The Female Hero in Folklore and Legend

by Tristram Potter Coffin

1975 EDITION........1st PRINTING

223 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1975

About the author

Tristram (“Tris”) Potter Coffin was an American folklorist and leading scholar of ballad texts in the 20th century. Coffin spent the bulk of his career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor of English and a co-founder of the Folklore Department. He was the author of 20 books and more than 100 scholarly articles and reviews.

Reviews

[Linda DiMeo Lowman · Rating 1 out of 5]

The male author of this book has wide-ranging knowledge of all the females and related written records of them. That stated, I'm not quite sure why he published this book. My first question before I began reading was, "Why is a man writing a book like this?" As I read, I began to get angry. He basically tears apart each "female hero" he writes about. Was she as pretty? Was she sexually active and who did she have sex with? In descriptions of many of the women, he concludes that they were not attractive (not sure how he knows this). For example, he posits that Cleopatra was not attractive based on images known of her likeness. Throughout history, the "attractiveness" of women as determined by men has varied widely. How can anyone know if she was attractive or not during the period she lived? Also, attractiveness does not only apply to a person's looks, but encompasses all aspects of a person including their personality, inner beauty among other factors.

My recommendation is to skip this book completely and read a book about women heroes as written by another woman or women.

[Katharine Fitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going into this book, I had hoped from the title that it's contents would be based more in criticism and theory. Instead, this is a book largely concerned with exposing the true stories and the real women behind the folktales that immortalize them. Each chapter is focused on a different female "archetype" and some analysis is provided as to why each of these archetypes may have captured the mythic consciousness, but the conclusion that Coffin draws is largely based in sex every time. Any criticism that is to be found in this book also largely centers on the female as she relates to the male and is often conducted through the eyes of the male, not so much on what a female hero might have to say for femininity itself or the general human experience. My feelings on this are mixed, but overall land me in a position where I do not necessarily disagree with the points Coffin raises, but rather find his to be an incomplete perspective. As with all books of this nature, it should not be read in a vaccuum, however I do not purely mean this in the sense that a reader should be familiar with the primary sources in question, but rather also with the works of other theorists and critics who approach this matter from different angles. If your interest is purely in the history of oft mythologized women, then this could be a really interesting read. If your interest lies more with questions of WHY we tell these stories, WHY these archetypes fascinate us, and WHAT they have to teach us about ourselves and humanity as a whole, then you may still find something of value within this book, but not of any great depth or length. That type of criticism is kneecapped by Coffin's more material approach to narrative and anyone hoping for a more symbolic approach is likely to be left wanting.

That being said, I think there is interesting criticism to be drawn from the facts presented in this book and I also think certain chapters contain some really interesting discussions on the way an archetype may mutate with time, I just wish that these points were explored a little more. I feel overall that my opinion of this book has been greatly influenced by the fact that I anticipated something different than what I actually got, so if you are someone who is more interested in the historical origins of folktales than you are in their symbolic origins, you may get a lot more from this than I did.

Pair with Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto for an interesting experience.