“Hell Hath a lot More Fury an a Woman Scorned” “Hell Hath a lot More Fury Than a Woman Scorned”

By Noor Hasan

Content warning: Gender-based violence, gun violence, transphobia

The trope of a scorned woman is addictive. A woman who is weak and insecure at the hands of a man’s rejection has become almost entertaining in nature. The vulnerability of rejection in this lens is a hot storyline because we can afford to view a compromised woman in this fashion safely. The actual threat of a violent return is nearly unfounded. The opposite, however — a man who is rejected by a woman and responds with physical threat — is not so few and far.

The dangerous results of refusing men’s unwanted advances only grow more life-threatening for BIPOC, transgender folks, and nonbinary individuals who are increasingly susceptible to violence on the basis of race and gender identity. The entitlement of misogyny has led to a fear of laying boundaries, establishing new norms of comfortability, and simply saying no.

UCLA’s School of Law indicates that transgender individuals are about “four times more likely” than their cis counterparts to be subjected to

“violent victimization.” This ranges from sexual assault to aggravated violence, both of which create a dangerous gateway for suicide attempts and ideation by survivors. Nonbinary and transgender individuals are subject to dehumanizing fetishization, and their attempts to reject the overwhelmingly transmisogynistic advances of men are exceedingly — and violently — ignored. In part, this is due to a key point discussed by the ACLU: the legal system continues to fail trans and nonbinary individuals (and especially BIPOC), with law enforcement often becoming the source of more sexual and physical violence. Rejecting sexual advances has created a cycle of erroneously criminalizing transgender and nonbinary individuals.

The result of rejecting a man’s advances can quickly and easily turn violent, and at times, deadly. However, femicide and sexism rooted in incel culture is no novel discovery. Studies indicate that about six women die each hour globally at the hands of men, often one they already know. Society has grown so dangerous for women that the mere act of rejecting a man begets the potential of physical or linguistic violence. In fact, scholarship has coined a term for this phenomenon.

Lily Katherine Thacker describes this as “rejection violence,” which links components of toxic masculinity and fragility to the violent reactions of men towards women who have rejected their advances. According to a study spanning from 2016 to 2020, nearly 80% of gun deaths between intimate partners targeted women, with the overall number only increasing each year.

Yet, for centuries, perceived femininity has been tied to (arguably) the most famous non-Shakespearean piece of dialogue that argues the complete opposite of explicit statistics. Traditionally, entertainment has copiously labeled women as the hostile, violent, and deadly force towards any signs of rejection far greater than men. Playwright William Congreve’s tragedy “The Mourning Bride’’ is the source of one of the most notorious quotes on the emotional volatility of women. The lead character, Zara, ends the third act of the tragedy with the line, “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.” Engraved on mugs, used as performative feminist jargon, and even inspiring the titles of books and movies, to say Congreve’s claim on the rage of a romantically rejected woman has enriched and guided modern sexism would be a gross understatement. Congreve successfully contributed to making the violent image of a scorned woman an entire genre, in an almost poetic and wise fashion.

Repercussions of the quote has, whether intentionally or not, inspired female characters in notable works like Stephen King’s novel “Misery.” Take the film adaptation of the novel, for example. Annie Wilkes, a former nurse, finds her idol, author Paul Sheldon, the victim of a car accident and rescues him, nursing him back to health in her home. It becomes clear that Annie Wilkes is not simply in love with Sheldon for just his writing, but for his aura and personality. She begins to rely on his dependency as her source of happiness and sanity. Throughout the film, as her adoration for him grows, he continues to politely reject her, until finally all hell quite literally breaks loose and she spirals into insanity. Now, do not get me wrong – Annie Wilkes clearly indicates symptoms of sociopathy by breaking Sheldon’s legs, yelling at him repeatedly, and confining him through locked doors; all done to prevent him from physically leaving her home. But the film creates an explicit connection between Annie’s pure spiral of insanity and male rejection, firstly from her former husband (who had divorced her), and secondly from Sheldon. Directed by Rob Reiner, and written by Stephen King, both of whom are men, the film and novel – although sound masterpieces – are a great example of the “scorned woman” becoming an entertaining genre that continues to be capitalized upon.

Entertainment has worked for centuries to minimize female rage and anger so that it is most insatiable when women are rejected by men. It is through this rejection that women’s rage is the most valid, the most entertaining, and in no serious undertaking, mightier than the wrath of hell itself. Even in more nuanced films which aim to encapsulate feminine rage, most notably Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” Volumes, feminine rage is generally portrayed as being erratically violent and caused, in-part, by some form of male-rejection. Simply known as “the bride” in “Kill Bill Volume 1,” the film’s protagonist, Beatrix, is brutally beaten by assassins and shot at her wedding by her male partner, Bill. The Bride then goes on a vengeful path, killing each and every assassin (plus those who get in her way) that took part in her brutal beating and attempted murder until finally (in a later Volume) she kills Bill. It is important to consider the key feminine symbolism of the film. Beatrix is nearly killed at her own wedding by the groom, all while pregnant with his child. Much (arguably most) of her anger is connected to mourning the loss of her child caused by the sheer violence of Bill and the assassins (we later discover the child is alive).“Kill Bill” traces key stereotypical “milestones” of a woman’s life – a wedding with a beaming bride dressed in white, and pregnancy. It is the violent threats to these institutions and to Beatrix’s life in general that supercharges her rage against her partner, Bill. But the likelihood of Annie Wilkes’ complete violent breakdown, or Beatrix’s vengeful murderous path, as established statistically, are far from reality.

Congreve’s reductive claim from “The Mourning Bride” paved the way for generalizations of women and how they internalize and display feelings of rage. But what really are the legitimate and key sources of women’s rage? The American Psychological Association points to a study quite literally called “the Women’s Anger Study,” which found that the three primary sources of women’s rage are “powerlessness, injustice, and the irresponsibility of others,” none of which hold any relation to being rejected by men. Rather, the sexist claim over the entirety of feminine rage by Congreve holds no scientific grounding at all. Scientifically speaking, women express their rage to mourn the structural inaction of others. The patriarchal desire of men –of a husband – to be the central framework of women’s lives gave way to the quote. The patriarchy demands a heteronormative life to be the single most important development for women, so when men reject women and leave them scorned, it threatens their purpose to simply exist. Under the patriarchy, women’s largest source of anger is not the initial sting of being rejected by men, but the fact that rejection leaves women in the patriarchy incomplete – purposeless without a Bill for them to kill.