SOURCE: Indick, Ben P. “Lovecraft's Ladies.” In Discovering H. P. Lovecraft, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, pp. 80–84. San Bernardino, CA: The Borgo Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Indick refutes the common assumption that Lovecraft's stories are not concerned with female characters.

One of the commonplace stereotypes about H. P. Lovecraft is that he had very little interest in women. His marriage itself, to Sonia Greene, is dismissed as some sort of aberration. L. Sprague de Camp, in his biography, remarks on “a lack of women in his stories.”¹ Indeed, Lovecraft himself writes: “There is no such thing as ‘love’ in any unified, permanent, or important sense.”² In a letter to Frank Belknap Long, he states: “(women) are by Nature literal, prosaic and commonplace, given to dull realistick Details and practical Things, and incapable of vigorous artistick Creation and genuine, first-hand appreciation.”³ In letters referring to the young woman he...