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Feminist Fairy Tales: Classic Tales Revamped Where Strong Women Take Fate Into Their Own Hands
Prominent feminist author Barbara Walker has revamped, retold, and infused with life some of your favorite classic fairy tales. No longer are women submissive, helpless creatures in need of redemption through the princely male! Instead they are vibrantly alive, strong women who take fate into their own hands.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
33 people are currently reading
1220 people want to read
About the author
Barbara G. Walker
36 books134 followersBarbara Walker studied journalism at the University of Pennsylvania and then took a reporting job at the Washington Star in DC. During her work as a reporter, she became increasingly interested in feminism and women's issues.
Her writing career has been split between knitting instruction books, produced in the late 1960s through the mid-80s; and women's studies and mythology books, produced from the 1980s through the early 21st C.
Her writing career has been split between knitting instruction books, produced in the late 1960s through the mid-80s; and women's studies and mythology books, produced from the 1980s through the early 21st C.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
March 4, 2017
This book was a deeply, deeply unpleasant read.
I love fairy tale retelling anthologies, particularly ones that cover a wide variety of cultures and history. But these stories were all dull as drainwater or or very offensive. Each one read like a parody, like fairy tales deliberately written in an overly preachy and silly manner to mock people being offended by actual folklore.
The first few stories were harmless enough, if nonsensical. As the stories progress though, they get increasingly disturbing and nasty. It's like Walker sat down to start writing these and got increasingly pissed off at the subjects she was writing against, until the last few stories were little more than her telling the readers directly on her views of religion and politics.
Yeah, those come up quite a lot in this series. I know it's incredibly difficult for a writer to keep personal opinions and beliefs out of their works, but Walker doesn't even try. She hammers readers over the heads with the same messages:
1.) Women are always good and loving and kind and nurturing.
2.) Pregnancy and childbirth are wonderful, special gifts that women have and men all secretly hate women because they think childbirth is the most powerful and awe-inspiring thing ever and wish they could do it too.
3.) It's perfectly alright for women to con other people. In fact, women who do so are heroic and have a deeper understanding of the world around them.
4.) Threats to harm a person are valid ways to inspire them to change their ways. That's not me jumping to conclusions, incidentally. Walker actually WRITES that moral into the intro of one of the stories.
5.) Men are usually viscous, ugly brutes who attack women with no warning and little motivation. If men are good, they are handsome and passive, letting their wives, mothers, and sisters run EVERYTHING for them, regardless of whether or not said wives, mothers, or sisters know how to handle those responsibilities.
6.) Religion is a terrible invention that makes people superstitious and stupid. Or rather, mainstream Christianity is. Christianity seems to be the only religion recognized, although Walker seems under the impression that God = Zeus = Odin = Jesus. Also, religion (or, like I said, Christianity) hates sex entirely and teaches people that they should never have sex under any circumstances and should feel ashamed of themselves if they have it. Always. Universally.
7.) Paganism (or rather, the neo-pagan New Age hippy beliefs Walker thinks are paganism) apparently doesn't count as a religion so much as a totally peaceful, awesome way of life that puts women in charge and worships a vague Goddess who is really every goddess ever, since this society actually existed in history and we all instinctively remember the Goddess in different forms. But everyone believes the Goddess isn't real or is evil because of Christianity and Men. Not because there's no evidence for it, nope.
8.) Going off of that, Christianity and Men go hand in hand. Just about all evils in the "historic"-based fairy tales teach that we used to have a beautiful world run by Goddess-worshiping priestesses, but male Christians took over. Apparently there aren't any truly devout Christian women, because Walker takes it as a given that women are repressed and brainwashed by Christianity.
9.) If a woman is a demanding snot or tries to force someone into marriage, it's admirable. It's also admirable if a woman uses magic to forcibly change her entire country into what SHE thinks is the ideal society, without thinking about the consequences or whether or not anyone else wants this.
10.) The world would be so much better if women would remember their jobs and take command of their menfolk. Also, women should only marry kind men not for happiness but because of some creepy eugenics-sounding idea that breeding only with kind, intelligent men means all the brutish thugs will die out forever.
I get that Walker's idea of feminism is a more outdated version, probably picked up from the 70s (a lot of the aspects of the stories, particularly the ancient Mother Goddess-worshiping society and the vagina envy were, I understand, a major part of 70s feminism). But this was published in the early 90s. Did she not take a minute to see how social views changed? Or notice that it was less acceptable to casually use words like "orientalia" or "gypsy"? I mean, she clearly watched the Disney movies out at the time, judging by some elements she "borrowed", so you'd think she'd pick up from Jasmine or Belle that women can be feminist without being passive whinebags who rely on goddesses to save them.
(That would actually be the eleventh thing this anthology taught - ripping off Disney is awesome. And if you think I'm saying that based on minute evidence, consider that Walker wrote her little mermaid as being raised by a father who, after a human killed her mother, forbade his daughters to go to the surface lest they be seen by humans and who can't resist the allure of the human world anyway. And the sea witch is huge and black and covered in spikes. Gee, wonder what she was thinking of?)
Edit from 11/20/2016: Having re-read this anthology, I would like to report that Disney movies are not the only things Walker plagiarized. I am about 98% certain that Walker ripped off two short stories for her fairy tales.
1.) Tanith Lee's "When the Clock Strikes" is an adaptation of Cinderella in which a woman was from a powerful royal house until a duke kills everyone in line between himself and his title. She escapes, goes into hiding by marrying a merchant, and has a daughter who she grooms to follow in her footsteps and share her beliefs as she engages in devil worship. After overcoming her stepfamily and winning the love of the prince (a love that is certainly not requited), the daughter fulfills her mother's wishes, in this case cursing the prince into insanity before vanishing.
Walker's "Cinder-Helle" is an adaptation of Cinderella in which a woman was formerly a powerful priestess of the Mother Goddess until Evil Christian Men killed or oppressed everyone. She escapes, goes into hiding by marrying a wealthy man, and has a daughter who she grooms to follow in her footsteps and share her beliefs as she names her daughter after the Ancient Pagan Mother Goddess. After overcoming her stepfamily and winning the love of the prince (a love that comes across as unrequited), the daughter fulfills her mothers wishes, in this case using her new position of power to forcibly ban Christianity and make everyone return to worshiping the Mother Goddess.
2.) In Prosper Merimee's "La Venus d'Ille", a bronze statue of "Modest Aphrodite" is found, with a Latin inscription. The son of the statue's owner unthinkingly puts his fiance's wedding ring on the statue, and it curls its hand so that it won't come off. That night, the statue comes alive, goes into the son's bedroom, and holds him all night until he dies, before returning to its original position. The story ends with the statue melted down to make a church bell.
In Walker's "Fairy Gold", a statue of the Mother Goddess (illustrated in the style of "Modest Aphrodite") is found, with an inscription in a "dead language". A shepherd unthinking puts on a gold ring, which matches one on the statue and which he can't remove. Around this time, the statue also changes position. After a period of time, the shepherd vanishes and his sister finds him dead, locked in an embrace with the statue. The story ends with the sister deciding that dying in the arms of the Mother Goddess meant he was happier in death than many were in life.
HMMM. I don't know, it looks an awful lot like Walker read those stories and decided she could "fix" them.
