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Tag Archives: menstruation

MARGARET THATCHER MEETS MEDEA: Witches and Monstrous Mothers throughout the Ages.

12 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by Alyson Dunlop Shanes in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Blood, Carrie, Christianity, Colchis, curses, demonisation, Dracula, Euripides, feminism, Greek, Hekate, Horror, Jason, Lucy, Magi, magic, Malleus Maleficarum, Margaret Thatcher, Medea, menstruation, monsters, monstrous mothers, periods, powerful women, prophesy, Psycho, Religion, sacrifice, Sex, sexism, sexual predators, Stephen King, supernatural, The Devil, Vampire, vampirism, witch, witchcraft, women

lucyMargaret Thatcher is nothing, if not memorable.  She is both loved and reviled, depending on which side of the fence you stand on.  It is not my intention to pay a tribute, though it does seem like a fitting topic this week, following the death of Thatcher, to discuss legendary women who fall into the category of ‘monstrous mothers’.  Their deeds are outwith the accepted boundaries of what it means to be a woman.  They, therefore, become known as a witch or monster.

Medea, wife of Jason, in the classical tale of the same name, is one such witch.  Written in 431 BCE by the Greek playwright Euripides, Medea tells the story of a foreign witch betrayed by the man she loves.  She gives up everything, her wealth and status, for Jason; everything, that is, except her magic.  In fact, Medea is a priestess of Hekate from Colchis.  This was the special domain of sorcery known as Kolkha.  In the 6th century BCE Colchis came under the Persian Empire†.  In Greece, foreign religions were treated suspiciously and given the name ‘magic’; terms which arose from the name of the Persian priests, The Magi.  Medea is treated badly throughout the story, both by the suspicious women of her new town and from her once beloved Jason.  The townswomen do not like that Medea dresses differently from them; and Jason betrays her when he decides to marry Princess Glauce.  Glauce is deemed to be more of an appealing match.  After all, Medea is only a ‘barbarian woman’ in the eyes of the Greeks.  By this point in the story, Medea has raised Jason’s two sons, and gets her own appalling revenge on him by murdering his wife and her father on the wedding day.  She goes on to murder the two sons that she and Jason have together.  Medea is shown, however, to be an oppressed victim, appealing for the sympathy of the audience. In this tale, she escapes in a blaze of glory, astride dragons, having wreaked her revenge on the philandering Jason.  

The Sun himself, the source of all life and warmth, vindicating the cause of passion, disorder, violent cruelty, against the cold, orderly, self-protective process of civilised man, is a reminder that the universe is not on the side of civilisation; and that a life combining order with happiness is something men must win for themselves in continual struggle with an unsympathetic environment. (1)

This week, I’ve read the line: “Ding dong the witch is dead…” so often I can’t now seem to get it out my head.  Interestingly, it was not until The Wizard of Oz, that we had the introduction of the witch as a terrifying character on the silver screen. 

The witch has always inspired dread and fear, going back to ancient times, as can be seen in the case of Medea.  The earliest known witches were feared only because they were thought to have magical and terrifying powers, not because of any association with The Devil.  This was a later-added Christian fear (both The Devil and the association of The Devil with witches).

In some cultures, young girls who experienced prophetic dreams during menstruation were thought to be witches.  There was often this association with blood and the supernatural.  Menstruation was linked to the ‘witches curse’, something Stephen King explored in his much celebrated story Carrie.  Historically, the curse of a woman who was menstruating or pregnant was believed to be much more powerful.  It was known as a ‘Mother’s Curse’, and meant certain death.  In the 14th century, the secret feminine knowledge of midwifery became associated with witchcraft and in 1484 The Malleus Maleficarum stated that witches were castrators.  Clearly men, therefore, had much to fear from these devil women!  Witches, during those years, were often accused of such things.  The main reason given for a woman’s ‘otherness’ is her natural carnal nature.  Here is a shining example of the demonisation of women and sex, rolled into one convenient package.  Burn the horny cock-thieving bitches!

