Jayda Le

Greg McClure

Writing 39B

8 February 2017

In I am Legend, by Richard Matheson, feminism is prevalent throughout the story and

how Robert Neville portrays women. From the beginning of the novel Matheson explains how

Nevilles life is repetitive and how the world has forced him to be celibate projecting that women

are only sex objects. Throughout Nevilles journey to find cures for the plague he only targets

women as his victims because he is unable to cope with the idea that their kind killed his wife.

Neville is not the only one who targets women, but when the vampires become desperate they

attack their own kind and it is usually women as well. When Ruth is introduced into his life for a

brief moment he believes that he is superior and has authority over her. Immediately, he assumes

that they will fall in love since they are the only two living people in the world, but little does he

know Ruth is one of the main power leaders in the new society that is developing around him.

Matheson displays that Neville is unable to accept the new society and how women are equal in

the world, similar to sexism today, and eventually he accepts his fate that he is going to die. With

that, Matheson is expressing that the new world needs to make room for women because they are

dominating figures in the slowly growing utopia. I am going to explain how Nevilles conflict is

surrounded with the idea of feminism and how he is constantly fighting with the concept of

women having a powerful role in society, even though every decision revolves around the death

of his loved ones that were female. With Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern

Horror Film, By Carol J. Clover, an expertise in horror and credited for final girl theory in her

book, I will define how females play significant roles in the genre of horror culture.
 The idea of women being in authority has been a constant problem for hundreds of years,

due to the fact that women are perceived to be individuals that stay home to nurture their

offspring and wait patiently for their husbands to come home, so they can satisfy them. When

Neville becomes agitated that the women who made it so difficult, he thought, the women

posing like lewd puppets in the night on the possibility that hed see them and decide to come

out Matheson suggests that women are sexual beings that attempt to accomplish their goal by

displaying arousing movements with their body language (7). Lewd is defined to be crude and

offensive in a sexual manner and in the novel the female vampires are defined to be lewd

puppets but being a puppet means that it has to have a master. The female vampires are only

being obedient and showing what their master wants and Matheson suggests that Neville is

vulnerable because women are powerful with their provocative body language, but Neville

rejects the temptation. Neville believes life without sex is, an insult to a man. All right, it was

natural drive, but there was no outlet for it any more. Theyd forced celibacy on him which

indicates how being deprived of sex is only an insult to men because it is seen to be a necessity,

but for women they are just individuals that participate in the act and not actually crave sex (8).

It has been proven in psychology that sex is not a necessity, but a psychological need. People feel

that sex is one of the most important factors to survival next to food and water, but being

deprived of sex does not kill someone or make them any less healthy. If women were present in I

am Legend, they would be perceived to be baby-making machines, no matter their sexuality

because as Neville describes celibacy as being an insult to men forcing women to feel obligated

to give up their dignity to satisfy a mans psychological needs.

In most societies men are superior to women and take advantage of them because they are

seen as week and disposable; just like how Neville exploits the female vampires to experiment
on their bodies, vampires will prey on the female vampires when they become desperate for

blood. When Neville does his daily chores, he opens his front door and glances at the bodies,

sprawled on the sidewalk; the other one was half concealed in the shrubbery. They were both

women. They were almost always women which demonstrates how even though vampires make

up all the world besides Neville, they still choose to pick women for their bate (12). No matter

what society it is, women are always belittled and treated differently because men do not want to

feel inferior by women. When Matheson writes They were almost always women displays that

women are the bottom of society, so male vampires choosing to murder their own kind even

though they belong to the same society does not matter because they are women. Matheson is

saying that in the old world that women are abused and are not allowed to express who they are

since they have no authority or power in society. They are constantly suppressed because an idea

has been conformed that women must depend on a mans income and watch over children.

Women are discouraged to be active in powerful roles that could allow other females to live in a

world where they have some sort of authority.

Nevilles immediate approach when spotting another human being for the first time in awhile

was that they were going to fall in love because the assumption is that Ruth is the only female

and he is the only male that is living, so it is inevitable that they are going to have sex. When

Ruth is introduced into the novel, Neville instantly visualized something on the order of a

Hollywood production; stars in their eyes, entering the house, arms about each other, fade out

because Ruth is a woman the assumption is that they will instantly fall in love since they are the

last two people in earth and can repopulate the world. Since Neville is a man he decides that he is

in control of the situation and that Ruth is obedient and easily manipulated into his way of living.

His drive to survive is based on two individual females, his wife and daughter. When he ventures
out to kill vampires in abandon houses, he always takes a pause questioning, Why do they all

look like Kathy to me implying that his murders are for his daughter and wife that was

murdered by the plague (15). Even though they were not killed by actual vampires, Neville needs

someone to blame and believes his massacres are justified since they took his loves ones.