The Heroine with 1001 Faces

I’m real glad to see this book appear, and I’m sure it will unleash a slew of new works that build on its theme. I want to give it four stars largely for launching such a fantastic conversation. Tatar is obviously a master folklorist, and her book is mainly a history of storytelling -- with a focus on the evolving female roles. She’s a literary critic, assessing the merits, horrors, and limitations of ancient myths, traditional folktales, modern novels, comic books, movies, and TV shows. She focuses heavily on the Western world, but includes stories from the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. There is almost nothing from South or East Asia. <br /><br />I was much impressed with Tatar’s exploration of “curiosity” as a female trait, and of how traditional myth and folklore has presented curiosity as a fatal flaw in women such as Eve or Pandora. In women, curiosity has been presented not as the spark for learning, but as snooping, prying, and especially as “sexual curiosity” – with this portrayed as the cause of a million falls or abuses, the mention of which must be repressed or silenced by any means necessary.<br /><br />Tatar surveys a vast field of popular tales, including tons of the latest films and television series. She critiques how the rise of female heroes has commonly delivered vigilante fighter types, who show that women can fit the old male model of heroism and beat bad guys just as mercilessly as any male superhero. At the end she projects a “lift off” into a world where new kinds of female heroes push new frontiers. But I think Tatar leaves a few big holes in her story: Tales of religious women and of social reformers. What about the legendary female heroes of greater spiritual potential such as Rabia (a founding saint of the Sufi movement), Hildegard of Bingen, Mirabai, or Kwan Yin, the female savior of the universe? Tatar does mention some female heroes of social or political movements such as Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale, or Oprah Winfrey. But the book mainly neglects this kind of non-literary hero. I expect the next works on this great theme will include other re-definers of what heroism is -- the likes of Harriet Tubman, Mother Jones, Jane Goodall, Shirin Ebadi, Irshad Manji, Aung San Suu Kyi, Greta Thunberg, and Vandana Shiva, otherwise known as “Mama Kali.”

Maria Tatar's book was a revelation and a vindication. <br /><br />After reading Joseph's Campbell's The Hero with A Thousand Faces, I felt uneasy--I had always assumed 'hero' was used in the 'hero's journey' as a gender neutral term, in the old-fashioned way that 'he' or 'mankind' was used as the default to mean 'anyone' or 'everyone.' When I actually went to the source, it was pretty clear that women could not be heroes. We were relegated by Campbell to be prizes, obstacles, or helpers to the male hero. <br /><br />In Tatar's compulsively readable analysis, she shows that in their own unique way, women's stories can rewrite narratives--and society. Once relegated by Campbell and male-dominated societies to the world of 'fairy tales' and 'old wive's tales'--in other words, to women's circles only--Tatar reveals that the structures and tropes Campbell espoused as universal are only one side of the story and one particularly masculine narrative structure. Tatar's work shows us that heroines have always been prevalent in our narratives, and when we give them their due consideration, they provide clues and guides for how to seek justice, how to live with compassion and intelligence, and how to tell stories that are empowering and subversive.

<b>2021 Best Books of the Year [#09 of 11]</b>

In <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/56769530.The_Heroine_with_1001_Faces" title="The Heroine with 1001 Faces by Maria Tatar" rel="noopener">The Heroine with 1001 Faces</a>, <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/15620.Maria_Tatar" title="Maria Tatar" rel="noopener">Maria Tatar</a> interrogates Joseph Campbell’s definition of the hero and the heroic quest in his landmark book, <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/588138.The_Hero_With_a_Thousand_Faces" title="The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell" rel="noopener">The Hero With a Thousand Faces</a> She argues Campbell’s definition is masculine-centered and blind to the heroism of women simply because women operate under a different set of constructs.<br /><br />That women do not conform to Campbell’s model of heroism does not negate their status as heroines. Using examples from mythology, folktales, fairy tales, and a host of other works, Tatar argues for expanding our definition of heroism. As she convincingly demonstrates, women have traditionally operated under a different paradigm of heroism by using use a variety of woman-centered skills and tools at their disposal to save themselves and to rescue others. Words are wielded as weapons through their story-telling. And information is shared in women’s circles through what has pejoratively been labeled old wives’ tales or gossip. When women are denied voice, as in the case of Philomela whose tongue was cut out to prevent her from reporting her rape, women spin and weave and write their stories to warn others and to demand justice. <br /><br />From mythology, Tatar moves to fairy tales and folktales; to contemporary re-tellings of myths which give prominent voice to women who had been marginalized in male-centered heroics; to novels; to what female authors and their female characters have said about finding voice; to popular young adult novels about female detectives; and to current examples on television, films, and social media. She discusses the evolving definition of female heroism, women’s fight for social justice, and female vigilantes. <br /><br />Tatar interrogates the word “curiosity.” She provides illustrations in mythology and fairy tales of women punished for all forms of curiosity, including sexual curiosity. Women’s curiosity has historically been muffled, silenced, or repressed. Tatar argues that rather than being a drawback, a woman’s curiosity is an invaluable asset for generating knowledge. It makes women particularly adept at solving mysteries, observing details in speech and action that others have overlooked, asking questions, investigating, cultivating an ethic of care and compassion, and pursuing social justice. <br /><br />Tatar’s research is extensive; her examples are wide-ranging. Her expansion of the definition of heroism allows us to recognize the heroic work of a Shahrazad as we invite her to step up to the platform to receive her accolades alongside traditional male heroes. Who is to say that when Shahrazad rescues her community of women through story-telling she is any less worthy of praise than a blood-splattered hero emerging victorious from battling enemies? Her tools may be different, but her struggle and the struggle of all women who use their voices and the tools at their disposal to pursue social justice are worthy of the honorific title of heroines.<br /><br />Maria Tatar’s exceptional, well-researched, and accessible study, with its extensive notes and index, makes an invaluable contribution toward re-defining our concept of heroism to include woman-centered voices and woman-centered work. <br /><br />Highly recommended.<br /><br />My book reviews are also available at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="http://www.tamaraaghajaffar.com">www.tamaraaghajaffar.com</a>

