The Heroine with 1001 Faces
Page 40
Song of Solomon, The (Morrison), 137
Song of the South (Disney), 193
Sotomayor, Sonia, 209
South Pacific, 24
speaking out, xvii–xviii, 90–91
agency and, 70, 90
anonymity and, 104–5
bodily mutilation and, 62, 63, 64
counterfactual in, 64
deception and, 110–11
dream narratives and, 90–91
in fairy tales, xviii, 11–14, 90–91
false accusations in, 96
female avengers and, 251, 252
intermediaries and, 79, 80–88, 89, 91, 92, 93
justice and, 195, 196
in nineteenth-century adult fiction, 105–7
Philomela and, xvii, 62, 62, 64, 77, 96, 295n24
power of, 194–95
risk of, 88–90, 91, 109–11
software for, 91–92
traditional women’s work and, 62, 64, 65–66, 295n24
victim impact statements, 92
See also #MeToo movement
spiders, 49–50, 66, 69, 216–17, 246
Spielberg, Steven, 249–50
Spinks, C. W., 309n37
spinsters, 215–18, 220–21, 224, 228
Spyri, Johanna, 177
Stanhope, John Roddam Spencer, 34
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, 261
Star Wars film franchise, 17–18, 261
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 177
Stewart, Kristen, 261
Stiller, Ben, 287
Stone of Patience, 84–88
See also intermediaries
storytelling
action/conflict and, 8–9, 292n7
altruism and, 11, 75–76, 187
atonement and, 243
in Black traditions, 107, 298n6
Campbell on, xx
gossip and, 107–8, 121, 122, 123–26
as idionarration, 79
immortality and, 9, 46, 49–50
importance of, 95–96
justice and, xviii, 10–11, 92
in Little Women, 169
male appropriation of, 96–100
marginalized people and, 273–74
multiple perspectives and, 38, 39
prehistoric, 283
social media and, 93
as sorcery, 48
spiders and, 69
survival of, 111–12
traditional women’s work and, 64, 66, 69
transformation and, xviii, 9–10, 76, 78
See also speaking out; women’s reimaginings; women’s voices; women’s writing
Stothard, Thomas, 115
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 190
Straparola, Giovanni Francesco, 118
Stratemeyer, Edward, 208, 212, 213–14
Strong Poison (Sayers), 221
Summer and the City (Bushnell), 202
Summers, Sasha, 47
superheroes. See comic books; hero’s journey
Superman, 152, 229, 233, 234, 284
Szasz, Thomas, 288
Tale of Tales (Basile), 117
“Tale of the Husband and the Parrot” (Thousand and One Nights), 76
Tale of Two Cities, A (Dickens), 26, 154, 223
Tales from the Cloud Walking Country, 83
Tales from Times Past, with Morals (Perrault), 164
Talking Book trope, 46, 107
“Talking Skull, The” (African folktale), 109–10
Tarantino, Quentin, 237, 252
“Tar Baby” (African-American folktale), 148–49
Tar Baby (Morrison), 15, 148–49
Taylor, Mildred, 194
Taylor, Recy, 110
Telemachus, 35, 37, 58–59
Tereus, 61–63
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The, 241
textile production. See traditional women’s work
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston), 107–8, 147–48
Theron, Charlize, 262
Theseus, 16
Thomas, Angie, 152, 193–96
Thousand and One Nights, The, 10, 72–78, 296n35, 296n44
See also Scheherazade
“Thousandfurs,” 111, 127
Thousand Ships, A (Haynes), 15, 42–43
Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (McDonagh), 251
“Tiger’s Bride, The” (Carter), 142
Till, Emmett, 195
Titian, 55–56, 55
Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare), 63
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee), 192–93
Tolentino, Jia, 26
Tolkien, J. R. R., 165, 261
Tolstoy, Leo, 26, 154
“Tongue-Cut Sparrow, The” (Japanese folktale), 100–102
“Tongue Meat” (Kenyan folktale), 96–98
torture. See bodily mutilation
Tosca, La (Sardou), 241
Townsend, F. H., 106
toxic masculinity, 20
traditional tricksters, 238–39, 245, 246, 307n5, 307n6
traditional women’s work
gender binary stereotypes and, 59
heroic behavior and, 37
in nineteenth-century children’s fiction, 178
speaking out and, 62, 64, 65–66, 295n24
storytelling and, 64, 66, 69
women’s voices and, xviii, 71, 96, 295n24
See also domesticity
Transformations (Sexton), 138–40, 283
Treasure Island (Stevenson), 177
Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A (Smith), 180–84, 183, 226
Trickster Makes This World (Hyde), 238
tricksters. See female tricksters; traditional tricksters
Trojan War, 282–83
See also Iliad, The
Turkle, Sherry, 92
Twain, Mark, 176, 177, 193
“Two Brothers, The” (Egyptian folktale), 96
Twohey, Megan, 95
Two Popes, The (Meirelles), 237
Ulysses (Joyce), 18
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 190
Unnatural Death (Sayers), 220
Unsuitable Job for a Woman, An (James), 226
Updike, John, 73
vengeance. See female avengers
Verne, Jules, 154
victim impact statements, 92
Villa, Susie Hoogasian, 84
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Auguste, 271
Virgil, 26–27, 43–44
Vogler, Christopher, xiv, 21, 144
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr., 138, 140
Wagner, Lindsay, 258
Wagner, Richard, 28
Waiting to Exhale, 241
Wakdjunkaga, 2, 239
Walker, Alice, 70–71, 72, 135
Walpole, Hugh, 218
war
Campbell and, 16–17, 24
healing and, 184, 281–83, 284–87
women’s labor force participation and, 228–29
women’s reimaginings and, 40–42
Wonder Woman and, 234
writing and, 283–84
