From Girl to Goddess
Reviews and Endorsements
While the male in literature and mythology has his journey, so the female has
hers. Valerie Estelle Frankel’s book of folklore and myth explores this journey
and guides the reader through the complex twists and turns of the female
experience. It’s a surprisingly comprehensive and readable excursion into the
feminine aspect of myth and legend. The male has one journey and while the
female journey may sometimes mirror the male, it is, in the end, her own battle
and voyage.
Frankel is an amazingly systematic storyteller. Where some authors turn vague or
verbose, or both, on certain explanations in regard to myth, Frankel never talks
down to her audience, or fails to keep them tracking along with her on a path
sometimes fraught with confusing, contradictory, or complex information. From
Girl to Goddess is written in a wheel pattern that mirrors the feminine
journey, taking the heroines and the reader from girl to woman to goddess and
beyond. Frankel has a seamless way of weaving the story so the reader feels as
though they travel along with her through these deep valleys and dark woods,
even if they are only hypothetical places. She also doesn’t neglect less
well-known myths. She includes not only the classics from Greece, Rome,
Scandinavia, and Britain, but rare ones from the Zuni, Navaho, Blackfoot, Aztec,
and Samoan people, as well as stories from China, Vietnam, Vancouver Island, the
Sudan, and other places.
Once you read this, you’ll never see the female journey the same way again. This
book is a fascinating and engaging explanation into the feminine journey and a
real treasure of storytelling. It’s at once academic in scope and yet accessible
to the layman reader. It contains masterful storytelling and retelling of the
myths that are used to support the thesis of the feminine journey. Overall, the
book is empowering to all females, and lets the see themselves as the everyday
heroines they are.
Amazon Star Rating: 5 out of 5
Axie Barclay,
July 2011,
Sacramento
Book Review | San Francisco Book Review
Frankel has been working on this book for a long, long time, and I've been waiting for it for a long time! She sifts through the world's myths and legends and their variants, all featuring female heroes. This is a world analysis, with as much attention paid to Asian, African, aboriginal, and peoples of the oceans as is paid to western tales. Frankel points out how many stories were used to teach young women their role in relation to men, mothers, families, their children, and villages far more than they were taught what was considered a more masculine kind of heroics. The analysis is witty and Frankel's respect for the great female archetypes is obvious, as is her respect for the cultures from which the stories come. For anyone who wants to read these stories and their background, and for anyone who wants to read more than just the typical western stories of female trials and magic, this book is the perfect place to start. It is scholarly but readable, and it will give the person who's truly interested a stepping-off place to explore this great, lesser-known, area of storytelling and myth.
—Tamora Pierce, Bestselling fantasy author
I recommend From Girl to Goddess highly. Frankel’s truly global choice of tales and her analysis of them is outstanding. It is a book to turn to for deepening one’s understanding of myths and stories about women and their underlying structures, or more personally to better understand one’s own journey or the journeys of the women in one’s life. The extensive bibliography is a great service to readers interested in this topic in itself; I greeted old friends with delight while highlighting item after item to track down later. I look forward to more from Frankel; this book could have been twice as long and still not exhausted its subject or the reader’s desire for more, more, more stories.
—Janet Brennan Croft, Mythlore Fall/Winter 2011
Frankel's book stands well along-side Campbell‖s as an intelligent and insightful consideration of fantastic literature and legend which invites the reader constantly to rethink past readings. That invitation leaves the reader asking for more, hoping for further opportunities to consider and re-consider heroines from myth and legend...Valerie Frankel's From Girl to Goddess is filled with the same sort of excitement, as she finds, rediscovers, and traces such archetypes throughout a myriad of texts. As her introduction reveals, these patterns may be found in many works beyond myth and legend, and her gift to readers is to leave those patterns to be discovered with further readings.
—Hugh H. Davis, Mythprint, July 2011
From her extensive study of myths, Frankel developed the epic girl plot, the heroine’s journey. But what is the best-selling epic girl plot, and how does it differ from that for guys? With guys, a mysterious wizard knocks on the door and tells the boy he is the chosen one; he has the force; he journeys and has a scary conflict with the shadow in himself, the Luke-I-am-your-father. The girl story is similar, but some steps are opposite, enough to have inspired Frankel to write her book.
—David Strom, Writer's Talk, Monthly Newsletter of the South Bay Writers Club, Oct 2011
Frankel, a storyteller,
essayist, and novelist, seeks to throw off the oppression of our culture's
obsession with hero myths as she reveals the heroine...as an embodiment of one
of the goddess archetypes.
—Reference & Research Book News, Inc.
Ever since I used Christopher Vogler's The Hero's Journey to plot my first novel, I have wanted this book. I sensed that my heroine's journey didn't quite fit the outline, and now Valerie Frankel shows why. In the Introduction, Ms. Frankel says, "The heroine's true role is to be neither hero nor his prize." Rather than conquering through war and battle, the heroine wins through patience, fortitude, and wit. Her goal is not to rescue the princess but--of interest to Romance writers - to re(gain) family.
Using myths and folklore from many cultures, Ms. Frankel portrays the heroine's journey to overcome innocence, betrayal, misleading mentors, unconsciousness, allies and enemies, lovers, confront the father, abuse and healing, descent into darkness, the deadly mother, find the elixir, flight and return, goddesshood and wholeness.
One section is devoted to archetypes: Maiden, Warrior Woman, Warrior Lover, Lesbian, or Seductress. The Mother may be Thwarted, Wife, Triumphant, the Great Goddess, or Terrible. The Crone may be a Destroyer, Wisewoman, Trickster. The Spirit Guardian as Protector, and Rebirth.
There is an extensive appendix of folklore types, reference notes, and bibliography. I only wish it also included some of the gorgeous artwork on the website: www.vefrankel.com
—Christie Maurer, Editor, Monterey Bay Romance Writers of America Monarch e-News.
