The Wild Woman archetype

I am reading Women Who Run With the Wolves. I read it in 96 I think. At that time I was reading very little work from writers that I knew. I think it was PGL that spoiled me and makes me want to talk to an author while I read their work.

I was wild with words when I read Run With the Wolves. I had so much to say, so much to think, so much that made me yell. yes, yes, YES, YES, this is true, this is what I need.

So I bought it for myself for Christmas.

I was on page five when I started thinking about my women characters and mothers. Madwoman begins with a mother who is dead and a wild woman who is a mother to be. DTF has a mother who is stifled by everything but her children. Her story is the story of learning to reach into the dirt and find her La Loba.

There is no mother in Carnal Fear. Sutter never once mentions her mother. Did she have one? Eric doesn't. He was sentenced to an orphanage for his crimes of being crippled.

Aaron and Sarah, oh yes they have a mother. A mother who mothers Sutter when she can. A mother who cries and cares and supports even when it hurts her to let go.

The mother in Bluer Than the Night Sky vanishes when the protagonist is young. Then the protagonist becomes a mother and her children are stolen away.

In Other People's Blood the first mother throws her daughter into the street to become a prostitute. The next died in a fire.

I think I meant Trixi to be dead but now I am not so sure.

Robyn is Johanna's mother of her heart although she won't admit it.

Someone once told me that my male characters are lost and clueless. I am not sure that is true. DTF's three out of four males find what they want. Dalton is lost in Madwoman. He is lost in his grief. A wilderness I know well. But Dalton finds his madwoman to lead him back from the desert, through a maze and into himself.

Henderson is happy. Galen dies for the first time in the desert. But then Mike blooms and is born in the desert. Margory's father is a terrible person. Her wolf is a male though and he is everything she cannot get from her family. Her angels are men. They are both empowered and helpless.

Bishop is a thug.

Am I uneven in my treatment of men and women? I don't think that I am but perhaps I am blind to my own isms.

Ooh this spellcheck just pissed me off. It knows madman but not madwoman. There is an ism for you.