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Old Wives’ Tales, or the Feminist Revisionist Tales: “The Angels Whisper,” “Unyielding Hatred,” and “The Wampus Woman.” By Kimberly Estenson In partial fulfillment of the degree Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English Wittenberg University April 9, 2019 2 Critical Analysis of Old Wives' Tales If the imagination is to transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives... nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or experimentally call by another name. - Adrienne Rich This past summer I came across a recent publication recommended on the New York Times Best Seller’s List, The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley. This novel retells the life of Beowulf’s classic villainess, Grendel’s mother. In The Mere Wife Grendel’s mother faces many of the same trials found in the original text; she is still at risk of losing her son, she is still hated by and excluded from society—in fact everything is the same, except that the narrative is now placed in a modern day, dystopian suburb. By placing a traditionally demonized figure in a contemporary context, I was moved by how the author was not only able to draw readers’ attention to Beowulf’s original problematic representation of women, but also how Headley was able to comment on issues women face today. Grendel’s mother faced issues in the original text such as not having a voice and having her worth being tied to her title as a mother, both of which seem strikingly similar to issues women face in the present. As an English major, I have been assigned Beowulf in numerous classes and so had already engaged in this text many times. However, while reading The Mere Wife, for the first time I could read this story in a way where I could appreciate the prose and drama of the original text without feeling guilty for loving something that also attacked women. This was a rare and invigorating experience for me, and ultimately the kindling to this project. Outside of Headley’s novel, Dr. Richard’s class, “Darkness Within,” has also largely impacted this project. Dr. Richard’s seminar took place my sophomore year and was centered on traditional monster texts (i.e. Frankenstein, Tempest, Wieland). However, we were uniquely challenged to find humanity 3 in the monsters of the text and monstrosity in the humans of the text. Of the three original texts that I revisit in my short stories, they were all included in the “Darkness Within” syllabus. The literary term behind Headley’s novel is called feminist revisionist theory. A subsection of feminist theory, feminist revisionist theory re-tells classic and mythological stories in order to offer a female perspective on a traditionally male-oriented text, with the understanding of and desire to combat the unconscious absorption of traditional gender norms taught in the original texts. Upon research, I realized that this genre of literature is something that I had come across long before The Mere Wife; I just had not heard the term before. Among the books and writers that have influenced and inspired me throughout this process there also is the The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, in which the biblical life of Dinah, along with the wives of Jacob from Genesis is explored in depth, offering a uniquely female perspective on Jewish tradition and history. The theme of intergenerational sisterhood from this text inspired Carmilla’s sense of connection with her ancestor, Lily. In addition, I have been shaped by Angela Carter’s work, including her collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber, which includes much more violent retellings than Disney versions of fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast and Snow White. While each female experience is different, I wanted to keep Carter’s unabashed portrayal of the less “lady like” experiences in women's’ lives. Whether through menstruation or child birth, women are more likely to experience bleeding and pain, and yet these normal parts of their existence are often censored from traditional texts. Furthermore, I have been impacted by the recent increase in the retelling of traditionally demonized female characters in film and theatre as well. For instance, there is the book and then hit Broadway musical Wicked which retells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, and then also there is Disney’s Maleficent 4 which is a cinematic retelling of the story of one of their original characters, Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty. Because I grew up in an age of so many prominent feminist revisionists texts, it is hard to imagine that there was ever a time in which I did not question the demonization of women. However, growing up heavily involved in a conservative church and community, without any other perspectives to challenge my understanding of gender norms, my personal vision of women and their role in the world was drastically warped. As I came of age in my church community, I realized that myself and other women have grown up programmed to see their voices and stories as secondary and trivial. When women express their opinions, their validity is instantly questioned because they are assumed to be just ‘over emotional’ or a ‘bitch’. We are taught to preface our statements with phrases like “I feel that” or “I’m probably wrong, but--”. In short, men tell their stories, and those versions become history, whereas when women tell their stories, they merely become old wives’ tales. Therefore, by re-writing the story of Lilith from the original Jewish myth, Grendel’s mom from Beowulf, and Carmilla from Le Fanu’s Carmilla, I sought to gain a better understanding of how these texts shape gender norms by challenging what these texts have taught me to be as a female. In mythopoeia scholar Christine C. Keating’s article, “Unearthing the Goddess Within: Feminist Revisionist Mythology in the Poetry of Margaret Atwood,” she discusses the idea of how mythology shapes our perception of self and our role in society. On female-centered mythology she states, “We are Eve, Mother Earth, the Madonna, Desdemona, Medusa, Persephone, all embodiments of male-created myths that have captured our reality and ultimately our identity” (483). People, therefore, are the product of stories that tell them what others were 5 like before them, and so through understanding other women in mythology, we gain an understanding of self. My approach to writing Old Wives Tales was under this understanding in which mythology helps us understand ourselves, and also, I wrote with the Carl Jung’s idea of Collective Unconsciousness in mind. According to Swedish psychologist Carl Jung, the collective unconscious seems to “consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious...” (The Structure of the Psyche, 8). Therefore, while I chose to write my three stories each two hundred years apart in American history, under the idea of collective unconsciousness, their lives are not too far from each other. And by presenting the history of women before, I desired to show how each of my characters is a product of the women that lifted her to where she is today. There is an often unconscious genealogy of how we understand what it means to be female and how we adapt to live in a world that is constructed to harm us. As in evolution, women learn from how their mothers and their grandmothers survived before them. For instance, Carmilla ultimately learned to leave an abusive relationship as her ancestors Lily and Meredith did before her. In each of these stories the women face a struggle between that of accepting the path that a patriarchal society has prescribed before them or giving into this unnamed, yet ancient understanding of a female existence that is empowered rather than controlled. Long before the conception of Christianity, there were numerous ancient religions and cultures that chose to venerate and celebrate women. Women were not simply the 6 introducer of sin to the world or a distraction to men trying to live pious lives. Instead, female goddesses could be round and dynamic characters. Ancient goddesses were admired as creators of life and feared for also being able to bring destruction. Divine females had a deeper connection with and power over nature, and most importantly, they were not stagnant. Lily, Meredith, and Carmilla all must choose which mythology they will allow to shape their identity. While each of these characters face an American culture trying to shape them into women who are submissive, fertile, delicate, heterosexual, or motherly, they also each feel a connection to the ancient women before them not bound my patriarchal norm. The Angels Whisper Set in America in the late 1600’s, this story follows a husband and wife, two settlers eager to make their mark on a new country and home. The story opens with descriptions full of life, whether it be the loving relationship between Adam and Lily, or the lush wilderness that surrounds their small cabin. Lily’s optimism at the story’s beginning stems from her belief that because Adam loves her, he must also see her as equal. However, when time passes and she fails to fulfill her wifely duty of providing a son for Adam and remaining young and beautiful for him, Adam begins to show disdain for Lily. Lily realizes that Adam’s love was conditioned on the idea that Lily would make his own aspirations possible.

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