Virginia Feito on Victorian Psycho and the rise of femgore
"I mean I was ejecting bloody lumps of flesh from my vagina at eleven years of age."
Winifred Notty is here at Ensor House to play the perfect Victorian governess. Except she’s really not the best candidate, by a long shot. From tormenting the house staff, to casually harming her charges, Winifred gives in to her every compulsion. Victorian Psycho is brimming with gore, horror, humour, and femme rage.
We are honoured to have Virginia Feito to chat Victorian Psycho with us today.
Your writing style is so fun, as seen from the chapter titles. Did you come up with them first or the content first?
The content. The earliest drafts of the novel actually had no chapter breaks at all. It was just one big bleak throw-up. I added them in afterwards, very much inspired by the elaborate, spoilery chapter headings featured in a lot of Victorian literature.
Victorian Psycho has horror and humour. Why do you think humour is so important in horror novels?
It’s not always important in horror novels, but it’s definitely important for me in order to deal with horror in my day-to-day life. I wouldn’t know how to handle it otherwise. In this case it was also crucial for the psychology of the narrator because she’s just having such a joyful time and manipulating us with what is essentially her stand-up comedy.
Nothing is off the table in Victorian Psycho and there are so many unhinged moments. What do you feel when you need to write in Winifred’s POV?
I feel like I need to let go of any (reasonable) fear I might have of “going there”, because the narration is first-person, and she’s a psychopath, and I can’t be coy about it. So I tried to get into the headspace of somebody who isn’t afraid of upsetting anyone or coming off as deranged or weird or nonsensical. It was pretty liberating, but then I’d read some of it again and feel kind of ashamed of myself.
Readers are obviously going to come up with theories to try and make sense of what’s going on. Are we overthinking things? Should we just go with the flow?
I love overthinking things. There’s definitely a valid way of reading this story that is just appreciating the “fun” of it, but I can also say there was a lot of overthinking that went into writing it, so anyone who wants to seek layered conceptual depth within its pages is absolutely welcome to – it’ll be there.
Victorian Psycho is also about femme rage. Why do you think femgore works so well as a genre?
Because we were late to the game because until recently women were supposed to be lovely and obedient martyrs and nobody wanted to read books with gross female characters in them. So we’re just having the time of our life now, discovering the nuances of a genre that still feels very fresh and incredibly satisfying.
We really enjoy the discussion of how women actually face blood way more frequently than the average man, yet seen as more squeamish. Is the rise of femgore here to change this notion?
Definitely. Men have no clue how insane our body horror is. And maybe because of this or in spite of it we’ve normalized it, and I’m here to question that choice because the things our bodies do has traumatized me for life and I want to talk about it all the time. I mean I was ejecting bloody lumps of flesh from my vagina at eleven years of age. How are we over this??
Finally, this book is set near the Christmas period. Would you recommend buying Victorian Psycho as a Christmas present or are we going to get weird looks?
Definitely would recommend! It’s very much a companion to Dicken’s A Christmas Carol (albeit a very weird, graphic sort of companion) – with deliberate winks at details like Scrooge’s Dutch tile fireplace. Just because you buy into the cozy, wassailing variety of Christmas doesn’t mean you won’t also enjoy it at its most outrageous and belligerent. I love me all the faces of Christmas!
