My uncles sold me in the morning, and by the afternoon I stood in the grave of the Long-Sleeping God, fouling the second of the twelve sacred rites.
—Julia Darcey, “The Things We Did in the Dark” in Beyond the Bounds of Infinity: An Anthology of Diverse Horror 87
Christianity is a patriarchal religion. For most of its history in most of its sects, the priesthood has been exclusively male; so have most prophets and saints. The dogma of Christianity and the social norms of Christian cultures tend to circumscribe women’s place and sexuality in religion and society. H. P. Lovecraft was a materialist, but he was raised in a Baptist household, and many elements of Protestant culture remained with him throughout his life, despite his disbelief in the specifics of the Bible—or the Qur’an, Talmud, Book of Mormon, or any other religious text.
Which is why, perhaps, the gender dynamics of Lovecraft’s cults is a bit patriarchal. We never see the full rites of the Esoteric Order of Dagon in “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” or the cult of Cthulhu in “The Call of Cthulhu,” yet the members of those sects we do see are explicitly male. Lovecraft did not show a priestess of Cthulhu or Mother Hydra, did not show female worshippers among the orgiasts in the swamp about Cthulhu’s idol. The witch-cult is a little different; Keziah Mason was definitely a member of that old religion, women members of the de la Poer family were apparently party to goings-on in “The Rats in the Walls,” and Lavinia Whateley apparently participated in rites and celebrations in “The Dunwich Horror”—at least, before she was shut out. Yet for the most part, Lovecraft seems to have not been overly concerned about depicting or defining the role of women in these cults of eldritch worship.
On the other hand, Lovecraft also seldom had virgin girls sacrificed on altars to sate the lust (for blood or sex) of a god. When Ghatanathoa was placated in “Out of the Æons” (1935) by Hazel Heald & H. P. Lovecraft, it was a rather egalitarian sacrifice of twelve young men and twelve maidens. While Lovecraft was not exactly equal-opportunity in his depiction of these cults and sects, neither did he succumb completely to popular tropes.
Later writers have begun to explore the possibilities of what women would actually be like inside these religions. “A Coven in Essex County” (2016) by J. M. Yales looks at women trapped in the patriarchal culture of Innsmouth; “Mail Order Bride” (1999) by Ann K. Schwader plays with the idea of a all-women fertility cult devoted to Mother Hydra; “The Book of Fhtagn” (2021) by Jamie Lackey gives a glimpse of who would choose to go full cultist in such a community; Innsmouth (2019) by Megan James touches on bake sales and all the ways people keep a church going with thankless, unpaid, often unacknowledged labor of women.
“The Things We Did in the Dark” by Julia Darcey is another exploration in the same vein, although this is not specifically Lovecraftian, it plays with the tropes of eldritch horror while also picking at themes of virgin sacrifice, cloistering women into religious roles, using religion as a means to dispose of young women in a socially acceptable manner (cf. Magdalene laundries). There is, too, an aspect of the SCP wiki or The Cabin in the Woods: she is part of the special containment procedures, and she is the D-class personnel whose very lives are acceptable losses to keep the greater evil contained.
The language is straightforward, stark, and grim. There’s an implication that the family structure has broken down; the unnamed protagonist speaks of uncles but not mother or father, implying her parents are dead and she is at the mercy of male authority figures. Physical abuse is taken as a matter of course. Treated as a commodity to be bought and sold.
That is the setup, and it takes the unnamed protagonist the length of the short story to work out some of the harsh truths of the world and her situation—and finally, to realize her own empowerment. There is something dark and alluring about that final sentence in this story. Darcey has not painted a picture of a lovely and thriving culture; we see it only by how it treats its most unvalued prisoners, who did nothing wrong except being born women in a society that does not value women.
Something to think about.
“The Things We Did in the Dark” by Julia Dacey was published in Beyond the Bounds of Infinity: An Anthology of Diverse Horror (2024) by Raw Dog Screaming Press.
Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard & Others (2019) and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (2014).
Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 