Section 5

THE POSSESSED GIRL

The theme of sexual repression and hysteria is central to films about female possession. Again we see the fragile borders traversed; this time between sanity and hysteria. Once the impressionable young girl has been in contact with the dark, usually sexual, forces that lie pent-up in her youthful bosom, she is easy prey. The possessed girl has much in common with the mystical moppet--both dwell on the border between the real and imaginary but whereas the girl with a vivid unnatural imagination has a special ability to enter into the mystical realm, the possessed child is taken over by a force from another world and transformed into a monster within the earthly realm. Films about possession by the devil, constitute the largest grouping, that star monstrous little women. One of the most commercially successful horror films of all time, The Exorcist (1973), spawned a sub-genre of imitators, including: The Devil Within Her (l974), Abby (1974), Demon Witch Child (1974), Exorcism (1974), The Night Child (1974), The Sexorcist (1974), To The Devil--A Daughter (1976), Cathy's Curse (1976), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), and Audrey Rose (1977). Very few films feature a possessed boy. The behaviour of the possessed girl disturbs acceptable standards of propriety and decency which is why it is so shocking and yet so appealing.

Historically, the majority of recorded cases of possession were of women, particularly nuns, and young girls. Reported cases of devil possession go back at least to the seventh century. In one instance, it was recorded that the possessed threw herself onto the ground "and rending herself in a lamentable fashion, began to utter loud and terrible cries accompanied by the most filthy words." (Robbins, 392). According to The Malleus Malificarum, the Catholic Church's manual for witch hunters, the female sex is more prone to possession because women are "feebler both in mind and body" (Kramer and Sprenger, 44) and because women are prone to "carnal lust", which in them is "insatiable." (47). Given the popularity of films about female possession--it would seem that this, once popular misconception, still holds wide appeal.

Significantly, the external behaviour of the possessed, closely resembled that of the 1Sth-century hysteric as described by Breuer and Freud who both regarded hysteria as a psychic disease caused, in some degree, by sexual problems. Bodily and facial contortions, deepening of the voice, and allotriophagy, or the vomiting of unusual objects were common to both. Regan's behaviour in The Exorcist involved characteristics, usually assigned to the hysteric. No doubt historically recorded cases of female possession would, in another time and place, have been diagnosed as instances of hysteria.

Freud (1905) developed his theory of hysteria further, arguing that the hysteric oscillates between taking up a female and male position. The hysteric's confusion, raises questions about the absurdity of defining identity in terms of one or the other gender. Lacan (Ragland-Sullivan) goes further to argue that all subjects are potential hysterics, that hysteria is the price paid for the division of the speaking subject into male and female. Feminist theory (Bernheimer and Kahane) in its rereading of the Dora case history, has appropriated the image of the female hysteric as an heroic figure in rebellion against the dictates of patriarchy. In sofar as the monstrous little woman's actions contravene proper feminine behaviour, we could argue that the possessed female monster is an hysteric, a pubescent girl in revolt against the gender role already carved out for her by a patriarchal culture.

The recent New Zealand film, Heavenly Creatures, based on a true story about two teenage girls who murder one of their mothers, powerfully associates hysteria with sexual repression and lesbian desire. The girls conjure up an imaginary world, a "fourth dimension", over which they preside as King and Queen. It is populated by fabulous creatures, and malevolent male figures, such as the young Orson Welles, who carry out their unspoken aggressive desires. Through repression their innocent yearnings eventually transform into destructive, murderous impulses. In various scenes we see them running through the forest, their playful laughter transforming into outbursts of hysterical screaming. Their decision to murder the mother arises in response to the efforts of both sets of parents to separate them. The mother chosen for slaughter is the one who is most obviously trapped by poverty and by female role-conditioning. She epitomises everything the girls must overcome if they are to remain together.

One of the first films to explore child-possession is Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961) based on Henry James' short story, The Turn of the Screw. Because The Innocents portrays a case in which both a brother and sister are possessed, it is worth considering in some detail in order to determine whether or not gender influences the filmic representation of possession.

Two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, live on a vast country estate, provided for by a wealthy but absent Uncle, who wants nothing to do with their world. When a new governess, Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr), replaces the recently-deceased Governess, Miss Jessel, she becomes convinced that the children have been possessed by the spirits of Miss Jessel and her sinister partner, Quint, who also met an untimely death.

Sexually repressed and painfully sensitive, Miss Giddens tries to force the children to admit they are in mortal danger, but only succeeds in terrifying them. They eventually appear to crack under the emotional strain, each one exhibiting all the signs of an emotional breakdown. Or could it be possession? The question of whether or not the children are possessed by the ghosts of the dead couple, or by Miss Gidden's own transgressive desire, is left open. It is even possible that the ghostly figures which Miss Giddens sees might be creations of her own morbid imagination. The film's power resides in its refusal to give a rational explanation, preferring instead to offer images which might be interpreted in a number of ways. In a particularly spooky scene Miss Giddens encounters a statue of a childlcupid in the garden. She recoils in horror at the sight of insects crawling from its laughing lips. One interpretation might emphasise the governess' hysteria: a different, but related, explanation might propose that the image depicts an intimate link between childhood, decay and death.

