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Summary
Summary
From the beautiful apsaras of Hindu myth to the swan maidens of European fairy tales, tales of flying women - some carried by wings, others by rainbows, floating scarves, or flying horses - reveal both fascination with and ambivalence about female power and sexuality. In Women Who Fly, Serinity Young examines the motif of the flying woman as it appears in a wide variety of cultures and historical periods, expressed in legends, myths, rituals, sacred narratives, and artistic productions. She introduces a wide range of such figures, including supernatural women like the Valkyries of Norse legend, who transport men to immortality; winged deities like the Greek goddesses Iris and Nike; figures of terror like the Furies, witches, and succubi, airborne Christian mystics, and wayward women like Lilith and Morgan le Fay. Looking beyond the supernatural, Young examines the extraordinary mythology surrounding twentieth-century female aviators like Amelia Earhart and Hanna Reitsch. Throughout, the book Young traces the inextricable link between female power and sexuality and the male desire to control it. This is most vividly portrayed in the twelfth-century Niebelungenlied, in which the proud warrior-queen Brünnhilde loses her great physical strength when she is tricked into giving up her virginity. Centuries earlier the theme is seen in Euripides' play Medea, in which the title character - enraged by her husband's intention to marry a younger woman - uses her divine powers in revenge, wreaking chaos and destruction around her. It is a theme that remains tangible even in the twentieth-century exploits of the comic book character Wonder Woman who, Young argues, retains her physical strength only because her love for fellow aviator Steve Trevor goes unrequited.The first book to systematically chronicle the figure of the flying woman in myth, literature, art, and pop culture, Women Who Fly is an exciting, fresh look at the ways in which women have both influenced and been understood by society and religious traditions around the world.
Author Notes
Serinity Young is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at New York's American Museum of Natural History. She is also Adjunct Assistant Professor of Classical, Middle Eastern, and Asian Languages and Cultures at Queens College.
Reviews (2)
Choice Review
"Why is a 'flighty' woman a bad thing?" Young (research associate, anthropology, American Museum of Natural History; adjunct, classical, Middle Eastern, and Asian languages and cultures, Queens College) poses this question in the introduction to Women Who Fly, and she deftly answers it in the rest of the volume. She scrutinizes an ongoing mythological archetype of the flying female through religious traditions that span millennia and practically every human culture. Young groups her investigation into three major clusters: ancient Near Eastern and European cultures, Asian cultures, and shamanistic traditions. What emerges from this thorough examination is a common image of the flying female as free and untamed by the destructiveness of patriarchal culture. Accordingly, Women Who Fly should be considered as much a work of critical feminism as a religio-mythic analysis of a single extended image. Though the bulk of the investigation considers the role of women in ancient and medieval religions, Young does bring forward several of those themes to deal with more recent times, such as female pilots Hanna Reitsch and Amelia Earhart and pop culture (e.g., Wonder Woman). This work of comparative symbolism moves fluidly through the grand scope of religions and mythologies in an engaging and readable manner. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. --Dann Everett Wigner, formerly, The University of the South
Library Journal Review