In horror, the witch still has an essentially sexual nature, with supernatural powers and a wish to harm, wreaking destruction on the community.  Being closer to nature than man, she can control such things as storms and hurricanes.  In Carrie, the anti-heroine is a young menstruating woman, although not a mother.  The monstrous mother role is given to her mother, who desires to control her daughter through a warped sense of religious morals.  At no point in the story does she ever really show a maternal bond with Carrie.  In both Psycho and Carrie the monstrous child is a product of the psychotic, domineering and monstrous mother.  There is, incidentally, another important similarity between Carrie and Psycho.  Both Marion in Psycho and Carrie, are punished severely after enjoying sensual pleasures in the shower, and both these scenes end in blood-shed. 

Having been given no prior warning about periods from her mother, Carrie is then subjected to a lecture on the sins of women when she returns home.  Raving about sexist religious beliefs, Mrs White goes on to blame all human evil on women.  Woman is the universal scapegoat, and Carrie is, therefore, the sacrificial victim at the Prom, where she is baptised in the blood of a pig as a joke by her bullying classmates.  Carrie is ‘crowned queen and anointed with pig’s blood’ before going on to wage her terrible and monstrous revenge.  Like Medea, we are encouraged to view her display of monstrosity with sympathy because, like Medea, Carrie has been treated appallingly by her female peers and (not her husband) her mother.

Both women desire a fresh start at the end of their vengeful outburst: Medea in Athens, and Carrie, pictured as a trembling child washing off the indicators of her womanhood, kills her mother and returns to the ‘womb’ of the dark closet.

It’s pretty safe to conclude that the monstrous female is a patriarchal invention.  Women tend not to be frightened of themselves, usually.  In horror, the monstrous nature of women is undoubtedly linked with her place as man’s sexual other (2).

The dark side of maternity is also explored in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  The Count, described by Almond as a ‘monstrous baby’, suckles on women, turning them into bad mothers: ‘non-maternal sexual predators’ such as the vampirised Lucy, is later destroyed by honourable men.  Furthermore, the three female vampires encountered by Jonathon Harker are representative of rampant female sexuality, much reviled by Victorian society.  In such a society, they symbolise the corruption of motherhood.  With witch-like qualities Shakespeare would have been proud to see, the terrifying power these three possess is female sexuality.  Furthermore, Lucy goes from unconscious flirtatiousness to becoming blatantly seductive and, therefore, dangerous.  Shortly after her death there are newspaper reports of children going missing who later, returning with bitten necks, report having met a beautiful woman who turns out to be Lucy.  When confronted vampirising a child at night, Lucy callously discards the child and attempts to seduce her husband, Arthur.  This is a scene which shows female sexuality is incompatible with maternity, a strong Victorian notion.  It also reverses the roles of the mother and child.  Instead of the child feeding from the mother-figure, the mother feeds upon the child (3).

Powerful and/or sexual women are often seen as a threat to a patriarchal-dominated society, whether or not they and their behaviour deserves to be viewed as ‘monstrous’.  Like her or loathe her, Margaret Thatcher was a successful politician from the late 1950s, gaining the ultimately most powerful position possible in 1979 when she became Prime Minister of the UK.  Thereafter, she became a Monstrous Mother, suppressing the power of her ‘children’, sending them to be killed in unnecessary wars, increasing their poverty and manipulating them with well-timed elections.  Eventually, 200,000 of Maggie’s children demonstrated against her policies.  There’s definitely a gothic horror story in that!  I doubt, however, that Maggie would get as much sympathy as Medea or Carrie… 

I’m not sure either if she had an ‘essentially sexual nature’, though no doubt she was the wank fantasy of some BDSM pervs…

Well, anyway, I’m even more grateful to have such a loving mother when you see what’s out there!  Mine even gave me a kidney – she’s a keeper!

Until next week: More power to MILFs!  Your friend, A.D.

 

(1)               Euripides, Medea & Other Plays Penguin (1963 edition) p9.

