Female Warriors, Social Injustice and the Transformational Force of Anger in Jaye Wells' Sabina Kane Series

Abstract

Urban fantasy heroines tend to be highly trained supernatural or magical beings who unapologetically use violence to achieve their goals. Their stories, often plotted as revenge narratives, are in many cases driven by anger, a key force of good in the quest for justice. Heroines are transformed into protectors when their personal trajectories, often motivated by complicated family bonds, become entangled with the fate of specific cities. Rereading Jaye Wells’ Sabina Kane series in the context of recent feminist reinterpretations of women’s anger, I will argue that anger is a source of social responsibility, thus resolving the apparent contradiction between caring and violence, and can become a legitimate affect in romance fiction. I will explain how, in Wells series, the female questor achieves the transition from lone wolf to caring warrior without sacrificing her capacity to expertly wield extreme violence or deny her rage.