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

I am on page 316 and don't want it to end. I have written reference notes to be able to get back to those pages I want to read over and over. Born in 1940 in midwest farm country, most of my teen age years was spent wishing I would have been born a boy; I saw a man's world out there. Now as mother, and grandmother I am loving myself as crone, savoring every word Joan Gould has written on her pages in Part Three, my life is as she writes. Learning about the sexual meaning of the shoe from the Cinderella pages and The Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe nursery rhyme was so evident when I was watching the film Spanglish by James L. Brooks. The young wife is getting ready to leave the house to have an affair, and the camera is focused on her changing to a new pair of shoes as her mother (obviously a crone) focuses on her feet. What an aha moment for me. Gould adds very personal thoughts from her life between her interpretations of the stories. From the fear of falling down the stairs as we live alone, wondering who would find us, to handling every item we have accumulated over our lifetime and visualizing where we got it and what memory goes with it and to knowing our adult children don't need us anymore. Our lives are records that were passed to us from our mothers and grandmothers and we pass these records on to our children. Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell gave us the understanding of the collective consciousness and Joan Gould interpreted in depth what spinning straw into gold really means for us females. What a great read. Thank You Joan Gould

Like THE SECOND SEX and THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE, Joan Gould's SPINNING STRAW INTO GOLD is less a book than an awakening. Half scholarly work, half exquisite prose, this work is profoundly moving, one of those books that illuminates a woman's life. Most girls love fairy tales, whether they are from mythology ("Demeter and Persephone") or Hollywood("Pretty Woman"). In a fascinating book that is destined to become a classic, Ms. Gould tells us why we are drawn to one fairy tale over another. Insightful, warm, beautifully written, this book is a treasure. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

This is an eye-opening guide to the themes which underlie all of our great stories, no matter what culture we come from. Describing and exploring the significance of the well-known fairy tales as they exist in different countries and societies, as well as some of the most successful movies in our popular culture, Joan Gould delivers countless "ah ha!" moments, both about the threads that run between the fairy tales, and the themes that are always present in any story that achieves wide-spread success -- regardless of the media form in which it's told. This is a book which looks at the heroine of the fairy tales, rather than the dashing hero, and is perfect for women working to make their daughters' life transitions successful, for girls and young women, for whom the book puts in both a personal and a universal context some of the key pre-adolescent and adolescent struggles they didn't even know they were having and for anyone who enjoys figuring out what it is that makes a story strike a deep chord.

We have always known that fairy tales speak to our souls. If you want to know why, you will find this book fascinating. Think of a combination of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and you have Spinning Straw into Gold. It is amazing how these stories speak to us across centuries. And it is also fascinating to see how differently - and richly -- they are interpreted in this book. Most of what I knew was in the Disney versions, and I have seen here there is a lot more to explore! So reach over the oceans, back over time, into our collective unconscious to see what messages there are for you. I highly recommend the journey!