Not entirely persuasive, but sure to provoke brisk controversy in women’s-studies courses.
A nontraditional and challenging vision of how female lore passed down from generation to generation sheds light on the changes experienced by women through different stages of life.
Freelance journalist Gould (Spirals: A Woman’s Journey Through Family Life, not reviewed) identifies three stages—maiden, matron, and crone—and divides her material into three corresponding but unequal parts. In each, she examines classic fairy tales, ancient myths, and modern novels, plays and films that can be viewed as retellings of these old tales to reveal what they have to say about women’s lives and the biological, social, and spiritual transformations they undergo as they move from one stage to the next. Thus, the first section looks at, among others, “Snow White,” “Cinderella,” Jane Eyre, and My Fair Lady; the second includes “Bluebeard’s Wife,” Gone With the Wind, and Rebecca; and the last features “Hansel and Gretel” and the myth of Demeter and Persephone. Exhibiting considerable scholarship, Gould examines various versions of the tales as they have been revised and altered through the centuries. Her own experiences and those of such well-known women as Eleanor Roosevelt and Florence Nightingale provide further examples of transforming events. Disney fans will shudder as the very Freudian author sees sex everywhere: a key to a locked room, the spindle that pricks Sleeping Beauty’s finger, and the tower that houses Rapunzel are all phallic symbols, while a drop of spilled blood signifies either a first menstrual period or the loss of virginity, and Bluebeard’s forbidden bloody chamber is the male equivalent of a womb. Gould argues that the drive to procreate propels the maiden into the matron stage, during which the joys and stresses of bearing children and nurturing a family may create ambiguity and conflict. She is most specific when dealing with the biological and social transformations of stages one and two, and most uncertain when discussing the spiritual changes of stage three.
Not entirely persuasive, but sure to provoke brisk controversy in women’s-studies courses.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2005
ISBN: 0-394-58532-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2004
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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