The Heroine with 1001 Faces is an exploration of the archetype of the heroine written in response to Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. With the rising popularity of feminist retellings of mythology and folklore, The Heroine with 1001 Faces is a great book to recommend as supplemental reading!

Taking Joseph Campbell's famous word The Hero with a Thousand Faces as a starting point, Maria Tatar looks at the women in our stories, from the early women in ancient myth all the way to the female detectives of the 20th century and the creation of Wonder Woman, and all the kick-ass women who followed in her footsteps. It was a fascinating read, and I was probably most interested in the sections about fairytale and myth, especially when Tatar started looking at some of the recent retellings of them, and the ways that they morphed over years of being copied down and transcribed from one person to the next. This is a brilliant and comprehensive work that is well suited both for casual reading and as an academic source. It's well presented and dives deep into its topic, while still remaining accessible to readers who may not have spent a lot of time studying literature. It's certainly about time that Campbell receives a counter-argument, and this one is perfect!

The Heroine with 1001 Faces is an immersive folklore based examination of the heroine archetype in the collective cultural consciousness written and presented by Dr. Maria Tatar. Released 14th Sept 2021 by W.W. Norton on their Liveright imprint, it's 368 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

This is an erudite, very well written, layperson accessible look at the archetypes and portrayals of women in cultural narrative from the ancient world to the 21st century. It's a meticulously researched and annotated survey course and also, in a way, a companion volume (rebuttal?) to Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces. I loved poring over the illustrations as well as the exhaustive bibliography and full chapter notes and annotations. The chapter notes are likely worth the price of admission for anyone interested in the subject and there's obviously been a swoonworthy amount of time spent on research and resource gathering on the part of the author. I took notes during the read and harvested an impressive number of items which warranted further examination later.

I found the entire book quite interesting and fascinating. It is, admittedly, a niche book but will definitely appeal to readers interested in cultural anthropology. It's not a very easy read. The language is rigorous and formal. I definitely don't think it's inaccessible for the average reader, but it will take some effort (and I think that's a good thing). This would make a good support text for classroom or library use, for cultural anthropology and allied subjects, as well as a superlative read for those who are particularly interested in history, culture, and the arts.

Five stars. This is well and deeply researched and engaging.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I really wanted to enjoy this. The promise of an assessment of the heroines journey in world mythology, sold. Unfortunately, this has an intense vibe of "in this essay I shall" that never seems to quite pay out on the premise. Instead of focusing on the female characters throughout world mythology and the structures of their journeys, this takes on the task of saying how the arcs of women are different, but still, oddly, focuses on the men. I had hoped for and wanted so much more.

4.5 stars.

This was a very interesting read! Throughout the book, Tatar, an expert in folklore (so cool!), explores the varying roles of women in literature all the way from Greek mythology and classic fairy tales, to more modern stories and characters, such as Nancy Drew, Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex and the City,” and Katniss the Hunger Games. She really dives deeply into each of the stories she focuses on, which in turn, provides such a different perspective on some of our favorite (and/or most well-known) female characters and their experiences. She gives you a new lens to look through and explore stories that you thought you knew and understood so well, which is very refreshing. It’s a very useful book, and one that I believe should definitely be studied in college literature classes. As another reviewer (Dani C.) so accurately put it, “Tatar does an excellent job showing just how stories have taken power away from women & how women can gain some of the power back.”

All in all, it is a very enlightening book that I think everyone should make room for on their TBR shelf. Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and Liveright Publishing (an imprint of W.W. Norton & Company) for providing me with a copy of the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Maria Tatar is excellent at unravelling threads and themes of myth and fairytale, of contextualising them historically and looking, too, through a cultural and psychological lens. Here she takes on the giant figure of Joseph Campbell - not unkindly, and not, I think, without fondness - and looks at the places his vision didn’t go and where his theory stopped short: the female hero. As she points out, these exist in the history of folktale and myth, and always have; but their journeys are different from those of the classic Campbell male hero. They are the stories which drop out of the fairytale canon, which are there even in Grimm but haven’t stuck fast. I was familiar with most of these tales - Fincher’s Egg, Bluebeard, Mr Fox, et cetera - but this was still delightful for the way it shook Campbell’s thinking up and turned it out. But then Tatar pushes it further, looking at contemporary female heroes and how their journeys match - or don’t - the arc of historical fairytale female heroes. This is something that could feel forced or tacked on, an attempt to position the book in the present, but it doesn’t: Tatar builds up her argument and critical apparatus and runs stories like The Hunger Games through it. It works.

