StorySpotting: Fierce feline women (Wonder Woman 1984)

 StorySpotting is a weekly or kinda-weekly series about folktales, tropes, references, and story motifs that pop up in popular media, from TV shows to video games. Topics are random, depending on what I have watched/played/read recently. Also, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Be warned!

Finally catching up to the DC franchise, I watched WW84. It dabbles - to varying success - in all kinds of lore (most obviously the Midas myth), but since Kristen Wiig totally steals the show, I decided to post about something else.  

Where was the story spotted?

Wonder Woman 1984 (2021)

What happens?

Quirky scientist Barbara Minerva makes a wish to be special and unique like Diana, and unwittingly gains Wonder Woman's superpowers. Then, later in the movie, she wishes to become an "apex predator unlike any other", and transforms into Cheetah, a classic and iconic DC supervillain. She basically becomes an incredibly fast, strong, and agile feline-human hybrid. 

(At the end of the movie she has a big fight scene with Wonder Woman, and eventually it seems like she renounces her wish to save the world along with everybody else. Or does she?)


What's the story?

Women turning into felines is actually quite common in world folklore. I have gathered some of my favorite examples, excluding house cats, and focusing on larger felines, to save space (I am also excluding feline goddesses for the same reason). 

The leopard woman (Liberia)

Husband and wife journey through the bush, with the baby strapped to the woman's back, when they come upon a herd of bush cows. The husband tells his wife, who has shapeshifting powers, to turn into a leopard and go fetch some cow. The woman, who doesn't appreciate being ordered around, indeed turns into a leopard and scares the crap out of her husband. Then she kills a cow, transforms back, and tells him never to order her again to do his damn job. (*mic drop*)

Achol and her wild mother (Dinka people, Sudan)

A woman sells herself piece by piece to a wild lion in exchange for help with gathering firewood, until she turns into a lion herself, and runs away into the wilderness. Her daughter Achol puts food out for her every day, and every day the lion-woman returns to sing to her and eat. Her father and older brother are terrified, but the younger brother helps Achol capture the lion, and tame her until she turns back into a human woman. (Read here)

The wife who thought her husband's favors (Haya people, Tanzania)

To win back her husband's love a woman turns to a magician, who uses medicine on her and makes her stand on an anthill. When she walks off, she turns into a lioness; when she returns to the hill, she is human again. Her family gives her up for dead. She lives as a lioness for a long time, only occasionally returning to the hill to "remind herself she is human"; living as a lion makes her stronger and younger. Eventually she finds the magician - who turns out to be a slave, forced by his master to test the medicine on her. They make a plan, kill the master, fall in love, and live happily ever after.

Ak'omu-Bukuma (Haya people, Tanzania)

A man has a daughter with a leopard woman, and the girl sometimes takes on a feline shape for fun. As she gets older, she scares more and more people, so when she gets married, she promises not to transform anymore. However, her father-in-law wants to see her leopard form, and begs her to show him. Eventually she gives in to his pleas, but she sets up such a clever situation that when he runs around scared, no one believes what he saw. (Read here)

Nyavirezi (Rwanda)

The daughter of a chief accidentally drinks lion urine, and gains an urge to eat raw meat and the ability to transform into a lion. When she is married off (to a man who likes her because she is "big and strong"), she hides her powers. However, after the birth of their first child the husband finds out, they get into a fight, and Nyavirezi kills and eats him. Later on, she marries a man named Babinga who turns out to hail from a family of spirits, and has no problem with having a shapeshifter wife whatsoever. She gives birth to a hero-son, and also eventually trains a younger lion-shifter girl how to control her powers. The girl becomes her daughter-in-law.

The wife of the Dawn's Heart Star (San people)

Lynx and Hyena are sisters, and Lynx is married to the Dawn's Heart Star (Jupiter). The younger sister in her jealousy feeds some grubs to Lynx, and she turns into a feline creature and runs away into the wilderness. However, her baby is without milk, so she tells her sister to bring the baby out every day to the bush to be suckled. But every day, she forgets a little bit more, until she tells her not to bring the baby anymore, because she is becoming fully feral. Eventually the husband finds out, the family goes out, captures the lynx, and turns her back into a woman. (Read here)

The jaguar's wife (Opaye-Shavante people, Brazil)

A girl wishes to live with a jaguar, because she longs for eating good meat every day. The jaguar takes her into the woods and marries her; they keep supplying meat to her family. Eventually the jaguar suggests they should move into the village. People, however, are troubled by the transformation of the jaguar's wife: she is slowly becoming feline. Dark spots appear on her skin, claws on her hands and feet, and fangs in her mouth. Eventually her grandmother gets so scared that she kills her with witchcraft. The family, afraid of his revenge, offer the jaguar another girl but he doesn't accept. He just say "I do not wish you any harm", and returns to the jungle.

