Lustful ladies, she-demons and good little girls: female agency and desire in the universes of Sookie Stackhouse

Abstract

This article explores the imaginings of female desire and sexual agency conjured in the fictional universes of Sookie Stackhouse: HBO TV show True Blood (Allan Ball, 2008–2014) and its literary prototype – the horror-paranormal romance series The Southern Vampire Mysteries (Charlaine Harris, 2001–2013). A particular emphasis is placed on the dynamics between the literary and the televised versions of the story in order to investigate the ways in which True Blood complicates and re-configures the gendered scripts of sexual freedom and constraint produced by the novels. The first part of the paper reveals the ambiguities of female sexual agency and (dis)empowerment embedded in the accounts of the leading heroine’s sexual awakening. The second part explores the tropes of polygyny and polyandry, looking into their potential to create or contest gendered standards of sexual autonomy and morality. The last part considers the meanings of female sexual expression as elucidated through the romantic stories of Violet and Jessica, bringing to the fore the messages produced by their contrasting resolutions.

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