THEORISING RETELLING: A STUDY OF

SELECTED RETOLD FAIRY TALES

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO

TILAK MAHARASHTRA VIDYAPEETH, PUNE

FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Ph.D.) IN ENGLISH

BY

ZEENAT KHAN

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

LATE DR. VIVEKANAND D PHADKE

AND

DR. CHITRA SREEDHARAN

FACULTY OF ARTS AND FINE ARTS

TILAK MAHARASHTRA VIDYAPEETH, PUNE

[ MARCH 2016 ]
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Unusual as it may sound but still I would like to begin on a note of apology to my
M Phil guide, former Head of the Pune University Department of English, my dear
teacher and above all a gentle, true well wisher, Dr P K Sinha. It was his heartfelt
wish that I pursue further research shortly after my M Phil in 1997. However my
priorities in life then were different and later I wanted to shift my focus to the study of
English language. But as time would have it, life took such a turn that twenty years
later I had to research the same area with one of Dr Sinha’s best students. Journey to
and through my Ph D has been full of hurdles and hardships. And in each distressing
moment I missed Dr Sinha and wished I had listened to his advice then. Hence this
apology to him for disobeying him and regrets for not being able to work with him.

I fondly remember my guide for Ph D, a very dear friend late Dr Vivekanand Phadke
who was mainly and prominently instrumental in getting me registered for Ph D. His
unconditional, timely support and encouragement alone could see me through this
project. It was his helping hand and an understanding consent that cleared my way to
availing the Teacher Research Fellowship. His calm and ever cooperative nature was
my solace and would make me positively hold on to my work in the most stressful
phases. I know not how I may thank Dr Phadke, but will carry deep within me a sense
of gratitude till I breathe my last. He indeed left me indebted for life.

Dr Phadke’s unfortunate, untimely departure was a severe blow. Without his guidance
and warm support I was like a drifting ship and was certain about the uncertainty of
completing the project. Just when the thought and possibility of giving up started
gripping me I was assigned Dr Chitra Sreedharan as my new guide. It was a very
hopeful turn in this journey. I had known Dr Chitra as my senior in the Pune
University Department of English. I was happy to meet her in a different role. For as a
Ph D guide in her I could see a sincere and disciplined academician who insisted on
quality and paid attention to timely assessment of the work despite her hectic schedule
at college. Above everything else I found in her an ever helping, understanding, gentle
human soul that mentored me whenever I needed emotional and mental support. She
may not be aware of this but I truly feel that with her patience, cool attitude and warm
guidance she actually led me by the finger to the completion of this project. But for
her I would never have been able to submit my thesis. This project brought us closer
as friends. Deep from the bottom of my heart I express sincere gratitude to her for
being my friend, philosopher and Guide. Thank you very much Chitra!

In a very special way I would like to thank my friends Kamalakar Bhat, Vandana
Bhagwat and Aarti Vani for their heartfelt support and willingness to help me by
providing books, articles and critical comments. Their sustained encouragement and
advice certainly contributed to the research.

I must thank the Principal of my college and members of the Management for
generously allowing me to avail myself of the Teacher Research Fellowship for three
years. I appreciate and acknowledge the immense value of the provision of this
Fellowship under FIP granted by the UGC. I am obliged to the UGC, Joint Secretaries
Dr Shrinivas, Dr Manoj Kumar and Dr Kawade as well as the staff that looks into the
matters under FIP for their assistance and timely actions in granting as well as
extending my Fellowship.

I also acknowledge with gratitude the sustained cooperation and encouragement

extended to me during the course of my research by Dr Shripad Bhat, Head of the
Dept of Sanskrit and Indological Studies, Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth. Special
thanks to my friend Dr Manjiri Bhalerao for her assistance and friendly advice.

I am obliged to the libraries I visited and the online book delivery services particularly
Infibeam and Amazon through whom I bought the books required for the work. E-
sources, JSTOR and Library Genesis Project have been immensely resourceful.
Thanks are due to Mr. Rajendra Pawatekar and Ashwini Graphics for technical
support.

I owe a lot to my family particularly my husband and children for their patient
encouragement and my father for his watchful interest in the progress of my work.
Indirect contribution of my sisters and well wishes from my brothers and friends too
need due acknowledgement. I thank them all deep from my heart. Without all these
this thesis would not have come to fruition.

Zeenat Khan
 ABSTRACT

The thesis ‘Theorising Retelling: A Study of Selected Retold Fairy Tales’ attempts to
explore a relatively less probed area of retold fairy tales. Considering the attraction
children and adults alike have for fairy tales and the impact these tales have and the
adults wish them to have on children and their upbringing it becomes imperative to
explore what values are really transmitted to children through the literature
supposedly composed for them.

The probe into and analysis of classic fairy tales brings one to an awareness that the
apparently fascinating fantastic world of fairy tales actually bulges with class, race
and gender stereotypes and a well rooted patriarchal value system. It also gives a
realisation of manipulation of this world of entertainment and enlightenment by the
adult world. The fact that children are exposed to fairy tales at an early age indeed is
important since it is the formative period in life and as such implicit messages of the
manipulated tales condition the process of socialisation and acculturation.

It is in this realisation about the possible hidden adult agenda particularly of retaining
and generating the patriarchal undemocratic worldview and status quo that re-
viewing, re-visioning and re-telling of fairy tales takes its origin. The retellings
present “a different view of the world … in a voice that has been customarily
silenced.” (Zipes, Don’t Bet…i) While attempting to break the illusions of the classic
tales these retellings invite their readers to confront the tales and relate them to their
own social contexts. The purpose of the retellings is to liberate – liberate the fairy tale
itself and its readers – from a conditioned mode of reception. For the purpose the
retellers acknowledge and manipulate the liberating, emancipatory potential of the
genre itself. They seem to manipulate this potential towards a more democratic and
egalitarian cause and make it meaningful by voicing suppression and authoritarianism
of all kind.

The present thesis argues in favour of such manipulation by the fairy tale retellings, of
the liberating potential of the fairy tale genre in order to replace the discriminating,
stereotypical worldview in it with an egalitarian one wherein human beings are
viewed and assessed sans the labels of gender, class, race and so on. For this purpose

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it aims and attempts to study selected retold fairy tales and justify the rationale with
which retellings are attempted. This aim is achieved in the conclusion derived at the
end that underlines the need to retell classical fairy tales to suit the standards and
contexts of the contemporary times and the democratic, humanitarian values of all
times.

With this aim the thesis introduces the present research topic and a review of the
literary material available on the concerned field in its Chapter I. This chapter
presents the development of fairy tale scholarship and sets the tone for the argument
made later in the thesis. Chapter II ‘Exploring Childhood and Children’s Literature,’
probes into the concepts in its title. Considering fairy tales in the context of these
concepts and vice-versa and the fact that fairy tales are manipulated by adults as a tool
of socialisation and for transmitting “accepted” social behavioural patterns, Chapter
III ‘Fairy Tales: Generators of Values and Stereotypes’ seeks to present the
stereotypical representation of gender, class, race etc in fairy tales in relation to
children’s social development. It ends with the justification of the rationale behind
retelling the classical tales in a new light. Chapter IV attempts a thorough analysis of
some retellings of the well-known ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Little Red Riding
Hood’ and ‘Snow White.’ For want of space and time required for the completion of
the present project, the analysis is restricted to an overall 25 retellings of the above
mentioned tales. Admitting the limited scope at the outset the Chapter justifies the
selection of the particular tales that are analysed. In the course of the textual analysis
of the retellings however the Chapter does present a critique of the traditional tales
strengthening the argument made in the earlier chapters regarding the rationale behind
fairy tale retelling and preparing ground for the final argument regarding the need for
continuous attempts at retelling fairy tales. Chapter V “Towards an Understanding
and a Better Acceptance of the Theory and Attempts of Retelling Fairy Tales”
undertakes to see and understand the critical and creative interactions in fairy tale
studies and logically leads to the conclusion that retelling the old tales to suit
contemporary and universal human experience and values is the need of all times.
Despite discomfort with and hesitation in acceptance of the retold tales, the attempts
at retelling should continue and improvise to suit the times.

As mentioned clearly in the thesis its scope is confined only to a few retold tales.
Retellings of a few famous tales of the Brothers Grimm alone have been considered.

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Further research could be undertaken on retellings of even lesser known tales by the
Grimms. Retellings of tales by Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen as well
could be separate research topics. Comparative analysis of fairy tales by these fairy
tale writers and their retellings too could be considered for thorough research.
Scholars in India could explore Indian fairy tales and their retellings as well as the
interaction of the Indian reader with classical fairy tales and their retellings.

Dealing with children and with the literature transmitted to them are our important
routine concerns. Hence the argument of the thesis regarding the adult awareness
about alert transmission of fairy tales to children and for this purpose, positive and
conscious acceptance of retold fairy tales, which uncover the prejudiced parochial
patriarchal value system and make us visualise an egalitarian democratic social set up
bears considerable relevance to modern society and times. If this study creates slight
ripples about this awareness and alertness in transmission of fairy tales to children, I
think, the purpose of the research would be served.

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 CONTENTS

Chapter I

Introduction 1

Chapter II 33

Exploring Childhood and Children’s Literature

Chapter III 65

Fairy Tales: Generators of Values and Stereotypes

Chapter IV 88

Reviewing Fairy Tales: Attempts at Fairy Tale Retellings

Chapter V 208

Towards an Understanding and a Better Acceptance

of the Theory and Attempts of Retelling Fairy Tales

Conclusion 268

Bibliography 272

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CHAPTER-I

Introduction
Here is an attempt to interweave chapter-wise progress of the present thesis with the
development of fairy tale scholarship simultaneously offering a review of and a
glimpse into the literature composed in this field.

The term fairy tale was first coined by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy in 1697 when she
entitled her first collection of tales ‘Les Contes de fees’ literally meaning “tales about
fairies.” She did not justify the use of the term ‘fairies’ for her stories. The English
translation of her collection ‘Tales of the Fairies’ was published in 1707 and the term
fairy tale became part of the common English usage only from 1750. As J R R
Tolkien points out in his essay, it is in the supplement to the Oxford English
Dictionary in 1750 that the first citation for “fairy tale” was included.1 There could be
found some stray references to the term before 1750, as for instance, in Sara
Fielding’s The Governess (1749)

Fairies strikingly made their appearance in literary fairy tales only in the late 17th
century in France. Until then the fairy tale had not established itself as a genre nor did
it bear this name. Giovan Francesco Straparola (1550) and Giambattista Basile (1634)
did not use the term fairy in the description of their stories. Some stray instances of
the early appearance of fairies could be cited in the early Italian tales. However it is
the French conteuses and salonnieres of the 17th century who made the fairies
prominent in literary tales.2

Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy in her 1690 novel published a tale “The Isle of Happiness”
in which she presents nymphs and a heavenly island bearing resemblance with fairies
and a fairyland. This became the first published literary tale. D’Aulnoy recited such
fairy tales in literary parlours and salons. Since then the term fairy tale became viral.
The salons and parlours in Italy, France, Spain and England witnessed creative
storytelling about fairies before their publication.

