SOURCE: "Women, Danger, and Death: The Perversion of the Female Principle in Stephen King's Fiction," in Sexual Politics and Popular Culture, edited by Diane Raymond, Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990, pp. 158-72.

In the following essay, Burns and Kanner discuss the relationship between women and evil in King's work and assert, "On a complex and subtextual level, women are represented in ways that reveal male fear and envy of female sexuality and reproductive biology."

I hope that this study may lessen the male-centering propensity and shed new light on the psycho-sexual role of woman; that it may indicate how much more that is feminine exists in men than is generally believed, and how greatly woman's influence and strivings have affected social institutions which we still explain on a purely masculine basis.

With these words, the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim expresses the mission of his cross-cultural inquiry into rites...