Metamorphosis and Interspecies Desire

In classical mythology and later literature—including juvenile speculative fiction that draws on mythology—humans are transformed into trees and dryads represent spirits that inhabit, but may not be fully separable from, trees. Transformations are typically incomplete, resulting in hybridity. Paradoxically, the dualism of tree and dryad may also appear as hybridity. Many of the stories involve sexual assault that drives the metamorphosis. On the surface, these stories appear to reinforce heteronormativity (sometimes including heterosexual reproduction), but the same time, they undermine it by suggesting the possibility of interspecies erotic desire.