Edit 03/04/2017 - And DAMMIT, it looks like Walker ripped off ANOTHER story, this one for her fairy tale "The Weaver" (which is billed ostensibly as inspired by the "true" myth of Arachne). In this case, it looks like "The Weaver" was ripped off from "The Nettle Spinner" (which can be found here. The fairy tale is about a young, talented spinner named Renelde, who looks forward to marrying her sweetheart, Guilbert. She is pressured by a cruel Count into becoming his mistress and then his wife, but politely refuses both times. Out of spite, the Count refuses to give Renelde permission to marry Guilbert unless she weaves her wedding shift and his funeral shroud out of nettles, as he says she can only marry when he's dead. She manages to do so, despite it seeming to be impossible, and the Count slowly becomes ill as his funeral shroud is made. Renelde halts weaving at the request of the Countess (who is very kind and treated Renelde's family well), but the Count himself later begs her to finish when he becomes terminally ill but can't die until his shroud is made. On his deathbed, he repents his actions and apologies to Renelde. She and Guilbert marry and live happily after.
In Walker's version (the one called "feminist", remember), the young, talented weaver Rosette spends the story powerless and threatened by "Baron Wratheschild", who regularly abuses his wife and keeps her servants as sex slaves. Rosette isn't able to do anything to protect herself. She's given a few magical threads by the "fairy queen Arachne, patroness of weavers" (really), which give the Baron a broken leg and a mysterious illness, but he recovers from both and tries to get her executed for witchcraft (and use the opportunity to whip and rape her). Finally, after not doing very much for the entire story, Arachne has a spider give the Baron a lethal bite and Rosette and her sweetheart, Rambow (REALLY), elope.
If Walker really was *ahem* inspired by "The Nettle Spinner", that's just disgraceful. It means she removed a heroine who completed seemingly impossible tasks from her adversary while still remaining compassionate, a woman who continuously does good for her people even as her husband is cruel (the Baron's wife in Walker's story has pretty much no presence), and the idea that a villain can be moved by the heroine's compassion enough to repent his actions. Apparently what she thinks replaces all those things as "feminist" is putting in a Mother Goddess who really doesn't do very much at all for Rosette. And considering how much Christianity is hated in this anthology, I also suspect that Walker may have been trying to "correct" "The Nettle Spinner" as well, since that fairy tale implies that Renelde's miracle of spinning nettles was granted by God. As made evident in other works, Walker HATES God and the idea of God doing anything good for people. She doesn't seem to think it's possible.
I really, really hate to say this, because I don't like to suggest that there is a right or wrong school of feminism, but this is just backwards. The heroines are not independent or brave or self-sufficient. They don't even go the Disney route of showing kindness and compassion in the face of great adversary. Walker is one of those writers who mistakes "rude" with "feisty" and not in a deliberate character flaw way. It got to the point where in some stories, I honestly wasn't sure who I was supposed to be cheering for. In "Barbidol" (really), Barbidol is written as an incredibly judgmental airhead who has no friends and only dresses up as her occupations. She gets involved with an abusive GI Joe doll who has some punny name I can't recall. GI Joe is a violent thug and I guess the idea is that Barbidol is a fool for leaving the more gentle Kenndall (...) but Kenndall is just as much an airhead (and tries to manipulate Barbidol by dating her friend, hello?) and we're told that Barbidol actually starts thinking about things while trying to get Joe's attention then falls back into her materialistic life and WHO ARE WE SUPPOSED TO EVEN BE ROOTING FOR? The airhead? Her cardboard love interest? Neither? And really, Walker, do you want to teach your readership that their Barbie dolls secretly sneer at them for having underdeveloped breasts?
Even worse, the characters are just STUPID. If any of them rubbed two brain cells together and did anything remotely logical, the stories would be over in two minutes. A good example would be in the tale of Snow Night. The huntsman stalks Snow for a period of time and she clearly doesn't like it, then he tries to rape her when she refuses his advances. She proceeds to tell nobody about this, after fighting him off. Okay, I could buy she was traumatized (even though she seems to get over it pretty quickly), but then the huntsman tries to get the queen to condone him killing Snow and the queen, obviously grasping what he wants to do, calls the idea "obnoxious" and orders him to leave, summoning seven dwarfs to look after Snow until the huntsman tries to kill her. Because that makes much more sense than calling the guards to arrest him for talking about killing a princess.
It's even worse in stories involving deities, since Walker doesn't seem to get that gods and goddesses can do some pretty cool stuff in mythology. Here, they do virtually nothing. The Goddess characters are especially bad. In "How the Sexes Were Separated", the Great Mother is infuriated to see that Sky God ripped the formerly-hermaphroditic humans in half so... she gives him a tongue-lashing and lets him proceed to teach men to abuse women and hate sex. She doesn't try to stop him, she doesn't try to teach the men differently, she just hangs around hoping that one day, the humans will seeGod Sky God is a terrible, unreasonable deity and learn to ignore him.
Each story comes with an introduction and an illustration. The illustrations look nice enough, although I'm a bit disturbed that whoever drew them saw fit to include four or so topless women for the young audience to look at (or, in the case of the Empress's New Clothes, show a COMPLETELY NAKED empress). The introductions are completely laughable. Reading Walker's attempts to educate on folklore and mythology is like listening to Lucy Van Pelt explain that leaves fall from trees so squirrels can't eat them. She rambles through incredibly wrong "facts", held together by the flimsiest logic.
I'd like to finish by saying that I'm not sure what age range Walker had in mind when she wrote this. My copy was labeled for the library's juvenile fiction section, so definitely it was marketed for a younger crowd. I doubt any teenagers would like the dull, depthless prose though, and I REALLY am sure the kids would not care for or understand the religious or social arguments Walker tries to make (for example, Cinder-Helle's stepsisters being thinly-veiled representations of the federal government and Church and their mother is named Christiana DO YOU GET IT?!) There's also Walker's love of using incredibly gruesome fates, which...yeah. Kids can handle a lot, but do you really want to end a story with an old lady splitting a guy's head open and feeding his corpse to wolves, accompanied by her granddaughter? Or fairies thinking it's reasonable revenge for a gardener to nearly die from asphyxiation when he's attacked by a swarm of wasps (which he's allergic to)?
I suppose the two good things that came of this story were that I had a desire to seek out genuinely good retellings and I learned a lot about 70s feminism. As for the fairy tales themselves, I got nothing of any value out of them. Do yourselves a favor and skip this one. There are plenty of better talking fish in the sea.
I love fairy tale retelling anthologies, particularly ones that cover a wide variety of cultures and history. But these stories were all dull as drainwater or or very offensive. Each one read like a parody, like fairy tales deliberately written in an overly preachy and silly manner to mock people being offended by actual folklore.
The first few stories were harmless enough, if nonsensical. As the stories progress though, they get increasingly disturbing and nasty. It's like Walker sat down to start writing these and got increasingly pissed off at the subjects she was writing against, until the last few stories were little more than her telling the readers directly on her views of religion and politics.
Yeah, those come up quite a lot in this series. I know it's incredibly difficult for a writer to keep personal opinions and beliefs out of their works, but Walker doesn't even try. She hammers readers over the heads with the same messages:
1.) Women are always good and loving and kind and nurturing.
2.) Pregnancy and childbirth are wonderful, special gifts that women have and men all secretly hate women because they think childbirth is the most powerful and awe-inspiring thing ever and wish they could do it too.
3.) It's perfectly alright for women to con other people. In fact, women who do so are heroic and have a deeper understanding of the world around them.
4.) Threats to harm a person are valid ways to inspire them to change their ways. That's not me jumping to conclusions, incidentally. Walker actually WRITES that moral into the intro of one of the stories.
5.) Men are usually viscous, ugly brutes who attack women with no warning and little motivation. If men are good, they are handsome and passive, letting their wives, mothers, and sisters run EVERYTHING for them, regardless of whether or not said wives, mothers, or sisters know how to handle those responsibilities.
6.) Religion is a terrible invention that makes people superstitious and stupid. Or rather, mainstream Christianity is. Christianity seems to be the only religion recognized, although Walker seems under the impression that God = Zeus = Odin = Jesus. Also, religion (or, like I said, Christianity) hates sex entirely and teaches people that they should never have sex under any circumstances and should feel ashamed of themselves if they have it. Always. Universally.
