Women and Tradition: a Neglected Group of Folklorists - Book Review

Edited by Carmen Blacker and Hilda Ellis Davidson. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2001. 285 pp. Illus. $50.00 (hbk). ISBN 0-89089-739-5

While this book purports to be a history of women in folklore studies, it is equally a history of the development of folklore itself--its progression from an amateur study into a discrete discipline for academic study and research--and a history of The Folklore Society. It also introduces modern-day folklorists, their voices animating the portraits of their predecessors. As such it has an interesting cross-temporal feel; one wonders whether, one day, the authors of these essays will themselves be the subjects of a sequel. The book comprises a series of short biographies of prominent Anglophone women folklorists from the 1700s to the 1900s, of whom Katharine Briggs and Zora Neale Hurston are the most famous. These two are better known to the general public as authors and it is interesting to view them from this alternative angle, as folklorists rather than writers.

We gain an insight into the surprising lives of women for whom the investigation of folklore was often an act of rebellion, addiction, or obsession. Each life discussed here is, in its own way spectacular, a far cry from the popular image of the Victorian female folklorist as a harmless, if slightly dotty, amateur sitting at home waxing lyrical about fairies and Morris dancing. Often, the study of folklore seems to have been a "selfish" choice of rigorous academic career over the traditional women's role of wife and mother. In all cases, it represents a certain rebellious or non-conformist tendency, as an interest in folklore necessarily crosses boundaries of class and race, which were more marked in previous centuries and decades. Examples include Alice Gomme's academic independence from her husband, in a marriage described by Georgina Boyes as "a relationship which did not preclude their exerting individual influence on the committees of a number of learned societies and independent pursuit of major research projects;" and Mary Alicia Owen, who, says Lauren Greenwood, in the late nineteenth century "defied the social expectations of a well-born young woman, wandering freely among the cabins of former slaves and the villages of Musquakie Indians" to collect their lore and beliefs. As for Zora Neale Hurston, she needs an encyclopedia to contain her--an essay can only be a starting point.

There is plenty of interest here, including fascinating details that would appeal to even the non-folklorist. I have only one major problem with this book, which is the Introduction. It suffers in its opening pages from a series of sexist generalisations that, if I had been reading it out of casual interest, would have made me put the book down and thus miss out on a worthwhile collection of essays. The reader is faced with assertions such as: "Women are well known to be keepers and preservers of tradition. They remember stories and legends and anecdotes passed down to them by their grandparents, while many are also renowned as storytellers. Less well recognised are their ability of collectors of stories [sic] and their interest in the experiences and memories of others. Women possess a special knack, compounded of tact and sympathy, of persuading old or shy people to tell what they recall ..." I cannot be the only female reader who longs to retort something along the lines of: "I'm not. I don't remember anything my grandmother told me. I can't tell a story to save my skin. I've never collected any stories. I have very little interest in the experiences and memories of others. I have no tact and I have no patience with old and shy people. And yet last time I checked I was still a woman."

For the introduction to a collection of essays about women who broke all the contemporary female stereotypes, this seems inappropriate. It is later followed by the unsupported reference to "women of the countryside, the natural preservers of tradition." But, paradoxically, the introduction goes on to stress the perseverance and strength female folklorists needed to go on studying in the face of opposition from other women who certainly who had no interest in preserving and remembering tradition, especially when it was not their own: "They had to contend with petulance and guilt-instilling prejudice, while sisters and devouring mothers tirelessly reminded them that their proper duty lay at home ... not allowed as a child to learn Irish, the language of savages, while Romani was viewed as the language of thieves and carriers of disease, and Dora Yates' mother locked her out when she got back late one night from a visit to the gypsies ... Christina Hole's grandmother deplored the little girl's habit of telling herself stories aloud." What asserts itself again and again in these lives is that, historically, the study of folklore has been an attempt to destroy prejudice against and gain recognition for minority groups, validating them by recognising their stories and their histories. This is a tradition continued by this book and so it is surprising that the introduction is not more sensitive to the content. On the whole, however, this is an entertaining and illuminating collection of biographies. My advice: skip the introduction and read the essays.