Brian Griffith's Reviews > 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.

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.

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.”