The term fairy tale was used more to announce “difference and resistance” (Zipes
224) since many writers started using it to signify “much more than tales about
fairies.” (Zipes 224) As Zipes maintains, “It can be objectively stated that there is no

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other period in the Western literary history when so many fairies like powerful
goddesses were the determining figures of most of the plots of the tales written by
women – and also by some men.” (Zipes 224) While recording reasons for the
predominance of fairies in marvellous tales and labelling of these tales as fairy tales,
Zipes brings to highlight the fact that the women fairy tale writers who were members
of private literary salons could use the storytelling pastime as a means of displaying
their unique abilities in a social milieu where women were extremely underprivileged.
Through the fairies they portrayed “their actual differences with the male writers and
their resistance to the conditions under which they lived, especially regulations that
governed manners and comportment in their daily routines within the French
civilisation process.” (Zipes, 224) The world of fairy tales and their creation remained
away from the religious and royal intervention. Hence in them these women could
express their desired alternatives. The salons thus nurtured fairy tales and their
perpetuation/ dissemination/ spread.

Fairy tales became “femino-centric,” necessarily a “female genre” of the 17th

century.3 They portrayed a fashionable secular society, its luxury and dependence on
the powers of fairies and other supernatural beings. This was in direct contrast with
the Christian outlook and its preachers like Louis XIV’s wife who staunchly professed
the Christian mode of living. The Italian opera impacted the French fairy tale writers.
Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy particularly mimicked certain aspects of it in her fairy
tales. This led to the development of divertissement – the unusual entertainment
known as feerie which originated from the court ballets of 16th and 17th centuries.
Divertissement later included ballets, theatre, games and so on, which became very
common in the court of Louis XIV in the latter half of the 17th century. The fairy tale
operas were subversive; the fairies and their supernatural abilities could be made tools
to comment on the court’s religiosity and misogyny.

One more reason for the predominant presence of fairies in fairy tales by women
writers, as recorded by Zipes, is the dependence of these women writers on midwives
and nannies before, during and after childbirth. The salonnieres in their oral and
literary fairy tales assigned this role to the fairies and fairy like godmothers and not to
any goddess or religious Christian entity. Fairies in the tales are shown to predict
corruption or cast a spell of infertility. They provide or refuse help to the delivering
mother. They attend the birth scene; forecast the child’s future and shower

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benevolence or malevolence. The queens and princesses are shown to invoke not gods
and goddesses but fairies to beget a child. Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s fairies as
midwives and godmothers with supernatural powers could be traced back to Greco-
Roman mythology and French customs regarding bearing and rearing of children. The
way in which fairy tales represented fairies in their tales had obvious relevance to the
lives of the women writers, the conteuses.

According to Zipes another important reason why these women writers emphatically
presented fairies in their tales was “because they were steeped in the lore of fairies
and appealed to them out of protest against the Church and the state.” (Zipes 229)
Study of the symbolic significance and function of fairies and fairy tales necessitates
the understanding of socio-cultural context of the time when fairies featured in the
tales. In the Middle Ages for instance, as maintained by Harf Lancner there were two
types of fairies viz. the fates and the ladies of the forest. The 12th century witnessed a
gradual separation of the word “fairy” from the fate and thus the ladies of the forest
became the fairies. The Greek fates were transformed and in the 13th century and later
this transformation gave birth to two types of tales/plots and resulted in their
dissemination in the learned literate culture. The tale types were based on 1) the
adventure of the fairy Melusine depicting the plot in three stages viz. a) a human
encounter with a beautiful fairy in a forest, b) his expression of love and proposal to
marry the fairy who obliges on condition of observance of a prohibition laid by her,
and c) deliberate or inadvertent violation of the condition and loss of the wife and
happiness; and 2) the fairy Morgan ley Fay the plot of which comprises a hero who i)
travels into a world of super humans in search of a nymph or a fairy; ii) spends a long
time in blissful existence in this other world; iii) desires to return home; iv) seeks the
fairy’s permission and is allowed to go back on the promise of respecting a
prohibition; v) breaks his promise, is banished from the faerie land and dies.

Both the tale types almost always have unhappy, tragic endings. Marie-Catherine
d’Aulnoy perhaps was aware of these tale types. For instance, her first tale mentioned
earlier, ‘The Isle of Happiness,’ clearly displays elements of the Morgan ley Fay tale
type.4 She however, reflects in her tales the socio-political conditions of her time. Her
fairies – good or nasty – have extraordinary powers. This she did as well as the other
conteuses in order to disguise their borrowings. As Zipes quotes Seifert and Stanton in
his essay from their book Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by 17th Century Women

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Writers,5 “Intent on affirming their own social status, the conteuses disguised and
transformed whatever they borrowed from lower class tales with an abundance of
literary and cultural references. Indeed, the wide variety of intertexts woven into their
contes de fees shows sophistication that defies the stereotypical simplicity of the fairy
tale genre. Notwithstanding their modernist affiliations, allusions to Greek and Roman
mythology recur throughout the texts of the conteuses, sometimes alongside more
folkloric characters. In many of d’Aulnoy’s tales, for instance, Cupid makes an
appearance as either an ally or an enemy of fairies. More often mythology is used as a
conventional rhetorical trope. The stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, extremely
popular throughout early modern Europe, were particularly useful to the conteuses,
especially for the concept of metamorphosis and the plot situations it could generate.
However, their tales also evoke motifs and characters reminiscent of medieval
romance, with such figures as the fairies and such topoi as the maiden imprisoned in a
tower.” (Zipes 232-233)

The term fairy tale has culturally evolved over a period of time. It has undergone
several changes and transformations from the Greco-Roman period to the present.
These changes “reflect key moments in cultural evolution and reveal the memetic
power of the term fairy tale or conte de fees.” (Zipes 237) As discussed at length in
Chapter V of this thesis, evolution of this genre from oral to written through centuries
has been marked by its male bourgeois manipulation and appropriation. The ‘male’
institutionalisation and manipulation of the originally feminocentric fairy tale genre
started being critically challenged in the late 19th century.

It is only in the 1970s that a serious attention was drawn to the study of fairy tales as
an important literary genre. This critical attention was significant more due to its
feminist inclination since it was also the time when feminist scholarship emerged.
Both fairy tale and feminist studies raised questions about the process of socialisation
and social, cultural institutions involved in this process. Alison Lurie in 1970 and
1971 respectively brought forth her two articles viz. “Fairy Tale Liberation,”6 and
“Witches and Fairies.”7 The thrust of these articles was that the classic fairy tales and
lesser known tales with strong and resourceful fairy tale characters had a liberating
force and potential which men obscured by controlling the selection, editing and
publication of fairy tales. Dismissing the second part of Lurie’s argument on account
of her references to lesser known or unknown stories, which hardly have any impact

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on children as compared to the massive impact of the mythic figures of Cinderella,

Snow White, and the Sleeping Beauty, Marcia Lieberman in 1972, came up with a
strongly opposing view in her article “‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’: Female
Acculturation Through the Fairy Tale.”8 As the title itself indicates Lieberman was
exclusively concerned about the process of acculturation of women in a social system
through the fairy tale.

Acknowledging that “[T]he best known stories … have affected masses of children in
our culture,” (383-384) Lieberman who thinks of children as naïve, inexperienced and
capable of being moulded and conditioned by what they read, hear and see wants
adult facilitators of the tales to play a responsible role. “If we are concerned, then,
about what our children are taught, we must pay particular attention,” she says, “to
those stories that are so beguiling that children think more as they read them ‘of the
diversion than of the lesson.’” (384) Assuming the manipulative socialising potential
and power of the tales, she objects to the ideological messages transmitted explicitly
or implicitly through them. These messages are “imprinted” in children and being
untrained readers/ listeners children, particularly girls are influenced by the ideology:
“Millions of women must surely have formed their psycho-sexual self concepts, and
their ideas of what they could or could not accomplish, what sort of behaviour could
be rewarded, and the nature of reward itself, in part from their favourite fairy tales.”
(385)

Lieberman addresses the unresolved questions about “what is biologically determined

and what is learned” (394) raised in the 1970s and which remain unanswered yet. The
questions she raises – “to what extent is passivity a biological attribute of females; to
what extent it is culturally determined? … to what extent [do the stories] reflect
female attributes, or to what extent they serve as training manuals for girls?”(395) –
have been the issues confronted by fairy tale critics, scholars, re-tellers and
researchers throughout the four decades after Lieberman voiced them in 1972. This
milestone article written as a response to Alison Lurie’s and the debate between the
two sparked early feminist discourse on fairy tale research and at the same time, an
introduction to a new outlook on fairy tale studies emphasising social, political and
historical contexts of this literary genre. Their arguments have overshadowed and
haunted much of the fairy tale discourse and research till date. As Donald Haase
maintains, “Already anticipated in their terms of debate are nascent questions and

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critical problems that over the next thirty years would constitute the agenda of much
fairy tale research.”9 (2) Haase is proved correct when one recognises the undisputed
influence of Lieberman's article forty years after its publication. It has provoked
widespread agreement amongst and influence on fairy tale criticism, studies and
retellings. Vanessa Joosen10 cites examples of critics like Patricia Duncker (1992),
Maria Micaele Coppola (2001) and Gerard Gielen (2006) who reassert Lieberman’s
critique and views. (Joosen, 50) Some of the retellings depicting Lieberman’s
influence till the recent past are Long Live Princess Smartypants (2004) by Babette
Cole, Sleeping Bobby (2005) by Will and Mary Pope Osbourne and Little Red Riding
Hood Was a Cool Girl (trans. 2010) by Marjet Huiberts. Barbara Walker in her
introduction to her collection of feminist fairy tales in 1996 echoes many of
Lieberman’s concerns when she criticises society’s preoccupation with the idea of
beauty: “Only to be decorative is the customary female function in these old stories.
… The message that such stories convey to girls is plain: Your looks are your only
asset. Whatever else you might be or do doesn’t count.”11

In view of the fairy tale researchers’ concern with the effects of fairy tales on
children, Chapter II of this thesis deals with an understanding of the concepts of
‘child,’ ‘childhood,’ and ‘children’s literature.’ It tries to explore these concepts and
how changes in them and their understanding get reflected in the literature meant for
children. An interesting aspect of children’s literature is that it is composed, promoted
and distributed consciously and purposely by adults for children most of the times
with implicit adult agendas apparently to protect the ideal of childhood as a period of
innocence and playtime. The Chapter tries to comment on how the moral obligation to
protect the childhood innocence and hidden adult interests behind children’s literature
fail its innocent nature. On discussing the characteristic features of children’s
literature based on the writings of well-known experts in the field, the Chapter moves
on to consider Fairy Tales as a type of children’s literature. The whole concept of
children’s literature as an important tool of socialisation, seen in the context of fairy
tales reveals a lot of serious concerns related to the presentation of gender, society and
social, behavioural patterns in fairy tales. It is these concerns that are revealed in the
research by fairy tale scholars for the last three decades. The Chapter therefore ends
with a briefing of how fairy tales are seen from various perspectives like
psychological, Sturcturalist, Marxist and feminist.

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These various perspectives on fairy tales have at their centre a consideration of how
various facets of society are represented in fairy tales and their impact on
socialisation. Lurie and Lieberman’s debate could be at the root of these views. For
though diversely, the two are mainly focused on the representation of women in fairy
tales – while one sees in female portrayal in fairy tales, a potential for liberation, the
other sees the consequences of women’s peculiar representation into stereotyped
acculturation. Both are concerned about the effects of fairy tales on their readers, girls
and boys, and what fairy tales mean to women. For instance, about the impact of
women’s representation in fairy tales on children with respect to their gender identity
and social behaviour Lieberman says: “We must consider the possibility that the
classical attributes of ‘femininity’ found in these stories are in fact imprinted in
children and reinforced by the stories themselves” (395) “(The tales) have been made
the repositories of the dreams, hopes, and fantasies of generations of girls” (385) Both
Lieberman and Lurie’s concern raised an inquiry into the relationship between
development of the classical fairy tale and its role in the process of socialisation, how
fairy tales are perceived by children and adults and how the relationship between fairy
tale and gender could be viewed anew without inviting any generalisations about the
fairy tale genre and its diverse complexity and responses.

