#capc

There is a hysterical woman trope in stories—stories of women who, once they lose everything, enter into an irrational and destructive rage. 'Hysteria' used to be thought of as a disease that was an uncontrollable emotion or an unreasonable state unique only to women because of their female organs (naturally this made them inferior to cool, rational men). Now, obviously we don’t think of hysteria being unique to women anymore, but what I love about the reveal in episode 8 is that when Wanda finally ~feels her feelings~, she doesn’t destroy—she creates. A home she would have shared with Vision, a protective hex over the town, and out of her very being, she brings a new Vision to life. She manages to give birth to two children within this town... Her magic is not hysterical destruction, it is a literal creative and restorative ~force~[.] It may be described as 'chaos magic,' but creation is not chaos; creation is order. Wanda brings order from disorder. She’s lost until she forms and frames a world around herself. And...she creates this world as an outpouring of her grief—and 'what is grief, if not love persevering?' [T]here is beauty in the restoration of the creation that surges out of Wanda. It’s chaotic, perhaps, in her lack of intent and in the fact that she does not, actually, have 'everything under control.' It’s chaotic, too, in that she unintentionally traps people within Westview she doesn’t intend to trap. But none of this changes the fact that Wanda is not a hysterical female trope, burning the world down in a rage of irrational anguish. In her grief, Wanda recreates her husband. She creates their children, and a home, and an ideal community. She protects that community from outside attack. Wanda is a wife, mother, caregiver, protector. These are markers of her strength. She is no villain, and she’s not hysterical, either, not even when she loses control. [...] She’s a hero, and as I’ve pointed out before, these stories are all about being 'lost and found.'