When discussing “In an Artist’s Studio” by Christina Rossetti, we made a point of mentioning the fact that while the muse “fills [the] dream[s]” of the artist (14), clearly his obsession and in many if not all of his waking thoughts, the artist too “feeds upon her face” (9). He is always thinking about her, gaining some sort of sustenance from her even as he is in her thrall – the power balance between genders is unsteady, more of a push-pull than one-way street as one might have expected.
The poem complicates the power struggle between genders, in a similar way to the siren in Supernatural episode 4×14, Sex and Violence. The siren appears to four different men as four different women, and to each of them she was “Perfect, and everything that they wanted” (source).
Once she had them in her thrall – similar to how in thrall the artist was – the siren has become their most important person, and asks them to kill the previously most important person in their life. For the first three men, it was their wives; for the fourth man, his sick and dependent mother; for Dean and Sam, it was each other. The promise each time is that once this other person is dead, the siren can “be with you, forever” (source).
By the time the siren has appeared to tempt Dean, however, she has taken the form of a man rather than a woman – see clip of the confrontation below:[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUreiz4uJKY”]
The siren is seeking to be loved – the subject of an obsessive, destructive love, that will give them the most power over a man, the power to destroy his entire life. This is a similar effect that the female muse has on the male artist in Christina Rossetti’s poem, but in the former, the man has no control and can only destroy; in the latter, the artist has some control – how to represent the female muse – and can use his obsession to create.
Both femme fatales – the muse and the siren – complicate the power struggle between genders. The poem emphasizes that the struggle is not one way, that both the man and the woman can hold power; the episode reveals that the threat of overwhelming power can come from more that one gender. Rather than men being overwhelmed only by romantic or sexual desire (based on the normative sexuality of the Victorian era (at least on the surface), assuming that threat can only come from women), suddenly a man’s weakness can be more personal, familial rather than erotic; suddenly, the overwhelming power can come from a sexual female or a male relative – men’s weaknesses have doubled, men and women rather than just women. But in today’s world, when gender roles, gender itself and sexuality are so much more fluid, do these worries about gendered power struggles still hold power? Or have they become obsolete, in some ways?