Six Myths of Our Time: Little Angels, Little Monsters, Beautiful Beasts, and More

by Marina Warner

Is Jurassic Park a work of covert misogynist propaganda? Does romanticizing childhood lead to abusing children? What secret correspondence links Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to video games and Shakespeare's Caliban to Hannibal Lecter? in what ways do our culture's most hallowed legends inform the current debates over single mothers, the men's movement, and animal rights?

In these six dazzlingly intelligent and provocative essays, the distinguished English novelist and critic Marina Warner weaves classical mythology, pop culture, and today's headlines into a potent work of cultural criticism that is both unsettling and entertaining. Ranging from Medea to Thelma and Louise and from myths of cannibalism to the politics of rape, Six Myths of Our Time is at once a celebration of the enduring power of fable and a welcome antidote to its more virulent manifestations in our public life.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mythology, Essays, Literary Criticism, Fairy Tales, Feminism, Cultural Studies

135 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Marina Sarah Warner is a British novelist, short story writer, historian and mythographer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth.

She is a professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre at the University of Essex, and gave the Reith Lectures on the BBC in 1994 on the theme of 'Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time.'

Reviews

[AJ LeBlanc · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a huge pain in the ass that I can’t just be a feminist anymore. I have to be a humanist. Or I get to be a “feminist AND” or a “feminist BUT“. Everything is so watered down and angry that you have to explain what you are by immediately pointing out what you aren’t.

So…I’m a feminist BUT I don’t hate men. I’m a feminist AND I think we need to work to make sure everyone is treated fairly.

Mostly I just hate people. But I try to do it equally.

Anyway, this needs to turn into a book review of Six Myths of Our Time.

The book was published in 1994. I graduated from high school that year and was starting to devour anything having to do with folklore, especially re-written fairy tales. I loved how stories were being reclaimed by women and we were all “Screw you, Prince Charming!” Fists in the air, bitches!

I would have been all over this had I read it back then. I still liked it, but I’ve read it all before. Things that would have been amazing and new and driven me to anger and enlightenment in ’94 are boiled down to “Yep.” and “I know.”

Getting back to “I’m a feminist AND“, I found it interesting that some things were making me cringe or roll my eyes and think “This is why people think feminists eat babies and throw tampons and burning bras at young boys.” (That’s what people think we do, right? When we aren’t busy having abortions, getting divorces and practicing witchcraft? I haven’t read this month’s memo, so I can’t be sure.) But when I read an essay about how Jurassic Park is a misogynist text because all the dinosaurs are female and have learned to breed without men and therefore must be destroyed because they are unnatural, I want to hide because I know something like this is going to give Jerry Falwell a huge erection. And he’s dead.

But again…had I read this back in ’94 0r ’95 I would have freaked out and been all “YEAH! What the fuck, Michael Crichton?” and gone off on rants about it.

I realize this makes me sound like “I’m a feminist BUT I believe a lot of feminism is soooooooo outdated”, but the cool thing is, some of it is. Is the fight over? No. Have we done everything we need to do? No. Is feminist lit still awesome? Yep. Is some of it dated and a bit embarrassing? Yes.

This was a solid text in its time and I’m guessing it was a great launching pad for a lot of writers that were reclaiming stories for themselves. I still devour folklore and love rewritten (or reverted) tales.

Honestly, that’s what folklore is. The people at the time create stories of their time to explain their time. Women got pissed about being the passive princess or the evil witch and wrote the stories they wanted to read. It’s still happening and it’s awesome.

This book is perhaps a fairy godmother or great-godmother to these texts.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is important to note that Six Myths of Our Time was published in 1994 so Warner's comments about video games, while still much on point, are dated (there is, of course, no mention of Grand Theft Auto). After reading the first chapter, I doubt that I will be able to ever look at Jurassic Park(book or movie) the same way. I enjoyed the last chapter which dealt with the changed view of the British monorachy, and why, to an a extent that change happened. Warner comments much on how myths effect our day to day and social life and raises some good questions. What has happened to the male trickster hero for instance? She has a point. I had trouble thinking of one.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

More good stuff by Marina Warner - insights into how myth and folklore and the stuff of fairy tales is still ever so present in our own modern society. I give it four instead of five stars because it's more an introductory foray into these ideas, ideas she deals with much more in depth in other books. I'd say this is the "lite" version of what she provides much more research and detail about in books like From the Beast to the Blonde, Alone of all Her Sex, and Monuments and Maidens. It's a good place to start for those who are hesitant to dive into the deep end of the pool because these essays are very well written in a style that doesn't put off the non-scholar among readers.

