful grasp over Vanessa and the Victorian structure. By the series’ third and final season, Vanessa has wholly lost her faith and given up prayer, catapulting her into uncharted territory, which includes agreeing to join Dracula (Christian Camargo), another Gothic characteristic reversed.
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