PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Research Professor and a Senior Fellow at Harvard University. The editor of the Norton Critical Edition of The Classic Fairy Tales and The Annotated Brothers Grimm, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Our ur-narratives, Tatar shows, return again and again to the abuse and silencing of women, and the heroines she selects in myths, fairy tales, novels, television series, news stories and films use storytelling to 'rescue, restore, or fix things'. Starting with Philomela, who was raped and had her tongue cut out, Tatar reminds us that contemporary Philomelas are everywhere, only today we cut out their tongues with confidentiality agreements and by creating situations, as Ronan Farrow said of Harvey Weinstein, in which a woman's silence will benefit her more than speaking out ever could. -- Frances Wilson - Literary Review
