Arachnomania: Spiders and the Cultural Work They Do for Us

In praise of spiders in all their inspirational glory

Spiders are often found lurking in dusty corners, where we can observe them with interest or brush them away with disgust—or make a run for it, as the agitated Miss Muffet does. They are just as prevalent in our cultural landscapes, starring in horror films, inspiring works by famous artists and writers, and featured in myths and folktales. In Arachnomania, Maria Tatar explores how these creatures became our totem animals, our significant others, and our curved mirrors. Spiders model engineering genius in the construction of webs that have become powerful metaphors for drawing us out of our social isolation and connecting us in a fragile ecosystem. But these arachnids are also solitary in their habits and savage in their survival tactics. Spiders combine horror and beauty, and that may explain why we endow them with symbolic cultural weight.

Tatar invites us to acknowledge our collective arachnophobia yet also embrace arachnophilia and celebrate spiders for their cultural benefits and real-world merits. Spiders have been portrayed as the kindred spirits of femmes fatales and spinster sleuths. They have operated as proxies for our fear of nuclear annihilation but appear also in the form of benevolent gods and, in E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web, as a heroic barnyard savior. Spiders, Tatar reminds us, enable us to sustain our way of life on earth even as they continue to scare the living daylights out of us. With Arachnomania, Tatar offers up an anthem to the humble creatures that haunt our imaginations, reminding us of just how much we are the kindred spirits of the arachnids we should think of as “some spiders.”