The tiger woman (India)

A woman, looking for clean water, accidentally drinks from a water hole that a tiger uses, and she starts transforming into a tiger. She snaps at things and she craves raw meat, until she gains the ability to fully transform. From that on she hunts at night, but returns to her children in the morning. One day, she kills a person, and brings a leg home. Her husband is terrified, and she realizes that she is a danger to her family, so she runs away into the wilderness. The husband fills in the watering hole. 

Ralngam's journey to the sun (India)

A man, trying to climb up to the sky, falls into the distant land of the tiger people. He and his dog end up in the house of an old tiger-woman, who takes pity on them and promises to help. She hides them from the tiger-men, and figures out a way to help them escape and stall the hunters.

The last panther in Eastern Kentucky (USA)

A proud hunter sets out to kill the last mountain lion. While wandering in the wilderness, he meets a strange old woman with a beautiful necklace, who claims she can show him where to find the last mountain lion. She leads him deep into the mountains, until suddenly she disappears, and he is left stranded. He catches a glimpse of a mountain lion, wearing a beautiful necklace, running away...

(Story by Si Kahn, not sure if it is based on a folk tradition. Many American tellers tell it. Reference here.)

Conclusion

Boy, women turn into large felines a lot. Be warned.

The secret identity of the Princess with the Pea (Folklore Thursday)

Well, the Princess, specifically. If you want to know the secret identity of the pea, you'll be disappointed. It's a pea.

This is me, showing my work.

Full disclosure: I have never really liked Andersen's literary fairy tales, and doing some research on this one didn't really change my opinion of him. I wasn't even going to go into it, but I found some bread crumbs researching another folktale, and followed it all the way to some literature that talked about the possible folktale-origins of The Princess and the Pea. Sure, I knew that over-sensitivity is an existing motif (I have a tale of three over-sensitive men in my folktale collection), but I was intrigued when I found out that the "original" version was actually numbered ATU 545A - the female-hero variant of Puss in Boots.

See, Andersen claimed that he heard the story as a child. Researchers have already pointed out that there is no Danish version of such a folktale - but it is very popular in the Swedish tradition, which, when it comes to how stories travel... is close enough. I kept running into the same claim: There is a Swedish folktale, titled The Princess that Lay on Seven Peas, which includes a girl, a cat, and some pea-related shenanigans. Sadly, I could not locate the actual story anywhere, because nobody cited it.

So I eventually figured out that the claim came from Georg Christensen, who published an article on the origins of Andersen stories in Danske Studier in 1906. Since my Danish is nonexistent, I painstakingly fed the article into Google Translate, until I managed to find the citations he DID put in there. Which led me to a Swedish folktale collection, where I finally located the story. It is actually titled The Palace that Stood on Golden Pillars.
Close enough, huh.

So, now I had a text, in Swedish. Obviously, I would have to find someone to actually translate it, but as far as getting an idea of the tale went, I once again turned to Google Translate. Apart from some delightful results such as "The cat noticed, and put the mathematics on his mother-in-law", I could figure out what the story really was about.

Now.

ATU 545A is also known as The Cat Palace - and, as I have mentioned before, it is basically a genderbent version of Puss in Boots. A poor girl loses her parents, and inherits a cat (her brother gets the cow, obviously). She sets out, and the cat helps her pass as a lost and robbed princess, so that she gets invited to stay with a royal family. However, the mother-in-law is suspicious of her behavior (she's a peasant girl, after all), and decides to put her to the test. She puts things in her bed to see if she really is a refined lady, but the cat sees her, warns the girl, and helps her fake her way through the pea thing (and the bean thing, and the straw thing, and various other food items the queen puts under the sheets).
Eventually, the queen changes tactics: She sends a gorgeous silken dress for the girl to wear, and invites her for a walk. The girl keeps dragging the dress in the mud - but when questioned, she claims that she doesn't feel sorry for it, because she has much better dresses back at home, in Kattenborg. The queen has no more arguments left.

The rest of the story is pretty much the same as Puss in Boots: Time comes to visit the princess' imaginary castle, and the cat runs ahead to arrange it all, kill a giant, get a palace, etc.

Conclusion No. 1: If Andersen really heard this tale as a child, he managed to grasp the least exciting part of it. 
Go figure.

We have a girl, and a helpful, smart (occasionally sassy) animal helper. Most often a cat, BUT the tale also exists in variants where the helper is a dog, which makes it especially dear to my dog-person heart. Also, the girl is not actually as sensitive as Andersen suggests - she is simply faking it, in order to pass as "proper" royalty, and go through the mother-in-law's ridiculous tests (gotta give it to the woman, though, her suspicions were right). She blunders sometimes - says things she shouldn't say, or drags her expensive dress in the mud. And yet, the prince falls in love with her.
This is not a tale about a princess who can't sleep on a pea. This is a tale about a girl who is faking it until she makes it.

