ABSTRACT
Women make up over 50 per cent of the world’s population, they have always performed much of the world’s work, often toiling alongside men, and they have played crucial roles in the social and cultural life of all communities, but this is not reflected in the hero myth as it recurs throughout the centuries. In these stories women are few, and most of those few function only in the domestic sphere. Many of these are mothers-gentle creatures with expressions of beatific sweetness, or plump warm bodies who dispense food unfailingly. Others are golden-haired brides in the first flower of youth. On the other hand the few females encountered in the wilderness possess amazing powers and perform extraordinary functions: they are goddesses, fairy godmothers, evil witches, sirens. Their appearance tends to indicate their nature. Those who are beautiful and blonde, like Tolkien’s Galadriel, are certain to be benevolent. But some dark beauties are evil, deceptive and dangerous; they are La Belle Dame Sans Merci in one of her guises. Those who are ugly are, without exception, evil embodiments of cruelty and malice or of smothering destructiveness. All these women are, of course, stereotypes, but that is not sufficient to explain their functions in the story and their influence on the way we conceptualize reality.
