Here All Dwell Free: Stories to Heal the Wounded Feminine - Softcover

Nelson, Gertrud Muel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449907899 ISBN 13: 9780449907894

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1993

Synopsis

Every human being has both masculine and feminine characteristics, but because our civilization undervalues the Feminine, she hides within each individual and stands in need of healing. In Here All Dwell Free, Gertrud Mueller Nelson shows us how the wisdom of folk mythology offers us both the diagnosis of our ills and the healing prescription we seek for our feminine natures.
Nelson takes two Grimm's fairy tales and demonstrates how they refect the dilemma of modern women, and men, as they struggle to free and heal the feminine within their own personalities and their very culture. In "The Handless Maiden," a miller's daughter sacrifices her flesh-and-blood hands to preserve her father's material, mechanical world. In "Briar Rose," a princess is cursed by a forgotten mother-goddess to sleep, deathlike, until her dormant feminine nature is awakened.
In a mesmerizing interpretation of these two women and their passages to healing, Nelson shows us the difference between passivity and receptivity; the wounded healer and her spirituality; Earth as the wounded feminine; and the inner and outer synthesis of masculine and feminine polarities that must redeem the whole kingdom, so that all can live free. . .
"Superbly wise . . . A wonderful book which brings hope and healing to the urgency of our broken world."
Robert Johnson

About this title

From Library Journal

Nelson, author of To Dance with God (Paulist Pr., 1982) presents a mixture of Jungian and Christian interpretations of two classic fairy tales: "The Handless Maiden" and "Briar Rose." These fairy tales, says Nelson, help women understand and recover the devalued feminine in their inner and outer lives. Although information on men's recovery of their repressed feminine is included, this book is clearly aimed at a primarily female Christian audience. Two books which have similar theoretical content and will appeal to wider audiences are Madonna Kolbenschlag's Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye ( LJ 10/15/79) and Stephanie Demetrakopoulos's Listening to Our Bodies ( LJ 5/1/83).
- Lucy Patrick, Florida State Univ. Lib., Tallahassee
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0449907899
• ISBN 13: 9780449907894
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384