...

Oh yeah, about the title.

Conclusion No. 2: The Princess in this story is actually the Marquise de Carabas. 

There.

W111.2.5. Boy to see whether there is fire in the house: feels cat to see if she is warm (WTF - Weird Things in Folktales)

Welcome to my A to Z Challenge blog series titled WTF - Weird Things in Folktales! Find the introduction post (explaining the theme) here. Find all other participating blogs in the comments of each day's post on the main blog! You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

W is for Traits of Character, both favorable and unfavorable. Folktales are full of nice and less nice characters, and their personalities are represented through various actions - some more peculiar than others. Tales depicting extraordinary laziness (W111) are especially entertaining. Observe:

W111.2.5. Boy to see whether there is fire in the house: feels cat to see if she is warm 

This story, commonly known and shared around Europe in the Middle Ages, features an extraordinarily lazy servant. When his lord tells him to get up and see if it rained, the servant calls in the dog instead, to see if it is wet. When asked whether there is enough fire in the house, the servant, instead of checking the fireplace, calls in the cat and pets it, to see if it is warm. When his lord asks why the door has been open all night, the servant answers: "I knew you would ask me to open it in the morning, so I left it open the night before to save myself the trouble."

Let's face it, we all know that person (like someone who asks the phone if it's raining instead of looking out the window). Also, most of us have been that person, from time to time. I know from experience that you sometimes only notice it's raining when the dog comes in soaking wet...

(Read the French version of the story here, the German version of the story here, and the Yiddish version of the story here.)

Runner-ups
W11.9. Prince donates all including a tooth
W11.16. Generous king gives away his only eye
W28.4. Saint threatens to take place of homicide in hell unless soul is released.
W111.1.1.1. Man is burned to death because he is too lazy to put out spark
W111.5.13. Man weeds garden from cushioned rocking chair, using fire tongs to reach weeds
W116.7. Use of strange language to show one’s high education
W128.3. Dissatisfied rivers complain against sea
W152.3. Stingy dead woman raises her head to correct account of laundress, who is overcharging her daughter
W152.7. Spider in stingy woman‘s house grows thin
W152.12.2. Stingy farmer encourages help by promise of hot lunch. The servant discovers that the hot lunch is a mustard sandwich.
W152.14.2. Man saves sausage skins, sends them back for refilling
W212.1. Eager warriors go through tent wall

Folklore Thursday: The real reason women do the dishes

Today is Folklore Thursday on social media! If you want to find out more, follow this link, or click on the #FolkloreThursday hashtag on Twitter! Hosted by @FolkloreThursday.

Continuing my #FolkloreThursday series of selections from the Peasant Bible (Hungarian folktales based on biblical themes). This week I will let you in on a secret: The real reason why women have to do the dishes in the household.
(Shhhh... I'm a feminist too... just keep reading)

Adam and Eve make a bet

Adam and Eve had a fight about who was supposed to do the dishes. Adam did not like it one bit; he was supposed to be the head of the household, and felt like his manliness would the tarnished by doing menial chores around the house. (Cave?). Therefore, he did what any red-blooded man would do when he can't agree with his wife: He went to tell on her to God.
"Please God, I can't deal with her anymore. Take her back."
God took Eve away from Adam. Three days later, Adam showed up again.
"Please God, give her back! I miss her!"
"First you want her gone, then you want her back? Which is it?" asked the Lord.
"I don't know!" Adam wailed.
"You can have her back" God concluded "But next time you have a fight, don't come to me!"
Adam and Eve returned home, and went a whole week without argument. Then the dishes piled up, and the yelling started once again.
Finally, when they were both frustrated and exhausted, the couple made a bet to solve a problem: Whoever speaks first will do the dishes for all eternity (clearly they were not aware of the weight of their actions). They went for quite a few days without either of them speaking a word. Or doing any dishes.
One evening they were both by the fire; Adam was fast asleep, and Eve was just kind of sitting around (probably wishing for books to be invented). They had a cat that was also playing nearby.
Since this is the Time Before the Apple, when no clothes were necessary, all Adam was covered with was a sizable fig leaf (obviously). Well, as he was lying on his back, no doubt dreaming some very appealing dreams, the fig leaf began to twitch.

Cat.
+
Twitching thing

You do the math.
Eve observed what was happening. The cat froze, large, luminous eyes following the leaf's every movement. As the leaf began to rise up, the cat began to crouch down, tail sweeping from side to side. Ready to pounce.
And then
In the last possible moment
Before the cat pounced
With claws out
At the fig leaf
Eve swatted it away and yelled
"NO! THAT'S MINE! BAD CAT!"

And that is why women have to do the dishes.
You'd think men would be willing to take this chore over, given what we saved them from.
Cat people will understand.

(If you would like to read about other things we can blame Adam and Eve for, here is an earlier post.)