Books like Wise Women by Suzanne I. Barchers

A Jungian analyst and storyteller explores the Wild Woman archetype, using myths, fairy and folk tales to help women reconnect with creativity, instinct, and inner vitality.

The Female Brain explains how women’s minds work, drawing on two decades of research and clinical practice to reveal the unique neurological and hormonal influences on female behavior.

Marina Warner looks at storytelling, at its practitioners and images in art, legend, and history - from the prophesying enchantresses who lure men to a false paradise to jolly Mother Goose, with her masqueraders in the real world, from sibyls and the Queen of Sheba to Angela Carter. The storytellers are frequently women (or were until men like Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen started writing down the women's stories), and Marina Warner asks how changing prejudices about women affect the status of fairy tales: are they sources of wisdom and moral guidance, or temptations encouraging indulgence in romantic and vengeful fantasies? From the Beast to the Blonde considers old wives' tales in all their luxuriant detail and with a strong sense of the historical contexts in which they developed. Ms. Warner's fresh new interpretations show us how the real-life themes in these famous stories evolved: rivalry and hatred between women ("Cinderella" and "The Sleeping Beauty"), the ways of men and marriage ("Bluebeard" and "Beauty and the Beast"), not to mention neglect, incest, death in childbirth, murder, and racial prejudice. As she suggests in her superb closing chapter, happy endings come only after stumbles and falls; yet in some sense the story of tale-telling is never done.

A wise woman lures a princess and a peasant girl to a forest cottage, where she imparts lessons of Christian love and humility.

A lyrical Irish teenager's adventure against the backdrop of the 1916 Rising, highlighted by a celebrated fox hunt and subtle supernatural touches.

Spiritual experience has always been, and is especially today, a liberating source of women's identity and their resistance to oppression. These selections feature centuries of this tradition's most intuitive writing: women ancient, medieval, and modern articulate the spiritual dimension of life. From Ishtar of Babylonia and Isis of Egypt to the medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen, the contemporary African American poet Lucille Clifton, and the Buddhist shaman Joan Halifax, these visionaries see justice and love, loss, aging, and freedom; and it inspires artistic expression and political action. This deeply moving collection of poetry, essays, prayers, letters, memoirs, stories, and theologies by wise women is a source of empowering and uplifting thought for women in any time, at any age.

"Bennett interviewed women in Manchester, England, asking them about ghosts and other supernatural experiences and beliefs. (Her discussion of how her research methods and interview techniques evolved is in itself valuable.) She first published the results of the study in the well-received Traditions of Belief: Women and the Supernatural, which has been used internationally in folklore, women's studies, and other courses. "Alas, Poor Ghost!" thoroughly revises and expands that work. In addition to a fuller presentation and analysis of the original field research, the author has updated the text to incorporate more recent studies and assisted by Kate Bennett, a gerontological psychologist, analyzed new research with a group of women in Leicester, England. This last addition focuses on the role of bereavement and witnessing in contact with the dead."--BOOK JACKET.