7.) Paganism (or rather, the neo-pagan New Age hippy beliefs Walker thinks are paganism) apparently doesn't count as a religion so much as a totally peaceful, awesome way of life that puts women in charge and worships a vague Goddess who is really every goddess ever, since this society actually existed in history and we all instinctively remember the Goddess in different forms. But everyone believes the Goddess isn't real or is evil because of Christianity and Men. Not because there's no evidence for it, nope.
8.) Going off of that, Christianity and Men go hand in hand. Just about all evils in the "historic"-based fairy tales teach that we used to have a beautiful world run by Goddess-worshiping priestesses, but male Christians took over. Apparently there aren't any truly devout Christian women, because Walker takes it as a given that women are repressed and brainwashed by Christianity.
9.) If a woman is a demanding snot or tries to force someone into marriage, it's admirable. It's also admirable if a woman uses magic to forcibly change her entire country into what SHE thinks is the ideal society, without thinking about the consequences or whether or not anyone else wants this.
10.) The world would be so much better if women would remember their jobs and take command of their menfolk. Also, women should only marry kind men not for happiness but because of some creepy eugenics-sounding idea that breeding only with kind, intelligent men means all the brutish thugs will die out forever.
I get that Walker's idea of feminism is a more outdated version, probably picked up from the 70s (a lot of the aspects of the stories, particularly the ancient Mother Goddess-worshiping society and the vagina envy were, I understand, a major part of 70s feminism). But this was published in the early 90s. Did she not take a minute to see how social views changed? Or notice that it was less acceptable to casually use words like "orientalia" or "gypsy"? I mean, she clearly watched the Disney movies out at the time, judging by some elements she "borrowed", so you'd think she'd pick up from Jasmine or Belle that women can be feminist without being passive whinebags who rely on goddesses to save them.
(That would actually be the eleventh thing this anthology taught - ripping off Disney is awesome. And if you think I'm saying that based on minute evidence, consider that Walker wrote her little mermaid as being raised by a father who, after a human killed her mother, forbade his daughters to go to the surface lest they be seen by humans and who can't resist the allure of the human world anyway. And the sea witch is huge and black and covered in spikes. Gee, wonder what she was thinking of?)
Edit from 11/20/2016: Having re-read this anthology, I would like to report that Disney movies are not the only things Walker plagiarized. I am about 98% certain that Walker ripped off two short stories for her fairy tales.
1.) Tanith Lee's "When the Clock Strikes" is an adaptation of Cinderella in which a woman was from a powerful royal house until a duke kills everyone in line between himself and his title. She escapes, goes into hiding by marrying a merchant, and has a daughter who she grooms to follow in her footsteps and share her beliefs as she engages in devil worship. After overcoming her stepfamily and winning the love of the prince (a love that is certainly not requited), the daughter fulfills her mother's wishes, in this case cursing the prince into insanity before vanishing.
Walker's "Cinder-Helle" is an adaptation of Cinderella in which a woman was formerly a powerful priestess of the Mother Goddess until Evil Christian Men killed or oppressed everyone. She escapes, goes into hiding by marrying a wealthy man, and has a daughter who she grooms to follow in her footsteps and share her beliefs as she names her daughter after the Ancient Pagan Mother Goddess. After overcoming her stepfamily and winning the love of the prince (a love that comes across as unrequited), the daughter fulfills her mothers wishes, in this case using her new position of power to forcibly ban Christianity and make everyone return to worshiping the Mother Goddess.
2.) In Prosper Merimee's "La Venus d'Ille", a bronze statue of "Modest Aphrodite" is found, with a Latin inscription. The son of the statue's owner unthinkingly puts his fiance's wedding ring on the statue, and it curls its hand so that it won't come off. That night, the statue comes alive, goes into the son's bedroom, and holds him all night until he dies, before returning to its original position. The story ends with the statue melted down to make a church bell.
In Walker's "Fairy Gold", a statue of the Mother Goddess (illustrated in the style of "Modest Aphrodite") is found, with an inscription in a "dead language". A shepherd unthinking puts on a gold ring, which matches one on the statue and which he can't remove. Around this time, the statue also changes position. After a period of time, the shepherd vanishes and his sister finds him dead, locked in an embrace with the statue. The story ends with the sister deciding that dying in the arms of the Mother Goddess meant he was happier in death than many were in life.
HMMM. I don't know, it looks an awful lot like Walker read those stories and decided she could "fix" them.
Edit 03/04/2017 - And DAMMIT, it looks like Walker ripped off ANOTHER story, this one for her fairy tale "The Weaver" (which is billed ostensibly as inspired by the "true" myth of Arachne). In this case, it looks like "The Weaver" was ripped off from "The Nettle Spinner" (which can be found here. The fairy tale is about a young, talented spinner named Renelde, who looks forward to marrying her sweetheart, Guilbert. She is pressured by a cruel Count into becoming his mistress and then his wife, but politely refuses both times. Out of spite, the Count refuses to give Renelde permission to marry Guilbert unless she weaves her wedding shift and his funeral shroud out of nettles, as he says she can only marry when he's dead. She manages to do so, despite it seeming to be impossible, and the Count slowly becomes ill as his funeral shroud is made. Renelde halts weaving at the request of the Countess (who is very kind and treated Renelde's family well), but the Count himself later begs her to finish when he becomes terminally ill but can't die until his shroud is made. On his deathbed, he repents his actions and apologies to Renelde. She and Guilbert marry and live happily after.
In Walker's version (the one called "feminist", remember), the young, talented weaver Rosette spends the story powerless and threatened by "Baron Wratheschild", who regularly abuses his wife and keeps her servants as sex slaves. Rosette isn't able to do anything to protect herself. She's given a few magical threads by the "fairy queen Arachne, patroness of weavers" (really), which give the Baron a broken leg and a mysterious illness, but he recovers from both and tries to get her executed for witchcraft (and use the opportunity to whip and rape her). Finally, after not doing very much for the entire story, Arachne has a spider give the Baron a lethal bite and Rosette and her sweetheart, Rambow (REALLY), elope.
If Walker really was *ahem* inspired by "The Nettle Spinner", that's just disgraceful. It means she removed a heroine who completed seemingly impossible tasks from her adversary while still remaining compassionate, a woman who continuously does good for her people even as her husband is cruel (the Baron's wife in Walker's story has pretty much no presence), and the idea that a villain can be moved by the heroine's compassion enough to repent his actions. Apparently what she thinks replaces all those things as "feminist" is putting in a Mother Goddess who really doesn't do very much at all for Rosette. And considering how much Christianity is hated in this anthology, I also suspect that Walker may have been trying to "correct" "The Nettle Spinner" as well, since that fairy tale implies that Renelde's miracle of spinning nettles was granted by God. As made evident in other works, Walker HATES God and the idea of God doing anything good for people. She doesn't seem to think it's possible.
I really, really hate to say this, because I don't like to suggest that there is a right or wrong school of feminism, but this is just backwards. The heroines are not independent or brave or self-sufficient. They don't even go the Disney route of showing kindness and compassion in the face of great adversary. Walker is one of those writers who mistakes "rude" with "feisty" and not in a deliberate character flaw way. It got to the point where in some stories, I honestly wasn't sure who I was supposed to be cheering for. In "Barbidol" (really), Barbidol is written as an incredibly judgmental airhead who has no friends and only dresses up as her occupations. She gets involved with an abusive GI Joe doll who has some punny name I can't recall. GI Joe is a violent thug and I guess the idea is that Barbidol is a fool for leaving the more gentle Kenndall (...) but Kenndall is just as much an airhead (and tries to manipulate Barbidol by dating her friend, hello?) and we're told that Barbidol actually starts thinking about things while trying to get Joe's attention then falls back into her materialistic life and WHO ARE WE SUPPOSED TO EVEN BE ROOTING FOR? The airhead? Her cardboard love interest? Neither? And really, Walker, do you want to teach your readership that their Barbie dolls secretly sneer at them for having underdeveloped breasts?