[Gage Shrout · Rating 4 out of 5]

i genuinely loved this book, the lectures were all great, the ending had potential but for some reason felt like hell to get through until the last page.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warner explores the territories of myth and fairytale, situating them in modern culture and exploring changing contexts and connotations. Cannibalism is reimagined as consumerism, the consumption of self, and each other - never more relevant in todays social media frenzy, where people obsessively consume and digest content centered around 'the self'.

What makes Warner so readable is the accessibilty of her writing and the constant links to contemporary culture that she makes. The themes here are universal, and as such explore concepts which we all are able to relate to, and explore what it means to be human. Her writing always contains a plethora of referenced texts, plays, films etc - I always discover new areas to explore in Warner's vibrant books.

This is a short and compelling collection of 6 essays. Can be read as a whole or seperately. I enjoy Warner's non-fiction far more than her fiction - I attempted a collection of her short stories once which didn't particularly engage me. If you enjoyed her 'Signs and Wonders' collection, pick up a copy of this too.

[Martin Raybould · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inevitably, this is now a little dated but most of the ideas are still relevant & Marina Warner proves that the scary monsters are not just in our heads.

[Ava · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even among great feminists with their critical theory, it is still hard to find someone who touches those corners of literature and pop-culture and inverts their underlying message with brilliant ideas you couldn't think of randomly. Warner looks at The KingKong movie in a way that no one might have imagined in the late 20th century and she deconstructs all the accepted myths and looks at them differently. Her mastery in mythology brings us the details of stories she presents, and their adaptation in today's visual and pop culture, which leads to the suggestions she is trying to imply and ofcourse, without sentimental projection. I have to confess that some chapters, like the Island Race wasn't an easy read for me, however, the whole experience of this reading was absolutely worth it. She almost delves into different issues such as children via literature and fairy-tales, women and she-beasts of Jurassic Park and how they are presented to meet the needs of a male look, how the nationalist idealism can end up with vengeance and racist illusionaries, etc. Warner was the second woman who had a chance to participate in Reith lectures of BBC those times, which she stated frankly at the beginning of the lectures.
I put one excerpt from the book, chapter 4, "Cannibal Tales, The Hunger for Conquest"

"Cannibalism helped to justify the presence of the invader, the settler, the trader, bringing civilisation. The centre has to draw outlines to give itself definition. The city has need of the barbarians to know what it is. The self needs the other to establish a sense of integral identity. If my enemies are like me, how can I go on feeling enmity against them? Cannibalism is used to define the alien but actually mirrors the speaker."

She also has greater words and references in the first chapters where she talks about the contemporary ideas on women and female-ness. Can't focus enough on how this book is a must read and precious source for anyone who is following today's pop-culture and has a bit of taste for pop-culture myths, movies, and games.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

These essays, first given as radio lectures, are thoughtful, eclectic, and convincing. Warner takes several idea constellations, often liking a particular group with a form of mythical monstrosity, i.e. monstrous mothers, beastly children, vicious men, cannibalistic foreigners, etc. Along the way she mixes ancient myth and folktales with modern legends drawn from history and film. Her reading of Jurrasic Park, which appears in the first essay, is one of the high points of the book.

The book has mostly aged well. I picked it up thinking I might share parts of it with my undergraduate mythology class, but the datedness of the pop culture references and major cultural differences (the book is primarily British in perspective) made me decide otherwise. Still, if you are an adult, who lived through this time and if you know anything at all about the UK, this is a very accessible and exciting book. Sadly, many of the points she makes still could be heeded today. There is an unintended melancholy to seeing how entrenched some of these toxic mythical ideas remain despite the intervening decades. Perhaps by continuing to share this kind of analysis we can finally wriggle free from the grips of such ideas. There is much work left to be done.

[Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Original insights on well known myths.

To put this in context:
These are the half-hour lectures she gave on BBC radio for their Reith Lectures in 1993. With the exception of Margery Perham 33 years earlier, no other woman had lectured on the series. As Warner explains it, "I was, according to the unwritten code, an odd avatar for the old bachelor and patriarch to summon," as the lectures were "simply assumed to be on the whole off limits to women." She says that "friends commanded me to stand up for women" and that "I was ipso facto representative of my sex." There is an eternal "wow factor" to the effort involved in that; at the same time, some of the material sounds a bit dated in 2019, simply because yesterday's feminism isn't the same as today's feminism. The concepts are still agreeable, but there is something about the way it was "performed" (subject to male approval as it was) that made me aware that I was reading something from the '90s.

Regardless, there is good stuff in here about Medea, Gilgamesh/Enkidu, and the constructed innocence of childhood. There's also a large and tempting bibliography.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marina Warner's 1994 Reith Lectures are a disappointment but I am going to admit something. I did not bother to read more than the introduction and the first lecture although skimming the rest told me what to expect - an extended ideological rant from a fairly predictable liberal perspective.

The first lecture, with its reference to the then-topical popular media assault on single mothers under a socially reactionary Tory Government, is an exercise in barely sublimated outrage. She has a point here about the shifting nature of social myth but it is all far too jaundiced to be valuable.

It is of its time. It might yet be of interest to future cultural historians. It certainly helps us to understand how liberalism appropriated and, frankly, then distorted the past to meet changing relations of power and new 'ressentiments'. Its passion is polemical and not educational.

I am afraid this book gets dumped from the library with regret that I spent £4.99 back in the day. Feminists and liberals though may love it as a source of arguments for their belief system. In the end, it is just another tired weapon in the culture wars 'avant la lettre'.

[Eitan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marina Warner writes beautifully about myths and folktales. It seems that she is making a few points, perhaps the main one being that myths and folktales present themselves as being timeless and somehow natural, but are in fact ever-different and ever-changing. Is it unfair to say 'no duh?' She weaves together stories from Greek mythology, legends from different parts of the world, and current events (the BBC lecture series on which the book is based was given in 1994), so Medea meets Madonna, Hercules meets King Kong, and Turner meets Thatcher. But in the end, I'm not quite sure how it all hangs together. Nonetheless, it's a short book and Warner is a terrific writer, so if you like mythology or folktales, and are in the mood for a light read, this book may be for you.

[JHM · Rating 2 out of 5]

The fact that it took me a couple of weeks to read this relatively slim book is an indication of how little it held my attention. I did enjoy some of Warner's insights about the nature of myth and its relationship with both culture and history, but the essays themselves were not particularly compelling.

I may have been of a different opinion if I had read this book as an Englishwoman in 1994 rather than as an American woman in 2022. I don't agree with a previous reviewer who said that Warner's feminist observations are no longer valid, but there is a big gap in chronology and culture between this book's origins and my present life.

I'm going to copy a few insightful quotations into my notebooks, but his book isn't going to stay in my library.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was tempted to bump this up to three stars, but in the end it just wasn't that engaging a read. Each of the essays has an interesting point to make--"Little Angels, Little Monsters" and "Our Famous Island Race" are the most insightful, in my opinion--but I feel like Warner doesn't quite nail any of the main arguments. Her examples felt weak at times; in particular, I did not think the Jurassic Park stuff in "Monstrous Mothers" was convincing. And there was perhaps a tendency to wander too far from the core idea, or to sometimes come across as a bit too academic. Yes, there's wheat to be found here...but a lot of chaff surrounds that handful of grain.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly readable, this adapted form of Marina Warner's six-part lecture series presents personal essays that wed elements of academic analysis with storytelling. Although this book lacks some of the in-depth analysis one might desire from feminist texts, this might be forgiven given that this book's intended audience original was Britain's general public in the early 1990s. Despite this, Warner's exploration of myth and folklore touches on numerous conceptualizations of hegemony in regard to masculinity, monstrosity, ecology, and empire.

