The Woman with Fire in Her Veins
By Bryna N. Destefani
Moana gasps at the empty hole where the island of life used to lay. My son and I stare as she does the last thing we expected, and walks towards the fire demon. I get chills every time she restores the heart and Te Fiti emerges from within Te Ka’s burnt crust.
And then one day, I realized I was Te Ka.
As a child, I often thought that I was a bit of a pushover because of how much I cared about people. I cried when my sibling got in trouble, even if it was for being mean to me. I loathe when someone is sad, and I just want to comfort them. But every once and a while, a fierceness would come out, surprising even me. When I was little, my mom read me a children’s history book about Henry VIII. When I learned about the fates of his wives, I balled up my fists and growled with fury. Injustice gets under my skin, and I can feel the fire monster light inside me. This fire only grew as I got older, and the injustice around me became more apparent. At times, I have been confused by my duality of an intense desire to nurture and care alongside the fierce wrath of a warrior.
This duality isn’t portrayed very often. The fertility goddess rarely lives inside the fiery demon. Women are shown as either calm producers of beauty, or angry and spiteful creatures. Often, the angry queen is the villain opposing the calm, life-giving figure.
A lot has been written about feminine rage. In Alcott’s Little Women, Jo’s fiery temper leads her to almost destroy her relationship with her sister and endanger Amy’s life. Scared by her own temper, Jo turns to her mother for help.
It seems as if I could do anything when I’m in a passion. I get so savage, I could hurt anyone and enjoy it. I’m afraid I shall do something dreadful some day, and spoil my life, and make everybody hate me.
Many a quick-tempered girl relates to Jo’s fears.
And Marmee speaks to the souls of every girl who regrets the harm her rage has caused. She provides comfort, encouragement, and a challenge to her daughter, saying
“I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo, but I have learned not to show it, and I still hope to learn not to feel it.”
Marmee advised us to work at stopping the anger that overwhelms us and leads us to sin.
But Jo’s impetuous anger and the righteous anger of a woman wronged are two different things. This distinction is rarely made in literature and almost never made in real life. While we often tell tales of taming shrews, the Moana story illustrates a different kind of rage.
Why is Te Ka’s rage different? At heart (pun thoroughly intended), unlike other angry female archetypes, Te Ka’s anger is ultimately not the problem. Her blazing form arose out of Maui’s violation of Te Fiti. Maui’s thievery wronged her. Her anger is a response to the violence against her. Appearances are deceiving, and her fight to get her heart back is seen as aggression against others - as just another angry female figure.
Lyricist Taylor Swift explored this angry female archetype in her song, “Mad Woman.” While I don’t always agree with the conclusions Miss Swift comes to, she often asks the right questions - many questions others are too uncomfortable to address. She points out how society shuns the angry woman with no thought to what prompted her anger.
And when you say I seem angry
I get more angry
And there's nothin' like a mad woman
What a shame she went mad
No one likes a mad woman
You made her like that
And you'll poke that bear 'til her claws come out
Why do we say nothing about an aggressor and point fingers at the aggressive defense? Why is an angry woman always the outcast?
Mankind has a horrible habit of distancing themselves from the hard things around them. Anger and injustice, sin and mistreatment are heavy, uncomfortable topics to face head-on. Much easier to shun the anger and turn away. Claire Dunne’s film “Herself” (2020) paints this societal practice of avoidance in heartbreaking clarity. An abused wife, Sandra, flees her husband with her young daughters and struggles to build a home for them while battling for custody against her abuser. When the legal officials try to discredit her as a mother, Sandra challenges them.
“You always ask, “Why didn’t you leave him?” But you should be asking,
“Why didn’t he stop?””
Don’t get me wrong. It is desperately hard to control and keep anger from becoming a desire for revenge. Often women will allow their anger to become misdirected towards innocents rather than keeping their anger balanced and centered on the sin that prompted their anger. Te Ka’s rage never strays into vindictiveness - she seeks only to regain her heart. Ephesians 4:26 says, “be angry and do not sin.” Not ‘do not be angry or you will sin.’ There is a thing called righteous anger, which must be controlled, otherwise it can bleed into sinful hate.
We are made in the image of a sinless God who got angry, who cleaned out the temple.
Trying to stop righteous anger isn’t the solution. Marmee’s advice does not apply to righteous anger. Often, “stop being so mad” means “pretend the injustice isn’t happening.” Swift’s lyrics beg us to look at the genesis of the mad woman, instead of writing her off. How many women has society written off as “angry women” when they are actually wounded women, mistreated and wronged? We criticize their anger, but leave the injustice unaddressed.
That’s why the final scenes of Moana are so powerful. Moana looks beyond the fire and rage of Te Ka, and sees the wounded and wronged Te Fiti beneath. The entire story everyone has thought Te Ka was the villain who must be fought. Moana’s moment of clarity completely changes the film’s perspective. Te Ka is a character seeking justice. She battles not out of a desire to harm Maui, but rather in a desperate search for her stolen heart, the key to restoring her true nature. Moana does not turn away from Te Ka’s rage, but walks towards her.
Society wonders why a wronged woman stops producing life around her as they steal, batter, and abuse the heart from which that life comes. As Proverbs 4:23 tells us, “above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” However, rarely is a woman’s fight to guard her heart seen as anything other than spiteful anger.
For me, the lesson of Moana is that, where there is anger, first we must seek the cause of that anger. Anger can flash as a warning signal of a wrong that must be righted, a sin to be addressed. There is a right time to be an angry woman, and we - as a society, as churches, as people - have too often failed to recognize this.
To the loved ones, who have seen the wounds beneath a woman’s rage, and walked towards us and helped restore our hearts, thank you.
This article is part of a series we will share on anger in women.
We would love to hear from you. What are your views on anger in women?