In keeping with this discourse, Chapter III of the thesis attempts a thorough analysis
of fairy tales as generators of values and stereotypes that could impact their readers’
perspective on and formation of gender identities and social, behavioural roles.
Following a detailed discussion of these stereotypes the Chapter establishes the
rationale behind retelling fairy tales in a new light. Various retellings, as illustrated
later in this chapter, originated in Lieberman’s conviction that fairy tales impact
gender construction and address and counteract biased, negative representation of
women, stepparents and stepsiblings.

Parallel to fairy tale criticism focusing varyingly on female representation in fairy

tales and its impact on gender identity and child behaviour were classic tales re-
framed along completely revolutionary lines during the 1970s and 1980s. Behind
these tales was a strong belief in the ideological impact of the tales on the process of
socialisation and that an appropriate ideological position in the tales can bring about a
change in social attitudes and psyche by creating critical readers. Thus following
Lurie and Lieberman, on the one hand, we have Andrea Dworkin (1974), Susan

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Brownmiller (1975), Bruno Bettelheim (1976), Mary Daly (1978), Sandra Gilbert and
Gubar (1979), Jack Zipes (1979), Karen E Rowe (1979) and so on coming up with
more and deeper explorations into the fairy tale genre and explicit/implicit gender and
social concerns in it and similarly on the other hand, poets and writers of the 70s
ushering in an upsurge of revolting fairy tale retellings with Anne Sexton perhaps as
one of the first to do so followed by an army of retellers like Olga Broumas, Angela
Carter, Robert Coover and many more.12 Since then the critical and creative parallels
seem to have been interacting with and enriching each other while challenging the
social, political, cultural stance of the classical tales and furthering new positions
taken by the different retellings.

Chapter IV of the thesis, therefore, attempts to analyse thoroughly some of these

retellings to exemplify and demonstrate how the retellings of the classic tales function
and are composed to serve different purposes. The analysis includes the Grimms’s
popular tales namely, ‘Briar Rose/ Sleeping Beauty,’ ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Little Red Riding
Hood,’ and ‘Snow White.’ These analyses intend to support the implicit
psychological, social, cultural assumptions that inform most of the fairy tale retellings
for children and adults. These tales seem to assume and underline Bettelheim's
conviction that fairy tales have a therapeutic effect on child readers. However unlike
Bettelheim's insistence on such a therapeutic effect workable only on the child’s
unconscious level majority of retellings seem to side with Alan Dundes’s claim that
children should be consciously given awareness about the latent content of the classic
tales. He assertively says that, “… fairy tales ought to be explained to children so that
the underlying emotional traumas with which they deal may be less threatening.”13
This thus stresses the responsibility of the adult facilitators – parents, teachers,
writers, retellers, illustrators, publishers and so on – of fairy tales to children to read,
understand and pass on the “correct” – unbiased, democratic, egalitarian, and above
all humanitarian – perspective and interpretation of the tales they read or hand over to
their children. Most of the retellings are perhaps therefore addressed to adult readers
while some specifically target the child audience. The Chapter on analysis of the
retold fairy tales thus underlines this assumed need behind composing the retellings.

Lurie and Lieberman’s debate fuelled, for nearly a decade later, oversimplified
feminist ideas and thoughts on how representation of women in fairy tales was
oppressive and how fairy tales generated myths of female oppression. Throughout this

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period the fairy tale was either criticised for its gender stereotypes or admired for its
subversive power and emancipatory potential. Andrea Dworkin in Woman Hating
(1974)14 like Lieberman sees the presentation of passive girls and active boys in fairy
tales as generator of cultural values and gender roles. Susan Brownmiller in Against
Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (1975)15 analyses ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ as a
story composed through a male gaze and takes Lieberman’s stance to an extreme to
suggest that fairy tales teach women passive tolerance of oppression and victimisation
by participating in rapes and being sexually abused. She argues that fairy tales present
women as necessary and necessarily objects of male desire. Mary Daly in
Gyn/Ecology: The Meta-ethics of Radical Feminism (1978)16 elaborates on how fairy
tales condition their child readers to become typical patriarchal subjects at the hands
of women – their mothers or teachers. She uses the metaphor of the poisoned apple
and wicked mother for the tales like ‘Snow White’ and their tellers. Children, she
says, are unaware that “the tale itself is a poisonous apple” (Daly, 44) and its teller “a
wicked queen” who too is “unaware of her venomous part in the patriarchal plot.”
(Daly, 44)

While discussing European fairy tale critics of the 1970s who, like Lieberman,
acknowledge the socialising power of the genre and who admit Lieberman’s critique
in her book, Joosen cites Otto Gmelin (1975) who saw fairy tales as a means of
promoting sexism, capitalism and arousing fear and aggression in children.

With Karen Rowe’s “Feminism and Fairy Tales”17 in 1979 came to the fore a new and
more complex insight into gender construction in not just fairy tales but in romantic
and gothic fiction for adult women. She focused on the impact of fairy tale such as
representation of gender roles and socio-cultural values not just on children but also
on adult women who tend to internalise the conformist female attitudes and
aspirations. But at the same time she also points out these women’s awareness of the
gap between the ideal presented in the tales and actual practice resulting in an
unresolved tension between adherences to social, cultural values and accommodating
changing realities. Rowe hopes for building “courageous vision and energy to
cultivate a newly fertile ground of psychic and cultural experience from which will
grow fairy tales for human beings.” (223)

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Later feminists furthered Rowe’s agenda of cultivating a ground for egalitarian tales.
Carolyn G. Heilbrun in 1979 in her Reinventing Womanhood urged the need for the
women to recognise the human structures of fairy tales and manipulate malehood to
their own interests and to establish their own self-identity, to see the wakening hero as
that part of their selves that “awakens conventional girlhood to the possibility of life
and action.”18 For this purpose she strongly proposed “bold” re-interpretations of
myths, tales and tragedies “in order to enter the experience of the emerging female
self.” (150) Behind her argument is the assumption that gender of the reader hardly
affects the impact of the tale on him or her. Madonna Kolbenschlag in her Kiss
Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye: Breaking the Spell of Feminine Myths and Models
(1979)19 reassured the liberating potential of the fairy tales. She saw a hope and an
awakening potential in the same stories that tend to socialise women. She established
for women a hope of “spiritual maturity” (4) in the stories that determine “feminine
socialisation.” (3) Acknowledging what is usually considered “natural” as actually
culturally mythological/ mythical, and admitting the power of myths to reflect and
“model our existence” (x), Kolbenschlag “introduced six familiar fairy tales as
heuristic devices for interpreting the experiences of women. These tales are parables
of what women have become; and at the same time, prophecies of spiritual
metamorphosis to which they are called.” (x)

Thus like Kay F Stone before her, Kolbenschlag too refuted the assumption that all
women in all generations respond to the fairy tale alike, that the ideological content of
fairy tale is automatically internalised by the child readers. Stone in “Things Walt
Disney Never Told Us”20 concluded after interviewing 40 women of different ages
and backgrounds that though the influence of the fairy tale was undeniable for many,
many others were bored by the passive heroines in the tales. (48-49) Like her Kate
Bernheimer’s study of women authors’ varying experiences of fairy tale influence too
supports Stone and Kolbenschlag in countering Lieberman’s assumptions to some
extent.21

In 1980 Ronda Chervin and Mary Neill in The Woman’s Tale: A Journal of Inner
Exploration22 emphasised the psychological and spiritual enrichment fairy tales could
lead women to experience if they reflect on their responses to the tales and their inner
journeys. Psychological and social insights into and interpretations of fairy tales and
their consequences for women readers are positively probed in Colette Dowling’s

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The Cinderella Complex23 (1981) According to her, understanding psycho-social

attitudes of women reflected in fairy tales that restrict women’s freedom enables
imagination of alternative constructions of life for women. Another instance of
psychoanalytic perspective on fairy tales for helping women to be self-dependent in
the male order is the Jungian commentary on the Grimm tales in Leaving My Father’s
House (1992) by Marion Woodman.24 All these perspectives on fairy tales despite
their variations were directed towards critically considering fairy tales as a tool with
which women’s liberation could be attained and new possibilities of life for them
could be projected. In the light of these approaches and despite reservations about
Lieberman’s stance, various collections of tales portraying strong women characters
started being published assuming the negative ideological impact of classical fairy
tales. The aim was mainly to react to and substitute the gender bias of the classic tales.
Some retellers took up lesser known tales and converted their weak heroines into
strong and active ones. Lurie herself consciously worked on tales prioritising women
and their strength in her collection, Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales25
(1980). This along with Womenfolk and Fairytales26 (1975) by Rosemary Minard and
Ethel Johnston Phelps’s Tatterhood and Other Tales27(1978) and The Maid of the
North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World28 (1981) remained prominent
works for the following decades inspiring writers and publishers to collect
feminocentric tales from around the world exploring diverse presentations of women
in fairy tales.

While some writers’ focus was on presenting this diversity of women in fairy tales
others rewrote the popular tales necessarily presenting women positively as heroic,
strong, helpful, clever, and so on while some others chose tales that have ideal female
characters to be emulated by readers. For instance, Jeanne Desy’s “The Princess Who
Stood on Her Own Two Feet”29 (1982), Anne Sharpe’s “Not So Little Red Riding
Hood”30 (1985), Rapunzel’s Revenge: Fairy Tales for Feminists31 by Anne Claffey
and others (1985), The Tough Princess32 by Martin Waddell and Patrick Benson
(1986) etc. The inclination of these tales was towards accepting the socialising and
ideological power of the tales. Writing in the same year as Lieberman’s essay the
Merseyside Fairy Tale Collective’s retold tales underline the impact of the classic
tales on children’s socialisation and warn the adult facilitators of these tales to be

11 
 
 

cautious while passing them on to the young ones since these tales “help to inform
children’s values and teach them to accept our society and their roles in it.”33

However all these writers, retellers and their collections could not and did not attempt
to formulate a uniform identity, image or definition of the fairy tale heroine. Angela
Carter, for instance, in her Old Wives’ Fairy Tale Book34 presents a variety of female
characters as protagonists of her tales with the aim to present multiple identities of a
woman hero. Even in her Strange Things Sometimes Still Happen: Fairy Tales from
Around the World35 she continues her agenda of “reasserting precisely those
dimensions of a woman’s life – including sexuality – that male editors had
suppressed.” (Haase, 22)

Parallel to these collections of folk and fairy tales from around the world were
anthologies of literary fairy tales edited by both male and female writers during 1980s
and 90s. Amongst them Jack Zipes’s The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding
Hood36 (1983, 1993) is a remarkable anthology depicting 35 versions of the tale
‘Little Red Riding Hood’ with a critical introduction and epilogue that demonstrate
how the tale has been created by and projected the middle class male values and
ideology of power over women and how this projection and gender identities reflected
in the tale have contributed to the civilising and socialising processes in the western
society. As such this book and its critical commentary rendered a remarkable
contribution to the feminist fairy tale scholarship.

