SOURCE: Burns, Craig William. “It's That Time of the Month: Representations of the Goddess in the Work of Clive Barker.” Journal of Popular Culture 27, no. 3 (winter 1993): 35-40.

In the following essay, Burns examines images of powerful females in Barker's short fiction, particularly the stories “Raw Head Rex” and “The Madonna.”

Until recently, the Western world has lived under the grip of male domination. It is only within the last century that women have begun to speak out for themselves, to fight for more rights, more “equality,” through what has been labeled a “Woman's Movement.” It is interesting to note that there is, in human history, a tradition of matricentral tendencies, a trait which is also extremely common, and practically the rule, in the animal kingdom, as Marilyn French points out in her book Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals. And as illustrated in historical records and present-day...