Shuffling forth: An exploration of the evolution of the Little Zombie Girl

Although academic interest in the zombie has flourished in the last twenty years the little zombie girl has been largely ignored so my research aims to address this lacuna. This thesis examines how the little zombie girl relates to gender, sexuality, reproduction, and power structures, focusing on three primary texts: George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010-2022), and M.R. Carey’s The Girl with all the Gifts (2014). Utilising theories from gender and sexuality studies, helped me to approach the sense of disquiet that surrounds the little zombie girl. These theories underpin my argument that the little zombie girl derives much of her power from her position as Other. In my research I have shown how the little zombie girl is unique and she stands out from the zombie horde because she embodies the juxtaposition of not just the living and the dead, like all zombies do, but also the juxtaposition of an innocent child in need of protection and a threatening monster to be protected against, a little girl yet a markedly othered creature, a subject that is both pre-pubescent yet reproductive in her own right, a character that is both irresistible yet repulsive. I have looked at how the little zombie girl allows us to interrogate our fears surrounding things like the end of Anthropocene, fear of the Other, and also what it is to be human. By unpacking these concerns, I have shown that the little zombie girl is a powerful and subversive figure because she challenges our assumptions around heteronormativity, patriarchy, and human superiority and she derives her power by disrupting societal norms, subverting expectations, and rebelling against the status quo.

Publisher

University of Galway

Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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Collections

University of Galway Theses (PhD Theses)