Customer Reviews

Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life

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For the record, my answer to Joan Gould's first question--"What's your favorite fairy tale?"--is "Beauty and the Beast".

This question begins a beautiful, lyrical exploration of many fairy tales, both famous and obscure, and how they relate to the different stages of women's lives. In the Sleeping Beauty chapter, for example, she delves into the psyche of a young woman just awakening into sexuality; for Beauty and the Beast she explores a woman's experience with courtship and the beginning of marriage, and for the tale of Demeter she talks about being an older woman, watching one's child choose her own path. These are just a few examples. For every tale Gould draws parallels to other, more modern novels and movies that contain fairy-tale archetypes, like Jane Eyre, Pretty Woman, The Story of O, Harry Potter, and Wuthering Heights. I saw myself reflected over and over in these pages, both in the chapter that best fit my current circumstances and in all those that preceded it. I concur with the reviewer who says she wished she'd had this book when she was 18. It just "clicks" so well with things I'd experienced but not known how to name, and ties them in with the stories I've always loved, revealing to me just why those stories never lose their resonance with me.

My only quibble is that Gould focuses more on the biological aspects of womanhood--menstruation, sex, childbirth, menopause--than on other sorts of choices women make, like career and creativity. She does mention these things, but they are not given as much emphasis.

We have always known that fairy tales speak to our souls. If you want to know why, you will find this book fascinating. Think of a combination of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and you have Spinning Straw into Gold. It is amazing how these stories speak to us across centuries. And it is also fascinating to see how differently - and richly -- they are interpreted in this book. Most of what I knew was in the Disney versions, and I have seen here there is a lot more to explore! So reach over the oceans, back over time, into our collective unconscious to see what messages there are for you. I highly recommend the journey!

I found the authors writing to be poetic and the content verbally well formed. From this perspective it was a good book.

What I found disconcerting was that this writer seems fixated on the female biology rather then the MANY things that make a women a whole person. These fairy tales were written long ago when society viewed women as little more then objects. I feel that the author is very good at continuing this line of thought. If one were not to know any intelligent women you might think, after reading this book, that the only persute that a women had in life was to get a mate and procreate, and that the best moments in a womens life are experianced on her back and that she pines for this day and night. This books off balanced aproach to the MANY aspects of being human degrades the person to less then human. The books constent ability to make almost ALL things sexual or to sexualize them became cheap and overly easy. In the end I walked away feeling little more then an unthinking chimp in the zoo because of the lack of its ability to validate that a womens content is far more then just her sexuality.

If you are confused are unsure about your physiology or biology and why you behave in certain ways, and would like it explained through fairy tales then this is the book for you. If you want to be validated as a whole person that is more then just a biological hormonal sex object then this book could prove to be upsetting. I personally was not ready to have womenhood degraded to only such narrow aspects but, maybe others might find it entertaining to explore there body chemistry through fairy tales.

This is an eye-opening guide to the themes which underlie all of our great stories, no matter what culture we come from. Describing and exploring the significance of the well-known fairy tales as they exist in different countries and societies, as well as some of the most successful movies in our popular culture, Joan Gould delivers countless "ah ha!" moments, both about the threads that run between the fairy tales, and the themes that are always present in any story that achieves wide-spread success -- regardless of the media form in which it's told.

This is a book which looks at the heroine of the fairy tales, rather than the dashing hero, and is perfect

for women working to make their daughters' life transitions successful,

for girls and young women, for whom the book puts in both a personal and a universal context some of the key pre-adolescent and adolescent struggles they didn't even know they were having

and for anyone who enjoys figuring out what it is that makes a story strike a deep chord.

I am on page 316 and don't want it to end. I have written reference notes to be able to get back to those pages I want to read over and over. Born in 1940 in midwest farm country, most of my teen age years was spent wishing I would have been born a boy; I saw a man's world out there. Now as mother, and grandmother I am loving myself as crone, savoring every word Joan Gould has written on her pages in Part Three, my life is as she writes. Learning about the sexual meaning of the shoe from the Cinderella pages and The Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe nursery rhyme was so evident when I was watching the film Spanglish by James L. Brooks. The young wife is getting ready to leave the house to have an affair, and the camera is focused on her changing to a new pair of shoes as her mother (obviously a crone) focuses on her feet. What an aha moment for me. Gould adds very personal thoughts from her life between her interpretations of the stories. From the fear of falling down the stairs as we live alone, wondering who would find us, to handling every item we have accumulated over our lifetime and visualizing where we got it and what memory goes with it and to knowing our adult children don't need us anymore. Our lives are records that were passed to us from our mothers and grandmothers and we pass these records on to our children. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell gave us the understanding of the collective consciousness and Joan Gould interpreted in depth what spinning straw into gold really means for us females. What a great read. Thank You Joan Gould

Like THE SECOND SEX and THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, Joan Gould's SPINNING STRAW INTO GOLD is less a book than an awakening. Half scholarly work, half exquisite prose, this work is profoundly moving, one of those books that illuminates a woman's life. Most girls love fairy tales, whether they are from mythology ("Demeter and Persephone") or Hollywood("Pretty Woman"). In a fascinating book that is destined to become a classic, Ms. Gould tells us why we are drawn to one fairy tale over another. Insightful, warm, beautifully written, this book is a treasure. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Spinning Straw Into Gold is a wake-up call to becoming alive! It is a powerful, inspiring and hopeful read - driven to stimulate and, most of all, to awaken the reader to life's joys and potential.

This is an important book for every woman and all ages. It is beautifully written - every word is meaningful and precise. Spinning Straw Into Gold, is a guidebook to realizing your potential for "happily ever after."

I wish I had read this when I was 18!

I loved it!

I grew up with a big illustrated book of fairy tales and I loved them. I must have read that book dozens, if not hundreds, of times. But when I went to college and had my little feminist consciousness raising, I felt ashamed of all the love I'd poured into reading "The Goose Girl", "Donkey Skin," and "The Little Mermaid." Anti-feminist tripe! was the line of the day. 'Fairy tales are way of indoctrinating women to patriarchal oppression,' one friend insisted.

And so I thought. And let's face it, the Disney re-visions of the fairy tales have been just that. Singing, "Some day my Prince will come," and waiting passively for Prince Charming to ride in and sweep her off her feet. I knew that believing *that* would end badly. But this book has given me a new way of looking at my favorite childhood tales. I don't think I've ever said this about a book before, but this book is *wise*. It is clearly the product of love and years of research and thought and takes back the fairy tales from Disney-ification, while at the same time explaining *why* the Disney empire configures the stories in this way (highlighting the hero in the first reel and making them rescue stories rather than transformations).

Reading through this book has made me reconsider my life, and what fairy-tale archetype I was playing at, or responding against, at different times. White Bride? Yes I was. But also a Black Bride. Did I sleep like Sleeping Beauty through parts of my life? Yes.

Mind you, this is no cheezy self-helpy new-agey inspirational book, though it very easily could have been turned into it, replete with guided meditations and journaling exercises and the like. No. Gould has stayed with sharing her vision, and at times, snippets of her own life.

This book glows with wisdom, and is feminist in the best way--not pushy brash trying to out-man men or manhate their way to power. This book is feminist in that it honors the female life stages coequally with the male, and restores the notion of quiet transformation as a plot just as worthy and valid as that of conquest.

I didn't want the book to end! I felt like I was in therapy. Verey cathartic.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. It was so good I gave my copy to my aunt to read who after reading put it perfectly, "this should be required reading for all women." I highly recommend this book.