Over the course of centuries nature, specifically that of the North American variety, has been personified as being female and dangerous, something waiting to be tamed into submission. In the handful of literary instances that nature has not been deemed female, it is otherwise written as neuter but never male. Margaret Atwood addresses the different ways in which literature personifies nature in her lecture series Strange Things: The Malevolent North and Canadian Literature. I have found this useful in my reading of Wolverine: Origin by Paul Jenkins. Part one begins with "The Hill," the parcel of land in the Canadian North that young Logan's father built the family estate on that went from lush and free to being dominated by a man made mass of a mansion. The first three panels show it s transformation from a lush, green landscape, to a snowy, icy, broken and manufactured by man kind of environment. The locals even go so far as to describe it as a place "built on a foundation of tears." Sounds rather foreboding. Like nature is doing fine all on its own and then man has to come along and put his stamp on it, setting the scene for some sort of evil to take place.
Atwood writes that the North is largely characterized as a "frigid but sparkling fin de siecle femme fatale, who entices and hypnotizes male protagonists and leads them to their doom" (3). She cites a poem by Canadian poet Robert Service that is particularly interesting:
I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,...
And I wait for the men who will win me...
So who in Origin is being enticed and who is that is being accurst? Clearly in the beginning nature is no friend of young Wolvy who is cursed with allergies and sensitivities to any sort of outdoor interaction. Yet later, after he is cast out from his home and his family, Logan transforms in to the Wolverine we know and love today: the fearless cigar smoking outdoorsman.
I especially like the cover (shown at the top of the page) where a wolf like creature is hidden by the shadows of nature. Is Wolverine part of nature? Is he a spawn of man's rape of the land? Does that make him a hybrid of man and nature? It would seem that Logan's early life on the hill cut him off from nature's good influence and made him susceptible to its dangers and maladies.
After the first appearance of Wolverine's claws Rose describes him as a "monster," "beast," "monstrosity," and "something less than human." All this was said while the "bitter, cold wind howled over the leaves." Hmmm...looks like momma nature has returned to take back her son and whip his wussy allergied ass into shape!
The further away Rose takes Logan away from civilization, the faster he heals until they land in the Yukon Territory. This place Rose describes as a "hellish" "desolate spot" "at the edge of humanity." In other words, this very spot where man is attempting to mine the land, in the middle of the icy North is the epitome of man vs. Nature. This is where Wolverine's true mettle is tested. Which will he side with, his mother (nature) or with his father (man)?
In Part IV Rose further alludes to the female characterization of the north when she muses "how angry Mother Nature must be that she can't cover such an ugly stain on her pretty dress." The stain is the mining camp and the dress is the summer foliage. In this same chapter Rose labels Logan as a "man of the forest...a hunter" while Logan responds that his new found abilities emanate from "an urge." So now that Wolverine is on the edge of wilderness, he has found his true self, the forest hunter self.
This self is fully realized when Logan encounters a pack of wolves in the forest and takes his place as the alpha by killing the leader. Then it's all barefoot in the forest, using his bare hands to feed himself and his pack. So in the end, man's attempt to have his way with nature resulted in Wolverine. What exactly does that teach us? In this case, mess with nature and she will sic Wolverine on you. We learn that nature will always win. Man's attempts to conquer "her" are futile and so she is always left brooding and waiting for the man who will "win" her.
In March I will be doing a lot of reading and researching so you will not hear from me again until April. I plan on doing something about form or color and maybe drawing on a few different books for examples of these. I recently found in my local library Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Frank Beddor's Hatter M. That actually leads to a whole other issue; I found them in the teen section of the library which just goes to show that people, even highly educated ones, are still so far from taking the graphic novel seriously as literature. In any case, I am excited about the books and looking forward to wherever they will take me!
