Djed Press
Pontianak (Malaysia)
'There is another layer to the story, a cruel twist. The pontianak can be lured away from her home in the banana trees. If you shear her hair short, clip her nails and hammer a nail into the nape of her neck, she will become a docile and doting wife, indistinguishable from the average woman. If you remove the nail, she will return to her old vampiric proclivities.'
The pontianak is a creature to be feared – a woman who died in childbirth or pregnancy and who now roams the earth, disembowelling victims (often, men) with her long nails and feasting on their organs. The legend is specific to the Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia region (in the latter she is known as the ‘kuntilanak’). Wong reflects on what the pontianak myth says about the thin line between unrestrained monster and ‘docile’ woman.