Even worse, the characters are just STUPID. If any of them rubbed two brain cells together and did anything remotely logical, the stories would be over in two minutes. A good example would be in the tale of Snow Night. The huntsman stalks Snow for a period of time and she clearly doesn't like it, then he tries to rape her when she refuses his advances. She proceeds to tell nobody about this, after fighting him off. Okay, I could buy she was traumatized (even though she seems to get over it pretty quickly), but then the huntsman tries to get the queen to condone him killing Snow and the queen, obviously grasping what he wants to do, calls the idea "obnoxious" and orders him to leave, summoning seven dwarfs to look after Snow until the huntsman tries to kill her. Because that makes much more sense than calling the guards to arrest him for talking about killing a princess.
It's even worse in stories involving deities, since Walker doesn't seem to get that gods and goddesses can do some pretty cool stuff in mythology. Here, they do virtually nothing. The Goddess characters are especially bad. In "How the Sexes Were Separated", the Great Mother is infuriated to see that Sky God ripped the formerly-hermaphroditic humans in half so... she gives him a tongue-lashing and lets him proceed to teach men to abuse women and hate sex. She doesn't try to stop him, she doesn't try to teach the men differently, she just hangs around hoping that one day, the humans will see
Each story comes with an introduction and an illustration. The illustrations look nice enough, although I'm a bit disturbed that whoever drew them saw fit to include four or so topless women for the young audience to look at (or, in the case of the Empress's New Clothes, show a COMPLETELY NAKED empress). The introductions are completely laughable. Reading Walker's attempts to educate on folklore and mythology is like listening to Lucy Van Pelt explain that leaves fall from trees so squirrels can't eat them. She rambles through incredibly wrong "facts", held together by the flimsiest logic.
I'd like to finish by saying that I'm not sure what age range Walker had in mind when she wrote this. My copy was labeled for the library's juvenile fiction section, so definitely it was marketed for a younger crowd. I doubt any teenagers would like the dull, depthless prose though, and I REALLY am sure the kids would not care for or understand the religious or social arguments Walker tries to make (for example, Cinder-Helle's stepsisters being thinly-veiled representations of the federal government and Church and their mother is named Christiana DO YOU GET IT?!) There's also Walker's love of using incredibly gruesome fates, which...yeah. Kids can handle a lot, but do you really want to end a story with an old lady splitting a guy's head open and feeding his corpse to wolves, accompanied by her granddaughter? Or fairies thinking it's reasonable revenge for a gardener to nearly die from asphyxiation when he's attacked by a swarm of wasps (which he's allergic to)?
I suppose the two good things that came of this story were that I had a desire to seek out genuinely good retellings and I learned a lot about 70s feminism. As for the fairy tales themselves, I got nothing of any value out of them. Do yourselves a favor and skip this one. There are plenty of better talking fish in the sea.
March 19, 2015
Talk about preachy. Honestly, if these are feminist retellings of fairy tales then why are most of the helpers still male? Why can’t some of the dwarves, for instance, be female dwarves? It’s great that the Queen helps Snow, but seriously all male dwarves? And why are most of the men in the stories undeserving idiots? Why not totally reverse the beauty and the beast theme, instead of making them both ugly, and the beast still a jerk?
And how come every woman seems to be wearing a dress, and is white?
And the combining of different time periods in each tale is just confusing.
Honesty there are better feminist fairy tale collections out there, including ones with original work but also ones that have original folk and fairy tales in them.
And how come every woman seems to be wearing a dress, and is white?
And the combining of different time periods in each tale is just confusing.
Honesty there are better feminist fairy tale collections out there, including ones with original work but also ones that have original folk and fairy tales in them.
December 1, 2016
Let me start by saying that I love fairy tales from all over the world. I love reading revised ones; I savor new and original ones. I've received a number as gifts, and I've written more than a few as well. This is a genre that I have loved for decades and that is very, very close to my heart.
So please believe me when I say that Walker's tales were utterly enraging. The incompetently poor quality of the writing, the wooden characterization, the ineffectual antagonists, the do-nothing, arrogant and frequently cruel protagonists, the normalization of sexual assault, abuse (especially emotional abuse), and rape, the hatred of men (which became blatant by the end of the book), and the plagiarism of at least one of the stories all made me explode like the Tsar Bomba.
Warning: spoilers follow. Lots and lots of spoilers.
Among the family-unfriendly Aesops in this anthology:
It is perfectly all right, if you are a werewolf queen, to thank a starving peasant girl and her father by giving them meat from the king's deer, which you know will get them arrested for poaching ("The She-Wolf");
If you love your stepdaughter and want no harm to come to her, do not warn her that the lord whom she rejected and who tried to sexually assault her came to you with a plot to murder her, which he expected you to condone, because stepmother ("Snow Night");
Someone who is exceptionally gifted in battle should never think of anything but her own profit when someone comes to her with news of young women in potentially lethal danger ("Gorga and the Dragon");
Religious people are out to con you, so the best thing you can do is learn how the con works and trick people with it yourself ("The Oracle");
Stalking a woman from childhood? Absolutely fine. Regarding serial rapes and murders as entertainment that isn't worth stopping? Completely acceptable ("The Gargoyle");
Murdering bullies and pedophiles and then feeding their corpses to wolves who live near a village is fine as long as you're a priestess of the Mother Goddess/Red Riding Hood's mom, and will in no way endanger the villagers or the wolves ("Little White Riding Hood");
Smearing menstrual blood all over garbage and vermin is magic, forcing people to worship the Mother Goddess is in no way like forcing people to worship the Christian God, and vengeful punishment is a good thing that will only improve people ("Cinder-Helle");
If women con and humiliate another woman, they should be rewarded ("The Empress's New Clothes");
Christianity and men are to blame for all the evils of the world (multiple stories);
Which is why gods fading from existence is the best thing ever ("How the Gods Met Their End"); and
Women dominating men will totally save the animals and make the world a better place ("The White God").
And then there is the plagiarized story, "Fairy Gold." Beat for beat, plot point for plot point, it is identical to La Venus d'Ille, a 1837 short story by Prosper Merimee (the guy who wrote the novel that the opera Carmen is based on). In each story, a man finds an incredibly beautiful statue of a woman; the statue bears an inscription that turns out to be relevant; a ring is placed on a finger (in Merimee's story, the son of the archeologist who found the statue puts his engagement ring on the statue's finger during a game of paume, while in Walker's, the young man who finds the statue puts a ring on his own finger); the ring binds the statue and the young man; the statue kills the young man; the young man dies while intertwined with the statue. Walker's male lead Winsom dies slowly over the course of months, losing his strength with his sanity, while Merimee's Alphonse dies crushed and burned by the statue on his wedding night--but both end up just as dead.
The only plot detail that Walker changes from La Venus d'Ille is the ending, where the bronze Venus is melted down to make a church bell...and even that does not destroy the curse. In Walker's version, Lissom finds the corpse of her brother in the arms of the statue (and it's clear from the text that Winsom has been fucking the statue); her only reaction is "Her grief was soothed by the thought that in dying he must have been happier than most human beings ever expect to be." Indeed, Walker presents Winsom's loss of health, sanity and life as "a blessing." That's a nice healthy message to send to children!