3.5, kind of rounded up… mainly because I just didn’t want to round down. This *is* a good book, covering a lot of ground and providing a valuable resource that has been badly needed for a long time. But I can’t give it higher because of two things I kept coming back to… <br /><br />* the author (perhaps inadvertently) deadnames Elliot Page. It may not be my place to call attention to that, and there’s every possibility it was an editing oversight (the book was written during the pandemic and Page came out in December), but it’s something that needs addressing in future editions.<br /><br />* entire sections dedicated to Carrie Bradshaw and Girls but not even a mention of Furiosa…? Ellen Ripley? Sarah Connor? It’s strange to have a book dedicated to the evolution of female heroes and omit those three. <br /><br />Like I said, it’s very good and I’m sure I’ll revisit it in the future. But it’s definitely not definitive.

Not going to lie, I skimmed the last 50 pages because I simply could not with this shell of a book.<br /><br />This book was a huge letdown. For me, it joins a string of books about feminist topics written by well-respected academics that commit the double crime of being dull, and poorly argued. These books (like Jacqueline Rose's Mothers or Lucy Delap's Feminisms: A Global History) try to straddle the line between academic and approachable and fail miserably at both. <br /><br />The Heroine with 1001 Faces was published in September 2021, and yet it reads incredibly dated. It purports to challenge Campbell's definition of heroism, but what it does instead is list fictional story after story (across genres and cultures) that feature mostly women and girls as the main characters as examples of how women too can be heroes, or how women have challenged patriarchal norms. I guess? I don't know what the purpose was exactly: to show us that women too can be heroes? To expand the definition of heroism? Or to challenge the notion of heroism itself, and what it means to seek it. Why do we need heroes in the first place? <br /><br />Tatar goes into so many disparate topics but is incapable of bringing them together in a cohesive whole. Her analysis of pop culture and heroism are so incredibly shallow as to border on the ridiculous. There is no depth whatsoever to this book, no attempt to delve into the core issues, or to untangle the knots of oral history, authority, testimony, truth in a meaningful way. Which is a huge shame considering the fantastic work that has been done on this topic, by academics and non-academics alike, to understand the figure of women in mythology and fairytales, and how women's voices have been undermined, and how they have persisted regardless. While it seems that Tatar has read the books in question, I am not sure she has done the legwork on expanding on them in any meaningful way. She rehashes, but doesn't reply to them. <br /><br /><br />Honestly, I knew I was done with this book the moment when Tatar describes Carrie from Sex and the City as a "heroine" that is the female counterpart of Superman. Not to mention the several infuriating moments of conflating different stories, genres, and trends, and to assigning women certain qualities (such as care and compassion) without challenging them at any point. <br /><br />Reminds me so much of Atwood's The Testaments: thinks it has something to say, but the world and theory it is responding to is long gone. <br /><br /><br />

Thanks to NetGalley and Liveright for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. Here is that review: <br /><br />4 stars <br /><br />I haven't been this nerdy and excited for a book in a long, LONG time. As a regular professor of courses on folklore, mythology, and children's literature, I am extremely familiar with Tatar's scholarship...and Joseph Campbell's _The Hero with a Thousand Faces_. This book is really the missing piece I've been waiting for my whole career. <br /><br />Campbell's work largely excludes women, unless they are filling the most basic and binary roles, so even the title of this text is refreshing. Tatar comes off - as usual - as deeply knowledgeable not only about folklore and mythology but also about the numerous texts from which the examples are drawn. <br /><br />The greatest use for this text is going to be as source material for undergraduate and graduate students looking to work through newer texts - or older texts in more modern ways - and to access an update on Campbell's original construct. What will work so well for students here is the same feature that might tire readers like me, who geek out over stuff like this for pleasure: the lengthy summaries of various exemplary texts. Readers who hate spoilers or those who prefer more theory and fewer examples may find themselves frustrated by the structure. As much as this situation irritated me at times, I also couldn't help but realize how useful it will be for students. They won't have to know all of these works independently to contextualize the concepts or their own scholarship. This choice reflects Tatar's focus on the correct audience. <br /><br />One area I do find lacking here is attention to a broader definition of "women." In the current TERF laden territory, there's a missed opportunity to do better with the expansive and inclusive examples and constructs around gender. <br /><br />I am grateful this book exists and have already been touting its certain usefulness to students even pre-publication. It won't be a fun read for everyone who finds the subject interesting, but it will fill a longstanding gap and serve many, MANY students well for years to come.

