This is such a strong and important piece. I teach in an International School, and an assignment for Yr 9 students was how to use Drama in a social context. A group of Indian students took the story of Sita, and used it as an "allegory" to comment on domestic violence. So your essay really hit home for me. It's what Angela Carter did too, isn't it, with her re-imaginings of fairy tales. Thank you for posting!
Sita is one of the most significant icon, her story almost a token of currency, in justifying burning women alive on the pyre of their husband a couple century ago. The practice was named as ‘Sati’. The level of cruelty that pre modern women underwent due to these crooked myths and fairytales is unimaginable from our standpoint. But the modern retelling reshape narrative in a way that it frees the past without forgetting it. It is essential for collective healing!
Thanks to your student and thanks to you for seeing the significance of the power of myth 💜
Wow that sounds like such an impactful lesson! Thank you for challenging these myths with your students - that is so inspiring!
I really appreciate you spending such thoughtful time with Swarnali’s words. I was just blown away by this essay when she sent it over, what an honor to host it and these conversations!
Thank you Swarnali for your clarity in drawing out these threads. I have recently been thinking about how many of our cultural stories operate as warnings to ‘uppity’ women. And don’t get me started on the roles of the aged or disabled… I appreciated listening to your voice reading it too.
Yes yes yes! How many stories have been told to impart upon women that their emotional needs are a burden, that the space they occupy is a burden? And you’re so right, aging and disabled bodies are made to be villainous — as if that isn’t the outcome of bodies!
Thank you for spending such intentional time, Michelle! 💜
Thank you Michelle. You know I have always wondered why my mother retreats in silence when she is angry, now I know, now I understand that she has never seen an angry woman expressing her anger.
Interesting observation about silencing of anger. There is a French fairy tale by Perrault about ‘Diamonds and Toads’ that is purported to be about kindness, but which even as a child I suspected was really about feminine anger. https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamonds_and_Toads
I’m trying to think of any mouthy female in myth or fairy story who survived intact? Hera in Greek myth survived at the price of being publicly cheated on by Zeus is as good as it gets.
This was a contributing factor to Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies -- she was so sick of seeing only strong women and hearing of only weak ones, so she created a world where women could be every role and thrive doing so. She was seeing a society crumbling around her and thought 'let me introduce a potential new world order that doesn't diminish women.'
Women have been doing this for so, so long. We deserve to know them. I so appreciate you both for this conversation.
Wow! This is so inspiring! Thank you for writing. My work also seeks to change the narratives of women who were victims of male violence and patriarchal rhetoric during the 17th century Scottish witch hunts.
I am also interested in reimagining Goddesses in my art practice. Working with Ivy (a common wild plant in Scotland) for example, I imagine a powerful Engulfing Goddess.
Thanks again, I'm applying for a long artists residency and I have been wondering what to focus on. I think Goddess imagery is the thing!
Your work sounds incredible and so important! By chance have you read Melusine; Or, The Noble History of Lusignan? Melusine is said to have hailed from Scotland, and the way her and the women in the story provide the vehicle for the men to acquire power is a really interesting case study from the 14th study. The women are all written in this same misogynistic way, but without the women, the men would have no position. It’s so curious!
I so appreciate you spending such thoughtful time with Swarnali’s incredible words. Thank you for your presence 💜
This is powerful work. The way you strip the piety off Sita and Draupadi and let their wounds breathe makes it impossible to keep seeing them as static icons. You are showing how myth, like scripture, is an active technology for shaping power, and how reclaiming it is an act of sabotage against the very architecture that held it up.
What stays with me most is your insistence that survival does not mean silence. That is the same fault line I see in the Magdalene tradition, where women are framed as pure because they endured violence without overturning the tables. The real threat to empire was always the woman who speaks, names, and refuses to vanish.
Absolutely the ubiquitous nature of these myths makes it even more relevant throughout the world. Women have always been taught silence means grace, and tolerance means strength. But not anymore, we are naming it, changing it
Right? When Swarnali sent this essay over I was just blown away. So powerful! Thank you so much for spending such thoughtful time with it. I’m grateful!
You’re absolutely right about the myths around Mary! I often look at the strict Eve/Mary dichotomy medieval women were expected to operate within. I think of how women such as Marguerite Porete who were burned at the stake for refusing to acquiesce their realized ideals of a more tolerant Christianity. So many women along the way have challenged these narratives, yet the presupposition of patriarchy often keeps their names from our memories.
