elentarri 's review for:

Women Who Run With The Wolves: Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

0.5

slow-paced

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This book was apparently a best seller in its day, and from some of the reviews on Goodreads, was life changing and life saving for some.  However, my experience with this book was the opposite. After finally completing this book, I spent 30 seconds contemplating the possible abrasiveness of the paper, and also its potential to clog up the plumbing.

I was excited when I got hold of this book.  I have enjoyed reading a few other books that analyse myths, fairytales and legends and their related cultures, and was hoping for something to add to that.  But you won't find anything even vaguely scientific or academic in this book.  There were a number of aspects in the contents of this book that just rubbed me the wrong way.  Her assertions just didn't connect to me and the poorly written nature of the book just irritated me the more I read it.  Approximately 3 chapters in, I began waiting for Estés to break out the crystal ball and healing crystals, wave sage smudge sticks around, and draw a magic circle to invoke the Feminine Divine.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a Jungian psychoanalyst.  This book is an attempt at the idea of viewing fairytales and myths through the lens of Jungian Feminist Psychology with the aim of empowering women through some sort of Wild Woman archetype.  In this regard, I believe Estés has failed.

The book is written in tortured, cryptic, florid, overly-verbose prose in various shades of psychedelic purple.  The writing is pretentious and highly repetitive - within chapters and across chapters, and even within the same sentence.  The long strings of adjectives and verbs convinces me that at least one thesaurus did not survived the writing of this book before the ink rubbed off and the pages fell out!  The elaborate writing style makes gleaning any meaning out of the pompous, convoluted and obtuse text a chore.

Then whole thing consists of rambling psychological metaphors that are allegorical in nature.  The overblown, hyperbolic assertions sounds vaguely intellectual, until you examine what Estés is actually writing.  Then, a lot of it is nonsensical.  The worlds sounds pretty and evocative, but in the end lack substance and meaning - five hundred pages of ink and murdered tree that doesn't say very much and obscures whatever message Estés was hoping to convey.  It's the job of the author to convey and argue their thesis or ideas in a convincing and logical manner, not to leave the reader guessing and making assumptions about what they think the author meant.

The whole book consists of unsubstantiated statements made by the author, mixed in with dizzingly circular reasoning.  Author opinions are stated as facts.  I am left assuming Estés was stretching her imagination and making things up as she went along, because she doesn't state where she gets her assertions from, or why she thinks what she does, or why she interprets the tales the way she does in one story but differently in another, or provides any evidence for anything written in the book, or even looks at other anthropological or folklorist treatise on the subject.  There is also no internal consistency.  Her superficial interpretations (I cannot use the word analysis because there is none) of tales is similar to watching clouds - you can see whatever you like in them and make them mean whatever you want them to mean.  The other annoying aspect is that Estés admits to re-writing half the fairytales to accommodate her interpretations.  She doesn't discuss or compare female archetype myths/tales from different cultures, but just combines various tales she has chosen and that suit her purposes for that specific chapter, without differentiating what was added or explaining why she attributed specific meanings to various aspects or symbolism of the story and ignoring others.  In Estés Jungian pseudo-psychoanalysis, the links between the tales provided and the "Wild Woman" archetype were weak or circumstantial, and many came across as contrived.

I got the distinct impression that Estés does not like women very much and considers them pathetic, the weaker-sex, lacking agency, and always victims.  She keeps using terms that paint women as uncivilized, savage, feral, half-rabid, and animilistic. In chapter 8 she out-right labels women as feral.  I wonder if she realises that feral animals are considered a menace and get shot/poisoned?  Has she ever considered that animals are usually considered sub-human and inferior to humans and now she is painting woman with that same brush?  Does she realise woman have been (and some still are) treated like animals or less-than?  I don't think she thought this comparison with animals through properly.  Especially her continual comparison of wolves and women.

Estés also has this habit of generalising women and their experiences, and lumping them all together.  "All women..." is a frequent phrase that ignores the individuality of women with different life experiences, socio-economic backgrounds, cultures, personalities, and interests.  The author takes universal human experiences and implies that it is only applicable to her definition of women.  She stereotypes women and simplifies their experiences.  Estés is also, according to this book, of the opinion that the only way women can be complete is to commune with the "Wild Woman", be creative, become a mother, and rely on intuition.  What about those women who don't want children, can't have children, or have the maternal instinct of a rock?  What about those women who are analytical and logical, rather than "creative" (paint, sculpt and write are the examples used) or intuitive?  Estés also doesn't pay much attention to social and financial issues that may affect women.  I get the impression Estés expects women to just get up and wonder off into the desert to find their "Wild Woman", creativity and intuition.  Never mind that we have to put food on the table and a roof over our heads, or other obligations.  There was nothing in this book that spoke to the analytical, logical, civilized me. As for the Wild Woman inside - she was baring her fangs throughout.

I'm actually appalled at how many people think this book is so great.  Even if you got something out of it (all power to you!), or thought the ideas were new and exciting in 1995, the book is still written poorly, lacks internally consistency, is highly repetitive, includes circular arguments, and the author provides nothing to back up her assertions.  I also don't see how promoting woman as instinctual wild animals helps with the feminist agenda.  As another reviewer wrote: "A poorly written book accepted and revered by a whole community makes you question the judgement of that community."

On the other hand, maybe Estes' book would make more sense if I munched on some magic mushrooms?  Maybe I really am a savage troglodyte and all this mental acrobatics and psyche stuff is beyond me.  This book was a thoroughly disappointing, and potentially coma inducing, reading experience.

PS: No thesaurus was harmed in the writing of this review.