She is buried deep inside the source code of human storytelling: the lone girl in the woods. Lustful gods chase her. Huntsmen stalk her. Sly wolves nip at her heels. She rushes into the arms of forbidden lovers, and away from unworthy suitors. She runs through First Nations’ creation fables and Greek myths and Grimms’ fairytales. She runs across our screens as slasher bait. And the lesson this fleet-footed girl teaches us, again and again, is that fate can never be outpaced – especially the lurking inevitabilities of womanhood.
Lauren Groff’s new novel, The Vaster Wilds, begins in a winter forest. A servant girl has escaped from a plague-blighted settlement in the New World. Her hands are bloody, her heart is righteous and her head is full of scripture. She knows that she will be followed (“At least one bad man would be sent after her, for what she had done could not be permitted to stand”). And so she runs. And we run alongside her, out into “the great and terrible wilderness”.
