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Hello! I recently discovered this site while researching my latest article and I'm thrilled to pieces to have found such a number of people who love fairy tales as much as I do so I hope you don't mind my jumping in, this topic is just so interesting.

Katg: I never looked at Tam Lin or its folklore relatives in that light before of unequal suffering/work effort and it is an intriguing perspective. Personally I adore the heroines from "Singing, Soaring Lark," "Six Swans," "Seven Ravens," "Tam Lin," and "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," because their heroines are so intrepid, strong, and just plain bad-ass. Yet, you do bring up part of an interesting point about how women tend to be generally cast as the nurturer "holy mother," almost sanctified figure. I don't say that that is good or bad, I just think it's an interesting trend that is probably largely due to the practical biology of womanhood which casts women for that role.

One thing that I would like to point out is the fact that women, at least in Europe, tended to be the traditional keepers and purveyors of stories and the folklore tradition (at least according to Maria Tater's editions that I've read). As such, to me it makes perfect sense to imagine women gathered in a spinning circle or around a quilting rack telling tales of heroines interrogating stars, travelling the world, riding griffins, out-witting sorcesseres, and even doing magically significant spinning and sewing to save the imperiled beloved men of the story. Everyone wants to be the hero/heroine. Everyone wants to be brave, save the day, and make a difference; it's human. Yet, many people find it difficult to see their own significance, their own heroism, particularly in the every day even though they want to. Making a quilt that will protect the family from freezing to death is absolutely important but when one is sitting there working, it's just easier I think to make it more interesting with a bit of storytelling. I guess that I'm just pointing out that a consideration of the source might be in order--women telling tales to other women of heroines saving their families using spindles, bobibins, needles, thread, perseverance, ingenuity, and a woman's biological power to endure ghastly amounts of pain just makes intuitive sense to me the way male story tellers talking about clever, brawny, brave, and lucky heroes who always get the girl makes sense. We all see the world from our own perspective, even our fantasy world.