The Feminine and the Folkloresque
In a significant portion of feminist criticism in its populist interpretation, there is an ongoing sense of wanting to shape feminine characters from legends, folklore, and history into models for a kind of feminism and perceived empowerment more closely associated with twenty-first-century understandings of the feminine than those directly connected to social, historical, or cultural sources. This backcasting and interpretation changes these characters into ones that would better suit a modern set of beliefs through syncretism and the creation not of folkloric or cultural beliefs but of a folkloresque sense of the subject.