Mother Goose and the Voices of Women

Old Wives’ Tales: Women's Voices in Multivocal Myths

• This chapter considers women’s voices in myths as a distinct social group with shared interests across cultures.
• The author defends the comparative method and argues for the presence of women’s voices in texts primarily written by men, a concept that has faced resistance in academic circles.

Feminist Scholarship and the Study of Women

• Feminist scholars have analyzed men’s writings (e.g., Shakespeare, Chaucer) to understand women’s lives, attitudes, and behaviors, but recognize potential misogynistic biases in these sources.
• Contemporary women’s studies programs include works by women to broaden the canon, but some students believe that women should exclusively study texts written by women.
• The author argues that both men and women can record and understand both men’s and women’s voices, supported by existing scholarship.

The Transmission of Ancient Texts

• Most ancient texts (Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit) and modern tellings of traditional stories (Perrault, Grimms, Disney) have been transmitted by men.
• Feminists have highlighted gender differences in discourse, with some emphasizing social differences, others essential differences, and others strategic differences.
• Many believe that women’s writing is fundamentally different from men’s and needs to be recovered from history.

Retrieving Silenced Voices

• The author believes that women’s voices were not entirely silenced and can be found in existing patriarchal texts.
• Texts composed by men often differ in interesting and significant ways from those composed by women, but not entirely.
• It is important to ask whether texts express women’s concerns and acknowledge that both men and women can express these concerns.
• Feminist efforts to excavate women’s voices allow for a re-examination of men’s texts, recognizing traces of women’s voices within them.
• The goal is to find women’s voices in both women’s and men’s texts, avoiding an either/or approach.

Psychoanalytic Feminist Scholarship

• Early feminist critiques of Freud (e.g., Simone de Beauvoir, Mary Daly) highlighted his sexism and neglect of the female psyche.
• Psychoanalytic feminist scholarship (e.g., Juliet Mitchell) has revitalized Freudian scholarship by addressing these omissions.
• The author advocates for a spirit of true pluralism and builds on feminism’s contribution to understanding multivocality.

Reinterpreting