WHEW, Swarna, this essay alone is epic. I feel like I've been rewired just through reading it, the way I felt reading Women Who Run With the Wolves. There is so much to echo here, and cheer on, and mostly I want to thank both you and Kate for sharing your gifts. You have such a voice, such knowledge and insight and narrative skill. Reading your words awakens my own courage, reminds me that, for women to reclaim our lives and potential and power, for ourselves and billions of others, we cannot back down out of fear.
"These are not weak women; they are volcanoes forced to whisper." ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
Niaaa!! My dearest sister you always get it right. Women who run with the wolves is such a groundbreaking experience. I feel honoured that you evoke Este’s work as a companion to mine. I can only dream to be as wise and relevant as her.
I am grateful to have brought the sparks of my own awakening to your heart, you teach me as much through your brilliant work, my sister. 💜
We need to reclaim what is truly ours because we won’t be handed it down. Retelling our stories like we own it is the starting point. That’s how myths are unmade.
You already ARE as wise and relevant as Estes! You really are. I go back to some of your writing again and again, but especially those in which you unravel older stories, brush a hand across the creases that have become brittle through their centuries pressed tight in a dark chest of similar cloths. Your writing and thinking MATTER, my friend.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything Antonia said, Swarnali. Your words, the way you weave them, they MATTER in this historical moment so very much. I am so grateful to have the honor to receive them.
I learn so much from both of you incomparable wise-women.💜
I am so much more complete than I was upon waking this morning. Your essay educated me, inspired me, enveloped me in love and understanding, validated me and my beliefs, and rejuvenated my hope giving me the courage to carry on knowing we are not alone. I honor you.
This is deeply touching and beautiful. Thank you appreciating and putting it in these many words. When I wrote this essay I didn’t think it will evoke so much solidarity and make people feel seen. Things like this inspire me to keep pursing the world of words. 💜
Great piece. I’m reading the unabridged Ramayana for the first time this summer and one of my favorite moments so far has been in the Aranya Kanda, when Sita meets a female rishi. The two women are just very in awe of each other and it’s a rare glimpse of female solidarity even in a mostly male-centered text 💜
I love that so much! This make me think of Christine de Pizan writing of Jehanne d'Arc as an older woman, after having written so much in favor of women's power then all of a sudden this young woman steps onto the scene and propels France forward. She was in such awe and it is dripping from every line in her poem dedicated to the Maid. Female rivalry is a patriarchal myth and perpetuated by the patriarchy to keep us distracted. I love that Swarnali's piece found you in this moment. 💜💜 Thank you for spending your precious time here!
Kate I can’t tell you how much I swear by this sentence you just said “Female rivalry is a patriarchal myth and perpetuated by the patriarchy to keep us distracted”. I hate to see modern fantasy writers building a medieval world where women are just at each other’s throat all the time. I don’t think ancient societies functioned in that manner. This is exactly what I mentioned in my witch series also. Female rivalry is a patriarchal myth!
Absolutely, the glimpses are there but deliberately lost in the manufactured and commercially consumed versions. So grateful you found this precious moment within the myth. 💜
I agree, but I also think these stories are more than that. To me, they are not only cultural maps but can also map personal experience-- as the one can so easily bleed into, and inform the other. You state this well in the essay in your remarks about a kind of complicity that can exist in partnership with dominance.
Your essay will stay with me for a long time, and I'm happy with that :).
I am not very familiar with these myths, but I can certainly hear the echoes with the myths I grew up with, and see the need to speak new narratives into our world. Thank you.
Thank you for spending time with this. It is truly is fascinating, how these stories reverberates through geographically separated traditions and cultures. Literally informs us why these retellings are important. These models of oppression has done so much damage to our foremothers and still holding the same power over us!
I can’t tell you how much joy I felt on seeing your newsletter in my inbox. I am so happy to be in your orbit of adoration yet again dear. And I am deeply listening to your words whenever you are ready to share them.
Thank you for the warm welcome back to Substack. I am so grateful to be inspired by the way in which you weave words that contain tenderness wrapped in strength.
It warms my heart to see such a collaboration between two powerful woman I so admire. I'm coming late to this piece. It appeared while I was away on a road trip, finding more stories of the myths of the patriarchy, so I bookmarked it to read when I settled back at home, which is now.
Thank you for spending your precious time with our words, John! You’ve been such a constant support on this platform and I am so grateful to be connected to both you and Swarnali 💜
Thank you John for taking time out for this. I hope you had a pleasant trip. I am waiting to read about your explorations.
