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redefined and thus written out of history altogether. As well as char­ting the progress of the actress through three formative periods, therefore, these well-researched and entertaining books can be seen as part of the necessary recovery of the

The Feminist Companion to Mythology Edited by Carolyne Larrington Pandora Press: London 1992, ISBN 0 04 4408501 £12.99 Pbk

Where do stories come from? The abundance of stories in The Feminist Companion to Mythology bedazzles and delights. The power of the story to shape the characters of its listen­ers, and the power of the listeners to reshape the story in the retelling, is at the hub of it. Women, in this case, are the characters andre-tellers, and the myths they examine are from the Near East, Europe, Asia, Oceania, America. Myth is defined by the anthology's editor, Carolyne Larring­ton, as the stock of stories that fea­ture the divine, but since contribu­tors survey folk-tale and ceremony featuring symbolism as real to the story-tellers as their own voices- in addition to legend and texts known to be historical - she concludes that myth's definition has to stretch. Myth is, rather, a continuum, a col­lection 'of a web of meanings'.

This is not a book that seeks to constellate the many into one - it is not looking to mould together all the various aspects of female mythic figures into a single 'great goddess'.

Although Emily Kearns' writing on Indian Hindu myths does look in detail at this phenomenon, since, in the words of one villager, the 'wor­ship of a goddess is considered to be worship of the goddess'. Female divinities powerful in their own right did not emerge in the Vedic texts until about the eighth century, and now, in contrast to the literally millions of local deities, there are three supreme divinities of pan-

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whole of women's history which will continue to redress the balance by providing a solid foundation on which to build for the future.

Rebecca D'Monte

Indian Hinduism, one of whom is the Goddess. Paradoxically, she is understood to be both lower in the hierarchy than the other two male gods and, on another, theological level, to be the highest of all, the 'ultimate reality'. Kearns shows that many of the goddesses are fierce and aggressive and portray values that are traditionally seen as masculine, assertive and active, including the Goddess herself. Without her, the great god Siva would be 'inert'. It is only because of the Goddess, who embodies the abstract value of sakti, or 'power of action, of differenti­ation', that Siva, the male god who represents 'undifferentiated, in­active, Existence', is empowered to give shape to the world. Yet the result, our actual, manifold, particu­larized world, the world of many things, is also yet another manifes­tation of the Goddess, in one of her incarnations, this time as illusion or maya. Kearns unfolds these intri­cacies carefully and clearly, laying out the mysteries of a mythology that to me, anyway, were previously locked away.

Contributors do not follow a single analytical framework - im­possible, apparently, with their diverse material and theoretical backgrounds- but do focus on letting us know what feminist scholars can say now about the female figures that appear in the myths of many countries, and what was and is the relationship of those figures to the societies that produced the myths. From this interchange, a suggestive range of questions emerges.

Among these is the question of whether Western gender-inscribed categories can be applied carte

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blanche. Does feminist ethnography itself run the risk of misunderstand­ing even as it seeks to transcribe and reinterpret? Some of the writers, particularly those on Mexican and South American myth, suggest this possibility. The Aztecs had been in power for less than a century when the Spanish arrived and while the Aztecs altered local mythic figures (Xochiquetzal, for example, was the 'most female of the Aztec goddesses' and from her vulva flowers and their scent were created) to suit their own belligerent, expansionist, sun­worshipping purposes- the Spanish impose upon them, in turn, their own Christian value system. Thus Xochiquetzal's femininity is 'con­taminated' by the Christian ethics of good and evil. The South American goddess Pachamamma is similarly reduced, not only when she is turned into the 'bad' pagan goddess (as op­posed to the 'good' Virgin), but also, in contemporary versions, when she is converted into an 'Earth Mother' figure. Her fertility is vastly more complex, compounded less of biologi­cal associations than of those of time and space, geography and history.

The writers describing the Aus­tralian Aboriginal women's cere­monial stories, have vowed to keep the details secret. To the women concerned, the sacredness of the myth is essential, defining their re­lationship to the landscape and to each other. Identity and landscape are mapped together.

Anecdotal information- such as the fact that 20 per cent of Eskimo children might be brought up by their families to identify with a gen­der different from their physiological sex, and thus to carry out the op­posite gender-specific role (a girl might be trained to become a hunter, for instance) - or that Maori men looked after male children, but not female - or that the grandmother's power in China within the family be­lied the subservience of her place in society - fascinating in itself, is here placed against the myths that

formulate and display the meaning of gender difference, and the way this is used to designate the antinomy be­tween nature/culture. On the other hand, history is re-examined to find out whether the actual lives of the queens of ancient Egypt reflected the autonomy and sexual equality of the goddesses of mythology.

