Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology
A fresh cultural analysis of female monsters from Greek mythology, and an invitation for all women to reclaim these stories as inspiration for a more wild, more "monstrous" version of feminism The folklore that has shaped our dominant culture teems with frightening female creatures. In our language, in our stories (many written by men), we underline the idea that women who step out of bounds--who are angry or greedy or ambitious, who are overtly sexual or not sexy enough--aren't just outside the norm. They're unnatural. Monstrous. But maybe, the traits we've been told make us dangerous and undesirable are actually our greatest strengths. Through fresh analysis of 11 female monsters, including Medusa, the Harpies, the Furies, and the Sphinx, Jess Zimmerman takes us on an illuminating feminist journey through mythology. She guides women (and others) to reexamine their relationships with traits like hunger, anger, ugliness, and ambition, teaching readers to embrace a new image of the female hero: one that looks a lot like a monster, with the agency and power to match. Often, women try to avoid the feeling of monstrousness, of being grotesquely alien, by tamping down those qualities that we're told fall outside the bounds of natural femininity. But monsters also get to do what other female characters--damsels, love interests, and even most heroines--do not. Monsters get to be complete, unrestrained, and larger than life. Today, women are becoming increasingly aware of the ways rules and socially constructed expectations have diminished us. After seeing where compliance gets us--harassed, shut out, and ruled by predators--women have never been more ready to become repellent, fearsome, and ravenous.
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Community Reviews
This book was okay. It wasn't anything ground-breaking that I would recommend to a friend, but it was somewhat interesting.
My rating for this book could be, in part, that I expected something a little more from this book. Zimmerman says herself, at the very start of the book, that she is not a Classics expert. She goes on to say that she has somewhat of a passive love for mythology, and she has found modern connections to the myths that she knows from the ancient world.
I went into this book looking for a deeper look at some of these myths and their connection to the feminism of our modern world. However, that's not what I was given while reading the book.
While, yes, Zimmerman connects the concepts of these selected myths to modern struggles that women face daily... the focus was less on the reasons for these connections and more on how these similar issues have continued over time. I felt like I was gaining more insight on the myths themselves (through focusing with a more modern-lens), than I did about the modern struggles that women face, and how to improve upon those inequities.
I just felt as if the book was a little more surface-level than I expected... which may benefit those readers that may not have as much context for Classical Studies and mythology. As someone whose minor was Classical Studies, and who took multiple courses on mythology and its connection to modernity... it didn't quite impress in the ways in which I expected.
I also felt that this almost served as a memoir, of sorts, for Zimmerman who recounts specific examples of these inequities that she has faced in her own life. Again, not that anything is wrong with that... it just wasn't what I anticipated when going into this book.
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