Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986), Mary Daly (1928–2010) and Donna Haraway (1946–) are three prominent feminist theorists, all of whom assign an immense – yet often overlooked – importance to phenomena they themselves call myth (fr. mythe). By examining how these theorists conceptualize the nature and function of the various phenomena thus named, the present study offers new insights into their most influential works and overall feminist thought.

To conduct a productive analysis of Beauvoir’s, Daly’s and Haraway’s writings on myth it is necessary to situate these within a wider and hitherto unexplored context: one that encompasses large parts of the nebulous academic field known as mythology (i.e., the study of myth). This recontextualization, in turn, enables insights of a more general nature. One the one hand, it reveals how mythology has served a resource, from which Beauvoir, Daly and Haraway have drawn to articulate arguments and analyses of great significance for the historical development of feminist theory. On the other hand, it makes visible that the same feminist arguments and analyses at times challenge the very premises on which much modern mythology rests. Thus, this study sheds new light not only on the work of these individual theorists, but on the (entwined) histories of both feminist theory and mythology. By demonstrating the difference a feminist perspective on myth might make, it also helps clarify the value of feminist theory to mythology’s future.