CORALINE BY NEIL GAIMAN: An Unexpectedly Poignant Exploration of Validation, Acceptance, and Gender Identity

If you know me, you know that one of my favorite movies of all time is the 2009 claymation masterpiece, Coraline. I never shut up about it, actually, and with excellent reason: the animation manages to be grimy and sickly, yet glowing in brilliant technicolor, all at once. The color grading is so rich and divine that it makes my heart physically swell. All of the character designs are jaw-droppingly unique, and to make matters more admirable, they were all HAND CRAFTED OUT OF CLAY AND PURE LOVE. And, of course, the female protagonist is allowed to be shamelessly herself, which is carried through her rebellious spirit and expertly crafted dialogue. This level of production value and dedication to thematic maturity for a children’s movie is revolutionary. I could seriously write a dissertation on the ingenuity that is this 100-minute work of art.

Interestingly enough, though: when I first watched this movie at the ripe age of eight, I left the theater sobbing so hard that I formed a snot bubble. I remember squeezing my poor mother’s hand to a pulp, leaving her wide-eyed and taking empathetic looks from strangers as I broke down in the middle of a parking lot: Ah, we get it, sorry that you went to a PG movie hoping to have some cute mother-daughter bonding time and you left with an utterly inconsolable mess of a child.

At eight, I hated every second of that stupid movie. I thought it was gross. Creepy. Disturbing. Evidently, snot-bubble inducing. You get the idea.

Though I sympathize with my child-self and can now recognize that the themes and visuals may have been a bit too unsettling for a third grader, I put on my big girl pants and rewatched it again at the less-ripe age of fifteen. Once the end-credits began rolling, I fell in love with it for all of the reasons I once despised it. The grossness of Mr. Bobo became wildly entertaining. I recognized that the creepiness of the Other Mother was visually stunning and necessary for plot development. The disturbingly mature themes became something I could critically think about, and not just run out of the theater afraid of. But most of all, I had never realized how all of these “disturbing” elements were actually Coraline’s greatest strengths. 

So, you can absolutely imagine my delight when I was recently indulging in a “101 Facts You Didn’t Know About Coraline” YouTube video and discovered that my favorite film is, in fact, an animated adaptation of a book made in 2002. Oh my God. I was so excited that I immediately bought the e-reader and devoured the entire story in one serving. Sitting sweetly at only 176 pages, it is perfectly bite-sized, unexpectedly dense with critical commentary on gender as a social construct, and— don’t tell the movie adaptation’s director, Henry Selick— honestly better than the film. Shhhh.

To celebrate this finding and to convince everyone I possibly can to read this gorgeous novella, I conducted a deep gender-critical analysis of my favorite chapter. Enjoy (or, if you are like me at eight years old, run away sobbing uncontrollably). Up to you.

Just as a mysterious corridor bridges the two distinctly opposite worlds within Coraline by Neil Gaiman, androgyny acts as a point of transition between the masculine and feminine binary. The flexibility of gender is heavily emphasized in chapter four of Coraline, in which the titular female protagonist— known for exhibiting male-oriented traits— has her first conversation with an all-knowing, genderfluid cat.

In this chapter, the author establishes them as the only two characters who exist in the murky area between masculinity and femininity. By juxtaposing Coraline’s vigilant fixation on labels with the cat’s expressive sovereignty from any form of title, and by ultimately establishing the two as kindred beings in spite of their differences, Gaiman pleads that androgynous individuals must free themselves completely from rigid descriptors in order to be their most genuine selves.

Within this chapter, Coraline expresses an all-consuming desire to feel validated within her personal identity; she does so by requesting constant categorization from the cat. In other places throughout the novella, Coraline’s name is consistently mistaken to be Caroline, which she always corrects in an effort to assert her individuality. She craves to feel understood, and uses her unique name as a tool to know whether the people around her see her how she wants to be seen.

