Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life

by Joan Gould

What’s your favorite fairy tale? Whether it’s “Cinderella,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Hansel and Gretel,” or another story, your answer reveals something significant about you, your experiences, and your soul. In this penetrating book, Joan Gould brings to the surface the hidden meanings in fairy tales and myths, and illuminates what they can tell you about the stages in your own life. As Gould explores the transformations that women go through from youth to old age–leaving home and mother, the first experience of sexuality, the surprising ambivalence of marriage, the spiritual work required by menopause and aging–her keen observations will enrich your awareness of your inner life.
Full of archetypal figures known to us all, Spinning Straw into Gold also includes stories from the lives of ordinary women that clarify the insights to be gained from the beloved tales that have been handed down from one generation to the next.

Genres: Nonfiction, Fairy Tales, Feminism, Mythology, Psychology, Folklore, Womens

448 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 2005

Reviews

[Cara Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Is quite interesting in its discussion of the fairy tales, but irritating in saying woman=mother, and then I was tempted to throw it across the room when the author suggested that people with depression were somehow to blame for it. Would be better with less of the author's attitude.

[Dayna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was not quite what I was expecting. I guess I thought it would be more of a scholarly work, with lots of references and facts. It has some, but mostly it reads like a collection of Gould's personal opinions ... as influenced by her experiences as a mid-century woman. I was a bit disappointed by that. Beyond that, Gould's writing is nice, almost lyrical. Some of her theorizing was interesting, and I thought she made some good points. But a lot of it was totally subjective to your point of view, and so much of it wasn't completely relatable for women today. Especially the younger ones, who have not been brought up with fairy tales as a standard. My generation has been told that fairy tales don't reflect life, that there is no prince, and that it is our job to take care of ourselves ... we can do anything we want to, no matter our biology. So, it was interesting, but only just. It was a little too Freudian, and I thought it was hilarious how everything came down to sex. I would have liked to of read something a bit more celebratory of womanhood, and less disparaging. But I don't think Gould's intent was to be disparaging ... it just came off that way, to me, in more than one instance. So, while I liked it, I couldn't love it, and I probably won't ever come back to it.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really interesting study of fairy tales and (like the title says) what they reveal about women. It's not a perfect book, but I was expecting this to say how fairy tales are crap and help our society keep women down, but it's quite the opposite. Who knew that fairy tales could be about womens' transformations into decisive, independent beings? I learned that my knowledge about fairy tales is based on Walt Disney movies, and those aren't the good fairy tales. The dark, creepy "real" fairy tales are where all the fun is.

[Alexis Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I loved this book. While I think a few of the interpretations are kind of bizarre, or a bit of a stretch at times, I adored the author's deep insights and critical thinking on fairy tale heroines. It's just a fascinating read that gets your wheels turning. This book is something that has definitely helped my own character and story development, and I will be buying myself a copy in the near future.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

no matter how many times I read this book, I'm always picking up something new. It's the kind of book that can be opened at any point & read & enjoyed

[Samantha Lazar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was really interesting because it talked about many characters that are from well-known fairytales. This book really examined the way the women characters are portrayed in society. For example, Cinderella is a character that is examined very closesly in the book.

I remember reading stories like this when I was little, but I never really thought about the "stereotypical" woman character. She is the helpless character who needs to be rescued by her prince. Now, as an adult, I look at these stories in a very different way. However, I would not introduce these issues to elementary students. This is something I would use with high school students during a fairytale unit. It would be wrong to ruin these stories for young children, and I don't think that they would be able to fully grasp this type of analysis.

[Cassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the idea behind Spinning Straw into Gold, but I did not agree with some of the author's ideas. The analysis of the fairy tales were really enjoyable even though they may have been over analyzed. Overall, Spinning Straw into Gold is a unique book that would suit fairy tale lovers.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting read connecting popular themes in fairy tales with the conflicts women deal with at varying stages of a woman's life. I felt some of her claims of symbolism were a bit of a stretch, and the general feel was that women are hopelessly bound to urges and cultural expectations beyond their control. There were a couple of great passages that rang true to common frustrations, but I felt the analysis of the solution offered in the fairy tales was sketchy and incomplete and ultimately no type of a solution at all.

[Phair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting and full of ideas (I took 4pp of notes in my journal). Author has annoying habit of interjecting her own life story in illustration of some points that I found jarring & even a tad whining and/or grandstanding in tone. Some bits dragged & felt a little tedious and she seemed to lose focus toward the end and turn more toward illustrating her personal agenda rather than explaining the fairy tale/ folklore connections. [I never realized that The African Queen is essentially Beauty and the Beast!:]

[Kit Dunsmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book spoke to me on many levels. My favorite thing about it is the deep understanding she has of what fairy tales offer us. She looks past the Disney versions of princes rescuing helpless females and digs out the older and richer heroine versions of the stories, then shows us how they apply to our life transistions today. Her discussion of the stages of a woman's life and the transitions she undergoes (and how she gets through them) matched well with my personal experience. Added a bunch of new books to my TBR list because she referenced them.

[Car Mint · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is interesting book !
I scan contents of this book that wonderful topic.
I just get in from bookshop in this week !
Don't pass it ! Buy it now !

[Jessica Furtado · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who is crafting a workshop around the topic of writing confessional poems through the lens of fairy tales and myth, this was an interesting read. That being said, this work is definitely dated. Contemporary readers will be disappointed in its rather white feminist lens, as well as its adherence to binary gender. It barely touches LGBTQIA+ representation. As such, it will not be reflective of the experience of some readers.

In terms of what I was looking for in this text, it gave me some different lenses through which to view popular fairy tales and helped spark ideas for new writing prompts. As a cis white woman I could relate to aspects of the text, while some of the author's opinions felt judgmental and patriarchal.

I would love to see a similar project tackled today (almost 20 years later) with a broader, more inclusive definition of feminism in mind.

[Helynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such an interesting study (although it sometimes does get a little too Freudian for my taste; more on that later) about the psychology behind some well-known fairy tales and how they typify dilemmas and choices that have faced women for centuries. Author Joan Gould designates three phases of a woman's life--the maiden, the mother and the crone--that are analyzed by various tales. One of the chapters, entitled "Cinderella: Surviving Adolescence" states that all of us women are cinderellas of some sort--"overworked, unappreciated, biding our time, until we gather strength to step into our glory" (40). We stay with the program, as did Cinderella, because we figure it's all part of our growth. The fairy godmother does not equal enchantement so much as guidance to a higher level of consciousness. Gould claims that all the great Cinderella figures in literature and film--Jane Eyre, Hester Prynn, Celie from The Color Purple,/i> etc., actually support themselves when need be, without reliance on a man. (I like that!) The Sleeping Beuaty chapter is interesting as well. Gould notes that the sleeping aspect of the heroine's life is an avenue toward creativity. "We, too, are often half asleep in our daily lives, sometimes because we are in the midst of transformation," says Gould. "If we watch carefully we see that our feelings, our intellect, our will, even our bodies, drowse at critical times, if we are not ready for the adventure that confronts us. We black out when life demands too much . . we also sleep if life demands too little, leaving us no outlet for our talents, feelings, sexuality, and ambition . . . we aren't fully awake . . . we resist this idea, but should realize that sleep is a positive force that makes life and creative work, as well as transformation possible(90-92). . . No great work of art was ever created by the conscious mind alone--the period of germination at the deepest level, followed by gestation, still in darkness, is crucial" (98). Now, here is where Gould gets Freudian and a little weird. Continuing with the ideal that sleep incubates maturity as well as creativity, she says, "the 15-year-old princess unlocking the forbidden door to the spinning wheel is a sexual metaphor . . . the spindle a phallic symbol that draws blood . . . the menstrual 'curse' . . or first intercourse blood" (100). Despite the typical difficulties of female adolescence—i.e., wishing to sleep through the painful transitions to adulthood—we eventually wake. "Why do we wake when we do? Call it an inner migration from the underworld to the upper world, brought about by some seasonal change in the light. At any age, if we get a taste of who we are, if we fall in love with life in whatever form we find it and choose to embrace it, we can fairly call that moment 'the Prince's kiss.'" (125). Gould frequently comments on how the modern Disney versions of fairy tales have watered the original stories down to pale imitations of their original selves. "What Sleeping Beauty experiences in the Disney version is rescue, not transformation" (132).
Other interesting chapters examine the psychology behind Beauty and the Beast, Rapunzel, and The Seal Wife, and the Fitcher's Bird. A very interesting chapter analyzes the crone, or woman in her later years: "She faces what she fears, she grows in spirit (291) . . . . at 50, one is more or less either reborn or moribund"(294). Finally, the author reflects on her own great-grandmother, who briefly appeared to her after her death. Gould thinks also of her own granddaughter. "I am her past, but also her future" (312). Well, I found this book thought-provoking and I took a ton of notes. See what you think.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This marvelous book caught my eye because of its title, Spinning Straw into Gold. I instantly recognized the reference to Rumpelstiltskin, one of my favorite fairy tales. I was exceedingly impressed with the thoughtful research and insights of the author Joan Gould that I discovered inside.

Gould illustrates and examines the themes of female transformations and burdens throughout her life as dramatized in fairy tales. I've always loved fairy tales and of course recognized some of the messages about growing up, but I now have a much more profound appreciation and understanding of my own life thanks to Gould.

Her guiding point was that women are ruled by biological transformations that have huge impacts on their lives. The girl matures into a woman. A transformation. The young woman enters a sexual time. Another transformation. The woman bears children. A startling physical transformation. The woman grows old and loses fertility, and transforms into the final stage of life.

Many fairy tales and popular stories address the girl to sexual woman stages because this is the fun and sexy part. But from Gould I learned to think more deeply about the stages of matron and crone. I especially liked her interpretation of the Seal Wife stories. In the Seal Wife, a fisherman catches a seal and brings her on shore. He takes her seal skin and makes her a woman. He hides the seal skin because without it she cannot return to the sea. She is trapped on land with him and becomes his wife and the mother of his children. But one day she finds her seal skin, puts it on, and returns to the sea. The story connects with the general longing of mothers to escape their responsibilities and return to the freedoms lost to marriage and motherhood. Or it can represent the mother who recalls her former self and resumes some of her interests beyond the rigors of diapers and soccer practices.

I also liked Gould's words on the subject of old age. She explained how in earlier days most people did not live long enough to become elderly, so an old woman was considered to have some kind of strange magic keeping her alive. Now that old age is much more common, Gould said that it was a great gift of life for her free of the daily demands of nurturing the next generation as the matron must do.

I highly recommend Spinning Straw into Gold for people who like fairy tales and who really like to explore the deeper realities of life.

[Lisa H · Rating 3 out of 5]

I both love and hate this book.
I hate it because it focuses so much on the idea that biology is destiny. Then I find myself trying to defend this in that many fairy tales (ok almost all of them) were written when this wasn't even up for debate. But part of me longs for a progressive stance on fairy tales. A stance that includes queer and transfolk because part of me wants to believe with all my heart that we don't need to throw out everything about our current culture, we just need to modify it for it to be inclusive. As the author points out very rarely did fairy tales remain the same even when they were written down. Maybe it's our turn to change them.
That said I loved how this book went through and explained fairy tales, and not the Disney versions of them. It showed that in pre-Disney tales the heroines had spunk, and power, and didn't need to be saved by a prince.
Maybe it really isn't a surprise that I have a love/hate relationship with this book, because I have a love/hate relationship with fairy tales.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll never quite look at the story of Cinderella the same way again and that's a good thing. This work is brilliant! Nothing less than a woman-centered response to Joseph Campbell's A Hero's Journey. Joan Gould's efforts to hunt down the traditional versions of the fairy tales she analyzes (rather than relying on the Disney versions we're more familiar with) and her subsequent analysis of their themes and subtexts is illuminating to say the least.

Without giving anything away, Gould delves deeply into how women's fundamental biological differences from men (revolving around the ability to bear children) have profound emotional and psychological consequences for individuals and how fairy tales attempt to address these issues with metaphor. To me, the book was uncomfortably Freudian at times and there are places where I think she takes biological determinism too far, but even so this is a very insightful book. Fans of Jean Shinoda Bolen will very likely enjoy.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

What's that old quote about rivers and time?

The first time I read this book, I was a newlywed in Texas with a ton of time on my hands. I read it around the same time I read Bruno Bettelheim, at least two books about Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, and Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan. I remember being amazed at the depth and insight, picking up themes and symbolism that had never crossed my mind. It made the old stories feel powerful and new.

The second time I read this book, here in 2020, I read it over several months in conversation with my best friend. And I must admit at times it felt a little shabby and hokey. This, THIS was the book I remembered so fondly? This book where everything is a penis, or as Rachel Green would put it: "vegetarian-voodoo-goddess-circle-y"? But then there were things that struck me now, as a matronly mother and seasoned wife, that had real verve to them that went unnoticed when I was a maiden. Especially "the seal wife."

I wonder if I read it again in 10 years, or 15, what me as a crone would think?

[Dharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just starting it but it seems rather trite, a bit of reaching going on in the analysis but I'll keep going just to see what else might be here.

This book seems filled with psychobabble and really reaching when trying to apply feminism to these fables. Last night I read the only thing that I really like. Of course now I can't remember what the hell it was because I'm so bloody tired! But it was the first thing that felt like it spoke to me.

Later on it the book redeems itself, in my eye, with the interpretation of the Seal Wife. This may have more to do with my experience with women's experience of motherhood but it read true to me.

Still too much focus on traditional form of motherhood rather than expanding "mother" to also include creativity (as mentioned in The Knitting Goddess - which I am currently reading (7/08).

This reading is making want to add the original Grimms to my reading list.

Decided to not finish it. But did read Grimms later on.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Spinning Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life, Joan Gould deconstructs some popular fairy tales, dividing them under the categories of Maiden, Matron, and Crone. Gould’s study is interesting and her insights perceptive. However, woven in and out of her analyses are Gould’s continuous interjections of personal anecdotes and digressions. These interrupt the flow of her discussion and border on being irritating. In spite of that, however, the book is worth reading because Gould’s actual analysis and discussion of fairy tales is entertaining, lucid, and penetrates beneath the superficial level of the fairy tale narrative. Her analyses contain nuggets of wisdom, many of which continue to bear relevance for women today.

[Bea Elwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

okay this was a labor of love, I seriously wanted to finish this book but found the overwhelming referrences to a woman's only desire (conscious or unconscious) being to attract a mate and spawn children to be a bit too much. There are gems in this book - personally really identified with the sleeping beauty comparisions - but the authors opinion and personal interpretations are sometimes too hard to swallow and it brings the whole book down. I'd still recommend reading this book if - like myself - you look at literature's impact on personal mythology and the evolution of storytelling from generation to generation but take everything with a grain of salt.

[Victoria Blacke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this expecting it to be a published scholarly thesis. Once I realized it was more the author's unique feminist interpretation of fairytales I changed my expectations. Instead of searching for the facts and supporting documentation, I read this more like a literary thesis. The author was illustrating a "next level" deeper meaning behind the stories. With this in mind, the book became fascinating! It hypothesized a much more complicated social, sexual and human aspect to the fairytales beyond the face value we had all taken them. I thoroughly enjoyed having these fairytales brought to a different light.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was quite fascinating, if a little repetitive in parts. (Probably could have cut 50 or so pages, I reckon...) It's sort of a feminist deconstruction of fairy tales, very geared to women readers, and I have to admit it got me looking at some of the stories in a whole new light.

I've always liked fairy tales, but never looked too deeply into them before... I think I might have to search out a few more books like this. I don't know that I was always convinced, reading this, but I was very interested, so four stars from me.

[Kipahni · Rating 3 out of 5]

The way that gould writes keeps the reader interested. She has a very good way of telling tales and there are some quotable aspects and that is why I gave this book a three.
However, She comes off as over generalizing everything and an authority on Fairy Tales as well as being way to freudian and negative about the stages of a womans life.

I know that the Fairy Tales of old were somewhat darker and perhaps more sexual but I would not take it as far as Ms. Gould did.

[Ilze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fairy tales are stories we all know about, but how much have we thought about them? Joan Gould must’ve thought about them for years and it shows in this detailed study of several fairy tales, taking a woman from maiden to matron to crone (and eventual death). It’s not the kind of book you can give an immediate impression of. On the contrary, you have to read and page slowly and think about the words as you go. If it was a picture, I would frame it!

[Michelle Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This made for interesting discussion, I thought. There were many things she hit on that I found intriguing and she had a great way of writing it, but probably more of her thoughts I disagreed with.
I thought the way she ended it all may it worth reading for me. Actually I thought that at the end of every chapter. She would always close with something that tied it all up and very thought provoking.
I still love the cover of the book almost more than any other I have ever seen!

[Jeannine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird - this wasn't really a book of criticism, I would almost label it under self-help - but a really fun, fairy-tale-based investigation of how the symbols in fairy tales can help women solve their problems. It wasn't what I expected, not terribly intellectual, but I enjoyed the author's fresh take.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

2017: Enjoyed this much more the second time round, possibly because I am now in that interesting "sandwich" situation--daughter of an aging mother, mother of a young daughter. Much to mull over.

2009: Lots of symbolism, especially of the "maiden-mother-crone" variety. Wish I knew more about Jungian psychology--probably would have gotten more out of this book.

[Liaken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gould makes some good points in this book, but the approach is too psychoanalytic for my taste. I skipped most of the "maiden" chapters, and read about half of the "matron" and "crone" chapters. She has done good research and is often insightful. But I found myself resisting her "this is what it means" sort of tone.

[Raphael Phoebus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like how Gould manages to elevate the discussion of the women's plight in the current society through parallelism. I highly encourage others to read this book to have a better understanding of the basics of feminism and why it is an important issue not just for women but for men to understand. It doesn't give you hard facts or data, but it's a good enough supplementary material.

[Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually missed my plane back to the United States from Scotland reading this (totally didn't hear the "last call" message and didn't know I was at the wrong gate). At any rate, it is very engrossing. Only three stars because it doesn't explore as many fairy tales as I would have liked.