The persistence of local deities conveying different stories of women's needs, work, dreams- such as the pagan spinner goddess whose ordinance, which lasted until the nineteenth century in Russia despite the introduction of Christianity some nine centuries earlier, justified women's continuing refusal to labour on Fridays - is contrasted with the myths of national high culture.

Female figures of great age, such as those in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, pieced together only last century from the cuneiform script on clay tables unearthed all over the Middle East, are reinterpreted, minus the previous patriarchal bias of the original translators, to stand forth in their greater power and glory. Whilst another as familiar and famous as the great patriarch him­self, the Hebrew Yhwh, is reintro­duced with 'His Female Comp­lements'. Athalya Brenner discovers the female and feminine aspects of the God in the Biblical text, as well as evidence for casting the patriarch in the role of Failed Father.

Twentieth-century feminist re­sourcing of myth - by the new god­dess religion, Wicca (which has been evolving in the West since the Sec­ond World War), by writers' coining new words, by poets' rewriting of myth, is discussed in the final sec­tion. Much of the retelling of myths is juicy and rich, such as the story of Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess, who was recently re-sighted by a mural painter - and no wonder, given her fiery exploits, her 'uncom­fortable combination of the female, the sexual, the powerful and the old'.

The attempt to create something out of nothing (Juliette Wood hunts

down the lacuna and false trails transformed into evidence for a Cel­tic mythology, showing they lead instead to a mythology about the Celts) is itself, of course, a fantasy, a myth. So, to those who would tell stories, and present new myths, the final contributor, Diane Purkiss, warns: 'it's more important to be

A Matter of Honour: Experiences of Turkish Women Immigrants Tahire Kocturk Zed Books Ltd: London and New Jersey 1992, ISBN 1 85649 075 0£29.95 Hbk; ISBN 1856490769£11.95 Pbk

Tahire Kocturk explains that her book is the result of an attempt to make the voices of immigrant Turkish women living in Western Europe heard in the face of 'well­meaning generalizations' and 'less friendly prejudices' - in other words, racism.

Muslim communities, like many other communities living in Western European societies, face individual and institutional racism. This book comes out at a time when fascist attacks on immigrants and refugees are on the increase and Western governments are facilitating further attacks by preparing the legislative ground. While refugee camps and the homes of Turkish immigrants are set on fire by fascists in Germany, the Young Conservatives of Britain dis­tribute stickers on the Continent bearing slogans such as 'No Drugs, Islam and Turkey in the EEC'.

Kocturk's book arose out of a study she conducted between 1986 and 1989 on 'Family and gender relations among Muslim immigrants in Sweden'. She conducted inter­views in the Stockholm and Upsala regions of Sweden, a country not necessarily typical of Western Europe. The information in the study is interesting and as implied by its title it is about a very specific

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wary and even ironic about the strat­egies available when none are fool­proof. Let the imagination fly, she suggests, we need all the stories we can get, but don't pretend that the string to the past can be completely cut free.

Marsha Rowe

section of immigrant women. She interviewed 49 women and 10 men and the interviewees are 'Turkish speaking adults from Anatolia with at least one marriage or engagement experience'. Single women, for in­stance, are not included in the sur­vey. It is, therefore, arguable how representative her sample study is of the 'experiences of Turkish women immigrants' as suggested in the title of the book.

Out of 130 pages, only 30 are devoted to the description and analy­sis of the study; the remaining 100 contain historical background infor­mation. Historical documents, how­ever, as described below are very much male-oriented and need to be re-studied from a woman's perspec­tive. The scope of her historical ac­count is also too wide and her analy­sis is flawed by generalizations.

The issues of immigrant women with Middle Eastern and Muslim backgrounds are quite difficult to discuss and such discussions are 'often ideologically charged' (Keddie, 1991). Anyone who wishes to discuss these issues will soon realise that while there are widespread preju­dices that need to be overcome the problems of Muslim women should not be ignored.

The book provides interesting information on Islam and the honour ethic. Kocturk points out that many 'Islamic' customs, such as veiling and seclusion, pre-date Islam in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. As in other areas, Islam generally follows the Judaeo-Christian tra­dition. All three religions profess that man is superior to woman.