The
very nature of urban fantasy means an interaction with the
supernatural. Regardless of the supernatural creature that the author
chooses to focus on, the one thing is certain, unless an author is
making up a brand new creature from thin air, there will be a strong
lore in existence, which will highly influence how the character is
written. The vampire has most certainly taken a lead in terms of
representation. The werewolf is far less popular but when it does make
an appearance, regardless of who the author is, the characterisation is
nearly uniform. In many ways, the werewolf can be understood as a
metaphor for hyper masculinity and violence. Over the years, werewolf
nature has become commonplace to explain away abusive relationships and a
forced submission upon their partners. That this is romanticized is
one of the largest issues with how lycanthropy is constructed today.
Perhaps
the most common werewolf trope is extreme possessiveness to the point
of jealousy. These wolves demand to control and own their women and
defend them like an actual wolf would its hunting territory. I still
await the story when a werewolf actually cocks his leg against his
woman, but I won’t be surprised when it happens.
This overwhelming possessiveness and control is constantly presented as romantic. In the Otherworld Series
when Elena returns to Stonehaven, Clay simply will not accept that she
won’t be with him and considers them married, despite her objections.
Even after she is reconciled to their relationship, he demands near
constant attention from her. Other men cannot even look at Mercy from
the Mercy Thompson series
with Adam growling, roaring and coming close to attacking and he is
extremely reluctant to ever let her out of his sight. In the Caedemon Wolves,
the fact Devin feels possessive of Tamara and is jealous when she
speaks to other men is the very first sign that he actually has feelings
for her - before love or affection or kindness, it’s possession. Even
in Twilight
Jacob forces a kiss on Bella despite her objections - to say nothing of
imprinting, including small children and even eggs in the womb; marked
from the womb as owned! Taking, controlling and owning their mates is an
incredibly common theme.
Dominance
issues are nearly synonymous with werewolf stories today. It is based
in the false idea that because werewolves literally have an animal
nature that they will behave like wolves in a pack. This would be a
fine assumption, if this is what actually happened but that is not the
case in most stories. In the books that I have read, alphas are almost
always male though we know that in real packs there is an Alpha female
or male or both.
The constant jockeying for position as Patricia Briggs portrays in the Mercy Thompson
series is non existent. In Briggs’ world two wolves can barely stand to
be in the same car with each other simply because they haven’t figured
out who is the most dominant. Dominance in this way is more of one male
testing his masculinity against another through violent means. Because
the violence is happening in a werewolf pack, it is never questioned and
always rationalised, as though these men don’t spend more of their time
in human form.
It’s
also telling how so many of these dominance games put women at the
bottom of the hierarchy - a major contrast to the lives of actual
wolves. In the Mercy Thompson series, women are given the same rank as their mates, no matter if they were far more dominant than the men they were with. In The Protector female werewolves are sheltered and protected and often forced to take mates for their “protection.” In the Anita Blake Series
just about all the shapeshifter packs are dominated by men, female
heads are remarked upon for their rarity and the main source of
influence for female shifters is as mate to a male leader.
Female
werewolves are often the exception to the rule and are generally not
constructed as violent as their male counterparts. For instance, Natalya
Stravinsky, of Shawntelle Madisons’ Coveted series
is specifically stigmatized for her lack of aggression and plays an
absolute second to her werewolf lover. There are strong female
werewolves in the series but the story does not focus on them per say.
Kelley Armstrong’s Elena of the Otherworld Series,
is the only female werewolf and we are reminded of this ad nauseum.
She is nowhere near a match for Clay, her lover and in fact, spends
quite a bit of time being kidnapped. While the men of this series use
their werewolf nature to attack and defend, Elena’s nature is only
useful in turning her into a special snowflake. This situation also
occurs in Douglas R Brown’s Tamed,
wherein Christine is the only werewolf allowed in a civilized area and
unlike her male counterparts, she is highly lucid during her change and
not prone to violence. A pack hierarchy never really develops though
there are wolves who hunt together. What we get instead is a constant
desire by the male wolves who cannot be tamed, to become violent at the
first opportunity. Christine does her best to avoid violence and even
saves the life of the man who was trying to kill her.
Of
course, all of these tropes are justified by the fact that the werewolf
can’t help it. It’s the beast. It’s instinct. It’s the woo-woo, they
can’t control it, they can’t stop it, so this is why it becomes
acceptable. This completely misses - or dismisses - the situation of the
woman (and, let’s face it, it is 99% of the time a male werewolf is
with a female human). Why should his inability to stop, justify her
having to tolerate this treatment? Why are his undeniable urges
justification for her abuse and victimisation? Why should she sacrifice
her agency, her control, even her very well being simply because he
can’t control himself?
We
see this constantly over and again, women making massive concessions
and endure completely unacceptable conditions to appease their men’s
uncontrollable urges - in The Otherworld Series, Clay
does not seek out Elena’s consent before changing her into a werewolf,
which reflects his refusal to allow her to have agency over own body,
even when something as serious as a change would risk her life. He
knew the dangers involved but his desire for a partner overrode her even
having a say on whether she wanted to remain human or become a
werewolf. Clay’s desire to possess Elena is so strong that when he
begins to force himself on her sexually, he actually has to make it
clear that he is not going to rape her because up until that point, not
only was he not seeking consent, it was not given or implied. With Clay
the excuse is that he was turned too young and had lived in the wild so
long, that he was more wolf than human. Once again, the animal nature
is blamed for violence against women and it’s all okay because there’s
woo woo involved. In the Mercy Thompson
series, Mercy has actually crawled on her belly and repeatedly averted
her eyes to appease Adam and other werewolves. It’s not just that the
men are behaving this way, but the women are expected to accommodate
their behaviour - that it’s understandable and even reasonable that they
have to live this way because he’s a werewolf and can’t help it.
And
never is this more blatant than when the werewolves are violent.
Perhaps closest to the classic legends of the rampaging lycanthrope that
loses control every full moon, this has often turned into werewolves
that cannot be antagonised for fear of provoking them changing and
attacking. In Twilight
we see Emily, a woman with scars on her face caused by her werewolf
partner, Sam, losing control and shifting. Bella is constantly warned of
the danger of antagonising the werewolves - including Paul snapping,
shifting and attacking her. Again, Mercy Thomas has been physically
afraid of the werewolves around her, should they snap if she doesn’t
play their dominance games. None of this is considered abusive - tragic,
perhaps, but not abusive. It’s a burden, usually for the werewolves not
their female partners who live in fear, or have to tip-toe round their
lover’s rages. Frankly, I can hear the echoes of “it’s just his way, he
can’t help it” excuse, while the woman tends her injuries and walks on
egg-shells. A violent partner is dangerous and unacceptable - that
doesn’t change because the partner is a werewolf, that doesn’t change
because he’s fighting his instincts and it doesn’t change because of the
woo-woo.
The
problem we see time and again in the genre is that the woo-woo is used
as an excuse to justify completely unacceptable behaviour. We
continually see relationships that make us cringe and are outright
abusive but they are considered acceptable because the woo-woo is
involved. No amount of fur and fangs will make an abusive relationship
one bit less abusive - and no amount of lunar shifting or clumsy,
patched together wolf-behaviour is going to change that we are
presenting predatory, abusive relationships as romantic, loving and
desirable.
We cannot dismiss the messages that our fiction sends, we cannot dismiss the values and ideals it supports: and we must criticise the pattern of placing abuse on a romantic pedestal. While there are some excellent books that challenge these tropes - Carrie Vaughan’s Kitty Norville Series, and Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series for example - these tropes are all too common.
