In the Curse of the Werewolf, pg. 47, the werewolf in English literature is often portrayed as a continental European, often with an accent. This of course recalls the 'foreign' Count Dracula. The continental European is someone who is not utterly foreign to an Englishman, someone who looks Caucasian, and can speak at least a little English, but is still 'unknown' and 'mysterious.' Who knows what these strange foreigners are actually like?
In addition, the female werewolf became more well known in the later half of the 1800s, in timing with the suffragette movement, or the "New Woman" movement. Amusingly, the author quotes Werwolves here:
"Apparently women are more desirous of becoming werwolves than men, more women than men having acquired the property of werwolfery through their own act. In the case of women candidates for this evil property, the inspiring motive is almost always one of revenge, sometimes on a faithless lover, but more often on another woman; and when once women metamorphose thus, their craving for human flesh is simply insatiable - in fact, they are far more cruel and daring, and much more to be dreaded, than male werwolves."These "new women" were unknown and un-understandable, who knows whether they might turn to cannibalism even! The Curse of the Werewolf goes on to say that the werewolf could also be a symbol of distrust of the poor and lower classes, and indeed many of the folk tales feature urban heroes traveling through a poor country town where they must stay the night with the 'town's people.' Of course werewolves can also be symbolic of people of other races and cultures, how many people of the world were dismissed by whites as "savages" and "animals?" It doesn't seem a large leap for one to write fiction in which they really are animals.
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