I am glad you are labelling them as ‘myths of patriarchy’ because they genuinely are. If women wrote these stories, I am sure truth will be different and so will be the character arcs.
Thank you so much for spending your time here, Debbie! I am so grateful. When Swarnali sent this over, I was blown away—no more will we allow our sisters to be ‘volcanoes forced to whisper.’
Thank you for writing it. It really puts the cultural background to all those horrific violence against women stories we see in the media. We have to change the narrative. 💕
A deeply fascinating read as always Swarnali - "let this essay be a disruption. Let it be a myth unmade," - I think all your writing is a magnificent disruption and I'm so grateful to read it :)
Oh my gosh I so agree with you, Jonathan! Swarnali’s writing is always exactly what I need — countering those internal assumptions, those external pressures. I’m so grateful to receive her words! Thank you for spending time with them 💜💜
This is such a strong and important piece. I teach in an International School, and an assignment for Yr 9 students was how to use Drama in a social context. A group of Indian students took the story of Sita, and used it as an "allegory" to comment on domestic violence. So your essay really hit home for me. It's what Angela Carter did too, isn't it, with her re-imaginings of fairy tales. Thank you for posting!
Sita is one of the most significant icon, her story almost a token of currency, in justifying burning women alive on the pyre of their husband a couple century ago. The practice was named as ‘Sati’. The level of cruelty that pre modern women underwent due to these crooked myths and fairytales is unimaginable from our standpoint. But the modern retelling reshape narrative in a way that it frees the past without forgetting it. It is essential for collective healing!
Thanks to your student and thanks to you for seeing the significance of the power of myth 💜
Wow that sounds like such an impactful lesson! Thank you for challenging these myths with your students - that is so inspiring!
I really appreciate you spending such thoughtful time with Swarnali’s words. I was just blown away by this essay when she sent it over, what an honor to host it and these conversations!
Thank you Swarnali for your clarity in drawing out these threads. I have recently been thinking about how many of our cultural stories operate as warnings to ‘uppity’ women. And don’t get me started on the roles of the aged or disabled… I appreciated listening to your voice reading it too.
Yes yes yes! How many stories have been told to impart upon women that their emotional needs are a burden, that the space they occupy is a burden? And you’re so right, aging and disabled bodies are made to be villainous — as if that isn’t the outcome of bodies!
Thank you for spending such intentional time, Michelle! 💜
Thank you Michelle. You know I have always wondered why my mother retreats in silence when she is angry, now I know, now I understand that she has never seen an angry woman expressing her anger.
Interesting observation about silencing of anger. There is a French fairy tale by Perrault about ‘Diamonds and Toads’ that is purported to be about kindness, but which even as a child I suspected was really about feminine anger. https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamonds_and_Toads
That’s insane.. the connection is uncanny. Thank you for sharing!
I’m trying to think of any mouthy female in myth or fairy story who survived intact? Hera in Greek myth survived at the price of being publicly cheated on by Zeus is as good as it gets.
This was a contributing factor to Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies -- she was so sick of seeing only strong women and hearing of only weak ones, so she created a world where women could be every role and thrive doing so. She was seeing a society crumbling around her and thought 'let me introduce a potential new world order that doesn't diminish women.'
Women have been doing this for so, so long. We deserve to know them. I so appreciate you both for this conversation.
Wow! This is so inspiring! Thank you for writing. My work also seeks to change the narratives of women who were victims of male violence and patriarchal rhetoric during the 17th century Scottish witch hunts.
I am also interested in reimagining Goddesses in my art practice. Working with Ivy (a common wild plant in Scotland) for example, I imagine a powerful Engulfing Goddess.
Thanks again, I'm applying for a long artists residency and I have been wondering what to focus on. I think Goddess imagery is the thing!
This sounds like a novel subject matter to study under feminist lens. More power to you in your pursuit 💜
Your work sounds incredible and so important! By chance have you read Melusine; Or, The Noble History of Lusignan? Melusine is said to have hailed from Scotland, and the way her and the women in the story provide the vehicle for the men to acquire power is a really interesting case study from the 14th study. The women are all written in this same misogynistic way, but without the women, the men would have no position. It’s so curious!
I so appreciate you spending such thoughtful time with Swarnali’s incredible words. Thank you for your presence 💜
I can trace my patriarchal line back to 17th Century Scotland. I had no idea about the witch hunts. Thanks for that.
