The Aesthetics of the Serpent: Identity, Stigma, and Renewal in Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent

Year 2026, Volume: 11 Issue: 1, 171 - 183, 26.03.2026

Baturay Erdal

https://doi.org/10.29110/soylemdergi.1853301

https://izlik.org/JA97RS85GC

Abstract

This article explores the image of the serpent and the reinterpretation of its association with women in Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent. The serpent, formerly a symbol of renewal and intuitive wisdom, turns into a representation of evil along with the rise of Judeo-Christian theology, and thus appears in the form a discursive apparatus serving the demonization of women through the culturally produced links to femininity. Challenging the patriarchal transmission of serpentine imagery, the author subverts this cultural lineage and restores it as a symbol of renewal and aesthetic transformation through the novel’s female protagonist, Cora Seaborne. While Cora rebuilds her identity through science and reason against the social constraints of the Victorian era, the novel’s understanding of contemporary feminist aesthetics reconsiders the serpent-woman image not as a mark of stigma but rather as a narrative of liberation and transformation.

Keywords

Serpent , Stigma , Feminism , Woman , Sarah Perry

Yılan Estetiği: Sarah Perry’nin The Essex Serpent Romanında Kimlik, Damgalanma ve Yenilenme

https://izlik.org/JA97RS85GC

Abstract

Bu makale, Sarah Perry’nin The Essex Serpent adlı romanında yılan imgesinin ve bu imgenin kadın ile özdeşleştirilmesinin yeniden yorumlanışını ele alır. Bir zamanlar yenilenmenin ve sezgisel bilgeliğin sembolü olan yılan kavramı, Yahudi-Hristiyan geleneğin ortaya çıkmasıyla birlikte kötücül ve şeytani olanın simgesi olarak kullanılmış, kültürel olarak kadınlıkla kurulmuş bağlantılar üzerinden kadının şeytanlaştırılmasında söylemsel bir araç olarak kullanılmıştır. Yılan imgesinin eril aktarımına meydan okuyan yazar, bu kültürel mirası ters yüz ederek onu romanın kadın kahramanı Cora Seaborne ile yeniden doğuş ve estetik dönüşümün sembolü haline getirir. Cora, Viktorya dönemi toplumsal kısıtlamalarına karşı bilim ve akıl aracılığıyla kendi kimliğini yeniden inşa ederken, romanın çağdaş feminist estetik anlayışı, yılan-kadın imgesini bir damgalanma biçiminden çıkarıp, özgürleşmenin ve deri değiştirmenin bir anlatısı olarak yeniden ele alır.

Keywords

Yılan , Damga , Feminizm , Kadın , Sarah Perry

References

• Alban, Gillian M. E. (2017). The Medusa Gaze in Contemporary Women’s Fiction: Petrifying, Maternal and Redemptive. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
• Alcoff, Linda M. (1988). “Cultural Feminism Versus Post-structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory”. Signs 13(3), 405–436.
• Auerbach, Nina (1982). Woman and The Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press.
• Caspi, Mishel M., & Mohammad Jiyad (2004). Eve in Three Traditions and Literatures: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.
• Cixous, Hélène (1976). “The Laugh of the Medusa”. Trans. K. Cohen & P. Cohen. Signs 1(4), 875–893.
• Daly, Mary (1990). Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
• Ewing, Jeffrey A. (2017). “Women as ‘the Devil’s Gateway’: A Feminist Critique of Christian Demonology”. In B. W. McCraw & R. Arp (Eds.), Philosophical Approaches to Demonology (pp. 80–97). New York and London: Routledge.
• Gasser, Erika (2025). “Satan, Sex, and Gender in Early Modern Europe”. In R. Raiswell, M. D. Brock & D. R. Winter (Eds.), The Routledge History of the Devil in the Western Tradition (pp. 265-279). New York: Routledge.
• Gilbert, Sandra M., & Susan Gubar (2000). The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination (2nd ed.). New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
• Gussenhoven, Frances (2001). “The Serpent with a Matron’s Face: Medieval Iconography of Satan in the Garden of Eden”. European Medieval Drama 4(1), 207-230.
• Irigaray, Luce (1991). Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche. Trans. G. C. Gill. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Jantzen, Grace M. (1999). Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• King, Jeannette (2000). Women and the Word: Contemporary Women Novelists and the Bible. Houndsmills, U.K.: MacMillan Press.
• Kristeva, Julia (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. L. S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Merchant, Carolyn (2013). Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture (2nd ed.). New York and London: Routledge.
• Millett, Kate (2000). Sexual Politics. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
• Perry, Sarah (2017a). “Confronting the Possibility of Monsters in 'The Essex Serpent'” [Interview]. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/532818864 (Access Date: 23.11.2025).
• Perry, Sarah (2017b). “Interview with Sarah Perry” [Interview]. https://kate-braithwaite.com/2017/05/25/interview-with-sarah-perry/ (Access Date: 30.11.2025).
• Perry, Sarah (2018). “Sarah Perry on Sexism in Publishing, Why We Don’t Need ‘Strong Female Characters’, and Inventing Her Own Gothic Monster”. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/sarah-perry-melmoth-essex-serpent-author-sexism-publishing-strong-female-characters-a8362006.html (Access Date: 05.12.2025).
• Prevot, Andrew (2023). The Mysticism of Ordinary Life: Theology, Philosophy, and Feminism. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Rich, Adrienne (1995). “Anger and tenderness”. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (pp. 21–40). New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company.
• Starhawk (1987). Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
• Stone, Merlin (1976). When God Was a Woman. Harcourt. New York: The Dial Press.
• Walker, Barbara G. (1983). The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
• Williams, Selma R., & Pamela Williams Adelman (1992). Riding the Nightmare: Women and Witchcraft from the Old World to Colonial Salem. New York: HarperPerennial.