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reality (or produce a unity) through recourse to oppositions. In this
sense, an analysis that focuses solely on the ‘content’ of a monstrous
representation such as the werewolf misses the point, because it will
always lead back to the polarities that the monster has escaped. To
explain further: a content analysis of the werewolf produces an understanding
of lycanthropy as expressive of surface–depth, nature–culture,
conscious–unconscious oppositions. Yet, there remains a sense in which
these categories cannot fully contain or explain the werewolf: for
example, although the wolf is ‘hidden’ in the person, you can also tell a
werewolf by the eyebrows or the fingernails. Or, as in Vandover’s case,
lycanthropy is a psychic affliction, but it is also written on the body.
In this sense, Žižek’s schema may explain the bodily ‘excess’ that
Russo has noted in the Gothic register. The body is a site where one
of the ‘surpluses’ identified by Žižek emerges; the body is never ‘just’
a body, but also carries a ‘non-material but physical element’. This is
what werewolves and other monsters remind us of, but it also suggests
why the monstrous body always exceeds the oppositional categories that
seek to contain and explain it. Further, it may explain the amplification
and diversification of monstrosity in modernity, because as each
spectral manifestation is assimilated into social ‘reality’ (through
the explanations of comparative mythologists or literary theorists,
for example), new spectres emerge which must outdo the excesses of
their predecessors.
Certainly, the body of the werewolf became increasingly excessive
as the nineteenth century wore on. Although Reynolds had developed
the horror of the transformation scene as early as 1846, Wagner the
Wehr-wolf was not depicted as especially aggressive once he assumed
wolf form, causing deaths as a result of the speed with which he rushed
about as a wolf, rather than through acts of gratuitous violence (Figure
4). Marryat’s 1839 story had depicted a monster of more evil intent
in the werewolf Christina, and subsequent female lycanthropes were
consistently nasty in their wolfish incarnations. While imagery of the
ferocious female werewolf persisted in fiction throughout the period of
the fin de siècle, her combination of intelligence and demonic intent
was also increasingly emphasized in discussions by folklorists and
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