While fairy tale retellings co-exist with the traditional tales, they do overlap and are
connected with fairy tale scholarship/criticism. Critics like Stephen Benson for
instance, point out “the extraordinary synchronicity”37 of the retellings and fairy tale
criticism: “The concerns of the fiction are variously and fascinatingly close to those of
scholarship.” (Benson, 5) Zipes too argues that “the innovative fairy tale experiments
in all cultural fields” in the present are a result of “an inextricable, dialectical
development of mutual influence of all writers of fairy tales and fairy tale criticism.”38
Maria Tatar similarly brings to our notice the critical, interpretive impulse of retelling
and the literary, creative potential of criticism: “Just as every re-writing of a tale is an
interpretation, so every interpretation is a re-writing.”39 This interactive relationship
between criticism and creation is evident in the increasing allusions by the fairy tale
critics to examples from fairy tale retellings and by the retellers to the thoughts of

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the critics. For instance, Zipes, Gilbert and Gubar, Ruth Bottigheimer often refer to a
variety of retellers and quote from them in order to support their views on traditional
tales whereas Jane Yolen in her retold Briar Rose40 quotes P. L. Travers (pages 1,
161, 223) and Zipes from his Spells of Enchantment. Evelyn Conlon in her “That I’ll
Teach Her”41 (1986) too illustrates Zipes’s theory in Why Fairy Tales Stick to argue
that the stories have to transform themselves if they were to survive.

We thus see a significant critical attention paid to the fairy tale genre since 1970s
when feminist perspective on fairy tales was outspoken. Since then a culture of re-
visiting and re-visioning these tales started building up. As Chapter V of this thesis
enumerates in detail, the art of spinning the fairy tale was mainly initiated by women
conteuses. Karen Rowe in her article points out that the European women writers of
literary fairy tales of the 17th and 18th centuries tried to assert their right as the tale
spinners. Classic fairy tale motifs and narratives were widely re-used by the women
writers of the 19th century English novel. Writers of fairy tales after 1970 did not only
spin or re-use the fairy tale, they engaged themselves in a broader revisionist project
in which “defining a female self has been a major endeavour,” says Alicia Ostriker.42
(70) Aptly enough Ostriker selects Anne Sexton’s Transformations (1971) to display
“multivocality” of revisionist attempts at fairy tale (re)telling. Multiple voices
according to her is the characteristic feature of revisionist writings of women. She
describes women revisionist myth makers in terms of female Prometheuses who
commit thefts of language. Feminist fairy tale scholarship had been intent on
enquiring the representation of the female hero in fairy tales. Ellen Cronan Rose,
Gilbert and Gubar, Cristina Bacchilega, Kate Bernheimer, Elizabeth Wanning Harries
etc manipulated in their enquiry the metaphor of the mirror that reflects patriarchal
values in the tales. The early revisionist writings by Anne Sexton, Olga Broumas and
Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber, 1979) had been used as exemplary for their
scholastic arguments. Feminist fairy tale scholars intended at finding out the
consequences of women fairy tale revisionists’ quest for female identity after trying to
destroy the patriarchal mirror held in the classic fairy tales.

Lieberman in her essay voices feminist rejection of a beauty contest held in Atlanta in
1968. Hence she criticises fairy tales for the priority given to beautiful girls.
“Beautiful girls are never ignored.” (385) The “beauty contest” and the rivalry set
amongst women on that ground was and has been condemned by feminists as

13 
 
 

a patriarchal tool and strategy to keep women apart from one another. So does
Lieberman condemn it as a patriarchal ideology of the fairy tale.

Fairy tale scholars in their criticism and fairy tale retellers in their retellings take up
this issue variously. Jane Yolen for instance, in her Sleeping Ugly43 attempts a critique
of the beauty contest by completely discarding and reversing its pattern. So in her tale
the most beautiful girl does not win the prince but is left asleep forever. Priscilla
Galloway in her retold tale “A Taste for Beauty”44 (1995) presents a first person
narration of Snow White’s young stepmother who realises clearly that she is chosen
by the king only for her physical beauty: “Nobody ever said much about my character
and intelligence. I became queen because I’m the most beautiful of all.” (106)

The concern of the classic tales with beauty conditioned by patriarchy instigates
feminist critics to use and manipulate the mirror metaphor. In “Through the Looking
Glass: When Women Tell Fairy Tales”45 (1983) Ellen Cronan Rose argues for women
rewriting fairy tales that would reflect genuine female experience more accurately.
Her unchallenged reliance on Bettelheim’s idea of fairy tales as “embryonic”
(Bettelheim, 211) stories about growing up, however, confines Rose’s argument to the
notion of singular, linear female development alone. She does not move beyond this
notion of female growth and experience. As a result her interpretations of the
revisionist fairy tales expect mere re-evaluation and revision of patriarchal paradigms.

Going beyond Marcia Lieberman, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in their
remarkably noteworthy essay “The Queen’s Looking Glass” in The Madwoman in the
Attic46 talk about a fairy tale’s multilayered structure wherein they identify a conflict
between two female archetypes – the angel and the witch – the necessary constructs
constructed and used by patriarchy to understand, judge and limit/ constrict women.
Gilbert and Gubar undertake a detailed analysis of “Snow White” that forms a
significant part of their wider exploration of the 19th century women writers’
discomfort with authorship. Their analysis of “Snow White” becomes part of their
analysis of metaphors of and women’s representation in male writing. It is men who
expect and design what a woman is or should be. And thus the archetypes of the angel
and the monster, Gilbert and Gubar believe are the masks men artists have fastened to
women limiting entire womankind into these two categories alone.

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Basing their argument on Bettelheim's that the focus and centre of the conflict
between Snow White and the queen is the king himself and his authoritative voice,
Gilbert and Gubar identify the mirror’s voice as the patriarch’s, the king’s, but
dismiss the positive connotations that Bettelheim sees in it. Their valuable insights
into “Snow White” effectively demonstrate 19th century woman’s confinement at the
hands of the prevalent bourgeois culture. Granting the central role to the king in the
form of the mirror’s ruling voice representing patriarchy, Gilbert and Gubar attempt
and offer a powerful critique of patriarchy.

The influence of feminist criticism on fairy tale retelling and the impact of revisionist
retellings on fairy tale scholarship and criticism are most noticeably obvious in the
interaction between the “Snow White” retellings and Gilbert and Gubar’s insights in
their analysis of the tale. Gilbert and Gubar’s concerns parallel Anne Sexton’s ideas
expressed in her retellings. Many other “Snow White” retellings on the other hand,
echo and reflect Gilbert and Gubar’s convictions particularly about patriarchal control
of and over female identity. This creative interaction between criticism and literary
composition is presented in Chapter V of the present thesis. Gilbert and Gubar
reconsider and innovatively rewrite “Snow White” in No Man’s Land47 (1994)
wherein they underline the necessity to write new tales which could explain multiple
roles women are able to play as authors and as characters. In the concluding retelling
they refer emphatically to the mirror once again: “Sometimes when this Queen looked
into the mirror of her mind, she passed in her thoughts through the looking glass into
a forest of stories so new that only she and her daughter could tell them.” (403)

The mirror metaphor continues to fascinate feminist fairy tale scholars when they
attempt to enquire into the issues of female identity while composing and consuming
fairy tales. Using the mirror metaphor, Kate Bernheimer in her essay collection about
women and fairy tales, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall asserts that women perceive and
receive tales differently. The multivocal responses by women parallel and
authenticate the multiplicity of the genre. Elizabeth Wanning Harries too reasserts the
complexity of relationship between the classic tales and gender construction in them
by arguing that “Fairy tales act as broken mirrors for women who use them to
construct incoherent and unknowable images of themselves.” (Haase, 36)

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Cristina Bacchilega in her work Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative
Strategies48 (1997) re-reads the postmodern versions of ‘Snow White,’ ‘Little Red
Riding Hood,’ ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Blue Beard’ using the mirror metaphor.
As said earlier, after the Lurie-Lieberman debate in 1970 the four decades have seen
fairy tales being either admired for their liberating potential or criticised for being
sexist. Bacchilega addresses the complexity of women’s representation in fairy tales
and uncovering the mirrors and revisions, establishes the need to question the
narration, action and perspective of any revisionist attempt so that a new
understanding of women in fairy tales is obtained. As she herself claims, “this
feminist and narratological project” attempts to address “several problems related to
how fairy tale materials are selected, appropriated, and transformed… What kinds of
images of woman and story do these rewritings/revisions project? What narrative
mechanisms support these images? And finally which ideologies of the subject
underlie these images? In short, this book explores the production of gender, in
relation to narrativity and subjectivity, in classic fairy tales as re-envisioned in late
20th century literature and media for adults.” (4) Consistently manipulating the mirror
metaphor Bacchilega concludes: “The wonder of fairy tales, indeed, relies on the
magic mirror which artfully reflects and frames desire. Overtly re-producing the
workings of desire, postmodern wonders perform multiple tricks with that mirror to
re-envision its images of story and woman.” (146) She thus demonstrates that human
desire is shaped by history, ideology and changing material conditions.

The attempt to understand the critical and creative interactions in fairy tale studies
undertaken in Chapter V of the thesis concludes with insistence on the need to
positively keep on the attempts at retelling old tales until the time they are accepted
willingly and without any discomfort. The thesis ends on the conclusive note that
despite hesitation and discomfort in the reception of the retold fairy tales attempts at
retelling should continue since it is the need of the time to have tales reflecting
contemporary values and universal humanitarian values. To this end the retellings
should be directed and for the purpose, the thesis argues, the retelling attempts should
continue persistently and keep improvising themselves.

Literature consulted before arriving at the above stated conclusion includes the
following major works, apart from the ones mentioned in the discussion above:

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Kay Stone’s works offer quite significant insights into the matter of fairy tale
production and reception by women. Feminists have always argued about
unchallenged, unquestioned, passive reception of classic fairy tales by women.
Stone’s majority of works are interactive and she being both a scholar and a
storyteller offers new and original perspectives from these three viewpoints. Her first
essay “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us” (1975) recorded the folklorist’s
perspective that foregrounded her conviction that fairy tales presented positive and
aggressive heroines as well. Her conclusions were based on the interviews of women
readers she had conducted for her research on “The Romantic Heroine in Anglo-
American Folk and Popular Literature” (1975). As she herself claims her 1980 article
“Fairy Tales for Adults: Walt Disney’s Americanisation of the Marchen”49 treats
Disney films more even-handedly while criticising Disney for his gender
stereotyping. Her argument here is that the happy endings of fairy tales are mainly
about finding oneself and not any prince or princess. It is this position with which she
continued most of her later writings which surveyed the actual reception of the fairy
tale heroine by women readers, whose reactions and interpretations, to Stone, were
more significant than theoretical positions. Thus when Bettelheim considered fairy
tale models of fairy tale heroes and heroines problem-solving and feminists claimed
the opposite, Stone decided to actually probe the reactions of the female fairy tale
readers before she wrote “The Misuses of Enchantment: Controversies on the
Significance of Fairy Tales” (36-54) and found that the women she interviewed sided
with both the positions – the one considering fairy tale gender constructions problem-
solving and the other considering them problem-creating. And hence Stone concluded
that “fairy tales are not inherently sexist, many readers receive them as such, … that
girls and women find in fairy tales an echo of their own struggles to become human
beings. Thus gender, both of the reader and the protagonist, is indeed significant in
this struggle.” (54)

In her “Feminist Approaches to the Interpretation of Fairy Tales” (55-61) she

critically analyses the three approaches taken up by feminists with changing times and
perspectives: the earliest feminist position, which illustrated and criticised the unjust,
unequal treatment of women in life and fairy tales; the second generation feminist
view that considered women separate from and superior to men and the third who

17 
 
 

talked of equality between men and women stressing the need for a change in male
biases for this equality to establish itself.