Although the central relationship is between Miss Giddens and and Miles, with whom she appears to be in love, the film's themeof corruption and hysteria is played out more vividly in relation to Flora. Like Amy from The Curse of the Cat People, Flora is similarly associated with the garden as a place of natural delight and dangerous morbidity. Sensitive and pretty, Flora is also strangely self-possessed for a child. When Miss Giddens arrives at the Estate, she hears a voice calling out Flora's name across the lake. She first sees Flora--her name suggests nature--as an upside-down reflection in the lake. Despite these eerie signs, she observes that Flora is "an enchanting child" who certainly looks "angelic."

The Innocents 550K quicktime movie

Through an accumulation of small details Clayton suggests a dark, mysterious aspect to Flora's personality. She predicts correctly that Miles will soon be arriving home from school when he is expelled. She stands at the foot of Miss Giddens' bed, watching her, perfectly at home, a sprite cloaked in dark shadows. She is mesmerised watching a spider devour its prey. "Oh look, there's a lovely spider and its eating a butterfly," she exclaims, coldly poking the helpless creature further into the deadly web. With its fluttering white wings, the butterfly is not unlike Miss Giddens, her gown billowing as she sweeps around the dark house which gradually envelops her in its own sticky web of shadowy corridors and dark rooms. On another occasion Flora, with calm premeditation, almost drowns her pet tortoise. Miles says of his sister: "One can never believe Flora. She invents things. She imagines them."

On two separate occasions by the lake, Flora hums the song from Miss Jessel's music box: both times, a ghostly female figure appears in the reeds, as if in answer to Flora's music. The apparition communicates to Flora through song--the very song that Flora hummed at night over Miss Giddens' bed. After Miss Giddens verbally attacks Flora, trying to make her admit she can "see" Miss Jessel, the girl becomes hysterical, voicing obscenities and yelling uncontrollably. "To hear such filth from a child's mouth," says the housekeeper after failing to subdue Flora who screams throughout the night. Flora's cruel behaviour, night wanderings, eerie singing, lewd talk and apparent communion with Miss Jessel's spirit--all suggest a mysterious dark side in Flora's make-up.

Under pressure from Miss Giddens to admit he has been in communication with Quint, Miles also becomes hysterical. Before he collapses and dies, Miles, whose face becomes that of Quint's, screams at the distraught governess: "You are a damned hussy, a damned dirty-minded hag". The scene is depicted with such ambiguity, it is impossible to determine whether Miles is possessed by Miss Gidden's hysteria or by Quint. His outburst however, seems to expose Miss Giddens' repressed desire to shed her puritan values and embrace a life of sexual passion.

The Innocents 1.7MB quicktime movie

The Innocents represents Miss Giddens' relationship with, and effect on, the two children quite differently. While brother and sister both become channels for her repressed desires, Miles is the one with whom she is sexually obsessed. He treats her like a lover. He demands to know why she wants to be alone with him, offers no protest when she kisses him on the lips, and says to her, in the tone of an adult male: "No, my dear! You don't think I'm like any other boy. Otherwise we wouldn't be having these conversations." While Miles' death is portrayed largely as a consequence of Miss Gidden's own hysteria, Flora's collapse is associated more with the girl's own propensity for cruelty and corruption. Miles' is not sinister in the manner of his sister. He is "knowing", even adult, like a lover in relation to Miss Giddens, but he is not cruel, nor is he depicted as in direct "communication" with the spirit world. Although there is a suggestion that Miss Gidden's sees Quint in him (particularly at the end), he does not appear to be linked as strongly to the dark forces of the "other side" as is his sister. When Miss Giddens first arrives, Flora asks her what seems, initially, an odd question. "If weren't good would the Lord leave me here to walk around?" The female child is more prone to sinister deeds and hysterical convulsions and she is also stronger--perhaps because of her alliance with the spirit world. Flora survives the ordeal while her brother perishes, apparently destroyed by an excess of feminine hysteria.

Of course, we only see these morbid events through Miss Giddens' eyes and they may be a product of her over-wrought imagination, but Flora's sinister side suggests they are real. The important fact is that the film constructs, mainly female characters (Flora, Miss Giddens, Miss Jessel) as intermediaries between the world of spirit and body, fantasy and reality, life and death. Miles is also susceptible, but the text marks his possession as sexual rather than supernatural. He is like the boy of The Go-Between, a conduit for adult passions, specifically for Miss Gidden's powerful but unfulfilled desires, which she has directed towards the boy, who also represents the Satanic figure of Quint. The mise-en-scene, or setting, of desire, is created by the film's all-pervading atmosphere of feminine mystery and barely repressed hysteria, which signifies the world of the imagination, and is expressed through the triad of frightening female figures.

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