Chapter 4 - ‘I Know Your Body’: Trauma and the Frankenstein Myth in ‘Coven’

Summary

Introduction

‘Coven’, the third season of American Horror Story takes place at Miss Robichaux's Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies in New Orleans, now home to a coven of witches. Its members include ‘Black Widow’ Zoe, who unintentionally causes fatal haemorrhaging in her sexual partners; telekinetic Madison; ‘Human Voodoo Doll’ Queenie; telepathic Nan; outsider Misty, who has the power of resurgence; and Cordelia, the young witches’ guardian and mentor. Cordelia's estranged mother, Fiona, is the current Supreme, the leader of the witches who inherited her immense power from her predecessor. Fiona's abuse of her position has caused numerous problems, including infiltration from witch-hunters and a growing animosity with voodoo queen Marie Laveau and her followers. This is eventually rectified when Cordelia successfully completes the ‘Seven Wonders’, becoming the new Supreme and revealing the coven to the public.

In ‘Coven’, death is an inevitable, but unstable state. A number of the characters die – sometimes more than once – and are resurrected (Kyle, Misty, Zoe, Madison, Myrtle, Queenie), returned as ghosts or other spiritual entities (Nan, Luke, Spalding, Axeman), reappear on screen in hell (Laveau, Madame LaLaurie, Fiona) or in monstrous form (Bastien, LaLaurie's daughters). The series has a particular affiliation with Mary Shelley's seminal novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) and its numerous adaptations, primarily through the character of Kyle Spencer, who takes the place of the Creature. Analysing ‘Coven’ within the framework of Frankenstein assists in establishing it as a Gothic text, potentially reframing how issues such as gender and disability are approached. ‘Coven’ is, after all, a story of the transcendence and inevitability of death, the power of damaged bodies, and infinite loops of trauma in the Gothic.

Shortly after her arrival at the Academy, Zoe accompanies Madison to a party, where she makes a romantic connection with the mature and charming Kyle. However, Kyle's fraternity brothers assault Madison, leading to her killing them in revenge. To repay Zoe for dispatching the surviving perpetrator with her la petite mort powers, Madison later sneaks both girls into the mortuary to revive the innocent Kyle, stitching together a new body for him by choosing from the various ‘boy parts’ on offer. While their resurrection spell works, it leaves Kyle with no voice and limited cognition. Therefore, while the boundaries between life and death are continually transgressed throughout ‘Coven’, Kyle's narrative is particularly reminiscent of the Frankenstein myth.