To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

Books in Review
from their own perspectives. Women's
myths, she asserts, are less frequently found
in traditional formal religious and social
ceremonies and more often in the mundane,
in the stories women recount among
themselves and to their children, in the rituals
they perform among themselves, and
in their gossip while they work together.
The book is organized into categories:
goddesses, heroines, spinsters, guides, origins
and matriarchy. Each chapter is a compendium
of text, collected myths and
narratives, illustrations, popular beliefs and
customs, historical accounts, and critical,
interpretative material. Rather than an
analysis of each topic, the result is a "spinning
and weaving" together of many
strands and voices into a tapestry or collage
of material. The pattern is suggested in a
line from the book's opening poem,
"Grandmother," by Paula Gunn Allen:
"After her, the women and the men weave
blankets into tales of life..." For this reader,
the "weaving" unfortunately at times
resembles an assemblage of research notes
and quotes, interesting in themselves, but
requiring more digestion. In "Origins and
Matriarchy," the quotations range, in a few
pages, from a 19th century Swiss comparative
historian/mytho-logist's theories, to an
illustration of a Native woven basket, to
anthropological notes on food-carrying
bags and women's gathering activities, to a
South American matriarchal myth. These
quotations follow each other with little or
no authorial interpretation or analysis, nor
do they, in themselves, always provide a
continuity of viewpoint or contrast of
opinion. They simply "are." So the reader
makes meaning by following the progression
of quotes throughout the chapter, concluding
from the ending passages that the
author wishes to imply that, although there
was no golden age of matriarchies, the
value of the matriarchal myth lies in its
visions of new paradigms for the future.
Weigle's strengths include her use of
indigenous American as well as European
material; her recognition that myth "ratifies"
existing social order; her understanding
of many myths and lore as male
interpretations of the female archetypes,
and her location of women's own myths in
the mundane, the telling of life experiences.
In The Reflowering of the Goddess, Gloria
Feman Orenstein, a professor of comparative
literature at the University of Southern
California, includes the "mothers" of contemporary
Goddess research, Merlin Stone
and Marija Gimbutas, in her dedication
and, indeed, draws heavily upon the work
of these women in her theorization of a
"feminist matristic vision." Using
Gimbutas' studies of pre-patriarchal cultures
in Old Europe and Stone's research
into the old Goddess religions of the Near
East, Orenstein recalls the existence of
ancient Goddess-centered cosmogonies
and creation myths; traces the suppression
of the Goddess; and postulates a relationship
between women's madness and separation
from the power of the lost Great
Mother. Orenstein's interests include women
artists and surrealism, ecofeminism, theater,
feminism and the creative arts, and
shamanism—all of which have been woven
into her theory of a "feminist matristic
vision," embodied in a "reflowering" of the
ancient Mother Goddess as the sacred symbol
of the center and origin of life.
The concept of a feminist matristic
vision, which Orenstein distinguishes from
"gynocentric," meaning "woman-centered,"
and from "feminine," a "patriarchal social
construct" which varies in meaning in different
historical periods and cultures,
implies "a shift in cosmogony rather than a
shift in gender alone." Orenstein places the
Goddess, envisioned as the Great
Mother/Earth Mother, "at the origin of
Creation and at the center of the Cosmos."
With this shift in mythic visioning, she
argues, comes a distinct change in values,
world view, and action because "on a very
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