Reviving the Myth: The Wild Woman Archetype in the Works of American Women Writers

Abstract

The following book aims to explore the connection between Jungian theory of archetypes used by Clarissa Pinkola Estés in her work entitled Women Who Run With the Wolves and the literary work of American women writers. It seeks to investigate how the archetype of the wild woman taken from psychological studies manifests itself in the literary, and how female experience expressed in the literary form might be interpreted through the lens of fairy tales and fairy-tale motifs. The following book shows that the archetype of the wild woman can be traced in the works of American women writers and it is often used by authors that wish to depict women who follow their instinctive natures, who decide to be independent and free of various forms of oppression imposed on them, who are not afraid to accept or even celebrate their otherness.