Goth Girls-Part One

Women who run from houses are the heroines of the Gothic Romance, but that's not the same as being a goth girl. The heroine of the Gothic Romance goes back a long way, definitely to the nineteenth century, possibly to the one before it. The goth girl as we know her is supposed to have originated in the 1980s. But what were her origins before her origins?

I'll start with three pictures:

That's Siouxsie Sioux of the band Siouxsie and the Banshees. The picture is from the 1980s. Siouxsie Sioux is supposed to have created the goth girl look. I don't know enough about these things to say one way or another, but even if she didn't create it, she was there near the beginning. I went looking for the picture above because I wanted to find something similar to this one:

That's Margaret Brundage's cover illustration for the November 1933 issue of Weird Tales magazine featuring what looks like a goth girl. I kind of hate the word iconic, but this image has become almost iconic. Maybe emblematic is a better word. When people want to show a cover of Weird Tales, this is usually the one. Alistair Durie used it for the cover of his book Weird Tales, published in 1979, at around the time Siouxsie Sioux was really hitting it big. Reginald Smith had used it previously for his booklet Weird Tales in the Thirties, from 1966. Here's another image from that prime year in pop culture:

This one is a picture of Julie Newmar as Catwoman, from the TV show Batman. Was she a goth girl? I guess so. You will soon see more about Batman, like within minutes. By the way, Julie Newmar was born in 1933, the same year in which Margaret Brundage's Batwoman cover was published. Her birthday was a month ago, so Happy Birthday, Julie Newmar!

Here's another picture of a possible goth girl from another show that made its debut in 1966:

That's actress Antoinette Bower from the Star Trek episode "Catspaw," with a teleplay by teller of weird tales Robert Bloch. "Catspaw" is one of at least three Gothic episodes of Star Trek. I'll write about them soon, hopefully in the 60th anniversary month of the first broadcast of the show. Born on September 30, 1932, in Baden-Baden, Germany, Antoinette Bower died earlier this year, on April 30, 2026, in California. I'm sorry to see her go, but this is as it ever was and ever will be for us on this earth. I wish I could have found a picture of her with her hands to her face in keeping with the current theme and motif.

Speaking of which:

Here's Adam West as Batman doing the Batusi. Batman isn't a goth girl, but Batman is in the Gothic-Romantic tradition, or of the Gothic-Romantic genre. Batman haunts Gotham City, of course. The name lets us know of its Gothic atmosphere and Gothic origins. He and his city and milieu are in contrast to the science-fictional character Superman and his Apollonian city Metropolis. You could also place Batman in the category of the weird hero genre, which began as such in the pulps. The Shadow is another example of the weird hero. Byron Preiss published a series of Weird Hero anthologies in the 1970s. Adam West, who died in 2017, was born in September, so Happy Birthday to the spirits of him and Antoinette Bower.

I mentioned this cover the other day:

This is Bob Kane's cover for Detective Comics #31, from September 1939, or 87 years ago this month. This is clearly a Gothic-Romantic image, complete with a full moon, bats on the wing, and a dark and forbidding castle. There is even a red-robed cultist. I guess he is that "terrifying master of crime known as The Monk!" Notice that the woman in his clutches is blonde. Blonde women do not make goth girls. The goth girl is always dark-haired, or, as in the case of Amelia, purple-haired. The one possible exception I can think of is Alannah Currie of the Thompson Twins, who turns sixty-nine years old today. Another Happy Birthday!

In thinking about the origins of the goth girl, I remembered Leslie Fiedler and his book Love and Death in the American Novel, the second edition of which was published in--when else?--1966. In that book, Dr. Fiedler pointed out that the blonde woman in our literature is pure and innocent, while the dark-haired woman is very often corrupt or fallen in some way. We continue to see this in movies and TV shows of today. One of my dark-haired sisters noticed the phenomenon a long time ago. She didn't like it very much. The dark-haired goth girl fits with that stereotype.

As I pondered on the origins of the dark-haired bad girl or goth girl, my thoughts went to a Gothic fiction called The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall by the American George Lippard, from 1845. I don't know why my thoughts went in that direction. It seems to me that the poor victim in that book is a young blonde woman. Maybe there is a dark-haired woman on the opposite side of things. Anyway, it's a strange coincidence in what I write today that the Batman villain in the illustration above is called The Monk. I have never read The Quaker City, but I would like to. I have been interested in it since I first read about it in Leslie Fielder's book. Now I wonder if there was ever a girl-meets-house-type Gothic Romance paperback cover of a girl running from a house in the city. In other words, has there ever been an urban Gothic Romance? In the next part of this series I'll have an example of the urban goth girl.

To be continued . . .

Text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley