SPINNING STRAW INTO GOLD

“What’s your favorite fairy tale?” is the opening line of this adult non-fiction book. Starting from that question, Joan Gould digs deep into the hidden meanings of fairy tales and myths to show what these beloved stories teach us about the patterns and meaning of women’s lives.

Spinning Straw Into Gold illuminates the stages of a modern woman’s life – including the author’s – as we move from Maiden to Matron to Crone.

“We are born to be changed,” the book tells us. “We are always on the move from one transformation to the next, whether we want to be transformed or not.”

One of the book’s themes is that these stories change their outer form as they travel through the centuries with us. “Cinderella” becomes My Fair Lady and Jane Eyre, but she also becomes Million Dollar Baby. In Pretty Woman, Cinderella’s dirt and ashes are translated into moral rather than physical squalor, while the rags she wears are replaced by the trashy clothes of a streetwalker. (Of course, rags come close to being fashionable these days.) “Beauty and the Beast” reappears on Broadway and on movie screens as the Phantom of the Opera or King Kong.