Stone retains in all her works, her confidence in women’s mature reception of the
tales by using their conscious and unconscious reinterpretation of the tales which they
dislike but cannot give up. “It is the possibility of such reinterpretation that gives hope
that women can eventually free themselves from the bonds of fairy tale magic, magic
that transforms positively at one age and negatively at another.” (53) Her interviews,
scholarship and her own retellings as well as fairy tale performances authenticate her
views and offer original valuable insights into fairy tale studies. She records her
journey from fairy tale scholar to storyteller in her book Some Day Your Witch Will
Come (2008), which constitutes the three decades of her work and scholarship divided
into folkloristic analysis, storytelling performances and contemporary retellings
including five of her own.

Significance of Stone’s work in the present study is that it makes one aware of the
necessity of a variety of approaches to fairy tales. To quote her own words, “no single
outlook or approach offers a final answer to the mystery of this genre, because the
wonder-tale at its best is multi-faceted in depth and meaning, always open to new
breath and breadth.” (233)

The view Stone expresses in her “Fire and Water: A Journey into the Heart of a
Story” (232-247) published later in Donald Haase’s Fairy Tales and Feminism also,
about the experience of composition of revisionist tales being both “frustrating and
rewarding, in quite different ways” (243) and her determination and provocation to
the feminist scholars, writers and retellers to continue the struggle “to keep going,
keep writing, keep telling … [keep] our voices alive even when we feel petrified”
(243) help in validating this researcher’s conclusion drawn at the end of the thesis.

Ruth B Bottigheimer’s works similarly contributed to the depth of the present thesis.
Bottigheimer is known for her social critique of fairy tales. In her article “Tale
Spinners: Submerged Voices in Grimms’ Fairy Tales”50 Bottigheimer explores the
oral tradition from which the Grimms derived their material for their collection of
fairy tales. Her probe into the negative associations of the word ‘spinning’ with curse
and punishment and an activity necessarily associated with “subjugated womanhood”

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raises doubts that the Grimms perhaps attempted to submerge messages in the original
tales.

Her edited book Fairy tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm51 (1986)
puts fairy tales in the social context while considering them from historical,
folkloristic as well as literary and psychoanalytic perspectives. The exemplary essays
study the social values these tales contain and generate and how the tales in some
social contexts function as a paradigm for understanding and developing oneself in
relation to society. She continues her probe into the Grimm tales and their intentions
in her next book in 1987 Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social
Vision of the Tales.52 Here one sees a progress in her earlier arguments about gender
biases in Grimm fairy tales. From a feminist perspective set in the framework of
historical philology Bottigheimer shows how in their progressive versions of the book
of fairy tales the Grimms revised the tales to suit the 19th century moral code that
explicitly discredited women.

Bottigheimer’s research since the early 1990s culminated into her book Fairy Tales: A
New History53 (1990) wherein she recapitulates the theories she has developed
relating to a definition of fairy tales and an alternative history of the origin and
dissemination of these tales through print media. The book offers her original insights
into and fruitful research on the components of fairy tales, “foundations” (26) of these
tales and the ways in which these tales spread amongst their reading masses. She digs
the oft believed history of the literary fairy tales and brings to our notice that “newly
emerging evidence supports a new and vastly different history of fairy tales.” (26)

Maria Tatar’s The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales54 coincides with
Bottigheimer’s work on the Grimm fairy tales, their origins and spread. Considering
the psychological import of the fairy tale plots and assuming that the Grimm tales that
are widely read “took on a special character” (xxi) with every new edition of their
book, Tatar records the important stages in the editorial history of the Grimms’
Nursery and Household Tales demonstrating how the Grimms shaped the adult folk
material to suit children and the contemporary social moral values. She reflects on
fairy tales theoretically and raises issues like “To what extent is the Grimms’ variant
of a tale type such as ‘Cinderella’ culture bound and to what extent does it veer off
into pure fantasy? What does one make of a fairy tale’s repetitive patterns and

19 
 
 

recurrent motifs? ” (xxii) She thoroughly deals with male and female heroes in fairy
tales in one part of the book and male and female villains in its other part. She
concludes with the art of getting even in keeping with the fairy tale plots.

In her essay “Tests, Tasks, and Trials in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales”55 published earlier
in Bottigheimer’s Fairy Tales and Society Tatar offers interesting observations about
characters of the heroes in fairy tales who, she sees as “exceptionally unmemorable,
unlikely to win prizes for intelligence and good behaviour … Frequently their stories
chronicle perilous adventures, but they themselves remain cowardly and passive.”
(33) Through these observations she implies that even the traits attributed to the male
protagonists are not positive suggesting thereby that the sexist bias of the fairy tale
may have its origins in psychological realities. She asserts this when she says,
“psychological realities of a more fundamental nature seem to have given rise to the
general plot structure of these tales.” (45) Tatar’s works along with Bottigheimer’s
innovatively new probe into the fairy tale history offered valuable insights to this
researcher while working on the project.

Donald Haase’s essays and books have been greatly resourceful for the present
research. Haase in his works has always established parallels between feminist studies
and feminist fairy tale scholarship. In his book Fairy Tales and Feminism56 too, as the
title itself clearly suggests, he combines fairy tale study with the fresh evaluation of
feminist focus on the genre. Inclusion of Bottigheimer’s article mentioned above and
of Lewis C Seifert’s essay in this book brings to light Haase’s emphasis on what these
two writers argue about the need to address the ambiguities and contradictions in the
fairy tale text. Response oriented approach by the feminist fairy tale scholars is
underlined in Elizabeth Wanning Harries’s article “Women’s Autobiography and
Fairy Tales” and Kay Stone’s “Fire and Water” also mentioned above. The main
thrust of these two articles is to study female response to fairy tales at different times
and ages and to empower both the tellers and readers of new versions of tales in the
face of apparent victimisation.

Crossing the Anglo-American bounds of the fairy tale research, Haase includes the
essays of Patricia Odber de Baubeta and Fiona Mackintosh who examine reception of
fairy tales by Iberian and Latin-American writers and Argentine women respectively.
At the same time Bacchilega’s essay shifts the focus slightly to India and oriental

20 
 
 

nations. The concluding essay by Cathy Lynn Preston considers the ‘Cinderella’ text
in different contexts of film, television and internet. The collection of essays is
complemented by primary texts and illustrations of the classic tales. The book with its
extensive bibliography acquires a significant place in fairy tale studies. Similarly
extensive and critical bibliography and survey by Haase appears in Marvels and
Tales, Vol. 14 dedicated to the theme ‘Fairy Tale Liberation – Thirty Years Later.’ It
must be admitted here that this introductory chapter of this thesis considerably draws
on this particular article by Haase: “Feminist Fairy Tale Scholarship: A Critical
Survey and Bibliography.” In his article “Decolonising Fairy Tale Studies”57 (2010)
presented by him first at an international symposium in 2008 Haase talks about efforts
to resolve “continuing colonisation” of the fairy tale genre and studies owing to
certain problematic notions and practices such as categorisation of tales as per tale
types and motifs: “Identifying a tale as a variant of any international tale type, with its
component motifs, automatically subsumes that tale in a general classification system,
displacing and abstracting it from its context … With the reduction of tales to types
and constellations of motifs, the value of the story as a verbal text essentially
disappears.” (27) Haase argues for the need to decolonise the fairy tale and usher in “a
responsible form of trans-cultural fairy tale research” (29) and for this purpose he
insists on relinquishing universalisation of the classic texts at the expense of their
specific socio-historical and cultural contexts and generalisation of the European fairy
tale as a universal genre. His interesting analytic argument in this essay offers a hope
for fairy tale studies to move beyond its Anglo-American confines and be
international, intercultural and cross-cultural. It is his broader vision on the issues
relating to fairy tale scholarship which perhaps drove Haase to edit three volumes of
The Greenwood Encyclopaedia of Folklore and Fairy Tales58 underlining the
challenge confronting fairy tale studies – the challenge “to cultivate a constructive
transnational interdisciplinary conversation that can promote approaches that are
appropriate both for rethinking the past and for coming to grips with new forms of
production and reception during this dynamic era of fairy tale proliferation and
change.” (xxxviii) References to Haase’s committed scholarship indeed contributed
fruitfully to the present thesis.

Kate Bernheimer’s idea of “explosion of fairy tale influences in art and literature”
(Bobby, 7) is extended in Susan Reddington Bobby’s attempt throughout the essays

21 
 
 

on transformed traditional fairy tales by contemporary writers in her Fairy Tales Re-
imagined: Essays on New Retellings59 (2009). Bobby throws light on new fairy tale
forms ushered in by the contemporary retellings which reflect the changing world and
perspectives. Apart from the well known revisionist writers like Sexton, Broumas,
Coover, Byatt etc Bobby acknowledges the efforts by lesser known retellers as well
by including essays on them in this collection. Another very remarkable aspect about
this book is that it extends the scope of retold fairy tales beyond the concerns of
gender and links it to trauma narratives of the holocaust and socio-political
commentaries. On the whole the book is a valuable guide on the retelling of fairy tales
and their value in the contemporary world.

Elizabeth Wanning Harries’s book Twice Upon A Time: Women Writers and the
History of the Fairy Tale60 too has been a resourceful guide for the present project and
could be treated as a valuable, thought provoking contribution to fairy tale scholarship
in further future studies on the subject. Harries discusses the “compact” and
“complex” fairy tale telling traditions that exist alongside each other. Both these
traditions are kept alive by the conteuses of the 1690s and their late twentieth century
women successors. Harries traces the social history of fairy tale tradition and makes
us look at it from a focus and perspective not considered before.

Similarly valuable and resourceful is the book by Vanessa Joosen, Critical and
Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue between Scholarship
and Postmodern Retellings (2011). It has an incredible reference value for research in
the field of fairy tale studies since it offers the latest novel approach to the fairy tale
scholarship. It suffices to quote Jack Zipes on this book of Joosen’s: “Her book is the
first comprehensive study to focus on the major critical works, intertextual references,
and scholarly debates that have invigorated the hybrid genre of fairy tale. Joosen
succeeds in shedding new light on the overlap between fairy-tale re-creations and
critical analyses without privileging one over the other.” (Cover page)

Any fairy tale study or research is absolutely incomplete without a mention of Jack
Zipes and his views on a variety of topics related to the subject. The amount of work
he has done and the commitment with which he progressively addresses the issues
concerning the fairy tale genre is stupendous and admirable. It is opportune to
mention here that this research greatly owes to Zipes’s scholarship in the field.

22 
 
 

Jack Zipes in his Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy
Tales61 (1979) describes the rise of the literary fairy tale in Europe at the end of the
18th and beginning of the 19th century as the “bourgeoisification” of the oral folktale.
What he means by this is the manner in which the bourgeois educated the masses,
appropriated the tales of and by the non-literate peasants and manipulated them to
serve the interests and needs of the new literate audiences.

His Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (1983) again demonstrates how the folktale
has been appropriated and re-appropriated in Europe and America with an intent to
socialise children about the socio-cultural values particularly gender identity and
behavioural patterns. Zipes’s essay, “Who’s Afraid of the Brothers Grimm?
Socialisation and Politi[ci]sation through Fairy Tales” presented by him in 1979-80
was later incorporated in this book. This essay shows illustrations and comparisons
from different Grimm versions and shows how the brothers altered tales to generate
patriarchal bourgeois values for the purpose of socialisation.

Zipes divides his edited book, Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy
Tales in North America and England62 (1989) into three interesting parts: ‘Feminist
Fairy Tales for Young (and Old) Readers,’ ‘Feminist Fairy Tales for Old (and Young)
Readers,’ and ‘Feminist Literary Criticism.’ Zipes clearly advocates retelling as an
alternative to counter the “atavistic notions of sex roles” and “ideology of male
domination” in the traditional fairy tales. The retold stories and their specified target
audiences, as Zipes claims in his introductory remarks, have an obvious political
purpose to symbolically represent “the authors’ critique of the patriarchal status quo
and of their desire to change the current socialisation process.” (xiii)

The articles in Part III of the book include “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” “The
Queen’s Looking Glass” and his own article “A Second Gaze at Little Red Riding
Hood’s Trials and Tribulations.” These articles justify Zipes’s claims made in the
introduction and his intent behind bringing out this book. Though at times one-sided
and reductionist this book does offer new perspectives on the tales and an overview of
concerns and issues of feminism and feminist fairy tales from 1970 to the late 80s.

In Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture63 (1991)

discounting, right at the outset, that fairy tales “were first created for children and are
largely the domain of children,” (xi) Zipes presents more than 60 fairy tales – classic

23 
 
 

and retold – with a view to give his readers a sense of history of the fairy tales as a
genre since they are “grounded in history: they emanate from specific struggles to
humanize bestial and barbaric forces [which they set] out to conquer.” (xi) Zipes,
through the tales he has arranged in an order that tries to prove the historical evolution
of the genre and power of fairy tale enchantment to “free us” (xxx) asserts his faith in
the power of fairy tales “to arouse our imagination and compel us to realise how we
can fight terror and cunningly insert ourselves into our daily struggles and turn the
course of the world’s events in our favour.” (xxx) This assertion and insight supported
the emphasis in the present thesis on the necessity of fairy tales in their retold forms
for us.

His scholarship continued on these lines and a remarkably illustrative book

demonstrating stages of changes in a tale from an oral tale to an appropriated tale and
then a variety of revisionist versions of the same tale appeared in the form of Trials
and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood (1993). Zipes very painstakingly shows
the manipulation of a tale about a peasant girl meeting a werewolf in the forest into a
story about the initiation of a shrewd girl belonging to a sewing community and later
into a text that lays the responsibility of rape on the bourgeois girl herself. By
attempting to reveal “the true history of this seductively innocent girl” (18) Zipes tries
to hint at the danger in considering the classical fairy tale as too monolithic with one-
dimensional impact on the readers.

Zipes continues and furthers this assertion in his book Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as
Fairy Tale64 (1994) by disclosing ideological linkage between the genre and systemic
oppression and domination. He illustrates his idea of mythicisation of fairy tales by
showing, for instance, Disney’s film on ‘Snow White’ as expressing typical male
individualism in America or by elaborating how Robert Bly in his ‘Iron John’
misunderstands folklore and classical fairy tales. The book, extensively referred to in
this thesis, does offer a novel look into fairy tales as a literary genre.

Zipes in his When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition65
(1999) accounts for the reasons why and the manners how the fairy tales acquired the
power they exercise on human beings right from childhood. He explores the social
emergence of the fairy tale from 16th century till the twenty first. He throws light on
the manipulation of the fairy tale genre by its writers in order to express their own

24 
 
 

deeper desires, views and preferences in the existing social context. He also assesses
the values fairy tales generate for children and adults and their role in the process of
socialisation.

In the year 2000 Zipes came up with a valuable book on fairy tales: The Oxford
Companion to Fairy Tales: The Western Fairy Tale Tradition from Medieval to
Modern.66 Reference work of its own kind and great worth this encyclopaedic source
contains more than 800 useful entries on writers, illustrators, retellers, books, films,
opera, music etc related to the fairy tale genre. 67 experts in the field have contributed
to the Companion exploring the development of the fairy tale tradition particularly in
the western, European and North-American regions.

In his second edition of The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern
World67 (2002) Zipes claims that he substantially and thoroughly revises, re-
examines, expands and alters his original theses about the fairy tale genre. His attitude
here to the Grimm brothers is softened and in their treatment of the oral tales he sees
extraordinary artistry. He is critical and sceptical about their art and ideology and the
way modern, postmodern writers and filmmakers have appropriated their art, ideas
and tales. However he acknowledges the great hope the Brothers perceived in fairy
tales for themselves and for their nation. Overall Zipes’s reading of the brothers
Grimm in this book grows to become more balanced.

Zipes continues his firmly grounded historical approach to fairy tales in Why Fairy
Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre68 (2006). On the basis of this
approach he addresses the question why some fairy tales ‘work’ while some others do
not, the question about fairy tale’s stable, steady cultural acceptance. As such bringing
forth the cultural ramifications of the fairy tale he establishes the profundity of the
fairy tale as an important and serious literary genre. To address the issue he includes
two chapters on history and theory of the fairy tale and proves his contentions by case
studies of well known tales like Snow White and Cinderella. In the concluding
chapter he summarises the problems of telling old classical tales in the twentieth
century.

Zipes’s latest book of 2012 The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social
History of a Genre69 provides us with a new theory about the manner and reasons of
fairy tale evolution, retellings and their relevance to our lives even today.

25 
 
 

His scholarly meditations, for decades, on the subject are reflected in the variety of
essays included in the book. Particularly the inclusion of “Sensationalist Scholarship:
A ‘New History of Fairy Tales’” and “Reductionist Scholarship: A ‘New’ Definition
of the Fairy Tale” presents an analytical critique of and a different outlook on the
trends in fairy tale scholarship.

Zipes’s immense work and scholarship certainly has a great resource value and the
present thesis uses it to the fullest extent. Apart from the literature reviewed above a
number of scholarly articles on fairy tales and retold fairy tales have been written and
published in the famous journals devoted wholly or partly to the study of the field.
They include volumes of Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies, Journal
of American Folklore, Women and Folklore, The Lion and the Unicorn, Children’s
Literature in Education, Women and Language, Women’s Studies, Signs etc.

The scope of the present thesis is confined to a detailed study of only a few retold
tales. Of course this scope could be extended to include even less known classic and
retold fairy tales. Further one of the limitations of the field of fairy tale studies in
general has been that it is vastly and mainly confined to the European-American
world and worldview. As Haase in one of his articles maintains, it is really necessary
to go beyond these bounds and peep across the restricted perspectives. Thus attempts
could be made to research fairy tale impact on readers in other developed and
developing countries as well as the cross-cultural, inter-cultural state of this impact.
Further the response-oriented study undertaken by scholars like Kay Stone and to
some extent Kate Bernheimer could be stressed to judge where exactly we stand in
our understanding of the field of fairy tale study. For Indian scholars the study of fairy
tales in India, the interaction of the Indian reader with the classical fairy tales and the
ones rooted in India could be an interesting area to probe into. The field of fairy tale
studies is extremely vast and definitely innumerable possibilities of research are
hidden in it. This project is but a mere fraction of the tiniest drop in the fairy tale
ocean.

26 
 
 

NOTES

1
J R R Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” in Essays Presented to Charles Williams (Oxford:

OUP, 1947) 38-39.

2
See Jack Zipes, “The Meaning of the Fairy Tale within the Evolution of Culture,”

Marvels and Tales 25.2, (2011): 221-243. Subsequent references are

given parenthetically.

3
Patricia Hannan’s perception as quoted by Zipes.

4
Jack Zipes, ed and trans. Beauties, Beasts, and Enchantment: Classic French Fairy

Tales (New York: New American Library, 1989).

5
Lewis C. Seifert and Donna C Stanton, eds. Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by

17th Century Women Writers (Toronto: Iter, 2010).

6
Alison Lurie, “Fairy Tale Liberation,” New York Review of Books, 17 Dec,(1970):42-

44.
7
________, “Witches and Fairies: Fitzgerald to Updike,” New York Review of Books,

2 Dec. (1971): 6-11.

8
Marcia R Lieberman, “Some Day My Prince Will Come: Female Acculturation

through the Fairy Tale,” College English, 34 (1972):383-395. Also found in Jack

Zipes’s Don’t Bet on the Prince, 185-200.

9
Donald Haase, “Feminist Fairy Tale Scholarship: A Critical Survey and

Bibliography,” Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies, 14.1.

(2000):15-63.
10
Vanessa Joosen, Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual

Dialogue between Fairy Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings (Detroit,

Michigan: Wayne State UP, 2011) 50.

27 
 
 

11
Barbara G Walker, Feminist Fairy Tales. (San Francisco: Harper, 1996) ix.
12
Jack Zipes in the second edition of The Brothers Grimm: from Enchanted Forests to

the Modern World points out that there were almost no major revisions of the

Grimm fairy tales in West Germany between 1946 and 1966. In 1967 Lutz Röhrich

parodied the Grimms’ ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’

13
Alan Dundes, “Bruno Bettelheim’s Uses of Enchantment and Abuses of

Scholarship,” Journal of American Folklore, 104(1991):74.

14
Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating. (New York: Dutton, 1974).
15
Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. (New York: Simon,

1975).
16
Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. (Boston: Beacon,

1978).
17
Karen E Rowe, “Feminism and Fairy Tales,” Women’s Studies, 6 (1979): 237-357.

Reprinted in Zipes’s Don’t Bet on the Prince, 209-226.

18
Carolyn G Heilbrun, Reinventing Womanhood (New York: Norton, 1979, 1993)

150.
19
Madonna Kolbenschlag, Kiss Sleeping Beauty Goodbye: Breaking the Spell of

Feminine Myths and Models (Toronto: Bantam, 1979, 1981).

20
Kay Stone, “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us,” Journal of American Folklore,

88(1975): 42-55.
21
Kate Bernheimer, Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their

Favourite Fairy Tales (New York: Anchor, 1998).

22
Ronda Chervin and Mary Neill, The Woman’s Tale: A Journal of Inner Exploration.

(Minneapolis: Seabury, Winston, 1980).

23
Colette Dowling, The Cinderella Complex (New York: Simon, 1981).
24
Marion Woodman, Leaving My Father’s House: A Journey to Conscious

Femininity (Boston: Shambhala, 1992).

28 
 
 

25
Alison Lurie, ed. Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folk Tales (New York:

Crowell, 1980).
26
Rosemary Minard, ed. Women Folk and Fairy Tales (Boston: Houghton, 1975).
27
Ethel Johnston Phelps, ed. Tatterhood and Other Tales (Old Westbury, New York:

Feminist, 1978).
28
__________, ed. The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from around the

World (New York: Holt, 1981).

29
Jeanne Desy, “The Princess Who Stood on Her Own Two Feet” 1982 Zipes’s

Don’t Bet on the Prince. 39-47.

30
Anne Sharpe, “Not So Little Red Riding Hood” 1985 Zipes, The Trials and

Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood 324-327.

31
Anne Claffey et al., eds. Rapunzel’s Revenge: Fairy Tales for Feminists (Dublin:

Attic, 1985).
32
Martin Waddell, The Tough Princess (London: Walker, 2002).
33
Jack Zipes, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children

and the Process of Civilization (New York: Methuen, 1983).