Warner, Marina, 116
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, 136
warrior women
appetite and, 263–64
Arya Stark (Game of Thrones), 257–58
in Disney films, 259–61
fairy tales and, 261–62
Katniss Everdeen (Hunger Games), 152, 214, 263–66
Waterhouse, John William, 158, 159
Wayne, John, 237
Wayward Girls and Wicked Women (Carter), 141
weaving. See traditional women’s work
Weil, Simone, 40
Weinstein, Harvey, 94
Weizenbaum, Joseph, 91–92
Wertham, Fredric, 151
Wharton, Edith, 26
What Maisie Knew (James), 168
“What Was Penelope Unweaving?” (Heilbrun), 293n36
White, E. B., 49–50
White Album, The (Didion), 95–96
Whitman, Emily, 47
Whitman, Walt, xix
Whore of Babylon, 163
Wiggin, Kate Douglas, 177
Williams, Maisie, 257
Wilson, Edmund, 219–20
Wirt, Mildred. See Benson, Mildred Wirt
witch accusations, 287–88
witness stories, xviii
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 271
Wolf, Christa, 31, 32, 40–42
women
as duplicitous, 73–74, 76–77, 158, 296n35, 296n44
as evil, 127, 163
women’s reimaginings, xvii, 30–33
The Aeneid and, 43–44
agency and, 15
ancestral wisdom and, 136–37
Calliope and, 42–43
Cassandra and, 277
Helen of Troy and, 278–80
The Iliad and, xvii, 15–16, 32, 40–42, 44–45, 47–48
immortality and, 43, 47, 48
magic and, 291n5
marginalized people and, xviii, 39, 294n45
Medusa and, 277–78
#MeToo movement and, 35, 45
multiple perspectives and, 38, 39
The Odyssey and, xvii, 15–16, 31, 32, 33–37, 47–48, 293n36
oral vs. written traditions and, 46–47
Philomela and, 70–71
See also fairy tales, women’s reimaginings of
women’s speech, maligning of
Cassandra and, 276–77
discrediting of fairy tales and, 114, 116, 117–18
gossip and, 102–3, 120–22, 123
scolds and, 117–18, 120
women’s voices
control of, 91
defiance and, 105–7
in Greek mythology, 39–40
magic and, 291n5
Scheherazade and, 72, 77
traditional women’s work and, xviii, 71, 96, 295n24
See also speaking out; storytelling; women’s reimaginings; women’s speech, maligning of; women’s writing
women’s writing
altruism and, 171–72
dismissal of, xvi–xvii, 172, 175–76, 181, 202, 207–8, 219–20, 289
immortality and, 186, 188, 199
self-actualization and, xvi–xvii
See also women writers; writing as heroine’s mission
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (Estés), xviii, 128
women writers
Alcott on, 171, 178, 200
ambition and, 169–70
autofiction and, 170, 174, 180–81, 202
domesticity and, 224
lack of support for, 136
Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, A (Hawthorne), 159–61, 160, 161
Wonder Woman (television show), 258
Wonder Woman comics (Marston), 151–52, 153, 228–34, 231, 236
Woodson, Jacqueline, 194
Woolf, Virginia, 136, 197, 285
words. See storytelling
Works and Days (Hesiod), 157
World According to Garp, The (Irving), 63
World War I, 184, 285, 286–87
World War II, 16–17, 24, 184, 228–29, 234, 284
Wright, Joe, 255–57, 257
Wright, Richard, 274
Writer’s Journey, The: Mythic Structure for Writers (Vogler), xiv, 144
writing
female detectives and, 221–22
heroic behavior and, 38–39
war and, 283–84
wisdom and, 267
woman as muse and, xvi–xvii
women’s reimaginings and, 277
Wonder Woman and, 231–32
See also oral vs. written traditions; storytelling; women’s reimaginings; women’s writing; writing as heroine’s mission
writing as heroine’s mission
altruism and, 169–70, 173
in Anne of Green Gables, 174
autofiction and, 170, 180–81, 202
Anne Frank and, 185–86
in Harriet the Spy, 189–90
imagination and, 202
Little Women and, 154, 171–72
loss of, 178, 179–80
#MeToo movement and, 204–5
romance and, 199–201
in Sex and the City, 200, 201–2, 203
in television series, 199–205
in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 183–84
Yeats, William Butler, 140
You, 199
Young, Kevin, 149
Zaman, Shah (The Thousand and One Nights), 73–74, 75
Zero Dark Thirty, 252
Zeus, 66, 157
See also rape in Greek mythology
Also by Maria Tatar
Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood
Off With Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood
The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales
Beauty and the Beast: Classic Tales About Animal Brides and Grooms from Around the World
The Annotated African American Folktales, with Henry Louis Gates Jr.
The Annotated Brothers Grimm
The Grimm Reader: The Classic Tales of the Brothers Grimm
The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen
The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Research Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. She is also a senior fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows. The author of many books in the fields of folklore, German studies, and children’s literature, she has also written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, the New Republic, and Slate, and she is a frequent guest on NPR and the BBC. She received the NAACP’s Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work—Fiction in 2018 and is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies.
Copyright © 2021 by Maria Tatar
All rights reserved
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