In this way, Coraline is actually rather insecure, as she requires external validation to feel whole. She naively sees titular roles and labels as reassuring, since sometimes confining oneself into a metaphorical box is more comfortable than traveling into the unknown. It frustrates Coraline to meet the cat— an entity that is confident enough to free itself from the seemingly frivolous act of labeling— as their conversation invalidates her own subconscious craving for binary security. Likewise, the otherwise self-assured Coraline consistently questions the animal (“How can you talk?”, “Please, what is this place?”, “How did you get here?”) in hopes to receive answers that will help the world make sense around her. Not only does this immediate trust in the creature highlight it’s naturally mature, guide-like essence, this suggests that Coraline’s desire to categorize the world makes her more juvenile in comparison and not fully secure in her own identity yet.

Coraline also feels an intense desire to choose sides within herself, which is representative of her mental battle between feminine and masculine traits. When Coraline begins to feel irritated with the cat, she thinks to herself, “half of her wanted to be very rude to it; the other half of her wanted to be polite and deferential. The polite half won”. She experiences cognitive dissonance, as she feels conflicted on whether to connect more so with her outspoken masculinity, or her obliging femininity. She feels the urge to categorize these arbitrary descriptions as concrete, tangible “halves” of her being.

On the other hand, the proudly genderless cat refuses to align with any definable label, and is thus rewarded by Gaiman with confidence and self assuredness. The most notable example of the cat’s androgyny in this chapter is its ambiguous pronouns: the cat is simply referred to by “it” and “you”. Its gender is never once specified or questioned. It is, however, described as “irritatingly self centered”, “proud”, and “apparently unaware of Coraline’s existence”; the cat’s unapologetic androgyny is applauded by the narrator and author in a way that can be interpreted as cockiness or arrogance, since it is so confident that it becomes unbothered by the outside world. Likewise, it has the self-assuredness to respond, “No… I’m not the other anything. I’m me,” when Coraline suggests it is actually the other cat since they are in the other world. The cat is not tied down to a singular identity or classification: it simply identifies as itself, nothing more or less. By refusing to use labels and categorizations, the cat is so self-actualized that it appears conceited to the unenlightened Coraline, who is actually unaware of her own self-centeredness that comes naturally with adolescence. The cat is just aware enough to own up to it. 

In response to Coraline’s plea for friendship, the cat belittles her immaturity by highlighting the juvenile, arbitrary nature of labeling themselves as friends: “we could be rare specimens of an exotic breed of African dancing elephants… but we’re not.” Out of context, this statement looks as though the cat could not be bothered with Coraline’s presence— however its actions show otherwise. Their unofficial bond is verified by the cat offering advice, protection, and guidance to the young girl; it just does not want to strictly define their relationship, despite the fact that this bond ultimately is a form of friendship.

This same theme is also depicted when the cat belittles humankind’s desire for categorization, and uplifts natural creatures by boasting their freedom from social constructs: “you people have names… because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names.” While Coraline feels the need to desperately cling onto her name in order to feel any semblance of identity, the cat lacks this necessity, and is in turn rewarded by the author with an intelligent guide-like status and self actualization. 

Despite their different worldviews, both Coraline and the cat are ultimately similar beings. It is worth noting that these two characters are the only characters within the novella that have the privileged ability to transition between the “other” world and real world. There is no “other” Coraline, and there is no “other” cat; they can simply exist within the dark, mysterious corridor between the two worlds, just as they can exist androgynously between masculinity and femininity. Thus, they are innately similar creatures, and are spiritually connected by this unique ability. 

Coraline’s initial craving for validation is penalized by Gaiman with insecurity, identity confusion, and immaturity, whereas the cat’s unapologetic androgyny is rewarded with intellect, confidence, and mystique. The cat’s refusal to align with any strict binary contrasts Coraline’s impulse to stick with the binary she has always known, despite her lack of true alignment with any specified gender. By giving them a mentor-and-apprentice style bond, the author asserts that Coraline has much learning to do before she can finally understand how similar she truly is to the cat.

Eventually, though, she does come to this conclusion, and spends the rest of the novel on a quest for confidence that is not validation-based. As stated in chapter seven, “the names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names”: from start to finish of the 2002 classic Coraline, Neil Gaiman establishes that labels are unimportant to one’s true identity, and androgynous individuals require complete freedom from binary descriptors in order to feel truly self actualized.