(2)               Creed, B   (1993) Woman as Witch in “The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis” Routledge pp73-83.

(3)               Almond, B R (2006) Monstrous Infants and Vampyric Mothers in Bram Stoker’s Dracula in “The International Journal of Psychoanalysis” 2007:88:219-35.

† The Making of the Georgian Nation: 2nd Ed, Ronald Grigor Suny, p 13

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Werewolves: Narrative and Symbolism in Film and Literature

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Alyson Dunlop Shanes in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

allegory, anarchy, Berserkers, bitten, classics, criminal, curse, delinquency, Devil, film, folk lore, folktales, forest, full moon, fury, God, hallucinogens, Herodotus, hooliganism, hypertrichosis, infection, literature, Luna, Lupa, lycanthrope, lycanthropy, Madness, menstruation, metamorphosis, Norse, Ovid, Pausanius, pentagram, Petronius, Pliny the Elder, pornography, prostitute, psychiatric illness, puberty, scratched, sexual, symbolism, transformation, tranvestitism, Viking, Virgil, werecats, werejaguars, werelions, weretigers, werewolves, witches

werewolf

By Sergey Kalinen

Werewolves!  Where does one start?!  These supernatural creatures have as vast and varied a history as vampires, probably even more so.  Early tales of transformation from man to wolf, can be read in the classical literature of Herodotus, Pausanius, Ovid, Virgil, Pliny the Elder and Petronius.

Depending on which part of the world you live in, the curse of the werewolf is either given by God or the Devil. Also, depending on which part of the world you live in, humans may metamorphose into any number of creatures.  In Europe, and subsequently Canada via Viking migration, America via European migration, Haiti via French migration etc, wolves are the most likely     were-animal.  Were-cats are also mentioned in the texts.  In Europe they are mostly associated with witches, whereas in Africa and Asia they are mostly associated with big cats – weretigers and werelions.  Werejaguars are also mentioned in the Americas.  In Thailand, there are even folk tales of werecrocodiles!

There seems to generally be a big difference between werewolves of film and werewolves of literature.  For example, in film werewolves are most often infected or cursed from being bitten or scratched by another werewolf.  In literature, they are cursed through a pact with the Devil, parentage or because they have a psychiatric illness (lycanthropy); also, in literature, religious symbols are usually no protection whereas, for example, a pentagram was used in the film An American Werewolf in London.  Traditionally used as a symbol for protection, it is often misunderstood to mean something Satanic.  In later (20th century) literature, the silver bullet was added as a means of killing a werewolf.  Prior to that, wolfsbane and exorcism were often tried on people believed to be lycanthropes.

From the original texts to current visual storytelling, it should by now be obvious that werewolves represent many varied things, and I’m not going to get too arsy about the differences because as I see it, most stories evolve and metamorphose themselves in the process.  Plus, films have to be written by someone before being put on the screen….

It has been suggested that rabies is one origin of werewolf beliefs.  It’s a great hypothesis, and there are several aspects of infection and symptom that would suggest this theory is correct.  Even though being bitten and infected was a later addition, and not present in origin myths and legends, the infection does curse the victim to a state of madness and is also often associated with canines.

Another possibility for the origins of the werewolf legends lies with the medical condition hypertrichosis.  This condition is caused by a genetic mutation of chromosomes, as well as various diseases such as cancer and anorexia.  In the most severe cases, the face and body are covered in thick hair, giving a very animalistic appearance.  In days gone by, people who suffered from this condition often ended up in circus shows, labelled with such names as “Wolf Man”.