In this powerful and thought-provoking book, Young (Courtesans and Tantric Consorts) draws on a variety of mythological and religious traditions to explore the concept of flying women and how representations of aerial females have reflected male anxieties and the changing status of women in society. From ancient bird-headed deities to the Valkyries of Norse myth, from medieval Christian mystics to Wonder Woman and 20th-century female aviators, Young shows how aerial women throughout history have represented themes such as fertility, prophecy, the protection and guidance of the dead, and the bridging of the mundane and divine. On a more fundamental level, Young argues, female figures with the power of flight have embodied the longing of women for escape from the constraints imposed on them by men. Yet, Young also shows how the transition from matriarchal to patriarchal societies has been accompanied by a metaphorical clipping of the wings of these female fliers: the diminishment and demonization of the powers of goddesses and other flying women mirrors the increasing constraints placed upon women in patriarchal cultures. VERDICT Highly recommended for readers of women's studies, gender studies, and mythology and comparative religion.-Sara Shreve, Newton, KS © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. xi |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Female Flight | p. 2 |
| Heroines, Freedom, and Captivity | p. 4 |
| Transcendence and Immanence | p. 7 |
| Shape-Shifting | p. 8 |
| 1 Earth, Sky, Women, and Immortality | p. 11 |
| Earth, Sky, and Birds | p. 11 |
| Magical Flight, Ascension, and Assumption | p. 15 |
| Dreams, Women, and Flying | p. 17 |
| Humans, Divinities, and Birds | p. 20 |
| Apotheosis | p. 20 |
| Birds | p. 22 |
| Bird Goddesses | p. 24 |
| Part I Supernatural Women | |
| 2 Winged Goddesses of Sexuality, Death, and Immortality | p. 29 |
| Isis | p. 29 |
| Women, Death, Sexuality, and Immortality | p. 32 |
| The Ancient Near East | p. 36 |
| Ancient Greece | p. 41 |
| Athena and the Monstrous-Feminine | p. 42 |
| Aphrodite | p. 49 |
| Nike | p. 50 |
| 3 The Fall of the Valkyries | p. 53 |
| Brunhilde in the Volsungs Saga | p. 54 |
| Images and Meanings | p. 59 |
| Brunhilde in the Nibelungenlied | p. 64 |
| Wagner's Brunhilde | p. 68 |
| 4 Swan Maidens: Captivity and Sexuality | p. 73 |
| Urvasi | p. 73 |
| Images and Meanings | p. 75 |
| Northern European Tales | p. 79 |
| Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake | p. 81 |
| Asian Swan Maidens | p. 83 |
| Feather Robes and Dance | p. 85 |
| Two Middle Eastern Tales | p. 87 |
| Hasan of Basra | p. 87 |
| Janshah | p. 89 |
| 5 Angels and Fairies: Male Flight and Contrary Females | p. 95 |
| Angels and Demons | p. 96 |
| Fairies | p. 104 |
| Morgan le Fay | p. 105 |
| Fairy Brides | p. 110 |
| Asian Fairies | p. 112 |
| 6 Apsaras: Enabling Male Immortality, Part 1 | p. 117 |
| In Hinduism | p. 118 |
| Relations with Heroes | p. 119 |
| Seducing Ascetics | p. 121 |
| Kings, Devadasis, and Fertility | p. 125 |
| In Buddhism | p. 127 |
| Seductresses | p. 128 |
| The Saundarananda | p. 131 |
| 7 Yoginis and Dakinis: Enabling Male Immortality, Part 2 | p. 133 |
| Tantra | p. 133 |
| Yoginis | p. 134 |
| Yogini Temples | p. 135 |
| Practices and Stories | p. 138 |
| Sexual Yoga | p. 139 |
| Taming | p. 142 |
| Dakinis | p. 143 |
| Subduing | p. 144 |
| Tibetan Practitioners | p. 147 |
| Part II Human Women | |
| 8 Witches and Succubi: Male Sexual Fantasies | p. 153 |
| Medea | p. 154 |
| Ancient Witches and Sexuality | p. 155 |
| Circe | p. 155 |
| The Witch of Endor | p. 157 |
| Succubi and Incubi | p. 158 |
| Witches in Christian Europe | p. 160 |
| The Witches' Sabbath | p. 162 |
| Women and the Demonic | p. 162 |
| Flying | p. 166 |
| 9 Women Shamans: Fluctuations in Female Spiritual Power | p. 172 |
| The Ni¿an Shaman | p. 173 |
| Becoming a Shaman | p. 178 |
| Magical Flight, Ritual Dress, and Spirit Animals | p. 179 |
| Gender | p. 182 |
| Transvestism and Sex Change | p. 184 |
| Sexuality | p. 186 |
| 10 Flying Mystics, or the Exceptional Woman, Part I | p. 189 |
| St. Christina the Astonishing | p. 190 |
| Flight and Sanctity | p. 193 |
| St. Irene of Chrysobalanton | p. 194 |
| St. Elisabeth of Schönau | p. 196 |
| Female and Male Mystics | p. 201 |
| Hadewijch of Brabant | p. 205 |
| 11 Flying Mystics, or the Exceptional Woman, Part II | p. 208 |
| Islam | p. 208 |
| Rabi'ah al-'Adawiyya | p. 209 |
| Other Aerial Sufi Women | p. 211 |
| Daoism | p. 213 |
| Sun Bu'er | p. 214 |
| Daoist Beliefs and Practices | p. 216 |
| Buddhism | p. 222 |
| Human Dakinis | p. 223 |
| Machig Lapdron and Chod Practice | p. 226 |
| 12 The Aviatrix: Nationalism, Women, and Heroism | p. 228 |
| Wonder Woman | p. 228 |
| Amelia Earhart | p. 233 |
| Death and the Heroine | p. 235 |
| Hanna Reitsch | p. 237 |
| Women, Heroism, and Militarism | p. 243 |
| Conclusion | p. 249 |
| The Exceptional Woman | p. 251 |
| Women and War | p. 253 |
| Notes | p. 255 |
| Works Consulted | p. 313 |
| Index | p. 347 |