Walker's attitude toward fairy tales is one of contempt; she clearly has no idea that fairy tales featuring active heroines who save themselves and others even exist, and most of the intros to each tale devolve into rants that a) protest either the source material or some aspect of society that she dislikes/deems unacceptable, b) promote the Mother Goddess or c) rage against Christianity. She frequently missed the point of stories ("The Empress's New Clothes" is an excellent example of this), and I saw no sign that she had done a shred of research, as almost everything that she wrote ended up throwing every god into a blender and every goddess into a second one.
The stories also contain an unpleasant amount of ableism, hints of anti-Semitism ("Baron Wrathchild" maps all too easily to the title of the Jewish banker Baron Rothschild), and words and expressions with racist undertones. Virtually every story contains some reference or term that made me flinch--or, as in "The White God," manages to be about people of color while omitting human characters of color.
Furthermore, the anthology utterly failed at feminism. Most of her heroes and heroines were passive to the point of inertia, doing nothing save whining, crying or obeying whatever foolish or cruel commands the Mother Goddess/priestess of the Mother Goddess/fairy queen doubling as the Mother Goddess told them to perform. Generosity and altruism were presented as foolish things that would lead others to take advantage; selfishness and vicious behavior were presented as moral strength. It's as if Jack Chick and Ayn Rand both converted to paganism and then co-wrote a series of tracts.
To be fair, there was one story that was not bad--"The Frog Princess." The titular princess is originally a frog who falls for a human prince and finds that becoming physically human does not make her stop being her froggy self.
But I'm afraid that one story does not compensate for the other twenty-seven--especially not in a collection that includes things like "Barbidol [read: Barbie Doll]" (in which the female lead's only choices are between a shallow materialistic twit who ignores and emotionally abuses her and a physically abusive brute); "How Winter Came Into the World" (which takes the Demeter and Persephone story and makes it primarily about a male elf magician who wants to become a sky god); and "The Weaver" (featuring Arachne from Greek mythology as a goddess and fairy godmother to the titular weaver, Rosette, and a mustache-twirling kidnapper-rapist named, I kid you not, Baron Wrathchild).
I wish that I could say that this book was so bad it's good. But it's not. It's simply a very angry book by a woman who still has a great many unresolved issues with Christianity and who is determined to show the Mother Goddess (in whom she does not believe, being a committed atheist) as the ideal role model for all women.
If you want fantasy novels or fairy tales in which women characters take center stage, show multiple kinds of strength, not merely the physical variety, befriend and help other women, save themselves and others, choose for themselves, and make a difference in the story, plenty of such novels, not to mention both old fairy tales and the revisionist variety, exist. But this is not that kind of a book. I greatly wish that it had been.
So please believe me when I say that Walker's tales were utterly enraging. The incompetently poor quality of the writing, the wooden characterization, the ineffectual antagonists, the do-nothing, arrogant and frequently cruel protagonists, the normalization of sexual assault, abuse (especially emotional abuse), and rape, the hatred of men (which became blatant by the end of the book), and the plagiarism of at least one of the stories all made me explode like the Tsar Bomba.
Warning: spoilers follow. Lots and lots of spoilers.
Among the family-unfriendly Aesops in this anthology:
It is perfectly all right, if you are a werewolf queen, to thank a starving peasant girl and her father by giving them meat from the king's deer, which you know will get them arrested for poaching ("The She-Wolf");
If you love your stepdaughter and want no harm to come to her, do not warn her that the lord whom she rejected and who tried to sexually assault her came to you with a plot to murder her, which he expected you to condone, because stepmother ("Snow Night");
Someone who is exceptionally gifted in battle should never think of anything but her own profit when someone comes to her with news of young women in potentially lethal danger ("Gorga and the Dragon");
Religious people are out to con you, so the best thing you can do is learn how the con works and trick people with it yourself ("The Oracle");
Stalking a woman from childhood? Absolutely fine. Regarding serial rapes and murders as entertainment that isn't worth stopping? Completely acceptable ("The Gargoyle");
Murdering bullies and pedophiles and then feeding their corpses to wolves who live near a village is fine as long as you're a priestess of the Mother Goddess/Red Riding Hood's mom, and will in no way endanger the villagers or the wolves ("Little White Riding Hood");
Smearing menstrual blood all over garbage and vermin is magic, forcing people to worship the Mother Goddess is in no way like forcing people to worship the Christian God, and vengeful punishment is a good thing that will only improve people ("Cinder-Helle");
If women con and humiliate another woman, they should be rewarded ("The Empress's New Clothes");
Christianity and men are to blame for all the evils of the world (multiple stories);
Which is why gods fading from existence is the best thing ever ("How the Gods Met Their End"); and
Women dominating men will totally save the animals and make the world a better place ("The White God").
And then there is the plagiarized story, "Fairy Gold." Beat for beat, plot point for plot point, it is identical to La Venus d'Ille, a 1837 short story by Prosper Merimee (the guy who wrote the novel that the opera Carmen is based on). In each story, a man finds an incredibly beautiful statue of a woman; the statue bears an inscription that turns out to be relevant; a ring is placed on a finger (in Merimee's story, the son of the archeologist who found the statue puts his engagement ring on the statue's finger during a game of paume, while in Walker's, the young man who finds the statue puts a ring on his own finger); the ring binds the statue and the young man; the statue kills the young man; the young man dies while intertwined with the statue. Walker's male lead Winsom dies slowly over the course of months, losing his strength with his sanity, while Merimee's Alphonse dies crushed and burned by the statue on his wedding night--but both end up just as dead.
The only plot detail that Walker changes from La Venus d'Ille is the ending, where the bronze Venus is melted down to make a church bell...and even that does not destroy the curse. In Walker's version, Lissom finds the corpse of her brother in the arms of the statue (and it's clear from the text that Winsom has been fucking the statue); her only reaction is "Her grief was soothed by the thought that in dying he must have been happier than most human beings ever expect to be." Indeed, Walker presents Winsom's loss of health, sanity and life as "a blessing." That's a nice healthy message to send to children!
Walker's attitude toward fairy tales is one of contempt; she clearly has no idea that fairy tales featuring active heroines who save themselves and others even exist, and most of the intros to each tale devolve into rants that a) protest either the source material or some aspect of society that she dislikes/deems unacceptable, b) promote the Mother Goddess or c) rage against Christianity. She frequently missed the point of stories ("The Empress's New Clothes" is an excellent example of this), and I saw no sign that she had done a shred of research, as almost everything that she wrote ended up throwing every god into a blender and every goddess into a second one.
The stories also contain an unpleasant amount of ableism, hints of anti-Semitism ("Baron Wrathchild" maps all too easily to the title of the Jewish banker Baron Rothschild), and words and expressions with racist undertones. Virtually every story contains some reference or term that made me flinch--or, as in "The White God," manages to be about people of color while omitting human characters of color.
Furthermore, the anthology utterly failed at feminism. Most of her heroes and heroines were passive to the point of inertia, doing nothing save whining, crying or obeying whatever foolish or cruel commands the Mother Goddess/priestess of the Mother Goddess/fairy queen doubling as the Mother Goddess told them to perform. Generosity and altruism were presented as foolish things that would lead others to take advantage; selfishness and vicious behavior were presented as moral strength. It's as if Jack Chick and Ayn Rand both converted to paganism and then co-wrote a series of tracts.
To be fair, there was one story that was not bad--"The Frog Princess." The titular princess is originally a frog who falls for a human prince and finds that becoming physically human does not make her stop being her froggy self.
