Wolf Man Ashleigh Young Summary

Wolf Man
“Wolf Man,” by Ashleigh Young, asks big questions about female identity. Through along the story, the narrator expresses the feelings that she has toward her moustache and how other people react to it. This produces a question about certain and typical women’s appearance that women should have and presents the judgement of beauty which is spread around the story. This selected passage is the scene that the narrator, Young, comes to see “exhibition of mouchioed and bearded women,” and sees different kind of bearded women who join in this exhibition. Young’s reaction toward these women are very interesting. Young seems to pay attention to and interested in those women because she divines and describes bearded women interestingly.

Moustache is still not belong to women for Young. She looks at them carefully; this gives a sense of studying and examining. Then, she closes her eyes and opens quickly to “surprise [herself.]” Her reaction suggests that she expects their faces could change when she opens eyes and see them again. It’s the same case when we see a ghost, we close our eyes and hope that when we open our eyes again, a ghost will disappear. After that, Young tries to find the other ideas to support the reason that what make she feels negative toward facial hair. She says that “in itself, hair is meaningless.” Hair does not define any meanings for itself, but people and society give a certain meaning to it and this “makes it socially unacceptable.” Normally, facial hair symbolizes manliness; so it becomes strange suddenly if women have a moustache as the narrator seems strange for her father. This like she blames that society and people around her, especially her father, makes she feels uncomfortable with her moustache; she is not uncomfortable by herself. From these points, this shows her characteristic of depending on her father’s words—actually, everyone’s word. From the beginning till the ending, she cares about everything that other people have said to her and cares how people look at her. She loses all her confidence because of the moustache. She lets it