The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals, Post-Jungian and Postmodern Psychological Perspectives on Women in Contemporary Culture

by Ricki Stefanie Tannen

The Female Trickster presents a Post-Jungian postmodern perspective regarding the role of women in contemporary Western society by investigating the re-emergence of female trickster energy in all aspects of popular culture. Ricki Tannen explores the psychological aspects of what happened when women’s imagination was legally and psychologically enclosed millennia ago and demonstrates how the re-emergence of Trickster energy through the female imagination has the radical potential to effect a transformation of western consciousness. Examples are drawn from a diverse range of sources, from Jane Austen, and female sleuth narratives, to Madonna and Sex and the City, illustrating how Trickster energy is used not to maintain power and control but to integrate and unite the paradoxical through humour. Subjects covered This highly original perspective on women's role in contemporary culture will offer readers a new vision of how humour psychologically operates as a healthy adaptation to trauma and adversity. It will be of great interest to all analytical psychologists and psychoanalysts as well as those in women's, cultural, legal and literary studies.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 9, 2007

Reviews

[PJ Who Once Was Peejay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had trouble with Ms. Tannen's central premise. Trickster isn't just about redefining roles; Trickster is about radical paradigm shifts. Trickster is more a case of chaos theory personified, so the examples Ms. Tannen named of female detectives who redefined womens' roles in a male-dominated world seemed far too tame for such a fundamentally transformative mythology. The other aspect of Trickster on which Ms. Tannen seems to have missed the boat was that Trickster is often used to reinforce societal roles. Trickster shows by bad example how not to behave.

So, this is an interesting book, but I don't think it makes the case for a female trickster. It smacks more of shoehorning a mythology in order to fit a preconceived notion.

[Aicha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compared to Scheherazade's Sisters: Trickster Heroines and Their Stories in World Literature, this book was more theoratically based. I really appreciated the author's focus on humor and irony, and their differences in each gender.
This is another must read for anyone interested in research on the female trickster and the trickster archetype in general.

[Mark Faber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am learning so much. So much information in this book.

[Tristy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted this book to be so much more than it is, but that being said, it's still a really interesting analysis of how the female trickster has manifested herself in a variety of cultures, media and myth. Unfortunately, the author is OBSESSED with the detective/sleuth genre and focuses way to much focus and attention there. Only at the very end of the book (in just ONE paragraph) she branches out to speak of more modern tricksters, like Sarah Silverman and others. Also, she barely mentions the female tricksters of myth, like Baba Yaga and the like, which seems like a glaring omission. It's really a missed opportunity, because it's clear the author is an excellent scholar and researcher and it would have been an amazing book if she had branched out of her familiar/comfort zone of detective novels and explored other aspects more deeply. I'm keeping it in my library, for the few gems she unearths, but in the end, this book more missed than mark than landed on it.