male fantasies, male fantasies
and some plotting, revenge, and medieval history thrown in for good measure
Fiction, 1993
Have you watched ‘What We Do In The Shadows’? If so, you’re familiar with energy vampires. They’re basically vampires who feed off of people by boring them into a stupor. A couple of weeks ago, I met someone who was exactly that. I felt physically and emotionally exhausted after a mere 5-minute conversation with them. Immediately after, I had no choice but to nap for two hours. When I woke up, I continued reading The Robber Bride, where I encountered a vampire of a different kind: Zenia, a woman who survives solely through seducing her best friends’ partners.
While this is an incredibly exciting premise, Zenia is of course, not a vampire at all (but with her long black hair, ethnic ambiguity, and thirst for ruining men, she might as well be). We follow her only through the moments where she intersects in the lives of three of her closest friends, Tony (who writes backwards and is a history professor), Charis (who consults crystals, pendulums, and tarot to decide her every move), and Roz (who is rich enough for that to be her only personality trait). As we learn more about their men, and Zenia’s cunnning, we are also exposed to the backstories of these three women. And because this is a Margaret Atwood novel, they are bleak. Assault and loneliness ensue.
This is not a story about women who love men and have lost them, instead, it’s a story about the friendships women create with each other, and how fragile, tenuous, and strategic the web needs to be. Do I think there was a missed opportunity to talk about the relationships we craft with women who are so beautiful we want to be them (or be with them)? Yes. But the absence itself leads to conversation, if you so desire.
Song - This Is What Makes Us Girls - Lana Del Rey
Film - Heathers (except now they’re older but the same)