examples of girls and women living life on their own terms. What we experience, what we imagine, and what we create are always in conversation with each other.
This collection is a space where that conversation lives. Some of these women I feel like I’ve met before. Some of them have traits I recognize in myself. Others feel so outside of what I am used to, what I know. They all have a place here, and because they do, they can influence and impact what is created and imagined about women.
Here, Mulha, a fourteen-year-old South African girl, comes face-to-face with a monster and does not “waste time crying.” She does not crumble under adversity but instead finds light even in the darkest of circumstances. The thing that should destroy her becomes a means of provision. Mulha’s story reminds me of the women who raised me, who made a way out of no way, who found joy when all there seemed to be around them was pain and sorrow. There is a space for them here. Mulha’s story validates the years of waiting on an answer to a prayer, on the sweet redemption that comes after years of being forgotten and overlooked.
In these pages, Elsa in “Elsa and the Evil Wizard” makes space for women determined to stand on their own two feet. Elsa refuses to be wooed by an arrogant suitor who only values her physical beauty and has no interest in who she really is. What I love about Elsa, and women like her, is her willingness to take a stand not just for herself but also for all types of women who deserve to be seen. Elsa uses her smarts to rescue herself, yes, but then she goes beyond self-preservation and devises a plan so that no other girl is preyed upon by this evil wizard.
In the tale of “The Husband Who Stayed Home,” we meet a brilliant wife who switches roles with her husband, proving she can do everything he does and not only be good at it, but can also rescue him from the disaster he creates when he tries to take care of her responsibilities. She is not shy about her capabilities. She isn’t self-deprecating and doesn’t downplay the fact that she can do many things well. Once she is out of the box, she refuses to be put back in. She has outgrown its boundaries.
In the Zuni tale, “The Hunter Maiden,” we meet a girl who has the bold belief that there is no reason why she shouldn’t be able to hunt. Her brothers are dead and her father is too feeble. There is no other option for this girl—if her family doesn’t eat, her family will starve, die. The stakes are too high for her to stay in a girl’s place and play by the rules. She must do “the dangerous thing.” She has to.
And so do we.
In our real lives—whether writer or reader, scholar or student—we must do the dangerous things: challenge oppressive systems, take risks to go after the thing that will feed us, nurture us. We must provide spaces for diverse stories to be told and heard. The exchange of stories reminds us of each other’s humanity. The imagined story gives us an opportunity to create a new world.
This collection has brought together a diverse cast of women who, individually, are remarkable and intriguing. Together, they are powerful. There is strength in this collection. There are no easy solutions for our heroines; there are no princes who come to make everything better with just one kiss. These stories tell girls it is okay to be afraid, to be flawed, to be hungry, to be curious, to be angry. These are complex characters who are perfectly imperfect, who don’t need fixing, per se, but rather a space to exist as is. Imagine it.
In some ways, The Hunter Maiden reminds me of the gatherings I often have with friends—sometimes brunch or sometimes a meet up at home. We gather, all of us so different from each other, all of us bringing our stories of loving, parenting, creating, living, womaning to the group. It is there, in that place, during the exchange of stories, that we bear witness to each other, that we heal, that we question, that we imagine the world we want to create.
I am thankful for those women. I am thankful for this collection. Both provide a space for women to be.
ETHEL JOHNSTON PHELPS
The traditional fairy and folktales in this collection, as in my earlier books of tales, have one characteristic in common: they all portray spirited, courageous heroines. Although a great number of such collections are in print, this type of heroine is surprisingly rare.
Taken as a whole, the body of traditional fairy and folktales (the two terms have become almost interchangeable) is very heavily weighted with heroes, and most of the “heroines” we do encounter are far from heroic. Always endowed with beauty—and it often appears that beauty is their only reason for being in the tale—they conform in many ways to the sentimental ideal of women in the nineteenth century. They are good, obedient, meek, submissive to authority, and naturally inferior to the heroes. They sometimes suffer cruelties but are patient under ill treatment. In most cases they are docile or helpless when confronted with danger or a difficult situation.
In short, as heroines, they do not inspire or delight, but tend to bore the reader. I think it is their meekness that repels. They are acted upon by people or events in the tale; they rarely initiate their own action to change matters. (In contrast to this type of heroine, when clever or strong women appear in folktales, they are usually portrayed as unpleasant, if not evil, characters—cruel witches, jealous stepmothers, or old hags.) It is not my intention to delve into the psychological or social meanings behind the various images of heroines in folktales, but simply to note that the vast majority are not particularly satisfying to readers today.
In actual fact, the women of much earlier centuries, particularly rural women, were strong, capable, and resourceful in positive ways as hardworking members of a family or as widows on their own. Few folktales reflect these qualities. Inevitably the question arises: How many, if any, folktales of strong, capable heroines exist in the printed sources available?
In a sense, this book grew out of that question. Over a period of three years, I read thousands of fairy and folktales in a search for tales of clever, resourceful heroines; tales in which equally courageous heroines and heroes cooperated in their adventures; tales of likeable heroines who had the spirit to take action; tales that were, in themselves, strong or appealing.
As a result of that search, the heroines in this book are quite different from the usual fairy and folktale heroines. In a few of the tales, the girls and women possess the power (or knowledge) of magic, which they use to rescue the heroes from disaster. The hero may be more physically active in the story, but he needs the powers of the self-reliant, independent heroine to save him.
In the majority of the tales, the heroines are resourceful girls and women who take action to solve a problem posed by the plot. Often they use cleverness or shrewd common sense.
All the heroines have self-confidence and a clear sense of their own worth. They possess courage, moral or physical; they do not meekly accept but seek to solve the dilemmas they face. The majority have leading roles in the story. The few who have minor roles (in terms of space) play a crucial part in the story and have an independent strength that is characteristic of all the heroines here.
Although most of the printed sources for the tales I’ve chosen are from the nineteenth century, the tales themselves are part of an oral, primarily rural tradition of storytelling that stretches far back in time. Each generation shaped the tales according to the values of the time, adding or subtracting details according to the teller’s own sense of story. While the characters and basic story remained the same, it was this personal shaping of the tales that may explain the many variations of each story that now exist. As every folktale reader knows, different versions of the tales are found in different countries and even different continents. Variants of Cinderella and of tales of hero/heroines bewitched into nonhuman form are particularly widespread.
