i'm everywhere i'm so laura
on female characters haunting the narrative, laura palmer as the blueprint, and the Enigmatic Dead Girl archetype in media.
This essay contains spoilers for Twin Peaks, Pretty Little Liars, Ethel Cain’s perfect album Preacher’s Daughter, and The Haunting of Hill House. Proceed at your own risk.
I spent the last week recovering from COVID and rewatching Twin Peaks, which caused some of the weirdest fever dreams I’ve ever had. I constantly thought of red curtains and chevron floors, endlessly large forests, drinking hot coffee in diner booths, and of course, Laura Palmer. If you’re unfamiliar with Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer, homecoming queen and seemingly perfect girl next door, unexpectedly turns up, dead. Her death leads to an FBI investigation that uncovers the double life she was living and reveals that the town of Twin Peaks was not as innocent as it appeared on the outside. Created by the king of surrealism, David Lynch, Twin Peaks laid the foundation for the modern archetype of the “Enigmatic Dead Girl” in media. She’s beautiful, unknowable, and laden with secrets only fully uncovered after her death. She’s captivating; everyone wants her or wants to be her, and she somehow becomes even more present in death.
As I watched episode after episode of Twin Peaks, I couldn’t stop noticing that regardless of the smaller plot points, or crazy Lynchian dream sequences, Laura Palmer was the centerpiece, the heart of the show. She was not physically present in the narrative, but her memory, her death, and everything about her influenced the story throughout its entire run. Laura’s everywhere, in the undertones of conversations, in Agent Cooper’s dreams, in her cousin Maddy, even in the moments of pure panic, where the viewer asks themself if their fear is the same as Laura’s. She’s inescapable. She’s a ghost, haunting the narrative, reminding everyone that she’s the center of every event.
The concept of “haunting the narrative” is not a new one. It refers to a character being physically absent from the story being told, yet still heavily influencing the overarching narrative. The character could be dead, missing, away, etc. but their absence is what impacts the plot and drives it forward. It’s a concept that’s been often used in storytelling, it’s been in literature, film, television, really all mediums, but as I spiraled deeper and deeper into my fever-induced Twin Peaks haze, I started noticing how many examples of this trope are female characters, specifically women who exist outside the context of their death.
In no way is Laura Palmer the first girl to die in a TV show and have her death set off a chain of events; I’m sure you can think of movies and TV episodes that begin with a girl dying, but think of how many of those fleshed out that girl, made her a real person with flaws, desires, and motives. Laura is the blueprint for what I consider to be the modernized version of the Hot Dead Girl, or what I’m calling the Enigmatic Dead Girl.
In Twin Peaks and its 1992 feature film Fire Walk with Me, Lynch takes Laura Palmer from the beautiful, popular, blonde girl who was found wrapped in plastic in the pilot’s opening scenes, to a deeply-troubled girl, fighting demons (quite literally, looking at you BOB), dealing with substance abuse, and with agency over her actions. Before Laura, the dead girl’s role was to be beautiful and dead. Full stop. We didn’t need to know her, she was a prop, an object used to move the story forward, she was insignificant, she could’ve been anyone but her death was always more important than her as a character. Starting with Laura Palmer though, the genre evolved. Enigmatic Dead Girls died, but their death was a way to move their character forward, allowing them to be expanded upon with death acting as a catalyst.
One of the elements of Twin Peaks that made the story so fascinating was how intensely Laura haunted the narrative. As I mentioned, she’s everywhere. Even after Dale Cooper, the FBI agent sent to Twin Peaks to uncover the truth about Laura’s death, solves her murder, and the show moves away from her, everything comes crashing back to her in the end. Lynch never intended for her murder to be solved, and pressure from network executives led to Lynch and his co-creator Mark Frost revealing her murderer early into the second season. Twin Peaks becomes a town forever changed and always grasping on to that idyllic life Laura represented before her murder.
I wasn’t alive when Twin Peaks originally aired in the 90s (I watched it for the first time when I was around 17), so I was not introduced to this idea of a woman haunting the narrative or the Enigmatic Dead Girl through Laura Palmer’s character. Honestly, I don’t think I knew what Twin Peaks was when I first discovered this concept, but I knew Alison DiLaurentis, the modern girl’s Laura Palmer.
Alison DiLaurentis, blonde, semi-evil, owner of the most iconic yellow top to exist, is the central character in Pretty Little Liars, a 2010s sleepover staple and (I’m biased) the greatest show ever made. In PLL, Alison is the queen bee, she leads a friend group of the four silliest girls you’ll ever meet. The viewer finds out about 5 minutes into the first episode that Alison is missing (later revealed to be dead, even later revealed to be ALIVE) but from the start, the entire show is about her. She appears in flashback sequences (as the worst person in the world) and the audience and the protagonists constantly think about her. Like Laura Palmer, Ali is the beating heart of the show. In a show full of mysteries and red herrings and horrible men engaging in horrible relationships with teenagers (re: Ezra) everything always circles back to Alison.
