Blog 6: Gender, Disability, and The Shape of Water

 

Speaking Without Sound: Gender and Disability in The Shape of Water

Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water tells a love story that goes beyond romance, it’s about being seen and understood when the world decides you’re “different.” Elisa, the main character, is mute and works as a janitor in a secret government lab. When she meets the amphibian creature being held there, she connects with him through sign language and emotion instead of words. 

Elisa’s disability also challenges how women with disabilities are usually portrayed. As Garland-Thomson points out, they’re often shown as either completely asexual or overly sexualized. Elisa is neither. She’s just a woman with real desires and emotions, and the film treats that as normal, because it is. We see her pleasure herself during her morning routine, not in a way that’s meant to shock the audience, but to show that she’s comfortable in her own body. The eggs shown in the film can symbolize fertility and life, things society often tries to deny disabled women. Elisa breaks that stereotype by embracing her own sexuality instead of being ashamed of it.

Then there’s Strickland, the total opposite of Elisa. And although this is a feminist disability blog, in every film or piece of media there will always be a man that the woman has to respond to. It is how these stories keep getting made, the plot is almost always revolved around a powerful man. Strickland fills that role perfectly. He’s a white, straight, abled man who believes power and control make him superior. His new Cadillac and obsession with order show how much he relies on status to define himself. When he tells Elisa, “I bet I could make you squawk a little,” it’s not just creepy, it shows how he views women and disabled people as things to fix or control. He represents a system that silences others to keep power in his hands.

One of the most powerful moments in the movie is when Elisa signs, “I move my mouth like him. I make no sound like him. What does that make me?” She sees herself in the creature because they are both labeled as outsiders, both underestimated. By the end, when she saves him, she’s also saving herself from a world that never really listened to her in the first place.

Del Toro doesn’t make Elisa “find her voice” in the traditional sense. Instead, he shows that she’s been speaking all along, just in a way the world refuses to hear.

This story also reminded me of Frankenstein. In both, the so-called “monster” isn’t truly the monster, it’s the creator who is. Strickland tries to play God, just like Victor Frankenstein, deciding who’s human and who isn’t. But del Toro changes the narrative. Amy S. Li’s essay on The Shape of Water and its horror influences points out that del Toro “rephrases” Frankenstein by giving the creature empathy and love instead of rejection. That makes Strickland the real monster, not the amphibian man.

Elisa’s muteness also reflects the time period. Set in the 1960s, when women often lacked a “voice” both socially and politically, her silence becomes symbolic. She follows orders from men like Strickland, but she eventually breaks free and acts on her own. So it creates a question, is Elisa truly disabled, or is her muteness a metaphor for how society silences women? Maybe she represents both. Either way, her story gives power to voices that history has ignored.