HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A WOMAN SCORNED

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This popular quote (from William Congreve, not Shakespeare to whom it is commonly attributed) is considered a truism by many people today. Women, it is believed, when angered, will go to any lengths to unfairly punish the man who upset them; they are so emotional they don’t know when they’ve gone too far with getting even; angry women are, for all practical purposes, dangerously insane. Perhaps the most insidious use of this truism is by “Men’s Rights” organizations who use this belief to discredit women’s testimony in family and divorce courts.

This popular idea is upheld in movies, books, and television. “Kill Bill” and “Kill Bill 2″, an extremely popular duet of movies, are about a woman’s revenge for those who tried to kill her and her unborn child. “Carrie”, by Stephen King, is about a girl who uses her psychic powers to wreak a horrific revenge on her bullying schoolmates. Stephen King also has the vengeful woman show up in books like Dolores Clairborne and Rose Madder. “Fatal Attraction” is a movie about a woman who gets revenge on a man who wants to dump her after his adulterous affair with her. “Chicago” is about a woman who kills her lover because he is going to leave her (based loosely on a real murder case from the early 1900’s). And I could go on and on.

Some people have held up these books and movies as examples of feminism, either in praise of or in condemnation of the movie or feminism itself. Sometimes there even is a slightly feminist subtext. In none of the above movies is the violence done by the vengeful woman completely uncalled for. There seems to be some recognition that men lie, cheat, abuse and abandon their wives and girlfriends. “Chicago”, a musical, has a song calld “He Had it Coming” wherein the women (who are all accused of murdering their spouses) list the reasons he deserved to die.

But while the man’s behavior is tsk-tsked over as being naughty or even starkly displayed as being reprehensible, the woman’s revenge is the central horror of the films. The idea that the offending man will be punished (and often the implication is that his punishment is unfair) for his behavior is the real drama - the offenses done against the woman are merely the background story. The subtext says - men treating women is bad, but normal - women punishing men, on the other hand, is frightening and dramatic. For the man - even though it is made clear that he has done her wrong - is portrayed sympathetically. Bill in Kill Bill 2 is shown as having had Kiddo’s best interests in mind when he left her for dead. The poor stalked man in Fatal Attraction just made a mistake when he had the affair - he’s only human, he’s going to slip up. The men’s motives are examined, their psyches probed, there is usually a tearful scene in which they explain why they just couldn’t help themselves. The women are, by comparison, paper cut-outs - one dimensional characters crazed by a desire to hurt.

But even this isn’t my real problem with these revenge fantasy movies. My problem with them is this - they are a distortion of reality. Women, by and large, do not seek revenge for the violence men visit on them. Feminism is not about seeking revenge on men for rape and murder and wife-beating. Feminism is a movement based on seeking justice. To call these movies feminist is a way of buying into the “feminists are man-haters” myth. All of these movie scenes described are much more characteristic of male behavior. It is teenage boys, not girls, who become angered after years of bullying and start killing their classmates. It is men who kill their girlfriends or wives in retalition for her leaving them. Most of the time, it is men who wreak horrific revenge on women for having stepped out of line - in some places in the world, it is even legal to do so. Read any daily paper from any mid-sized or larger city - you will see a case where a man killed, attempted to kill, or kidnapped his ex-wife, girlfriend, and/or their children because he was “distraught” (read, “jealously enraged”) because she broke off their relationship. It is revealing that these books and movies - almost all written and directed by men - focus so much on the frightening possibility of women’s revenge, while simultaneously ignoring the much more frequent scenario of revenge exacted by men. There also seems to be a tacit admission that men think they may deserve such retaliation, even while the narratives show they (and the law) will not tolerate it.

Right now I am trying to imagine a movie in which a woman ends a relationship with a man after having treated him badly, only to have him attempt to wreak an exquisitely planned and incredibly violent revenge. I am trying to imagine her being portrayed sympathetically even though she is not the perfect wife or chaste girlfriend. And I can’t do it. I don’t think such a movie would sell - it would be portrayed as “controversial” and “man-hating” - yet this is the reality, and women’s revenge is the fiction.