Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: As we continue our look at the werewolf in myth,
Speaker 2: legend and media, we now turn to the female werewolf,
Speaker 2: a gendered take on the monster that might, at first glance,
Speaker 2: seem to be mere titillation, but the roots of the
Speaker 2: concept weave their way through a variety of contemplations about
Speaker 2: femininity and the wild in all their forms. I want
Speaker 2: to return to twenty seventeen's A She Wolf, A Cultural
Speaker 2: History of Female Werewolves, which features multiple chapters by different
Speaker 2: authors that examine female werewolves in myth, legend, and media,
Speaker 2: everything from century old legends to modern cartoons. As previously mentioned,
Speaker 2: the book's editor, Hannah Priest argues that European werewolf narratives
Speaker 2: revolve around the threat posed by wolves to domesticated animals,
Speaker 2: ultimately a threat to male owned agriculture and property. When
Speaker 2: the werewolf is male, the threat comes from outside the
Speaker 2: male landowner's domain, the outlaw wolf wanderer, who might seek
Speaker 2: to tear through the defenses and kill livestock or family members. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: female werewolves tend to emerge from within the male landowner's domain,
Speaker 2: often endangering children and serving as an overall threat to domesticity.
Speaker 2: Of note, the first Mexican werewolf movie, Le Loba or
Speaker 2: The She Wolf, from nineteen sixty five, features both a
Speaker 2: female and a male werewolf, and they correspond to this
Speaker 2: form quite perfectly. The female werewolf the daughter of a
Speaker 2: well to do Mexican landowner and scientists, and the male
Speaker 2: werewolf pursuit her from afar. This gothic slice of Golden
Speaker 2: Age Mexican cinema, the werewolf seems to represent the wild
Speaker 2: and uncontrollable elements of someone within the family unit and
Speaker 2: someone from beyond it. For more on La Loba, see
Speaker 2: our recent episode of Weird House Cinema on the film.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that both the first Mexican werewolf movie and
Speaker 2: the first werewolf motion picture period a now lost nineteen
Speaker 2: thirteen short titled The Werewolf, feature female licanthropes, but the
Speaker 2: vast majority of werewolf tales lean heavily toward male, often
Speaker 2: hyper masculine visions of wolf human hybridity Likewise, while the
Speaker 2: wolf man is often presented as a lone wolf, the
Speaker 2: female wolf woman is often connected to a social group
Speaker 2: or part of a mated pair. This is interesting in
Speaker 2: how it connects to previous discussions of what our ancestors
Speaker 2: saw of themselves in wolves and vice versa. As highly
Speaker 2: social animals, wild wolves reflect aspects of human family and society,
Speaker 2: and it's only rational for these elements to influence our
Speaker 2: conceptions of human wolf hybridity as well. In fact, as
Speaker 2: author J. Kate mentions later on in the She Wolf
Speaker 2: book quote, aside from a brief fashion for presenting female
Speaker 2: werewolves as lonely night stalkers in Victorian literature, the dominant
Speaker 2: presentation of female wear wolves from the Middle Ages onwards
Speaker 2: has been as part of a social unit comprising other
Speaker 2: were wolves or other humans. I won't attempt to summarize
Speaker 2: everything explored in the book. Definitely pick a copy up
Speaker 2: for yourself if you're interested in this topic as i am.
Speaker 2: There's an entire chapter concerning females in the RPG Werewolf
Speaker 2: the Apocalypse game, for example, but it explores the various
Speaker 2: ways in which female werewolf treatments explore societal ideas concerning
Speaker 2: female connectedness to nature and societal norms related to body, hair, menstruation, sexuality, aging,
Speaker 2: and other topics, and in some cases, certainly, the female
Speaker 2: werewolf can be yet another example of the monstrous feminine,
Speaker 2: in which some aspect of female bodies or female experience
Speaker 2: is othered from the standpoint of patriarchal anxiety. Overall, however,
Speaker 2: a good monster tale can reveal and convey much more.
