Dr. Michael Delahoyde
Washington State University
Introduction:
Ovid's Metamorphoses:
"Arthur and Gorlagon":
The werewolf lives the life of a wolf for two years and eventually
becomes the trusted dog of another king who "detected some signs of
human understanding in him" (242). But, "it so often happens that
the wife hates whom the husband loves" (243), and since this king's
wife is having an affair with a servant, which the wolf knows about,
tensions are thick in the household. The truth comes out: "The sewer
was flayed alive and hanged. The Queen was torn limb from limb by horses
and thrown into balls of flame" (246).
Finally, the wolf-king's wife is given to tormentors, "to be daily
tortured and daily exhausted with punishments, and allowed ... neither
food nor drink" (248). The wolf transformation is reversed at last,
and we end with our attention drawn to a mourning woman "holding
before her in a dish a human head bespattered with blood" (249).
This, of course, was Gorlagon's own story, and the woman is the
unfaithful woman (or one of the many). Let's eat.
So, clear? Dogs loyal; wives not.
Marie de France's The Lai of the Were-Wolf:
Here and in the Arthurian story is the association of werewolfism
with adulterous women; yet what the women do seems incidental.
Causes are obscure: the curse is there notwithstanding the infidelities
and betrayals. Who was responsible for the sapling in the Arthurian
story? The women seem to remain true to the "sewers," perhaps because
marriages were political arrangements
Wagner, the Wehr-wolf:
"The Other Side":
Of course we're supposed to assume initially that safety, civilization,
propriety, and piety are on "our side." But this side consists of
brutality, murderousness, ignorance, and religious paraphernalia.
What is horrible about the other side? Their alternative religion
amounts to a procession, but they do nothing -- no ravening beasts
from hell. So who are the monsters?
Werewolves rank as one of the most persistently successful monsters, but
they fare pretty poorly in literature. The 1941 Universal film, The
Wolf Man is really the central "text" for this monster. James Twitchell
claims that werewolves are traditionally not sufficiently anthropocentric
to arouse more than stark terror, while the animal itself is too distant
from our experiences (Twitchell 210). Although initially vilified because
either they occupied an ecological niche we wanted for ourselves, or because
they simply went after the animals we wanted to butcher ourselves, wolves
have, in this monster, come to represent the "animal" in the afflicted
humans. "England was wolfless by 1530, Wales by 1576, Scotland by about 1740"
(Twitchell 205); so psychological lycanthropy declined in western culture
long ago.
The story of Lycaon is the very first metamorphosis -- or transformation
-- among the many dozens in Ovid's encyclopedic collection of classical
myths. Jove (or Jupiter) is on a rampage in the Olympian council of gods,
insisting that "the entire human race must be destroyed" (227). Having
heard "Scandalous rumours concerning the state of the times" (228), Jove
disguised himself as a human and roamed the earth. Lycaon, determined to
find out if this traveler is really a god, wants to try to kill him in his
sleep, but instead,
he took a hostage ..., slit the man's throat with his sharp blade, cooked
his limbs, still warm with life, boiling some and roasting others over the
fire. Then he set this banquet on the table. No sooner had he done so, then
I with my avenging flames brought the house down upon its household gods,
gods worthy of such a master. Lycaon fled, terrified, until he reached
the safety of the silent countryside. There he uttered howling noises,
and his attempts to speak were all in vain. His clothes changed into
bristling hairs, his arms to legs, and he became a wolf. His own savage
nature showed in his rabid jaws, and he now directed against the flocks
his innate lust for killing. He had a mania, even yet, for shedding blood.
(228)
Jove ends his case: "You would think men had sworn allegiance to crime"
(228). The gods are ready to comply with his wishes, "Yet all were grieved
at the thought of the destruction of the human race" (230). "They inquired
who would bring offerings of incense to their altars, whether Jove meant
to abandon the world to the plundering of wild beasts" (230). Jove promises
"a new stock of men" (230).
This 14th-century Latin story begins with allusions to the elaborate
protocol of eating (234). Such rituals, however extreme, serve to maintain
a human separation from beasts. The progression of the story repeatedly
refers to, "as it chanced" (236, 237), further intrusions into dining
scenes. Gorlagon tells the story of a king whose pet sapling is the same
height as he. If anyone were to chop it down and hit someone else on the
head with it, saying, "Be a wolf and have the understanding of a wolf,"
that unfortunate would indeed become a wolf. The king is obsessively
concerned about preserving the sapling, and would "partake of no food
until he had visited it, even though he should fast until the evening"
(238). But, "it is customary for a woman to wish to know everything"
(238), so the queen nags the secret out of her husband, hacks down the
tree, and bungles the incantation, saying accidentally, "have the
understanding of a man" (239). She actually sets hounds on him (239).
In Brittany is a baron and his "very worthy dame" -- all fine but
"For three whole days in every week her lord was absent from her
side" (256). The husband must maintain a separate self for the
success of the marriage, but she badgers him into telling her that
he becomes Bisclavaret, running wild as a beast in the woods. And
it's important that he have access to his clothes. She cannot cope
with this dark side of him, nor can she keep a secret, so she tells
a knight, thereby betraying her husband. Bisclavaret becomes a loyal
dog to another king, until one day, "He became as a mad dog in his
hatred and malice. Breaking from his bonds he sprang at the lady's
face, and bit the nose from her visage" (260). The king is reminded
that this is very unlike the wolf. Presented with his clothes, and
offered some privacy, Bisclavaret transforms back into his human
form. His former wife goes into exile with her noselessness.
This 1857 melodrama by George W.M. Reynolds features a Faustian
pact between a German peasant and the devil as the origin of the
transformation, and an exchange of wolfishness every seven years
for wealth and immortality. So Wagner is nothing more than a
beast really and never was an interesting character in his own
right as was Varney the Vampire. But the enormous penny-dreadful
text is online in its entirety, and I'd be glad to read someone's
scholarly review.
Eric Stenbock's 1893 story focuses on young loner Gabriel, living
amid superstitious, hateful, small-minded townsfolk. From the woods
on the opposite side of a brook one can hear wolves howling, and
rumors of werewolves thrive. Interestingly, the story distinguishes
between "the were-wolves and the wolf-men and the men-wolves"
(270). (Wolf-men have wolf-heads; men-wolves have wolf-bodies --
pretty creepy.) A blue flower attracts Gabriel to "the other side"
and he witnesses a procession (not marauding beasts). Gabriel
crosses back. Eventually wolf-woman Lilith seems to replicate
Gabriel's own domestic surroundings, minus religious icons, in
a through-the-looking-glass episode. Gabriel later sees his wolf-body
reflection in the brook (277). Another glimpse of "this side" shows
the brutality -- "'Gabriel is skulking and hiding himself, he's
afraid to join the wolf hunt; why, he wouldn't even kill a cat,'
for their one notion of excellence was slaughter" (278) -- and
the ignorance -- "Their knowledge of other localities being so
limited, that it did not even occur to them to suppose he might
be living elsewhere than in the village" (278). In the end,
religious ritualistic magic destroys the other side. "The 'other
side' is harmless now -- charred ashes only; but none dares to
cross but Gabriel alone -- for once a year for nine days a strange
madness comes over him" (280).
Otten, Charlotte F., ed. A Lycanthropy Reader. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986.