Through the flashback sequences, the audience sees Alison as a real person. She’s bratty, provocative, manipulative, and somewhat of a villain. She’s not a good person at all, but she is written to be more than just a Girl Who Died. Ali’s awful behavior, general evilness, and secret-keeping are inescapable; almost all of the other characters’ villainy is somehow trickled down from Alison’s. She’s the textbook definition of haunting the narrative; I’m sure she somehow manipulated the textbook writers into replacing Laura Palmer’s picture with her own.
Alison continues Laura’s legacy of being a well-developed Enigmatic Dead Girl. Pretty Little Liars is often not serious at all, but it nails this aspect. I don’t want to see media where the dead girl is just a plot device, I want the girl to linger with the viewers, and remind us of the depth of tragedy. It is devastating, a girl is dead or missing. Twin Peaks and PLL reach deep into our minds and show all the different sides of grief and processing. It’s so common to see women reduced to the helpless victim, dead and gone and forgotten, the men move on to the next girl and the cycle continues, but with Laura and Alison, they never let up, there’s no space to forget about them.
I look at other examples of girls haunting the narrative: Nell Crain from The Haunting of Hill House, the fictional character of Ethel Cain, singer Hayden Anhedönia (stage name Ethel Cain) portrays throughout her album Preacher’s Daughter, Amy Dunne from Gone Girl, Jackie Taylor from Yellowjackets, to name a few. All of these women are more than just the trope. Throughout the primary story, we learn about these women through their absence, typically in flashbacks, memories, and dreams. Take Nell Crain, her death is in the first episode of Haunting of Hill House, and Nell, like her mother before her, plays a pivotal role in bringing her siblings together and back to the haunted house they grew up in. She is one of the most beautifully written characters in a TV show (and adapted from Shirley Jackson’s incredible novel) and throughout the series, her mental health struggles are explored, along with how the trauma she experienced as a child shaped her as an adult. The viewers are right there with the characters, Nell’s brothers and sisters, as they uncover these secrets and unpack how their childhood, relationship with their mother, and the house they grew up in led to Nell’s death. It’s devastating, genuinely emotional, and one of the best recent examples of a woman haunting the narrative.
I think Ethel Cain is one of the most creative examples of haunting the narrative, and the least “traditional” in a sense. Preacher’s Daughter, Cain’s album, centers around Ethel Cain, the character. She’s a young woman born into a Southern Baptist family and runs away from home, travels across the country, has an overall rough time of it, and later is murdered and cannibalized (intense, I know). I absolutely love a concept album, especially one with lore as deeply thought out as Preacher’s Daughter. Ethel Cain builds up this eponymous character, she struggles with her family and relationships; she’s dealt with abuse at the hands of men in her life, and she craves love and validation. Ethel Cain is not just a nameless, generic victim, it’s a tragic story, one of a woman longing for someone she could trust and a way out of the horrors of her past.
Upon first listen, Ethel Cain is not haunting the narrative in the same obvious way Laura Palmer introduced, it’s more subtle. There are moments in the songs where we remember that Ethel Cain is doomed. “Thoroughfare,” my favorite song from the record, represents a moment where she is happy, she seems to have found a way out of a dark situation, but in reality, this is the calm before the storm, she’s in a car carrying her to her death. Preacher’s Daughter lingers with you, it’s a cautionary tale, a beautiful tragedy. In “Strangers” the closing song of the album, Cain writes:
The fictional Ethel Cain’s mother is doomed to be reminded of her missing daughter, she has no idea of the true tragedy that she met at the hands of her captor. It’s a completely different take on haunting this narrative, but it’s done efficiently and through a beautifully written character.
I have so much appreciation for creators and writers who take the time to employ this concept, to give these women a life, to make sure their death (or “death”) isn’t just a plot device. These are the characters that captivate me and make me want to write something that lasts forever. Oh, to be a woman with emotions and motives and flaws! 30-something years later, Laura Palmer still haunts the pop culture narrative. And she isn’t going anywhere.
bonus content:
here’s a playlist i made while i wrote this, inspired by laura palmer but in honor of these girls, fated to haunt the narrative:
also because i think playlist making is therapeutic and my dream job is playlist maker/vibe curator, i’m including my pride and joy: my playlist for general twin peaks moodiness/fall vibes (notice how laura palmer is the cover image for both… her impact):
for more people’s princess, you can find me on instagram @peoplessprincesss.
p.s: weekly faves
twin peaks (obviously) but more specifically, twin peaks season 2 episode 1.
re-reading beach read
the giant fruit salad i made
testing negative for covid
my strawberry throw blanket
tottenham hotspur 4-0 win over everton
people’s princess website rebrand!! shoutout to my dear friend
for designing and creating so much of this!!
okay, that’s all for now, love you all to pieces & i’ll see you soon!
sarah 💌
I loved this so much! I love your mind. You’re such a unique and original voice and you add so much to this platform, we’re very lucky (🍀) to have you!
ugh brilliant