But I'm afraid that one story does not compensate for the other twenty-seven--especially not in a collection that includes things like "Barbidol [read: Barbie Doll]" (in which the female lead's only choices are between a shallow materialistic twit who ignores and emotionally abuses her and a physically abusive brute); "How Winter Came Into the World" (which takes the Demeter and Persephone story and makes it primarily about a male elf magician who wants to become a sky god); and "The Weaver" (featuring Arachne from Greek mythology as a goddess and fairy godmother to the titular weaver, Rosette, and a mustache-twirling kidnapper-rapist named, I kid you not, Baron Wrathchild).
I wish that I could say that this book was so bad it's good. But it's not. It's simply a very angry book by a woman who still has a great many unresolved issues with Christianity and who is determined to show the Mother Goddess (in whom she does not believe, being a committed atheist) as the ideal role model for all women.
If you want fantasy novels or fairy tales in which women characters take center stage, show multiple kinds of strength, not merely the physical variety, befriend and help other women, save themselves and others, choose for themselves, and make a difference in the story, plenty of such novels, not to mention both old fairy tales and the revisionist variety, exist. But this is not that kind of a book. I greatly wish that it had been.
January 29, 2022
I do enjoy Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves more than this collection, but I don't think this one is all that terrible like the GR rating is suggesting.
I'd read these stories years ago and this re-reading is like.......okay for me. So it gets a 3.5 stars rating from me.
I'd admit some of the stories are too 'in your face' when it comes to male suppression and the goddesses worship stuff, but many of the stories are humorous, with girls taking the active roles to gain themselves and their families a better future. There are a few stories with young men as protagonists too and these stories are also interesting to read, for example, the story about a fisherman who falls in love with a sea witch and
I'd read these stories years ago and this re-reading is like.......okay for me. So it gets a 3.5 stars rating from me.
I'd admit some of the stories are too 'in your face' when it comes to male suppression and the goddesses worship stuff, but many of the stories are humorous, with girls taking the active roles to gain themselves and their families a better future. There are a few stories with young men as protagonists too and these stories are also interesting to read, for example, the story about a fisherman who falls in love with a sea witch and
January 25, 2013
I thought the first couple stories were okay, and then I got tired of reading about the cauldron and the crone and how wonderful and wise women are (even when they actually are depicted as petty, passive, and stupid in many stories). Plus, just about every story was about the beautiful and dainty women succeeding or finding love, even though the author is always talking about finding someone clever and thoughtful. The Cinderella retelling was exactly the same as the regular Cinderella, except instead of a fairy godmother, there's "moon blood!" Also, I was a bit annoyed that the only semi-lesbian/queer story had women getting married, but at the end let us know they were still taking male lovers. Thank goodness! Goddess forbid (eye roll) they actually be women who want to love and have sex with each other! A couple stories were interesting, but I got pretty tired with the whole thing about three stories in. I hate when feminism is portrayed as women being wise and men being brutal and stupid, and many of the stories were exactly this. The stories just felt overly didactic, plus boring.
October 19, 2011
I already thought from the title that it was a bit too much and really it was. How could the author genuinely believe that simply by adding an old goddess to the original fairy tales without changing anything else (the women are still as passive as they used to be really) would make her tales feminist?
April 5, 2014
Stories Read:
The Gargoyle, The Littlest Mermaid, The Frog Princess
'the gargoyle,' from 'feminist fairy tales' by barbara walker
i’m reading a short story about a gargoyle. in the story, the outside gargoyles look down on the inside statues because they are lame and can’t move about at night and shit. what follows is amazing:
"but the gargoyles had noticed that the indoor statues didn’t seem to have any power of nocturnal locomotion, even though some of them had wings. so they thought themselves superior because of their wilder, freer life. they called the indoor statues cream puffs, sissies, namby-pambies, house pets, and altar potatoes."
ALTAR POTATO
The Gargoyle, The Littlest Mermaid, The Frog Princess
'the gargoyle,' from 'feminist fairy tales' by barbara walker
i’m reading a short story about a gargoyle. in the story, the outside gargoyles look down on the inside statues because they are lame and can’t move about at night and shit. what follows is amazing:
"but the gargoyles had noticed that the indoor statues didn’t seem to have any power of nocturnal locomotion, even though some of them had wings. so they thought themselves superior because of their wilder, freer life. they called the indoor statues cream puffs, sissies, namby-pambies, house pets, and altar potatoes."
ALTAR POTATO
April 1, 2023
I found this collection of rewritten fairytales and myths to be very interesting and engaging. The mixture of both fairytales and general folklore is diverse and fascinating. This book pushes feminist ideas on to the reader and asks us to question the way we view things and explore how what we consume shapes the way we think. As a spiritual person I found this to be fulfilling and empowering.
August 10, 2022
I love me a good retelling, and I really enjoyed these fairy tale retellings! With that being said, though, I don't know if I would call these feminist fairy tales. They were a lot more like fairy tales retold with feminist protagonists.
The main characters definitely tried to be feminists, but in a majority of the stories, a male was the main antagonist. There were very few stories where the men and women were seen as equals.
Every tale had a different moral, but don't be a dick.
The main characters definitely tried to be feminists, but in a majority of the stories, a male was the main antagonist. There were very few stories where the men and women were seen as equals.
Every tale had a different moral, but don't be a dick.
Read
May 25, 2018.
November 4, 2016
I want to preface this by saying that I am a fan of retold fairy tales. I am also a fan of short stories. I am ALSO a fan of feminist literature or feminist themes. Mix fairy tales retellings with feminism and short stories, and I am in literary heaven. This book, however, is a work of hell.
Barbara Walker's title is a complete misrepresentation of what this book truly is, an example of misguided notions of what feminism is, sprinkled with racist subtones. If one were to start reading this book without a clear idea of the feminist philosophy is, the belief in EQUALITY between sexes, then one might believe that all feminists are predominantly white, strictly heterosexual individuals, that believe in the inferiority of man and all similarly paternal or masculine associations, seeing that the characters of her stories fall into that caliber.
It was so painful to read of Walker's continual themes of the "evil" all-Father, and the ever benevolent and correct, wise Mother or similar spirit, not to mention that 95% of the time, this spirit was present only among white cultures or individuals. The lack of diversity and integration in this collection of stories, not to mention the factual errors in Walker's discussion of the history of each story (always tied to the Mother spirit) was appalling.
But perhaps the most unacceptable part of this book was not the belittlement of the male sex that occurred in this collection, but rather the inconsistency between the characters Walker creates and the philosophy she attempts to promote in her stories. Although she referred to the superiority of the feminine energy and sex ceaselessly in her introductions, most of Walker's female characters are valued based upon their physical beauty, and are almost entirely helpless in changing their fate without the aid of male characters.
Nearly all of the heroines were mentioned as being beautiful, and were directly or indirectly characterized as being chaste and "innocent," since they were always clothed in white, or had done nothing to harm anybody or anything. Not only that, but with the exception of "Princess Questa," (the only story I admired for its tale of a woman who develops her strength of character over the course of the story), most of the female characters are either rescued or aided from their predicament by another male character (most of the time a boyfriend), or by the convenient momentary absence or weakness of a male villain (with a good dose of female condescension besides). Overall, it was hard to tell whether Walker was trying to promote female empowerment, or undermine it altogether.
While feminism is a worthwhile topic to immerse yourself in and to learn about through a rich literary history, this book is NOT the right thing for current feminists or those curious about the topic. It is a mess of contradictory preachiness, combined with an unhealthy dose of condescension and anger on behalf of the author. Although it had a lot of room for potential, the overall result is one that is HORRIFIC in its final form.
Barbara Walker's title is a complete misrepresentation of what this book truly is, an example of misguided notions of what feminism is, sprinkled with racist subtones. If one were to start reading this book without a clear idea of the feminist philosophy is, the belief in EQUALITY between sexes, then one might believe that all feminists are predominantly white, strictly heterosexual individuals, that believe in the inferiority of man and all similarly paternal or masculine associations, seeing that the characters of her stories fall into that caliber.
