Howl's Moving Patriarchy

Howl’s Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki’s 2004 directorial follow-up to the critically-acclaimed Spirited Away, has been met with mixed critical reactions, due in large part to its departure from Miyazaki’s earlier works. Set in a remote Western location, rather than the identifiable East of Miyazaki’s other films, Howl’s tells the story of Sophie, a young girl that escapes from a moribund life as a hatter to one of magical vitality following her transformation into an elderly woman by the nefarious Witch of the Waste. In a thematic shift rivaling that of the films changed location Miyazaki foregoes the traditional ecocritical subjects of his works to espouse an anti-war message. Howl, the titular wizard with which Sophie comes to live, refuses his summons to become a member of the king’s army—an action that, while it places Howl’s ragtag “family” in danger, allows the group to locate the prince whose disappearance triggered the war and bring it to an end. Yet, these deviations pale in comparison to the presence of a discourse of male domination in the film of a director long-celebrated for his steadfast and admirable heroines. It is Miyazaki’s adoption of romanticized patriarchal conceptions of beauty and love that prevents Howl’s Moving Castle from attaining status as a truly transcendent film.

The presence of patriarchal thought in Howl’s Moving Castle becomes evident when, within the first few minutes of the film, Sophie checks her appearance in a mirror as she prepares to leave her hat shop and shakes her head in disappointment. This preoccupation with body image, based in unobtainable standards fashioned by men and propounded through a masculinist rhetoric that results in female subjugation, pursues Sophie throughout the rest of the film. When warned to be weary of Howl, who is known for stealing the hearts of young women, she replies with stalwart, denigratory conviction that she needn’t worry because Howl only targets beautiful girls. In what seems a step toward positive self-affirmation Sophie, upon the discovery of her transformation, remarks on the proper fit of her originally over-sized dress. Alas, this action is later countered by a self-disparaging comment concerning the weight of her significantly older, feeble—and therefore less conventionally beautiful—self. Yet, it is not only Sophie’s actions that reveal the ruling force of hegemonic beauty ideals in the world of Howl’s Moving Castle; the voice of patriarchy manifests in the speech and acts of the great wizard, Howl, himself.

Incurably vain, Howl revels in the power that his handsomeness affords him. That is why at one point in the film, when he accidentally dyes his flaxen locks red, he descends into a fit of despair, invoking the spirits of the dark to end his life because there is “no point in living if I can’t be beautiful.” However, Howl’s vainglorious aesthetic judgments are not merely directed toward himself. They are also aimed at Sophie, who becomes the object of his affection upon his discovery of her true identity. When Sophie, in the persona of Howl’s mother, sets out on trek to the palace to dissuade the king from requiring Howl to join his army he chastises her for wearing an old hat when he went through so much trouble to beautify her dress. In fact, it is only when Sophie is aware of the approval and love of Howl at the end of the film that she fully reverts to her nubile form—an effect that overextends the importance of stereotypical feminine beauty, as Howl cannot possibly love an old woman, and, in an echo of Howl’s earlier assertion that Sophie is “my girl,” emphasizes her role as a lovely possession. Despite the moving nature of the love story between Sophie and Howl, and the anti-war sentiment, Miyazaki’s reliance on patriarchal, domineering formulations of beauty and love to emotionally fulfill his narrative removes Howl’s Moving Castle from a position of innovative preeminence and places it in the realm of the traditional male-centered heroic fantasy narrative that his work generally opposes.