ABSTRACT

The inquisitive and enquiring Gothic heroine, who rose to an early prominence in the Gothic tradition and was a forerunner of the horror film's Final Girl, is still to be found in Spain's horror films today. Writers on horror cinema are by now well acquainted with Carol Clover's theory of the Final Girl, the heroine who manages to defeat the monster/killer and survive her ordeal, while others fail, particularly male characters. Carol Clover's theory has received some critique, but the figure nonetheless persists, and Final Girls can be found in recent Spanish horror and slasher thrillers, such as Angela in Alejandro Amenabar's Tesis / Thesis, Laura in El orfanato / The Orphanage or Julia in Ausentes. The heroines therefore run the risk of appearing wilful and thus stereotypically feminine, insisting on their own meanings contrary to common sense: they are thus co-opted back into a patriarchal narrative thought to have been submerged but still there, in plain sight but unrecognised.