It was so painful to read of Walker's continual themes of the "evil" all-Father, and the ever benevolent and correct, wise Mother or similar spirit, not to mention that 95% of the time, this spirit was present only among white cultures or individuals. The lack of diversity and integration in this collection of stories, not to mention the factual errors in Walker's discussion of the history of each story (always tied to the Mother spirit) was appalling.
But perhaps the most unacceptable part of this book was not the belittlement of the male sex that occurred in this collection, but rather the inconsistency between the characters Walker creates and the philosophy she attempts to promote in her stories. Although she referred to the superiority of the feminine energy and sex ceaselessly in her introductions, most of Walker's female characters are valued based upon their physical beauty, and are almost entirely helpless in changing their fate without the aid of male characters.
Nearly all of the heroines were mentioned as being beautiful, and were directly or indirectly characterized as being chaste and "innocent," since they were always clothed in white, or had done nothing to harm anybody or anything. Not only that, but with the exception of "Princess Questa," (the only story I admired for its tale of a woman who develops her strength of character over the course of the story), most of the female characters are either rescued or aided from their predicament by another male character (most of the time a boyfriend), or by the convenient momentary absence or weakness of a male villain (with a good dose of female condescension besides). Overall, it was hard to tell whether Walker was trying to promote female empowerment, or undermine it altogether.
While feminism is a worthwhile topic to immerse yourself in and to learn about through a rich literary history, this book is NOT the right thing for current feminists or those curious about the topic. It is a mess of contradictory preachiness, combined with an unhealthy dose of condescension and anger on behalf of the author. Although it had a lot of room for potential, the overall result is one that is HORRIFIC in its final form.
May 24, 2007
In a world where Spiderman's girlfriend hasn't even picked up the tiniest clue about defending herself and not walking down dark alleys, it's refreshing to come across a Red Riding Hood who takes down two lecherous woodsmen and a wise stepmother who uses her magic to protect her stepdaughter, Snow White. A few of the stories are a bit nauseating in their desire to show women in the best light (hell, we've all got flaws), but all in all, this collection is a fun little read about ass-kicking women who stand up for what they believe in.
November 2, 2013
Awful Awful Awful! I have never read a book that is so opposite of feminism. No intersectionality, still holds up the virgin dichotomy, most stories the girls were described as dainty, white and beautiful from a male characters point of view. Main characters have very little agency. You can be critical of religions like Christianity whilst respecting those of faith and the author was incredibly disrespectful. Her version feminism was incredibly ham fisted and the writing was awful.
August 9, 2012
I did not enjoy this collection of fairy tales. I thought I would. It would be interesting for use in exploring the culture of so-called feminism. The author provides her thoughts on each tale before she recounts the stories. I struggled with the atheism and the lack of morality and the women-are-better-than-men theme.
March 4, 2025
I would like to think, considering the lovely illustrations, that the ideal audience for this text is a young lady who is attempting to find her place in the world and she comes into the understanding that she is blossoming and open to receiving the gifts of her birthrights. Whatever those may be… 💖
Young men may enjoy too the folly of a prince or shepherd here and there.
Young men may enjoy too the folly of a prince or shepherd here and there.
March 21, 2009
I enjoy fairy tales and I am a feminist but after four of these stories I'd had enough of this book. Retelling traditional tales well takes subtlety and skill, both of which Walker's writing lacks. Lavine gets it right with "Fairest" and "Ella Enchanted."
June 30, 2009
I enjoy reading different versions of fairy tales, but Barbara Walker misses the mark. Although she makes ancient feminist references at the beginning of each tale, the telling of the stories are simplistic and transparent. Not recommended.
December 7, 2010
Well I actually didn't finish this because it was so annoying. I love a fairy tale revision, but at the beginning of all of them she gave a really boring explanation of why she wrote it. The worst part was that they were very uncreative. And the heroines that I did read about were ridiculous
March 18, 2009
This collection covered quite a number of stories and I liked the twists. A lot of stories seemed more realistic (such as The Frog Princess). I liked the lessons that were learned.
December 2, 2009
A little heavy handed.
December 25, 2009
Too heavy handed on the feminist aspects.
August 5, 2011
Thoroughly enjoyed these stories and the socially conscious twist. Imagine how life would have been if we grew up with these instead of the usual tales which don't do much for girls/women.
March 22, 2020
I don’t think this collection is nearly as bad as other reviewers made it out to be. Walker’s view of feminism is definitely a simplistic, very 1970s one (which makes the book’s 1996 publication feel very strange) and the tales are decidedly preachy, but—with the glaring exception of “Barbidol”—they aren’t poorly written. Far and away the worst element is the awful character and story names that feel like the inventions of a seven-year-old under a ten-second time limit (“Snow Night” = Snow White, “Ala Dean” = female Aladdin, “Ugly and the Beast” = “Beauty and the Beast,” “Barbidol” = Barbie doll, “Mikimaus” = Mickey Mouse, OH THE SUBTLETY). The anthology also irritates with Walker’s pandering introductions before each story: they add nothing, are based in very broad and simplistic understandings of mythology and folklore, and hammer readers over the head with her meaning rather than letting them deduce it from the stories themselves (and, given the face-value attitude of the stories, no reader would struggle to understand their messages).
But, aside from the obnoxious packaging, I really think the worst that I can accuse this book of is simplicity and repetition. The portrayal of gender is very basic—girls rule, boys drool—and it definitely tells one too many “let’s all worship the Earth Mother and destroy toxic Christianity” tales. The stories themselves, though, held my interest and were entertaining enough. In fact, I strongly suspect if Walker had cut those pesky introductions and given her stories and characters less idiotic names, this anthology wouldn’t receive nearly so much vitriol. Make no mistake, Feminist Fairy Tales isn’t great—but I also wouldn’t call it worthless. There are way better retelling anthologies to read, but I’ve also come across plenty of worse ones. The spark behind these stories is not without merit; the final product just needed more nuance and equanimity in order to not come off as so childish and condescending.
2.5 stars.
But, aside from the obnoxious packaging, I really think the worst that I can accuse this book of is simplicity and repetition. The portrayal of gender is very basic—girls rule, boys drool—and it definitely tells one too many “let’s all worship the Earth Mother and destroy toxic Christianity” tales. The stories themselves, though, held my interest and were entertaining enough. In fact, I strongly suspect if Walker had cut those pesky introductions and given her stories and characters less idiotic names, this anthology wouldn’t receive nearly so much vitriol. Make no mistake, Feminist Fairy Tales isn’t great—but I also wouldn’t call it worthless. There are way better retelling anthologies to read, but I’ve also come across plenty of worse ones. The spark behind these stories is not without merit; the final product just needed more nuance and equanimity in order to not come off as so childish and condescending.
2.5 stars.
March 17, 2020
This book is poorly titled, it should be: "Classic fairy tales and myths re-imagined from a matriarchal and misandrist word." It's disappointing that it was advertised as feminist fairy stories, when largely they're not. Some of the tales are amusing or clever, but, many of them come off as really bitter (especially towards Christianity) and there's a lot of male-bashing that I didn't appreciate -misandry isn't feminism, gender equality is.
Occasionally it was interesting food for thought, in the individual introductions to the tales, when Walker points out how certain tropes and archetypes are directly influenced/created by patriarchy ideals and philosophies, or by various ancient myths and sacred symbols. However, the defacto exaltation of all things female, the bitterness and perpetual anger towards male deities and the out-right misandry just gets more blatant as the book goes on, and it quickly becomes unpleasant to read. At many points, this book doesn't support feminism, it counters it.
