EMBROIDERY, SWEET LITTLE HOMEY CRAFT…OR NOT?
Embroidery, that delicate and homebound art, has long lived at the edges of Gothic fiction — a craft of patience, beauty, and hidden menace. In Mademoiselle Frankenstein, Océane takes up her embroidery needle not to ornament a handkerchief or a wedding gown, but for more nefarious means. Her stitches are strong, intricate, even decorative: a perverse marriage of artistry and anatomy. Lacework woven across a dead man’s cheek. Rosy threads tracing the lips of an undead mouth.
The grotesque beauty of this act — a young woman quietly embroidering her way through death — feels almost inevitable in the Gothic world. The very nature of embroidery lends itself to horror: the sharp needle, the hours of lonely, obsessive labor.
Embroidery has surfaced before in Gothic literature, often hinting at hidden madness or suppressed violence:
In The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Laura Fairlie is often depicted sewing — a symbol of her entrapment in a fragile, “ladylike” existence that leaves her vulnerable to monstrous deceit.
In The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, the governess’s sewing basket sits beside her as she tries to deny the supernatural horrors creeping around her, a fragile domestic token against overwhelming terror.
Even in Dracula, Mina Harker’s careful note-taking and needlework are juxtaposed against the bloody invasions of vampirism — order and control set against the uncontrollable.
Needle arts also occur in neo-Gothic and modern Gothic fiction:
Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Sewing and quilting recur as deeply symbolic acts — delicate domestic arts juxtaposed against the brutal legacy of slavery and death.
Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber: In this lush, Gothic retelling of classic fairy tales, vivid attention to domestic crafts (including sewing) twist into symbols of power, violence, and sexual awakening.
Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith: In this Victorian-set crime novel (rich with Gothic elements), sewing and embroidery symbolize the entrapment of women and their hidden agency.
Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties: In the story “The Husband Stitch,” sewing (and a literal stitch) becomes a potent symbol of bodily control, violence, and repressed horror.
Embroidery in Gothic literature: a gentle, patient, lethal craft.
