Revisiting Suburban Gothic Narratives: Intertextualities, Gender, and the Invisible Trope of Old Age in The Stepford Wives and Edward Scissorhands

Suburban Gothic fiction explores the latent dysfunctionality that lies beneath residential areas despite their apparently blissful image upholding the ideals of the American dream. Insofar as suburban Gothic is rooted in domestic Gothic and, by extension, female Gothic, it underscores the inextricable relation established between gender and aging, particularly with regard to the Victorian trope of arrested development, which acquires different connotations along gender lines. As representative of the early origins of suburban Gothic, Ira Levin’s novel The Stepford Wives (1972) portrays the arrival of a female newcomer at a conservative community comprising suburban housewives who never seem to grow old. As a postmodern exponent, Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990) tackles how an eternally young and androgynous humanoid is introduced in a suburban neighbourhood of middle-aged residents and their adolescent children. This article aims to analyse the intertextualities between these two paradigmatic narratives of suburban Gothic and, in particular, in relation to gender and aging—bearing in mind that, as suggestive of the metaphor of arrested development, the trope of old age remains invisible—and how these narratives evince either submission or rebellion with regard to gender and age conventions.