34
Angela Carter, Old Wives’ Fairy Tale Book (New York: Pantheon, 1990).
35
____________, ed. Strange Things Sometimes Still Happen: Fairy Tales from

around the World 1993 (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1994).

36
Jack Zipes, ed. The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood 2nd ed. (New

York: Routledge, 1993).

37
Stephen Benson, ed. Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale (Detroit: Wayne

State UP, 2008) 5.

38
Jack Zipes, Relentless Progress: The Reconfiguration of Children’s Literature,

Fairy Tales, and Storytelling (New York: Routledge, 2009) 122.

39
Maria Tatar, Off With Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood

(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992) xxvi.

29 
 
 

40
Jane Yolen, Briar Rose. (New York: Doherty, 1992).
41
Evelyn Conlon, “That I’ll Teach Her,” Ms. Muffet and Others. (Dublin: Attic, 1986)

32-36.
42
Alicia Ostriker, “The Thieves of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist

Mythmaking,” Signs8 (1982):68-90.

43
Jane Yolen, Sleeping Ugly. (New York: Paper Star, 1997).
44
Priscilla Galloway, Truly Grim Tales. (Toronto: Lester, 1995).
45
Ellen Cronan Rose, “Through the Looking Glass: When Women Tell Fairy Tales,”

Elizabeth Abel et al eds. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development. 209-227.
46
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, “The Queen’s Looking Glass,” The Madwoman in

the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Image. (New

Haven: Yale UP, 1979).

47
___________, No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth

Century. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1994).

48
Cristina Bacchilega, Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies.

(Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997).

49
Kay Stone, “Fairy Tales for Adults: Walt Disney’s Americanization of the

Marchen,” Some Day Your Witch Will Come (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2008) 24-

35. Subsequent references are given parenthetically.

50
Ruth B Bottigheimer, “Tale Spinners: Submerged Voices in Grimm Fairy Tales,”

New German Critique 27(1982):141-150.

51
__________, ed. Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm.

(Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1986).

52
__________, Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of

the Tales.(New Haven: Yale UP, 1987).

53
__________, Fairy Tales: A New History (Albany/ New York: State U of

New York P, 2009).

30 
 
 

54
Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales (Princeton, New Jersey:

Princeton UP, 1987).

55
________, “Tests, Tasks, and Trials in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales,” Children’s

Literature 13(1985):30-48.
56
Donald Haase, ed. Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches (Detroit: Wayne

State UP, 2004).

57
___________, “Decolonizing Fairy Tale Studies,” Marvels and Tales: Journal of

Fairy-Tale Studies, 24.1 (2010): 17-38.

58
___________, ed. The Greenwood Encyclopaedia of Folklore and Fairy Tales

(Westport/ Connecticut/ London: Greenwood, 2008).

59
Susan Reddington Bobby, ed. Fairy Tales Re-Imagined: Essays on New Retellings

(Jefferson/North Carolina/London: McFarland &Company, 2009).

60
Elizabeth Wanning Harries, Twice Upon A Time: Women Writers and the History of

the Fairy Tale (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2001).

61
Jack Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales

1979. (New York: Methuen, 1984).

62
__________, ed. Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in

North America and England (New York: Methuen, 1986).

63
__________, ed. Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Tales of Western Culture

(New York: Viking, 1991).

64
__________, Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as Fairy Tale (Lexington: UP of Kentucky,

1994).
65
___________, When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their

Tradition (New York: Routledge, 1999).

66
___________, ed. The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales: The Western Fairy Tale

Tradition from Medieval to Modern (New York: Oxford UP, 2000).

31 
 
 

67
___________, The Brothers Grimm: from Enchanted Forests to the Modern World

2nd ed.(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

68
__________, Why Fairy Tales Stick: The Evolution and Relevance of a Genre

(London: Routledge, 2006).

69
___________, The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a

Genre (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2012).

32 
 
 

CHAPTER - II

Exploring Childhood and Children’s Literature

Childhood as a concept has evolved over time and continues to do so. It is a social,
cultural construct. In that, it is viewed differently in diverse texts and media. For
instance, popular media aimed at a child audience, educational texts for children and
academic research on children, which sees childhood as a social stage of life rather
than simply a developmental one. The ways in which society looks at, understands
and treats children and their needs and the ways children see or are conditioned to see
themselves are different and at times perhaps conflicting. In the present, while
educational experts consider children’s rights and responsibilities while drafting or
designing texts for them, media perceives them as active and demanding consumers
while at the same time academic research increasingly insists on children’s autonomy
and competence. However children’s own perception about themselves could be
altogether different from these. Therefore while framing educational material or
passing on the media content and while undertaking academic research, it is
absolutely essential to attempt to see and understand children’s own perspective rather
than moulding children’s world view to adjust with that of the adults. As W.B.
Drummond rightly points out in his book The Child- His Nature and Nurture:

“…the child does not see as we see, and therefore does not quite see what we see, and
therefore at least to that extent words do not mean to him, even when they are used by
him and not by us, exactly what they mean to us. A fuller knowledge of a child’s
normal mode of mental and moral growth, and the way in which he reacts to different
materials of instruction, must make great changes in our (present) methods of school
training.” 1

Drummond speaks in the context of school training. However what he says holds true
in every field concerning children as what they grow to be is a result of all sorts of
influences they gather as children from a variety of sources. It should be noted at this
point that the word ‘child’ here has the implications of its definition in the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: “A child means every human being
below the age of 18 years.” However childhood cannot be a uniform or homogeneous
category. David Buckingham argues, for example,

33 
 
 

“What childhood means and how it is experienced, obviously depends on other social
factors, such as gender, ‘race’ or ethnicity, social class, geographical location and so
on.”2

As such every child’s childhood (experience) is different and unique. Different

children have different sorts of childhood and different peoples and societies hold
different views about childhood. This complicates the term. However, it could be seen
as an inclusive term covering a different array of socially, geographically, culturally
and historically contextual childhoods.

Philippe Aries in 1962-63 tried to trace the history of childhood. He asserted that
childhood was discovered in the seventeenth century with the introduction of the
printing press and claimed that the notion of childhood became solidified in the
eighteenth century. Despite this kind of study it is difficult to establish a universal/
global history of childhood without consulting at least sociological, anthropological
and psychological works.

Child study as an organised movement is a modern day phenomenon. Considering

this, Drummond credits Rousseau with the doctrines which are followed in New
Education. Rousseau in Emile (1762) rejected the puritan concept of original sin. He
asserted that children were born innocent but corrupted later by society. He was the
first to emphasise the knowledge of children’s ways in their education. He was much
ahead of his times when for the first time he based education entirely on a study of the
child to be educated. Rousseau’s influence inspired later educators and also
publication of many books for children that resulted in the growth of child study as an
organised movement in modern times. Drummond categorises the interest in child
study as i) scientific which could be traced to the scientific work of Darwin and
ii) practical which promises the establishment of a true scientific pedagogy.

Anthropological study of childhood addresses many important issues in childhood by

trying to know fully about the course of a child’s development e.g. the origin of
language.

Psychological study of the child interprets the observations in the child in the course
of his development. Though most difficult and most fascinating, psychological study
of the child demands that the one who undertakes it “must be gifted not only with

34 
 
 

the power of observing with scientific accuracy but with… scientific imagination. He
must love his subject and his subjects. He must possess an understanding heart and
sympathetic insight, and be able to lay aside his own grown up habits and ways of
looking at things. Only by becoming again as a little child can he hope to sit down
with the child in his kingdom and once more to see and hear and understand as a
child.” (Drummond, 15-16)

Drummond puts forth two methods of child study viz. i) direct methods which include
individual and collective observations of children and their ways in various incidents/
events in their lives and through physical examination, experimental tests and analysis
of oral and written replies by children, ii) indirect methods of child study which
include the study of a) spontaneous writings of children in the form of letters, essays,
autobiographies, diaries etc which provide childish or child’s ways of looking at
things; b) autobiographies containing accounts of reminiscences of childhood which
are mostly coloured by the writer’s later personality and prejudices; and c) portrayal
of the child in fiction and poetry.

After Rousseau’s account of how a child can ‘learn’ by doing, the interest in
‘childhood’ shifted to a largely biological view of the term in the mid nineteenth
century. Darwin’s theory inspired scientific enquiry and the search for scientific
universals. These earlier studies did not consider however the social or cultural
influence which was taken up in the twentieth century by developmental psychology.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, with the work of the Russian psychologist,
Lev Vygotsky intellectual enquiry into the socio cultural influences in child
development began. The latest sociological studies of childhood focus on the
‘constructed’ nature of the term. Childhood as a socio cultural construct implies
conditioning/ shaping and developing of the ideas of childhood in different societies
at different times. Concepts of childhood developed and maintained over a period of
time by a society determine adult attitudes toward children in different fields,
expectations from children, things they should be allowed or disallowed from
knowing or experiencing, things they are able or unable to do and so on. Intellectual
enquiry into ‘childhood’ in the last decade of the twentieth century recognises
children as ‘beings’ and not ‘becomings’, as individuals active and able to make their
own choices and take decisions. James and Prout in Constructing and Reconstructing
Childhood centralise the issue of how these capacities are either smothered/

35 
 
 

suppressed or encouraged by adult society and other authoritative sources. It thus

follows that adult power interests and concerns artificially construct, colour and shape
‘childhood’. James and Prout stress the need to ‘deconstruct’ these constructions and
uncover the unique views and abilities of children unconditioned by adults because
children do have their own concerns and capacities independent of the adult
perspective. With such insights into the understanding of the concept, the views on
childhood are fast changing in contemporary times. These views have other facets of
economic, social and cultural trends. Therefore along with its biological context
‘childhood’ needs to be considered in its social and historical contexts as well.

In a 2005 study on the transformation of childhood, Jyotsna Kapur brings forth a

number of contradictions with which the twenty first century society confronts the
idea of childhood. She points out that while the market presents innumerable
commodities evoking childhood, children and families are denied social protection.

“While new fads hit the market everyday that promise adults they can remain forever
young, children are represented in popular culture, law and public policy as little
adults. Instead of imagining childhood as a birthplace of new possibilities, we are now
confronting the death of the notion of childhood itself. Evidence of this death lies in
the new image of children that has emerged in contemporary children’s consumer
culture, at the heart of which is the children’s or family film.”4

Children are portrayed as independent entities “managing by their wits in a world

peopled by ineffective adults.”(Kapur, 2) This notion of childhood is in complete
contrast with and mocks the nineteenth century notions of childhood as a special,
eternal and pure state and of children as opposites of adults, thus blurring the
boundaries between adulthood and childhood. Kapur’s observation about the
presentation of childhood and adulthood in present day films for children as
“permeable and reversible; children can turn into adults and back into children again”
(Kapur, 3) can well be applied to the contemporary literature for children. Analysing
images of childhood, Anne Higonnet in Pictures of Innocence tries to prove how the
romantic child in avant-garde and commercial art is being replaced by the child who
is aware of his sexuality. Apart from being just a cultural entity, this changing,
growing child image is also moulded by institutions like that of law which had
established childhood and adulthood as separate categories. These institutions have

36 
 
 

started ‘reviewing’ childhood. For instance, while in India a demand is being made to
revise the juvenile delinquency law and try children as adults in cases of sexual
assault, in Iran, the Congo and the United States children under 18 are actually tried
for death penalty.