[Andrea]

Apparently I had marked this as read before but I have zero recollection of finishing previously. I erased the former rating (3 stars) because ???

This time I found it interesting in some ways, but I'm also in a longform criticism class so I was seeing those structures in an educational way.

Many parts of the essays are dated, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. They are historical moments.

This is not a review, only some comments.

[Pavlina · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do stories influence society, and how can they be reimagined if we ask cui bono? Warner argues that myths are more than timeless tales—they’re flexible frameworks that adapt to culture, carrying values and biases that subtly evolve. While myths often pretend to convey eternal truths, Warner shows how they actually shift to meet the needs of each era, acting as both mirrors and moulds for human identity.

[Michael Patton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started this book recently, only to realize I'd read it years ago--read it and liked it. Maybe five stars worth of like. But after going in a few pages, I wondered if I'd like "Six Myths" as much, the second time around. Nonetheless, I will recommend the book to anyone trying to see the play of myths in the modern world.

[Gwyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borderline man-hating feminist and kinda racist (which is justifiable for a book written in the 90s) but very very interesting perspectives. She raises some very good points about fairy tale influences and the concept of the savage “other”. Here’re some other highlights:

On Jurassic Park - “the dinosaurs epitomise the chaotic natural energy of fertility governed by the secular priests of the temple of science. ”

On Games - “Nincontinent, Nintimidating, Nintendo.” (She would love undertale)

On Frankenstein - “The point about Frankenstein assembling the monster from body parts haunts contemporary consciousness, but the book’s main philosophical argument, that his viciousness is learned, not innate is somehow overlooked. ” (pop off)

On Ninja Turtles - “Nature, newly understood to be somehow uncontaminated, innocent, nurturing and spontaneous, beckons as a remedy to the distortions and excesses of progress. In the popular comic strip, green ninja turtles do battle with computer nerds who threaten earth with ecocatastrophe.”

[Tina]

I loved this. I had a feeling that I was going to love it when in the introduction, Marina Warner quotes Roland Barthes: Myth transforms history into nature.

Particularly relevant to all the YA I read was Warner's third essay, "Little Angels, Little Monsters: Keeping Childhood Innocent." So many of the most popular YA - Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, The 5th Wave, Twilight, Divergent - end with or prominently feature the idea of the child as a stand-in symbol for hope, for the innocence of the future generations and the betterment therein of society. Time and time again I wondered how we got to a place where we placed such undue pressure and responsibility on a child and the child as a symbol. This essay gets into that and more. (Actually, I want to email my old kidlit professor and ask her whether she's read this essay or heard Marina Warner as she gave these lectures on the BBC. "Little Angels, Little Monsters" felt so, so relevant to everything that we had discussed; Warner even mentioned Bettelheim, who analyzed fairy tales with a Freudian lens. (Because of Bettelheim, every time I see Cinderella's slipper now, I think of the supposed representation of her sexuality i.e. her vagina.)).

Some reviews suggest that this book is dated. Maybe some of the cultural references are dated (the things that are referred to in the present are obviously no longer so), but the points that Warner makes on she-monsters (and motherhood/femininity, the role of women), modern masculinity, the concept of national identity, fairy tale beasts and cannibalism (and colonialism) still feel rather relevant to me. In fact, her last essay, "Home: Our Famous Island Race," is directly applicable to the Refugee crisis today. I appreciated the feminist lens and the broad-ranging approach Warner took to deconstructing these myths, and I will definitely be reading more of her work.

(I also am looking forward to reading some of the work she mentions here. Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands? Derek Walcott's work? Yes, please!)

[Kyle R · Rating 3 out of 5]

1994 doesn't feel like that long ago, but it was a time before mainstream internet and before 911, so some things in this book did seem outdated to me. But her take on video games and musclemen types in movies definitely seem to still ring true today, think about the plethora of superhero movies, the most celebrated ones being those that star alpha male types who are prized more for their brute strength rather than their cunning and intellect (like the example of Odysseus she gives, who outwitted his enemies rather than overpowered them) and think about the first-person shooter games and games like Grand Theft Auto... games that cater and foster a sort of male simulated fantasy of collecting the most powerful weapons and eliminating and conquering everything.