Wow. Thank you for offering this work and skill.
Kathryn, I’m so grateful to you for spending such thoughtful time!! Thank you. 💜
💜💜💜
This is powerful work. The way you strip the piety off Sita and Draupadi and let their wounds breathe makes it impossible to keep seeing them as static icons. You are showing how myth, like scripture, is an active technology for shaping power, and how reclaiming it is an act of sabotage against the very architecture that held it up.
What stays with me most is your insistence that survival does not mean silence. That is the same fault line I see in the Magdalene tradition, where women are framed as pure because they endured violence without overturning the tables. The real threat to empire was always the woman who speaks, names, and refuses to vanish.
Absolutely the ubiquitous nature of these myths makes it even more relevant throughout the world. Women have always been taught silence means grace, and tolerance means strength. But not anymore, we are naming it, changing it
Right? When Swarnali sent this essay over I was just blown away. So powerful! Thank you so much for spending such thoughtful time with it. I’m grateful!
You’re absolutely right about the myths around Mary! I often look at the strict Eve/Mary dichotomy medieval women were expected to operate within. I think of how women such as Marguerite Porete who were burned at the stake for refusing to acquiesce their realized ideals of a more tolerant Christianity. So many women along the way have challenged these narratives, yet the presupposition of patriarchy often keeps their names from our memories.
Thank you for sharing 🙏
🙏
💜💜
I enjoyed reading this fascinating essay about the links between myth and patriarchy.
Swarnali’s words blew me right open - just so powerful! Thank you for spending time with her words! 💜💜
Thank you 🙏
WHEW, Swarna, this essay alone is epic. I feel like I've been rewired just through reading it, the way I felt reading Women Who Run With the Wolves. There is so much to echo here, and cheer on, and mostly I want to thank both you and Kate for sharing your gifts. You have such a voice, such knowledge and insight and narrative skill. Reading your words awakens my own courage, reminds me that, for women to reclaim our lives and potential and power, for ourselves and billions of others, we cannot back down out of fear.
"These are not weak women; they are volcanoes forced to whisper." ❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
Niaaa!! My dearest sister you always get it right. Women who run with the wolves is such a groundbreaking experience. I feel honoured that you evoke Este’s work as a companion to mine. I can only dream to be as wise and relevant as her.
I am grateful to have brought the sparks of my own awakening to your heart, you teach me as much through your brilliant work, my sister. 💜
We need to reclaim what is truly ours because we won’t be handed it down. Retelling our stories like we own it is the starting point. That’s how myths are unmade.
You already ARE as wise and relevant as Estes! You really are. I go back to some of your writing again and again, but especially those in which you unravel older stories, brush a hand across the creases that have become brittle through their centuries pressed tight in a dark chest of similar cloths. Your writing and thinking MATTER, my friend.
I wholeheartedly agree with everything Antonia said, Swarnali. Your words, the way you weave them, they MATTER in this historical moment so very much. I am so grateful to have the honor to receive them.
I learn so much from both of you incomparable wise-women.💜
💜💜💜💜
That you two have met and collaborated is a gift to us all!
You must surely know that it means the world to me when you say that Nia. 💜💜💜
I speak only the truth 🕯️🧚
🧚🏽♀️💜🕯️
I am so much more complete than I was upon waking this morning. Your essay educated me, inspired me, enveloped me in love and understanding, validated me and my beliefs, and rejuvenated my hope giving me the courage to carry on knowing we are not alone. I honor you.
This is the type of note that fuels a writers soul, my goodness! Thank you for spending time with Swarnali’s powerful, powerful words.
You are not alone. 💜
This is deeply touching and beautiful. Thank you appreciating and putting it in these many words. When I wrote this essay I didn’t think it will evoke so much solidarity and make people feel seen. Things like this inspire me to keep pursing the world of words. 💜
Great piece. I’m reading the unabridged Ramayana for the first time this summer and one of my favorite moments so far has been in the Aranya Kanda, when Sita meets a female rishi. The two women are just very in awe of each other and it’s a rare glimpse of female solidarity even in a mostly male-centered text 💜
I love that so much! This make me think of Christine de Pizan writing of Jehanne d'Arc as an older woman, after having written so much in favor of women's power then all of a sudden this young woman steps onto the scene and propels France forward. She was in such awe and it is dripping from every line in her poem dedicated to the Maid. Female rivalry is a patriarchal myth and perpetuated by the patriarchy to keep us distracted. I love that Swarnali's piece found you in this moment. 💜💜 Thank you for spending your precious time here!
