Nightbitch

Nightbitch is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. She begins as an archetypal “nice” woman. For example, at the novel’s start, “when she had referred to herself as Nightbitch, she meant it as a good-natured self-deprecating joke—because that’s the sort of lady she was, a good sport” (3).

She faces the challenge of looking after a two-year-old with her husband away most of the week and has given up her career. However, she still strives to put on a brave face and put others before herself.

Nightbitch’s transformation into a dog reveals—and is a response to—her frustration and suppressed rage. The sprouting of hair from her neck and the development of dog-like features subverts her initial, passive forbearance. Her canine features signal the release of animalistic and self-assertive energy. Nightbitch’s transformation is accelerated by her discovery of Wanda White’s A Field Guide to Magical Women and, following shortly afterward, her initiation into the dog world by three dogs who mysteriously show up on her lawn, stripping her and leaving dead animals outside her home.

Wanda White’s book asks how “women might turn to the natural world to express their deepest longings and most primal fantasies” (40). White represents Nightbitch’s role as a mother and motherhood’s connection to deeper and repressed animal instincts.