Lauren Rocha's "The Sinful Maternal"

Lauren Rocha is assistant professor of practice of English and first-year writing coordinator at Merrimack College. Her work has appeared in such publications as Journal of Gender Studies and Journal of International Women's Studies. Her research interests are horror, gender, and popular culture.

Rocha applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, The Sinful Maternal: Motherhood in Possession Films, and reported the following:

Page 99 in The Sinful Maternal: Motherhood in Possession Films is part of the chapter discussing motherhood in The Conjuring (2013) and The Conjuring 2 (2016). Specifically, it examines the exorcism scene towards the end of The Conjuring in which Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) are attempting to banish the possessing spirit of Bathsheba from Carolyn’s (Lili Taylor) body.

If readers turn to page 99, then they will definitely get a glimpse into the larger topic of the book. I look at the details involved in Carolyn’s exorcism, such as Carolyn attempting to murder her youngest daughter to severe the connection between Carolyn and her motherhood, and how they draw on Carolyn’s maternal bond with her family to fully expel Bathsheba from her. I also begin to write about Lorraine as a motherly exorcist, something that is the opposite of traditionally depicted exorcists in horror. In the end, it is Lorraine who is able to successfully exorcise the evil spirit by reminding Carolyn of her motherly role to have her draw on that familial bond. Both of these examples highlight certain parts of motherhood that are developed in more detail throughout the book: mother/child relationships and maternal agency.

Page 99 also has one of my favorite images in the entire book. It shows a fully possessed Carolyn, transformed with inhuman eyes, ripping her way out of a white sheet that was placed over her. Her mouth and cheeks are stained with blood, as is the surrounding sheet. Only half of her face is shown, which adds to the terror of the image. The image conveys a sense of birth, of a possessed Carolyn emerging to spread chaos and destruction. To me, it is an image that embodies the book’s themes of possession, birth, and motherhood.

Learn more about The Sinful Maternal at the University Press of Mississippi website.

--Marshal Zeringue