Across cultures and centuries, folklore has often portrayed women who suffer violence or trauma as figures who ultimately wield power—either to protect themselves or to exact revenge. These stories reveal how victimhood and vengeance are often intertwined in myth, especially when women are cast as both symbols of danger and moral lessons. Deer Woman and Medusa are both examples of women who follow similar sequences of events, in their own culture, coming out of it all as protectors. They reflect a similar transformation through trauma.
Deer Woman is a powerful figure whose story, often rooted in experiences of sexual assault or abuse, becomes a cultural lesson. The precise trauma of Deer Woman can depend on where the story comes from, but the outcome stays the same: a woman, representing the traditional Native culture, hunting men and women who stray away from the culture. Within Native American folklore, the belief in tradition and value is important, and the primary goal of the Little People, a group of mythical beings—their stories are "used to motivate young people to stay in line with community standards" (Russow 26). Deer Woman's purpose steers young people towards life and living, as coming into contact with her and staying will ultimately prevail over death and prostitution (Allen 236). Additionally, she interacts with men who are afraid of losing their manhood (Russow 27), so they cannot imagine her with any power over them, pushing the agenda of a weak woman. The men she finds seek her out for their pleasure and gain, usually at a dance. The upper hand she has in controlling the situation when she is not viewed as a threat helps her create a space to gain revenge against those with the same mindset as whoever may have harmed her.
The story of Deer Woman is a life lesson, but to have that lesson, people must interact. In Allen's Deer Woman, the two men are faced with a decision to continue following the two Deer Women. Upon coming onto the women's uncle, they are challenged with a baseball game. The baseball game can be read as something of a challenge to their beliefs, whether or not they will stay and play this game that, previous to colonialism, did not matter to the culture. Russow says, "These characters have a choice, either defy patriarchal colonialism by seeking to embrace the values of their people, or persist in the cultural complacency that is destroying their people" (36). Lessons within the community aim for tradition, but there is always the chance the community may subside to the colonial views, and in turn, destroy their people—many of whom have been abused similar to Deer Woman.
Contrary to Deer Woman, Medusa is a Greco-Roman tale of a woman with serpent hair and an unfortunate past. Her life before her trauma is shown in a powerful image represented on the Temple of Artemis on Corfu (Bowers 221). She protected the temple from evil-doings and malicious people; she is seen as a safety net. During her lifetime, she, like Deer Woman, was sexually assaulted, which became her downfall. She was assaulted by Poseidon, a Greek God, and then cursed by a Greek Goddess, Athena. Her power turned those who made eye contact with her into stone, forever protecting herself from another man's overpower. She is similar to Deer Woman in the way that they both are curated to men's desires in their stories, yet they are not the victims in this stage. As for their trauma, they become a way to learn. For example, "she has become a classic example of the female object, though the greatest emphasis in the Medusa myth is the terrifying power of her own gaze" (Bowers 219). After being the scene of death for many men, Medusa became the men's story of a hero. Poseidon's son went to her and killed her, which moves from a symbol of female object to a symbol of evil captured by the demi-god son. Her story became one to remove her: "myths in which heroes conquer…gorgons…are essentially stories of 'riddance' in which beautiful and powerful women…are made to seem horrific and then raped, decapitated, or destroyed" (Pratt 168). By the end of Medusa's story, she has both been raped and decapitated and turned into a sacrificial victim to the man's story.
Both Deer Woman and Medusa show how women in myth are only granted power after they have been wronged, and even then, that power is framed through fear and violence. These stories do not center their victimhood, but instead use it as a turning point to turn them into monsters, warnings, or tools to uphold cultural values—often for the benefit of men. Their humanity is sometimes lost in the process, and then pain becomes secondary to the lesson their image teaches. Ultimately, these myths reflect a pattern in which women's trauma is rewritten into cautionary tales, reinforcing their marginalization rather than challenging it.