This study examines how feminist authors use myth to subvert patriarchal social systems. In order to answer this question, the specific literary strategies in the novels of two Francophone African and two German-speaking European women authors, Ken Bugul's "De l'autre côté du regard" (2003), Calixthe Beyala's "C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée" (1987), Ingeborg Bachmann's "Das Buch Franza" (1979) and Elfriede Jelinek's "Die Klavierspielerin" (1983), are analysed in a comparative perspective. This analysis starts from the ambivalent portrayal of women in mythology and addresses the question of the position, meaning and role of myth in literature and in the transmission of constructs such as gender and of power relations within society.