This is a fascinating expansion of Joseph Campbell's concept of the "hero's journey," which in Campbell's explication ignored any feminine heroes completely. Tatar counters this through an analysis of many of the heroines found in the (mostly Western) literary mythos and succeeds in highlighting many of the ways female characters forged their own heroic paths.<br /><br />The following except struck me as being particularly insightful: <i>Once written down, orally transmitted epics lost the improvisational energy that drove their tellings and retellings. Turned into sacred texts, immutable and unassailable, they became part of a literary-historical record, stories that no longer challenged listeners to weigh in, respond to, and reshape their terms and values as had been the case with oral performances.</i> While traditional tales change with new tellings, the process of writing something down hardens historically contingent values into timeless truths. With this in mind, creators of modern stories can feel more free to reimagine these original tales without concern for a fidelity to an "official" text that itself once emerged from an ever-changing oral tradition. That's a very liberating way of looking at myth and legend. Tatar discusses a good many of these contemporary re-imaginings, though I think her book's strength is more in analyzing the older tales and laying the groundwork for how these contemporary stories function. After all, one is not hard-pressed to find literary analyses of contemporary fiction.<br /><br />There was one moment in which Tatar marveled at how Campbell could ignore the cultural impact of <i>Wonder Woman</i> of his day when he was crafting his male-centered monomyth, and part of me wonders why Tatar seems similarly unmotivated to explore beyond her surprisingly rigid binary analysis of gender dynamics, despite hinting, from time to time, that she does realize that there is a lot more to unpack here.

Heroines in myths, fairy tales, literature, and films did not always have the opportunity to go on great journeys as their male counterparts. They quietly sought justice and righted wrongs without all the muscle of Achilles or powers of Zeus. Heroines are now demanding makeovers, evolving and challenging authority, while still being curious and caring. Ms. Tatar discusses abducted and abused mythical Greek women and women's stories as portrayed in tapestries, sewing, and spinning. She moves on to how the wisdom in "old wives' tales" was discredited and degraded as the gossip of women. and the storytelling of ordinary folk. There are then discussions of the works of Louisa May Alcott, Betty Smith, LM Montgomery, and the detectives, Nancy Drew and Miss Marple and others. Closer to the present she discusses The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and the young warrior woman, Katniss in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Wonder Woman makes an appearance and films are covered as well. There is a large amount of women's history and literature by women and men in this book that will perhaps make readers reread the stories they read before from a different perspective. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for a honest review.

Originally posted on my blog: <a href="https://nonstopreaderbooks.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-heroine-with-1001-faces.html" rel="nofollow noopener">Nonstop Reader</a>.<br /><br /><b> <i>The Heroine with 1001 Faces</i> </b> is an immersive folklore based examination of the heroine archetype in the collective cultural consciousness written and presented by <a href="https://german.fas.harvard.edu/people/maria-tatar" rel="nofollow noopener">Dr. Maria Tatar</a>. Released 14th Sept 2021 by W.W. Norton on their <a href="https://wwnorton.com/liveright" rel="nofollow noopener">Liveright</a> imprint, it's 368 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. <br /><br />This is an erudite, very well written, layperson accessible look at the archetypes and portrayals of women in cultural narrative from the ancient world to the 21st century. It's a meticulously researched and annotated survey course and also, in a way, a companion volume (rebuttal?) to Campbell's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces" rel="nofollow noopener">Hero With A Thousand Faces</a>. I loved poring over the illustrations as well as the exhaustive bibliography and full chapter notes and annotations. The chapter notes are likely worth the price of admission for anyone interested in the subject and there's obviously been a swoonworthy amount of time spent on research and resource gathering on the part of the author. I took notes during the read and harvested an impressive number of items which warranted further examination later.<br /><br />I found the entire book quite interesting and fascinating. It is, admittedly, a niche book but will definitely appeal to readers interested in cultural anthropology. It's not a very easy read. The language is rigorous and formal. I definitely don't think it's inaccessible for the average reader, but it will take some effort (and I think that's a good thing). This would make a good support text for classroom or library use, for cultural anthropology and allied subjects, as well as a superlative read for those who are particularly interested in history, culture, and the arts.<br /><br />Five stars. This is well and deeply researched and engaging.<br /><br />Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.