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 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.

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.

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.

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.