Shownotes Transcript
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Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact, a short-form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
As we continue our look at the werewolf in myth, legend, and media, we now turn to the female werewolf. A gendered take on the monster that might at first glance seem to be mere titillation, but the roots of the concept weave their way through a variety of contemplations about femininity and the wild in all their forms.
I want to return to 2017's She-Wolf, a cultural history of female werewolves, which features multiple chapters by different authors that examine female werewolves in myth, legend, and media. Everything from centuries-old legends to modern cartoons. As previously mentioned, the book's editor, Hannah Priest, argues that European werewolf narratives revolve around the threat posed by wolves to domesticated animals, ultimately a threat to male-owned agriculture and property.
When the werewolf is male, the threat comes from outside the male landowner's domain, the outlaw wolf wanderer, who might seek to tear through the defenses and kill livestock or family members. Meanwhile, female werewolves tend to emerge from within the male landowner's domain, often endangering children and serving as an overall threat to domesticity.
Of note, the first Mexican werewolf movie, La Loba, or The She-Wolf from 1965, features both a female and a male werewolf, and they correspond to this form quite perfectly. The female werewolf, the daughter of a well-to-do Mexican landowner and scientist, and the male werewolf, her suitor from afar.
In this gothic slice of Golden Age Mexican cinema, the werewolf seems to represent the wild and uncontrollable elements of someone within the family unit and someone from beyond it. For more on La Loba, see our recent episode of Weird House Cinema on the film.
It's interesting that both the first Mexican werewolf movie and the first werewolf motion picture period, a now lost 1913 short titled The Werewolf, feature female lycanthropes. But the vast majority of werewolf tales lean heavily toward male, often hyper-masculine visions of wolf-human hybridity.
Likewise, while the wolfman is often presented as a lone wolf, the female wolf woman is often connected to a social group or part of a mated pair.
This is interesting in how it connects to previous discussions of what our ancestors saw of themselves in wolves and vice versa. As highly social animals, wild wolves reflect aspects of human family and society, and it's only rational for these elements to influence our conceptions of human-wolf hybridity as well.
In fact, as author J. Kate mentions later on in the She-Wolf book, quote, "...aside from a brief fashion for presenting female werewolves as lonely night stalkers in Victorian literature, the dominant presentation of female werewolves from the Middle Ages onwards has been as part of a social unit comprising other werewolves or other humans."
I won't attempt to summarize everything explored in the book. Definitely pick a copy up for yourself if you're interested in this topic as I am. There's an entire chapter concerning females in the RPG Werewolf the Apocalypse game, for example. But it explores the various ways in which female werewolf treatments explore societal ideas concerning female connectedness to nature and societal norms related to body hair, menstruation,
sexuality, aging, and other topics. And in some cases, certainly the female werewolf can be yet another example of the monstrous feminine, in which some aspect of female bodies or female experience is othered from the standpoint of patriarchal anxieties.
Overall, however, a good monster tale can reveal and convey much more. The werewolf stands as a nexus between the wild and the civilized, between freedom and taboo, between liberty and control, and takes on so many additional meanings when applied specifically to women.
In Daniel Ogden's excellent 2021 book, The Werewolf in the Ancient World, he of course highlights the difficulty in deciding what exactly constitutes a werewolf versus other modes of hybrid monsters and various cultures that had no precise word for werewolf.
And this applies to both masculine werewolves and feminine werewolves, of course. He does mention an account that Priest singles out as the entry point of the female werewolf into literature. That is Gerald of Wales, 12th century CE, Topographia Hiberniae.
Gerald recounts a priest's travels in post-Norman invasion Ireland, and specifically his encounter with natives of Ossory, who spoke of how a man and a woman of their people were picked to undergo a seven-year transformation into wolf. The locals end up bringing the priest to visit the dying she-wolf and give her last rites.
In this moment, the male counterpart peels away the wolf's hide from her body, revealing the form of an old woman within. It's a perplexing story. As Priest points out, it's a tale told by an invader. Gerald of Wales was half Norman and half Welsh, and certainly not Irish. And the story concerns the traditions and customs of a conquered people.
Furthermore, as Ogden points out, the story is all the weirder when you consider that the people of Ossory have to contend with all of this lycanthropy because they were cursed by a priest and in later tellings of the same story by St. Patrick himself, all for the crime of being disruptive when he tried to convert them to Christianity. So driving out snakes is one thing, but cursing locals to become werewolves, surely quite another.
In She-Wolf, historian Marilee Metzahy explores Estonian werewolves, specifically accounts from the Isle of Saaremaa, where tales of female werewolves are more common than tales of male werewolves, apparently. Estonia is rich in werewolf traditions, which survive in the form of various fairy tales, legends, and also some historic accounts of witch trials.
Metzli explores the topic from a number of different angles, but the overall argument that I found most remarkable was that the predominance of female werewolf tales in Estonian traditions may connect to greater levels of gender equality in pre-Christian Estonia and a definite loss of those rights as Christian influences permeated Estonian society.
Furthermore, we may refer back to older connections between the wolf and fertility magic, traditional observations of lupine motherhood, and the link between maternity and sexuality that was subsequently eradicated under the influence of Christian culture.
In other words, while laws and top-down societal norms might have subjugated women, their traditional power in Estonia was not so easily erased, and we see it remain as protest, as recognition, and so forth in the tales of women with the secret might of wolves. One Estonian story shared in Metsavi's chapter encapsulates several of these ideas.
The wife also has wolf pups. There are different versions, but it essentially tells the story of a woman who goes into the woods to hunt and secure meat for the family, while her husband seems to stay at home at the cabin and seemingly just complain about how chilly it is, citing the fact that their child is too cold.
The wife tells him that their child is better off than those who sleep in the straw behind the house. And when the husband goes out to investigate, he finds several wolf pups, which he promptly kills. The next night, while the man lounges in the sauna, a great wolf bursts in through the door and attacks him. He manages to defend himself. He burns the wolf with a pair of tongs, scaring the creature off, and later, via the old identifying wound trope,
he learns that the wolf was in fact his own wife, seeking vengeance for his killing of her wild wolf children. Female werewolf stories continue to entertain us, while also retaining their ability to intentionally or unintentionally reveal much about the times and places they emerge from.
revealing both negative societal ideas about women, as well as more celebratory and even subversive ideas about feminine power. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Animalia Stupendium each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Today's episode is brought to you by Avis. Let's face it, with travel come curveballs. From flight delays to lost luggage, they put even the best laid plans at risk. Thank goodness for Avis. With them, you know your rental car will come through and your plans are protected at all costs.
Because it turns out Avis is here for your plans. And they'll do whatever it takes to ensure you keep them. Which is a big deal. And speaking of deals, you can save 20% when you pay now. Go to avis.com slash planonus to learn more. Avis. Plan on us.