Kate I can’t tell you how much I swear by this sentence you just said “Female rivalry is a patriarchal myth and perpetuated by the patriarchy to keep us distracted”. I hate to see modern fantasy writers building a medieval world where women are just at each other’s throat all the time. I don’t think ancient societies functioned in that manner. This is exactly what I mentioned in my witch series also. Female rivalry is a patriarchal myth!
Thank you, sisters! 🧚
Niaaaaa! 🤗🤗🤗
Absolutely, the glimpses are there but deliberately lost in the manufactured and commercially consumed versions. So grateful you found this precious moment within the myth. 💜
Wonderful. Worthy of re-reading, re-telling, and of holding onto in order to assist in the re-forming of one's own personal, and cultural myths.
I so agree. Swarnali’s words knocked me out of my seat when she sent them over. So powerful. So necessary!
Thank you for spending such intentional time 💜💜
Thank you for affirming. I insist that these stories are literal cultural maps.
I agree, but I also think these stories are more than that. To me, they are not only cultural maps but can also map personal experience-- as the one can so easily bleed into, and inform the other. You state this well in the essay in your remarks about a kind of complicity that can exist in partnership with dominance.
Your essay will stay with me for a long time, and I'm happy with that :).
So true, they are mirrors to inner psyche of both the individual and the collective. Thank you, your presence and attention means so much to me 💜
I am not very familiar with these myths, but I can certainly hear the echoes with the myths I grew up with, and see the need to speak new narratives into our world. Thank you.
Thank you for spending time with Swarnali’s words, Hans! You’re so right — I too can hear the echos.
Thank you for spending time with this. It is truly is fascinating, how these stories reverberates through geographically separated traditions and cultures. Literally informs us why these retellings are important. These models of oppression has done so much damage to our foremothers and still holding the same power over us!
Thank you - you've said so much that needs to be said.
Thank you for spending time with it Kristi 💜
As always, Swarnali, your words strike like a beautiful lightning bolt—-strong, poetic, and raw truth.
One of my favorite lines; “These are not weak women; they are volcanoes forced to whisper.”
I can’t tell you how much joy I felt on seeing your newsletter in my inbox. I am so happy to be in your orbit of adoration yet again dear. And I am deeply listening to your words whenever you are ready to share them.
Thank you for the warm welcome back to Substack. I am so grateful to be inspired by the way in which you weave words that contain tenderness wrapped in strength.
I only have gratitude for your compassion 💜
It warms my heart to see such a collaboration between two powerful woman I so admire. I'm coming late to this piece. It appeared while I was away on a road trip, finding more stories of the myths of the patriarchy, so I bookmarked it to read when I settled back at home, which is now.
Thank you, both of you. 🙏
Thank you for spending your precious time with our words, John! You’ve been such a constant support on this platform and I am so grateful to be connected to both you and Swarnali 💜
Thank you John for taking time out for this. I hope you had a pleasant trip. I am waiting to read about your explorations.
I am glad you are labelling them as ‘myths of patriarchy’ because they genuinely are. If women wrote these stories, I am sure truth will be different and so will be the character arcs.
Powerful, chilling, yet essentially empowering. We must reclaim our stories.
Thank you so much for spending your time here, Debbie! I am so grateful. When Swarnali sent this over, I was blown away—no more will we allow our sisters to be ‘volcanoes forced to whisper.’
May sisters be “Volcanoes that never forget to rage”.. love you Kate ❤️🔥
Love you!! 💜💜
Thank you for reading this. Yes reclamation is empowerment. We shall tell our own stories 💜
Thank you for writing it. It really puts the cultural background to all those horrific violence against women stories we see in the media. We have to change the narrative. 💕
A deeply fascinating read as always Swarnali - "let this essay be a disruption. Let it be a myth unmade," - I think all your writing is a magnificent disruption and I'm so grateful to read it :)
Thank you Jonathan! You are always so kind and open hearted towards my work. 💜
Well, it's very easy to be so :)
Oh my gosh I so agree with you, Jonathan! Swarnali’s writing is always exactly what I need — countering those internal assumptions, those external pressures. I’m so grateful to receive her words! Thank you for spending time with them 💜💜
Thank you Kate. I should have said that earlier, my apologies, got carried away :)