On the surface, these exchanges appear innocuous but to a queer audience in the 1940s, a female being labeled “odd” would function in much the same way as a gay man being called a “sissy.”
The coding evident in each film suggests the innate desires of each woman are something to be feared and something by which to be repulsed. Barbara Creed extends Carroll’s argument about the monster in Horror and the Monstrous Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection by arguing that, at its core, the monster is always imbued with the feminine.
The assumption that Irena possesses lesbian feelings is especially threatening because, to the audience, it implies a castration of the masculine identity. She is not a woman who desires men, which suggests that she is not a woman who needs a man.
She is an “other.” Yet, for societal boundaries to maintain intact, and for women to accept these boundaries, neither the desires nor the needs of these “others” can be allowed to persist.
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