Re: the gentle, rueful examination of Campbell - this is paired with a similar glance at Tatar herself as a student, and reflects on the way she dismissed the young Elaine Showalter’s scholarship at the time. It’s a generous work, not sparing herself either, and showing how the arc of history and criticism moves.

4 stars

I haven't been this nerdy and excited for a book in a long, LONG time. As a regular professor of courses on folklore, mythology, and children's literature, I am extremely familiar with Tatar's scholarship...and Joseph Campbell's _The Hero with a Thousand Faces_. This book is really the missing piece I've been waiting for my whole career.

Campbell's work largely excludes women, unless they are filling the most basic and binary roles, so even the title of this text is refreshing. Tatar comes off - as usual - as deeply knowledgeable not only about folklore and mythology but also about the numerous texts from which the examples are drawn.

The greatest use for this text is going to be as source material for undergraduate and graduate students looking to work through newer texts - or older texts in more modern ways - and to access an update on Campbell's original construct. What will work so well for students here is the same feature that might tire readers like me, who geek out over stuff like this for pleasure: the lengthy summaries of various exemplary texts. Readers who hate spoilers or those who prefer more theory and fewer examples may find themselves frustrated by the structure. As much as this situation irritated me at times, I also couldn't help but realize how useful it will be for students. They won't have to know all of these works independently to contextualize the concepts or their own scholarship. This choice reflects Tatar's focus on the correct audience.

One area I do find lacking here is attention to a broader definition of "women." In the current TERF laden territory, there's a missed opportunity to do better with the expansive and inclusive examples and constructs around gender.

I am grateful this book exists and have already been touting its certain usefulness to students even pre-publication. It won't be a fun read for everyone who finds the subject interesting, but it will fill a longstanding gap and serve many, MANY students well for years to come.

Although I am not usually a consumer of scholarly book analyses, I rather enjoyed this one. It was engagingly written (not too dry), if a bit repetitive. I liked the way Tatar included modern subjects - including characters from TV and film - among the more typical folklore and mythology choices.

What a fantastic read! I loved seeing the author trace the mythological and fictional representation of women throughout the ages, giving voice to how women's stories have been devalued and twisted to serve a patriarchal worldview.

Heroines in myths, fairy tales, literature, and films did not always have the opportunity to go on great journeys as their male counterparts. They quietly sought justice and righted wrongs without all the muscle of Achilles or powers of Zeus. Heroines are now demanding makeovers, evolving and challenging authority, while still being curious and caring. Ms. Tatar discusses abducted and abused mythical Greek women and women's stories as portrayed in tapestries, sewing, and spinning. She moves on to how the wisdom in "old wives' tales" was discredited and degraded as the gossip of women. and the storytelling of ordinary folk. There are then discussions of the works of Louisa May Alcott, Betty Smith, LM Montgomery, and the detectives, Nancy Drew and Miss Marple and others. Closer to the present she discusses The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and the young warrior woman, Katniss in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Wonder Woman makes an appearance and films are covered as well. There is a large amount of women's history and literature by women and men in this book that will perhaps make readers reread the stories they read before from a different perspective. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy in exchange for a honest review.

A scholarly examination of what being a heroine means and how this has evolved over time. This book is in part a response to Joseph Campbell's work on the hero and his belief that a woman's role was at home nurturing the hero.
The chapters are themed and include ones on fairly tales, rape and seduction, finding a voice, curiosity and detection, with examples from Eve to Jo Marsh to Nancy Drew and Lisbeth Salander.
I must admit that the book wasn't what I thought it was going to be. The 1001 in the title implied something more accessible. I found this book at times repetitive and dry but the later chapters were a little more interesting.

An essential for all library fairy tales and folk lore collections. As always, the writing here is imminently readable. I learned a great deal.