Female Muslim monsters, like their male counterparts, were symbols of fear. Anxieties surrounding race, sexual desire, and identity found a place for expression in these characters, even the ones who were human-like. Take, for example, Jane Eyre's Bertha, the West Indian wife of Rochester: "What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal; but it was covered with clothing; and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a man, hid its head and face."

XREF: Bertha as a figure of colonial/racial anxiety connects to wider postcolonial readings of Jane Eyre, like Spivak's.

Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imag…, loc. 417