Speaker 2: The werewolf stands as a nexus between the wild and
Speaker 2: the civilized, between freedom and taboo, between liberty and control,
Speaker 2: and takes on so many additional meanings when applied specifically
Speaker 2: to women. In Daniel Ogden's excellent twenty twenty one book
Speaker 2: The Werewolf in the Ancient World, he of course highlights
Speaker 2: the difficulty in deciding what exactly constitutes a werewolf versus
Speaker 2: other modes of hybrid monsters in various cultures that had
Speaker 2: no precise word for werewolf, and this applies to both
Speaker 2: masculine werewolves and feminine werewolves. Of course, he does mention
Speaker 2: an accountant that priest singles out as the entry point
Speaker 2: of the female werewolf into literature, that is World of
Speaker 2: Wales's twelfth century CE Topographia Hibernia. Gerald recounts a priest's
Speaker 2: travels in post Norman invasion Ireland, and specifically his encounter
Speaker 2: with natives of Ossary, who spoke of how a man
Speaker 2: and a woman of their people were picked to undergo
Speaker 2: a seven year transformation into wolf. The locals end up
Speaker 2: bringing the priest to visit the dying she wolf and
Speaker 2: give her last rites. In this moment, the male counterpart
Speaker 2: peels away the wolf's hide from her body, revealing the
Speaker 2: form of an old woman within. It's a perplexing story,
Speaker 2: as priest points out, it's a tale told by an invader.
Speaker 2: Gerald of Wales was half Norman and half Welsh and
Speaker 2: certainly not Irish, and the story concerns the traditions and
Speaker 2: customs of a conquered people. Furthermore, as Ogden points out,
Speaker 2: the story is all the weirder when you consider that
Speaker 2: the people of Ossary have to contend with all of
Speaker 2: this leacanthropy because they were cursed by a priest and
Speaker 2: in later tellings of the same story by Saint Patrick himself,
Speaker 2: all for the crime of being disruptive when he tried
Speaker 2: to convert them to Christianity. So driving out snakes is
Speaker 2: one thing, but cursing locals to become werewolves surely quite another.
Speaker 2: In she Wolf, historian Merely Metsi explores Estonian werewolves, specifically
Speaker 2: accounts from the Isle of Sarema, where tales of female
Speaker 2: werewolves are more common than tales of male werewolves. Apparently,
Speaker 2: Estonia is rich in werewolf traditions, which survive in the
Speaker 2: form of various fairy tales, legends, and also some historic
Speaker 2: accounts of witch trials. Metsiti explores the topic from a
Speaker 2: number of different angles, but the overall argument that I
Speaker 2: found most remarkable was that the predominance of female werewolf
Speaker 2: tales and Estonian traditions may connect to greater levels of
Speaker 2: ginger equality in pre Christian Estonia and a definite loss
Speaker 2: of those rights as Christian influences permeate Estonian society. Furthermore,
Speaker 2: we may refer back to older connections between the wolf
Speaker 2: and fertility magic, traditional observations of lupine motherhood, and the
Speaker 2: link between maternity and sexuality that was subsequently eradicated under
Speaker 2: the influence of Christian culture. In other words, while laws
Speaker 2: and top down societal norms might have subjugated women, their
Speaker 2: traditional power in Estonia was not so easily erased, and
Speaker 2: we see it remain as protest as recognition and so
Speaker 2: forth in the tales of Women with the Secret Mind
Speaker 2: of wolves. One Estonian story shared in Mesave's chapter encapsulates
Speaker 2: several of these ideas. The wife also has wolf pups.
Speaker 2: There are different versions, but it essentially tells the story
Speaker 2: of a woman who goes into the woods to hunt
Speaker 2: and secure meat for the family, while her husband seems
Speaker 2: to stay at home at the cabin and seemingly just
Speaker 2: complain about how chilly it is, citing the fact that
Speaker 2: their child is too cold. The wife tells them that
Speaker 2: their child is better off than those who sleep in
Speaker 2: the straw behind the house, and when the husband goes
Speaker 2: out to investigate, he finds several wolf pups, which he
Speaker 2: promptly kills. The next night, while the man lounges in
Speaker 2: the sauna, a great wolf bursts in through the door
Speaker 2: and attacks him. He manages to defend himself. He burns the.
Speaker 3: Wolf with a pair of tongs, scaring the creature off,
Speaker 3: and later via the old identifying wound trope, he learns
Speaker 3: that the wolf was in fact his own wife, seeking
Speaker 3: vengeance for his killing of her.
Speaker 2: Wild wolf children.
Speaker 3: Female werewolf stories continue to entertain us while also retaining
Speaker 3: their ability to intentionally or unintentionally reveal much about the
Speaker 3: times and places they emerge from, revealing both negative societal
Speaker 3: ideas about women as well as more celebratory and even
Speaker 3: subversive ideas about feminine power. Tune in for additional episodes
Speaker 3: of The Monster Fact, The Artifact, or Animalius to Pendium
Speaker 3: each week. As always, you can email us at contact
Speaker 3: at stuffdo Blow your Mind dot com.
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