The Love of a Bad Man by Laura Elizabeth Woollett
“The night is big and dirty and my legs too short to carry me far, but it’s the least I can do to make him chase after me.”
We have an inherent interest in women who do bad things in our society - or go along with men who do. It is often deemed horrific when women play a part in terrible crimes against other women and children, yet our collective history is riddled with such stories. The media latches onto their details tightly. We as an audience listen intently, searching for meaning and the reason behind their actions.
The Love of a Bad Man (2016) by Australian author Laura Elizabeth Woollett is a collection of twelve short stories that explore this obsession and attempts to get to the heart of what drives “good” women to become complicit in monstrous acts. The stories are all based on the real-life wives, girlfriends and lovers of infamous bad men - Charles Manson, Hitler, Ian Brady, and Jim Jones, to name a few (her 2018 novel, Beautiful Revolutionary, continues with these themes, centring on a female protagonist who becomes involved with Jim Jones and the People’s Temple). Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction and the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction in 2017, these stories are as disturbing as they are addictive to read.
The crimes span decades and global notoriety, but the focus is on the female counterparts who have typically been in the shadow of the male protagonists. The obsession and control at the heart of these relationships eclipses the magnitude of the brutal acts. In one story, a woman named Karla is held in a psych ward after conspiring with her boyfriend, Paul, to rape and murder several young girls. We are given access to her internal monologue, the focus of which is always on herself and her lover, not the crimes committed:
“I’m the most miserable woman in the country. I told that to Dr Voigt yesterday, and he looked sad and asked if I couldn’t think of anyone more miserable than me. I saw what he was getting at and said those girls’ parents, I guess, even though I didn’t mean it. Whatever they’re going through, it can’t be as bad as the crap I had to go through with Paul.”
The fact these women choose to continue loving the perpetrator of the violence they witness (or, at the very least, are aware is occurring) is something Woollett explores well. Delving into the imagined psyches of these women, she neatly threads the ways they behave with more common ideas of why we love who we love. It’s a jarring juxtaposition that oddly evokes some feelings of empathy. She raises unnerving questions about why we are drawn to people who are bad and why we stay with them:
"He is telling me that I'm good, but what thrills me is the thought that I'm not. If I look up at his face now, maybe I'll see something terrible."
Covering universal themes around love, the dark side of love, our yearning to be accepted and the psychology of control, Woollett doesn’t offer excuses or justification for their actions. She highlights clearly the fact the characters knew what they were doing, knew what their lovers were doing, and still played their roles - they marry and have children with them, stand up for and protect them, help them seduce, capture and torture their victims, evade the police, and take the fall when necessary for them.
Woollett depicts the voices of these women with care: they are well thought out and she does well to ensure their individualism is also brought out. I found myself Googling details after finishing some of the stories and was impressed by the sheer amount of research she clearly put into bringing these stories to life.
Skillfully written and deeply disturbing, this collection of short stories is fascinating, gruesome and utterly compelling. It's an exploration of the blindness of love as well as power imbalances within relationships and it had me gripped the whole way through.
Elaine Mead is a freelance writer and book reviewer, currently residing in Hobart, Tasmania. She is passionate about the ways we can use literature to learn from our experiences to become more authentic versions of ourselves and obsessed with showing you photos of her Dachshund puppy. You can find her online under @wordswithelaine.