Thirdly, The Berserkers, were Viking warriors described in Old Norse literature who dressed in wolf and bear skins.  They were said to enter an almost uncontrollable, trance-like fury, thought by some historians to be induced by drugs.  In one saga, they are described as being “tasters of blood”.  Their fit of madness is described here:

This fury, which was called berserkergang, occurred not only in the heat of battle, but also during laborious work. Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed impossible for human power. This condition is said to have begun with shivering, chattering of the teeth, and chill in the body, and then the face swelled and changed its colour. With this was connected a great hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe. When this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness followed, which could last for one or several days.(1)

This is interesting, in that not only do the Berserkers transform in the same way as werewolves do, but they are also weak when the effects wear off, in the same way that werewolves appear to be weak when they transform back to their human form.  The state of going ‘berserk’ is explored in Finding Delphi, when one of the protagonists is forced to confront his past and the guilt that remains with him because of his actions.  The effects of a hallucinogen experienced by him and other protagonists in the story, cause him to shapeshift into various animals, including a wolf.

The werewolf, in storytelling, has to be some part of the human being – a part of us which is deep-rooted and potentially accessible.  In some cases, it could be madness, and we have the full moon symbolism to thank for the association with the lunatic.  The word luna is Latin for moon and the goddess of the moon.  It is also, incidentally, the alchemical name for silver!  The full moon has long been associated with psychiatric illness.  It has never been proven to be anything more than a mythical link, although there is no accounting for the effect belief has on a subject.  In American Werewolf in London, the unfortunate David Kessler suffers psychologically through nightmares and supposed hallucinations, after straying off the path onto the moors, disregarding the full moon and being attacked by a werewolf which kills his friend, Jack, and turns David into a werewolf.  His reign of terror throughout the streets of London seems to be linked to delinquency and hooliganism, with some transvestism, anarchy and porn thrown in for comic effect.   In this case, the werewolf is the parts of an eighties society that London was either uncomfortable with or did not take very seriously, possibly both.  Certainly it represents the ‘Other’ in that society.

As well as furious, strange and criminal behaviour, the werewolf represents our most base instincts; our untamed wildness.  It represents the animal side of our nature.  It is really what is going on, or what we have the potential for, underneath our civilised exterior.  Of course, this includes our sexual nature which seems to have been demonised some couple of thousand years ago….  In very ancient times, the wolf was associated with prostitution, and this is one theory for the background story of the wolf that raised Romulus and Remus, the founding brothers of Rome – that is, that Lupa may in fact have been a prostitute.

Folk tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, are full of amazing allegory, warning unsuspecting adolescent girls of the dangers of not sticking to “the path”.  In the original fairytale there is a clear distinction between the safety of the village and the dangers of the forest.  The tale is symbolic of an innocent female victim being lured by a dangerous male criminal from a place of safety to a place of isolation.  Charles Perrault, writer of the earliest version (1697) explicitly explained the meaning of the story at the end:

From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition – neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!

There is no doubt in my mind that Little Red Riding Hood is a warning to pubescent girls on the awakening of sexual maturity, the red cloak symbolising the blood of menstruation; the wolf, therefore, a sexual predator.

The literary tale was beautifully brought to life in Company of Wolves, which was an absolute dream for the discerning symbologist (yes, I know it’s a made up title – please don’t write in!).  Unlike the fairytale the charismatic wolf is first encountered as a Prince Charming, later metamorphosing into a wolf.  Throughout the story there are several transformations from human to wolf, introduced through other folk tales within the story.  The main point, according to the old-fashioned thinking of her grandmother’s generation, is for Rosaleen (Red Riding Hood) to be wary of wandering off the path (of righteousness) as there are wicked men ready to take advantage of her.  However, Rosaleen’s mother has a different attitude.  Nowadays it’s okay to run off with the man (or werewolf!) you love.

I leave you with one of my favourite quotes, and the moral of the story, from Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood:

Little girls, this seems to say,
Never stop upon your way,
Never trust a stranger-friend;
No one knows how it will end.
As you’re pretty so be wise;
Wolves may lurk in every guise.
Handsome they may be, and kind,
Gay, and charming – never mind!
Now, as then, ‘tis simple truth –
Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!

Until next week, stick to the path and beware the moon!  Your friend,  A.D.

Footnotes

(1)    Fabing, Howard D. (1956) On Going Berserk: A Neurochemical Inquiry in Scientific Monthly 83 [Nov.] 234.

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