What she wrote about children was interesting also... how their play routines often mirror adult activities, and how interest in dinosaurs was thrown upon them, possibly because children are destined to become extinct just like the dinosaurs.

It was a good and easy read, a little outdated, but I'd be interested in reading more recent material by her.

[Andrew Kafoury · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has an awesome collection of essays with some unique insight into how myths impact our world view. The early essay bout the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park being about matriarchy threatening the nuclear family is pretty interesting - but the one about Mary Shelly's Frankenstein improving the monster genre by making a monster who learns how to do cruel things because of how society treats them opposed to just being a one dimensional monster is really great. She brings it back to how Frankenstein's Monster is the precursor for the Androids in Blade Runner. As someone who loves myths I really loved all these insights.

[Michelle Farinella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warner knows so much about mythology, I wonder if she can just enjoy a story anymore. Hmmmm.
This slim collection of essays is just a glimpse of her deep and vast anthropological knowledge of how the stories we choose to tell and re-tell carve out our cultural norms. It's scary how arbitrarily we choose the fairytales we regale to our children. It's strange how surreptitiously misogyny and racism can slither its way into the archetypes within our best-sellers and block-busters. In an era of memes, metta, and (post-) post-modernism, what will we do with the power this awareness can deliver?
I'll have to read more of Marina Warner. She is fascinating, but did not have room to expound on anything much more than a mention in Six Myths. Just as she touched the topic of something that slapped me to attention, she had moved on to other realms.

[Lis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a weird little book that I enjoyed rereading. It was originally a series of programs - lectures, really - on BBC Radio in the early '90s, and so it's written for a very general audience. Warner's always good to read - she has an excellent grasp of how to keep her thoughts flowing from one thought to the next, even (especially) when those thoughts are pretty far apart.

Of the six essays, the one on masculinity is the most dated and can easily be skipped. The rest are of varying qualities, but the ones on motherhood, children, and homeland are the best. Light but thoughtful reading, and those three essays in particular are a good introduction to Warner's style. Anything that leads you to From the Beast to the Blonde is good in my book.

[Pádraic · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is pretty good, more accessibly written than most other things of its type--perhaps because it was written to be read out on radio to a wider non-academic audience--but it's sometimes clunky or too brief or poorly edited. I imagine all those characteristics would be remedied in the expanded edition, Six Myths of Our Time: Little Angels, Little Monsters, Beautiful Beasts, and More, so you should probably just read that instead, I certainly ought to have done so.

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the themes are treated in greater detail in Warner's excellentNo Go The Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock, but this is a shorter and more accessible treatise for readers who want the ideas without all the examples and footnotes. The weakest section is that on video games, which is not only now out-dated, but doesn't read as if the author ever actually played one, or even knows anyone who has.

[Pamster · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were written as half hour speeches to be given on the BBC in a lecture series with a long history, in which she was the only the second woman ever invited to participate. I liked the cannibalism chapter a lot. And I got all worked up at the bar when someone didn't believe me that the Jurassic Park dinos could symbolize monstrous women as threat to the nuclear fam. I'm into reading more of her.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. Not as brilliantly accessible as Joseph Campbell, not as scholarly as Roland Barthes. It's hard to believe the essays were originally presented as radio talks because some of the sentences are difficult to untangle even on the page. Maybe hearing it aloud would actually make it clearer.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not Marina Warner's best, but still worth reading. It is not daring, audacious, or vital in the way that From the Beast to the Blonde is, but she is clear, succinct, and accurate. Very much cultural criticism for beginners.

[John Fredrickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a delightful and unexpected find. It is a short book of only 6 chapters, each of which explores a different theme of our implicit mythologies that our culture works with, often unconsciously. The last chapter on "home" was a bit difficult to follow, but the rest of the book is great.

[Kathleen O'Neal · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were well written essays on various mythical tropes. I was expecting a richer analysis than that provided though. The content was not especially memorable given that I am struggling to write this review about a year after reading the book.