I Am Legend

Horror novels such as I Am Legend generally construct narrative, character, and symbolic expectations particular to the genre. The horror genre is rooted in Gothic, a literary movement of the Victorian period that typically featured a woman locked in a house, some mystical or spiritual threat, and the absence of male protectors. I Am Legend navigates these genre expectations in a way that centers masculinity rather than innocent femininity.

Robert Neville, a character living in the 1970s but reflective of early 1950s America and its clearly defined gender roles, comments that he doesn’t keep the inside of his house clean as “he was a man and he was alone and these things had no importance to him” (3). Instead of explaining his habit as a symptom of alcoholism or depression, Neville comments that he is a “man” and therefore doesn’t care about a little mess—the implication being that if he were a woman, or if his wife Virginia were still alive, the house would be cleaner. Still, he is essentially locked in a house as a Victorian damsel would, and his lifestyle reflects the gendered expectations of his society.

Neville understands femininity as a means of domestic comfort, emotional support, and sex. Though Neville has his choice of Undead to experiment on, he exclusively chooses women. He questions his actions, but continues to objectify women’s bodies, reflecting the horror genre’s treatment of male protagonists’ love interests as plot devices. During her introduction, Ruth is almost victimized by Neville, who considers how “he might have violated her” (124) had they met years earlier. Ruth’s primary function in the novel is to act as a femme fatale, a plot device who ends Neville’s relatively safe seclusion. Like the character of Lucy in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Ruth is a seemingly innocent woman whose sexuality is directly linked to the threat of the Undead.

The novel’s gendered confrontations taking place in Neville’s house are significant, as much of Gothic tradition secludes characters—especially women—inside a home that has become horrific or threatening in some way. It is significant that Neville is locked in his home, and his safety is destroyed, when he lets a woman inside his safe haven—as his need to protect her is the reason for his eventual capture and death. The greatest threat to Neville turns out to his gendered expectations of femininity, and how this femininity should interact with his own masculinity.