1.

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

how Robert Neville portrays women.

2. 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.
3. 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.

4. 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 a

only female and he is the only male that is living, so it is inevitable that they are going to

have sex.
5. During the final interaction between Ruth and Neville, it displays how a strongly anti-

feminist man has finally accepted that todays society, or the utopia that Ruth is building,

is going to be filled with powerful women standing next to men.

6. Matheson is conveying that women are positively changing the world through their

ability to be free and not be suppressed by men.

7. Carol J. Clover proves that women have substantially changed the genre in horror

because they finally are able to be the protagonist instead of a miniscule role in fiction.

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 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.

Neville attempts to justify that women are just the first vampires he finds in abandon houses,

but what about the man in the living room, though? For Gods sake! He flared back. Im not

going to rape the woman because he does not want to be identified as the monster in situation

(Matheson 50). Neville is trying to reassure himself that he is not the monster because he does

not rape them, but the audience can acknowledge that Neville is the true monster in the novel

instead of the vampires because he only preys on women. He targets women because in his

society women are perceived as weak and vulnerable, which make them easy targets, so his idea

about women has carried on to when society has been plagued.