The writing style itself is just ok; it's really simple and plain. The best of this book are the illustrations. Although the images don't always match the written character descriptions, they are lovely drawings.
I liked Walker's myths and symbols encyclopedias, and I enjoy re-imagined fairy tales, so I was looking forward to reading this book. Sadly, overall, it's a big let-down.
Occasionally it was interesting food for thought, in the individual introductions to the tales, when Walker points out how certain tropes and archetypes are directly influenced/created by patriarchy ideals and philosophies, or by various ancient myths and sacred symbols. However, the defacto exaltation of all things female, the bitterness and perpetual anger towards male deities and the out-right misandry just gets more blatant as the book goes on, and it quickly becomes unpleasant to read. At many points, this book doesn't support feminism, it counters it.
The writing style itself is just ok; it's really simple and plain. The best of this book are the illustrations. Although the images don't always match the written character descriptions, they are lovely drawings.
I liked Walker's myths and symbols encyclopedias, and I enjoy re-imagined fairy tales, so I was looking forward to reading this book. Sadly, overall, it's a big let-down.
January 5, 2018
I didn't like this collection, at all. I found myself dreading each story, and groaning when I saw a story was longer than a couple of pages. Beyond the boredom inducement, this collection fell short of its title for me in a lot of ways.
WARNING: it's 90% white and 100% cishet, there is a same sex marriage included, but Walker rushes to assure the readers that the two married women are just gal pals, and have numerous male lovers
The women don't have much agency. Often times the male characters are given more depth than the females, and when women do take action, Walker makes them reliant on others nearly universally, sometimes this is a priestess/mother figure (nice to see in fairytales) but often a man, or group of men, to do the job for her.
Walker consistently linked women and their power with the ability to reproduce, and the womb. 1) this doesn't apply to all women so it was an excluding message and 2) if I wanted to read fairytales where my gender was reduced to my ability to procreate, i could just read the standard bunch.
I felt like all of these stories outdated, tired, uninteresting, and not a good representation for today's feminism.
Angela Carter's older book The Bloody Chamber provides more creative and well-crafted restructured fairytales, and I would recommend that over this book every time.
WARNING: it's 90% white and 100% cishet, there is a same sex marriage included, but Walker rushes to assure the readers that the two married women are just gal pals, and have numerous male lovers
The women don't have much agency. Often times the male characters are given more depth than the females, and when women do take action, Walker makes them reliant on others nearly universally, sometimes this is a priestess/mother figure (nice to see in fairytales) but often a man, or group of men, to do the job for her.
Walker consistently linked women and their power with the ability to reproduce, and the womb. 1) this doesn't apply to all women so it was an excluding message and 2) if I wanted to read fairytales where my gender was reduced to my ability to procreate, i could just read the standard bunch.
I felt like all of these stories outdated, tired, uninteresting, and not a good representation for today's feminism.
Angela Carter's older book The Bloody Chamber provides more creative and well-crafted restructured fairytales, and I would recommend that over this book every time.
February 2, 2022
I usually hate reading reviews while/before reading a book because it sort of clouds my own perspective on how I find it. However, I accidentally bumped into tons of negative 1-star reviews of this book. So let me start out by saying– not every book has to be perfect. Yes, I agree that the author's personal views have made it into several stories in thinly-veiled statements. However, I was able to appreciate the good parts: some of the ways where women helped each other, clever people who might otherwise have been misrepresented as weak or useless were promptly changed here.
I hadn't read/known the original tales of anything other than Red Riding Hood, Little Mermaid & Snow White so that might have been why I was more open to Barbara's interpretation & reimagination of the other storylines. I thought the vague idea of "Divine Feminine", the stressed emphasis on the life-giving aspect of a woman being the ultimate definition of "Goddess" & the preachy prologues before each story quite pretentious.
Regardless, I'm glad I picked it up. If not for anything else, the vocabulary used was quite different & I immensely loved the retorts & humour interspersed between otherwise difficult plots.
I hadn't read/known the original tales of anything other than Red Riding Hood, Little Mermaid & Snow White so that might have been why I was more open to Barbara's interpretation & reimagination of the other storylines. I thought the vague idea of "Divine Feminine", the stressed emphasis on the life-giving aspect of a woman being the ultimate definition of "Goddess" & the preachy prologues before each story quite pretentious.
Regardless, I'm glad I picked it up. If not for anything else, the vocabulary used was quite different & I immensely loved the retorts & humour interspersed between otherwise difficult plots.
February 7, 2022
I'm so grateful that this was left utterly ignored on my mom's shelf when I was growing up so I could slowly transition it to my room instead. I used to read these stories again and again as a kid obsessed with mythology, folklore, and yes, Disney too. But I never found Walker's reinterpretations of these stories at odds with versions of the stories that include huge musical numbers and problematic princes; just different flavours of stories that are so robust they can be reimagined in endless ways to satisfy different moods.
In retrospect, I do find some of the themes and a few of the choices in some retellings a tad obvious and perhaps too privileged with modern morality-- ie, characters having attitudes about their independence and autonomy that sound like something any modern woman would be able to access in the zeitgeist of her time. But the stories are still so inventive and fun to read with such excellent illustrations that I enjoyed enormously as a child (omg there's a nipple in this book, omg there's another!). Only major criticism now that I'm an adult? Needs more gay. A lot more gay.
In retrospect, I do find some of the themes and a few of the choices in some retellings a tad obvious and perhaps too privileged with modern morality-- ie, characters having attitudes about their independence and autonomy that sound like something any modern woman would be able to access in the zeitgeist of her time. But the stories are still so inventive and fun to read with such excellent illustrations that I enjoyed enormously as a child (omg there's a nipple in this book, omg there's another!). Only major criticism now that I'm an adult? Needs more gay. A lot more gay.
December 22, 2018
This 1996 attempt at reframing the stories we tell with fairy tales has not aged well. I find the introductory notes frequently disingenuous and occasionally full on misleading. I suspect there might be more of that, if I knew more of the historical context (I know at least one detail was well known by scholars, because I can point to another short story of the same era written by a historian who knew what they were talking about).
Other negatives -- intersectional feminism it is not; thinly veiled attacks on Christians rather than the mechanics of the church; weirdly hypocritical descriptions, and enforced gender binary. On the plus side, there are some very nice stories in amongst the collection. But in general, it came across as white middle-class academic feminism.
Not recommended as a pleasure read, although interesting in terms of looking inside someone else's thought process.
content notes: fairy tale type nastiness
Other negatives -- intersectional feminism it is not; thinly veiled attacks on Christians rather than the mechanics of the church; weirdly hypocritical descriptions, and enforced gender binary. On the plus side, there are some very nice stories in amongst the collection. But in general, it came across as white middle-class academic feminism.
Not recommended as a pleasure read, although interesting in terms of looking inside someone else's thought process.
content notes: fairy tale type nastiness
October 13, 2024
DNF'd at the uses of "orientalia" and "gypsy." WTF. I'm with the author in that Christianity has been a religion of the violent and oppressive, and the patriarchy sucks so a lot of men are in fact douchebags, but this book is not the feminist book I was looking for. It seems like it's the brand of white women-cis-het-feminism that is far too narrow and short-sighted than the feminism we need. I decided to stop investing in this book and go seek out some Black Queer feminist fairy tales instead.
June 17, 2021
The fairytales themselves were interesting and entertaining. The “feminist” slant was a bit simplistic in most of the stories. Given this is from 1997, it made it clear how much feminist ideas and ideals have grown and evolved over the past two decades.
Read it if you like fairy tales; skip it if you’re looking for non-reductive feminism.
Read it if you like fairy tales; skip it if you’re looking for non-reductive feminism.
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