Women Who Fly: Goddesses, Witches, Mystics, and other Airborne Females

by Serinity Young

Overview

From the beautiful apsaras of Hindu myth to the swan maidens of European fairy tales, stories of flying women-some carried by wings, others by clouds, rainbows, floating scarves, and flying horses-reveal the perennial 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, in legends, myths, rituals, sacred narratives, and artistic productions. She considers 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, dangerous women like Lilith and Morgan le Fay. Looking beyond the supernatural, Young examines the modern mythology surrounding twentieth-century female aviators like Amelia Earhart and Hanna Reitsch. Throughout, Young demonstrates that female power has always been inextricably linked with female sexuality and that the desire to control it is a pervasive theme in these stories. This is vividly depicted, for example, in the twelfth-century Niebelungenlied, in which the proud warrior-queen Brünnhilde loses her great physical strength when she is tricked into surrendering her virginity. Even in the twentieth-century the same idea is reflected in the exploits of the comic book and film character Wonder Woman who, Young suggests, 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 offers a fresh look at the ways in which women have both influenced and been understood by society and religious traditions throughout the ages and around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190659707
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/02/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter 1 - Earth, Sky and Supernatural Women PART I - Supernatural Women Chapter 2 - Winged Goddesses of Sexuality, Death and Immortality Chapter 3 - The Fall of the Valkyries Chapter 4 - Swan Maidens: Captivity and Sexuality Chapter 5 - Angels and Fairies: Male Flight and Contrary Females Chapter 6 - Apsaras: Enabling Male Immortality - Part 1 Chapter 7 - Yoginis and Dakinis: Enabling Male Immortality - Part 2 PART II - Human Women Chapter 8 - Witches and Succubi: Male Sexual Fantasies Chapter 9 - Women Shamans: Fluctuations in Female Spiritual Power Chapter 10 - Flying Mystics - Part I - West Chapter 11 - Flying Mystics, or the Exceptional Woman - Part II - East Chapter 12 - The Aviatrix: Nationalism, Women and Heroism Conclusion The Exceptional Woman Women and War

Editorial Reviews

"Women Who Fly is a novel study likely to interest readers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Although this sort of broad-brush cross-cultural and trans-historical overview will always have its pitfalls, it broadens the mind with examples from a rich arrayof contexts and opens the reader up to new possibilities. A valuable source of comparisons, the book will hopefully inspire further, more focused and in-depth studies of women who fly." — Ethan Doyle White, Time and Mind

"Young's cross-cultural, multi-period, multidisciplinary and comparative approach to the evidence for flying women successfully introduces disciplinary specialists to examples of the concept of airborne women within cultures or time periods that they probably would not usually investigate. It is also suitable for a general readership. The many examples of flying women examined in this book persuasively demonstrate that the trope of the aerial female, in various manifestations, is shared across religions and through time." — Caroline Tully, University of Melbourne, Reading Religion

"The strength of Women Who Fly is its broad sweep. Young consults sources that span multiple disciplines... [The book] is a good background resource for women's stud-ies projects, literary interpretations, and for an overview of historical representations of women who fly. Students and general readers will find it a baseline for deeper dives into religious and cultural symbols of women." — Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Nova Religio

"[Young's] method is encyclopaedic, [ ... ], and in Women Who Fly she has marshalled a wonderful gallery of flyers - a kind of panangelium - from cultures far and wide." —Marina Warner, London Review of Books

"Women Who Fly covers an enormous span of material, from ancient Indian goddesses and Valkyries to Wonder Woman and the very few women astronauts. But it reads like an adventure story, hundreds of individual adventures all seamlessly united by Serinity Young's extraordinary wide vision of the history of folklore and mythology. An inspiring and fascinating book."—Wendy Doniger, author of The Ring of Truth: and Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry

"From Sanskrit myth to the Wonder Woman comics, from Dante's guide in Paradise (the winged Beatrice) to Freud's interpretation of dreams of flying, Young masterfully weaves together a global history of women fleeing-by flying-the constraints of patriarchy. Young's superb writing guides the reader through the worlds of flying souls, counter heroes, witches, and Amelia Earhart. Young's unique choice of subject matter, religious studies background, and feminist insight give us much to contemplate, as the characters described soar off the page to enlighten us in this incredibly innovative history of ideas."—Walter Penrose, Jr., author of Postcolonial Amazons: Female Masculinity and Courage in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit Literature

"Ranging widely through myth, religion, and iconography, this story of 'sky-going females' highlights supernatural and human women who chafed at being bound by earthly constraints. Placed against this sweeping backdrop, the aspirations of modern aviators such as Amelia Earhart and Sally Ride are part of an ongoing power struggle between the sexes over who gets to fly, literally and symbolically." —Susan Ware, author of Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism

"[A] powerful and thought-provoking book... Highly recommended for readers of women's studies, gender studies, and mythology and comparative religion." —Library Journal

"... this provocative but convincing book certainly belongs on, or at least near, the shelf containing some of the most intellectually exhilarating books I know." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

"This is in many ways a joy of a book - certainly an unusual joy for an academic feminist book. Without ever resorting to the tedious or impenetrable jargon [...] it delivers a hard-hitting historical analysis in plain, but glowing English ... Every chapter of this book is an eye-opener..." —Lynn Pickett, Magonia Review of Books

From the Publisher

01/01/2018
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

Library Journal