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Paper short abstract

Looking at depictions of water spirits in Romanian folklore, the paper engages with cultural narratives of water and feminine agencies prescribed to operate on the “nurturing yet dangerous” binary.

Paper long abstract

"Știma Apei", "Femeia Gârlei", "Vâlvă de Apă" - folk mythic imaginary in customary rural Romania portrays a clear prevalence of women as water spirits. Simultaneously guardians, seductresses, monsters, and mothers, they are bound to be representations of fertility and life-giving qualities, while feared as destructive and vengeful. Easy-tempered, their rage turns to floods or draughts and thus control must be exerted.

The entanglement of water and the feminine operates on the “nurturing yet dangerous” duality perceived to emerge from both. Already essential work has been done by hydrofeminist theories as well as other studies (Sparano: 2024, Andaya: 2016, Strang: 2014, Siegel: 2008) to show this is but one of many cultural narratives where women and nature alike have been resized, mystified and demonized, with significant impact.

With water as top priority (UN) on the climate agenda today and women suffering most globally from ecosystem degradation, I propose a reframing of these aquatic archetypes as contemporary embodiments of resistance against patriarchal gaze and anthropocentric exploitation. Mutable, shapeshifting, and capable of existing within liminal spaces, harbingers of category crisis (Cohen: 1996), they may offer engagement with a different kind of imaginary needed nowadays - that of fluidity, interconnectedness and shared vulnerability.