The new century does not see children as embodying childhood. It looks at them as
independent, capable and at times more effective and efficient than adults. However
this does not put an end to childhood as a concept. Rather it should be seen as a
reinvention of the concept. Besides the inner child in the adult is evoked and attempts
are made to appeal to, please and release this child within in many ways in media,
advertisements and literature. The end and reinvention of childhood, the construction,
deconstruction and reconstruction of childhood could be seen as continually going on
with historical and material changes in society which affect all aspects of socio
cultural life including the family. As Kapur claims, the present day change in the
meaning of childhood is “a structural feature of post modernity, which,… David
Harvey and Frederic Jameson… understand as the cultural logic of late twentieth
century capitalism.”(Kapur8-9) This implies that the free market society has
commercialised every form of social interaction including the spirit of domestic life
and as such children and childhood too have been moulded to suit its commercial
purpose. The ‘home alone’ children taking care of themselves and childhood getting
more or less independent of adults are a product of this society. Growing consumer
culture and new technologies have enabled and perhaps forced the child to grow up.
Conflict arises when these children whose socio cultural and economic environment
pushes them to grow up socially are at the same time forced into the mould of
innocent childhood:

“In this struggle we should think of children as our collaborators. Just as we teach
children to read and write, clothe and feed themselves, in a bid to make them
autonomous members of society, we should teach them to think critically, organise,
collaborate with others, and protest so that they can cope with a system that is
essentially hostile to life and therefore to children.”(Kapur, 19)

Changes in the concept and understanding of childhood get reflected in the literature
meant for children making this literature in turn a similar socio cultural construct

37 
 
 

evolving over time. David Rudd’s attempt to depict the nominal essence of children’s
literature could be useful here. He maintains:

“Children’s literature consists of texts that consciously or unconsciously address

particular constructions of the child, or metaphorical equivalents in terms of character
or situation (for example, animals, puppets, undersized or underprivileged grownups),
the commonality being that such texts display an awareness of children’s
disempowered status (whether containing or controlling it, questioning or overturning
it), just as children themselves engage themselves with many ‘adult’ discourses. But it
is how these texts are read and used that will determine their success as ‘children’s
literature’; how fruitfully they are seen to negotiate this hybrid, or border country.”4

The fluid boundaries between children’s and adult literature pose difficulties in
defining the former. One very important aspect about children’s literature is that it is
not composed, produced and circulated by the children for the children. In fact, on the
contrary, it has almost always been written, illustrated, published, publicised,
purchased and circulated by adults for the education, enrichment and entertainment of
children. At the same time though it is primarily intended for children, it is read and
enjoyed both by children and adults. More often, it is the adults who determine texts
appropriate for children’s consumption. Naturally authors and publishers tend to
produce texts that please adult facilitators of children’s books. As Perry Nodelman
points out,

“In terms of success of production, what children actually want to read or do end up
reading is of less significance than what adult teachers, librarians, and parents will be
willing to purchase for them to read. Nevertheless, these adults make their purchases
on the basis of their ideas about what the children they purchase for like to and need
to read – so it is those ideas that writers must appeal to in order to be successful…. Its
producers must make judgements about what to produce based not on what they
believe will appeal to children but rather on what they believe adult consumers
believe they know will appeal to children (or perhaps, what should appeal to them, or
what they need to be taught).”5

Success of children’s literature is measured in terms of its popularity with children.

This success confirms the correctness of its producer’s judgements which ‘engender’
the texts.

38 
 
 

“Whether or not child readers do match how adults think about them, the children in
the phrase ‘children’s literature’ are most usefully understood as the child readers that
writers, responding to the assumptions of adult purchasers, imagine in their works.”
(Nodelman, 5)

Though with the advent of the paperback book and spread of public education
children can select their books without adult guidance, a book intended for children
very often reflects the ideology of the culture in which it is produced and presents
assumptions about children and their appropriate behaviour in the time of its
production. As a result children’s literature generally projects adult concerns and
concepts of childhood. What children might choose for themselves perhaps would be
different from what adults present them with, in the books meant for them. “…[T]exts
written by adults for children reaffirm and communicate the foundational idea that
engendered them – the idea that children are different from and even opposite to
adults.” (Nodelman, 63) Literature for children celebrates adult ideas of childhood and
conveys those ideas to its child readers. It views and reads childhood through adult
perspective.

It is in this sense too that children’s literature is a constructed phenomenon. Various

forces mainly regulated by adults are responsible for its existence. Walter Benjamin’s
distinction between children’s books and children’s literature signifies how certain
types of texts alone get categorised as literature for children. It implies intervention of
adult concerns and interests. Usually biographies, myths, fables, fantasy, patriotic
stories, fiction, educational texts are included under children’s literature whereas
comics, jokes, gossips, narratives presenting family histories, local heroes and deities
are not acknowledged as formal children’s literature. Texts which are characterised as
children’s literature seem to conform to a set of recognisably common and powerful
characteristics. As such children’s literature could be seen as a genre – “a group of
texts characterised by recurrent features.”6 Texts sharing similar characteristics/
attributes could be considered as a genre – a particular type of literature. Speaking
about the literary genre Derrida in “The Law of Genre”, contends that the literary
genre “covers the motif of the law in general.”17 The genres establish the law and
impose it on readers. He further maintains that the value of genre rests on the ideas of
inclusion and exclusion:

39 
 
 

“as soon as genre announces itself, one must respect a norm, one must not cross a line
of demarcation, one must not risk impurity, anomaly or monstrosity.”(Derrida, 224-
225)

As mentioned above children’s literature as a genre definitely exists and operates on

the principle of exclusion:

“Proclamations by adults that certain texts they don’t personally approve of are not
actually children’s literature at all – and therefore not suitable candidates for their
library or home or classroom – have been central to the discourse surrounding
children’s literature ever since it began.” (Nodelman, 110)

This brings to light the social dimension of categorisation of certain texts as children’s
literature and exclusion of certain others from it. Genres in general and children’s
literature as a genre in particular seem to have social and communal dimensions
exercising political effects on their readers and writers who at a conscious level do not
seem to be aware of the social dimension of what they are reading/ writing. This
points to methodical institutionalisation of children’s literature. It is unwise to view
children’s literature as having a self-evident and natural existence. Shared attributes
and ideas that inform and encourage the production of ‘typical’ children’s literature
and form its genre communicate special forms of social action having significant
impact on individual readers – child or/ and adult – and on all the facilitators of
children’s literature. As said earlier, production, circulation and consumption of texts
for children is thus regulated and manipulated by creating a demand for and
authenticating certain kinds of books as children’s literature. It is this
institutionalisation which mainly aids vested forces to regulate, propagate and extend
ideological, cultural and hegemonic discourses in children’s literature so that through
it are formed subjects who will voluntarily consent to and conform with the social
culture presented to them. Thus children’s literature as an institution facilitates and at
the same time controls the discourse(s) which adult forces of the dominant culture
suppose to be appropriate for children. As such children’s literature is constructed to
serve the function of teaching on the one hand, and of entertaining on the other. In
both the constructs the generation of perceptions of the existing ideology believing in
the status quo is mainly presupposed. This is done by way of actually preaching these
perceptions through the texts and by asserting them while entertaining children.

40 
 
 

The context, style and language in children’s literature thus are selected and moulded
to conform to the standard elitist cultural vision. They are standardised to assert the
status quo. On account of such insistence on continuity of elitist standardised cultural
ideology, many cultural exchanges between adults and children have been muted to
the extent of being totally forgotten. For instance, folklore traditions including
performance and verse traditions, community histories, family sagas, ballads etc seem
to be lost to the extent of being derecognised as children’s literature.

Children’s literature as an institution regulates the proliferation of utterances on and

by children thereby restricting its free production or circulation. Foucault in his
‘Order of Discourse’ points out procedures in the production of any discourse which
enable and at the same time restrain the utterances and their circulation within a field.
He says, “in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected,
organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward
off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its
ponderous, formidable materiality.”8

For instance, as explained earlier it is the adults who assume the power to select/
choose/ determine what is good for children, what they should or should not read. As
such it is they who taboo, tame or discourage subjects like sexuality, violence,
politics, rebellion etc and privilege certain other subjects such as triumph of the good
i.e. those who submit and conform to the order and punishment for the bad i.e. those
who do not conform and actively rebel. It is they, the adults, who simplify and
naturalise the associations like those between good and beautiful, bad and ugly,
kindness and servitude, passivity and reward, action and punishment. These adult
facilitators of children’s literature assume the child reader to be essentially there to
unquestioningly accept whatever is given to him. As Philippe Aries proves, like
family the idea of childhood too is a carrier of changeable social, moral and ethical
values and motives within the framework of society and culture. This assumed reader
cannot be effectively or definitely figured out. His presence as an unproblematic
universal figure is assumed for the existence of the literature meant for him.
Jacqueline Rose points out that “children’s fiction rests on the idea that there is a child
who is simply there to be addressed…. The ‘child’ is a construction invented for the
needs of the children’s literature authors and critics, and not an ‘observable’,
‘objective’, ‘scientific’ entity. ”9

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However Rose further maintains, “If children’s fiction builds an image of the child
inside the book, it does so in order to secure the child who is outside the book, the one
who doesn’t come so easily within its grasp.”(Rose, 2)

Thus ‘constructedness’ of the child reader has another function of ‘securing’ the
actual readers by identifying with the child characters in the text that too are
constructed to satisfy adult wants and needs.

As per Aries’ observation in Centuries of Childhood, it is the printing press which

enabled the separation of the worlds of adults and children and invented childhood.
With the replacement of oral culture by literacy, a long period of learning in school
and family was instituted for children. This hierarchy was broken down by the
intervention of media, the television to be precise, according to Postman. In The
Disappearance of Childhood Postman contends that the television’s audio visual
culture blurs the boundaries between entertainment and information and makes the
world seem out of control and irrational. He therefore suggests that childhood should
be restored by adults’ asserting authority and banishment of television sets. As such in
this institutionalised discourse entertainment alone is not seen to be its end goal but it
transcends entertainment and assumes the function of teaching. It takes upon itself the
function of communicating and continuing certain values thus inviting and
conditioning the implied assumed reader to side with certain positions. For instance,
triumphant, award winning and therefore desirable characters are portrayed as having
qualities like beauty, passivity, loyalty, honour, courage, humility, dutifulness, non
defiance or conformity, and responsibility. Such characters are elevated and are the
suffering and victorious heroines and heroes.

Continual exposure to such texts without the benefit of critical questioning and
discussion could indoctrinate readers into the ideology of the story.10

Thus the process of formation of the desired and desirable subjects to retain the status
quo continues through this discourse subtly and systematically. The texts seem to
work towards constructing the subjectivity of their readers, making them think of
themselves only in certain ways and not in certain others. In response to the
constructed nature of the implied child reader, one may consider Peter Hunt’s
assumption in his concept of ‘childist criticism’11 that adults can imagine and attempt
to read as children would read, enjoy and understand. This implies generalisation

42 
 
 

about children’s abilities and interests possibilities of which developmental

psychologists rule out. They assert that if at all adults claim to understand children’s
ways of enjoyment and thinking it is only through their own assumptions about
children and childhood, their own construction of children as they have imagined.
Talking about childhood as a biological ‘reality’, Rex and Wendy Stainton Rogers
claim that we can know about it only “within humanly constructed systems.” (Quoted
in Nodelman, 85) John Stephen also maintains that “all developmental paths are
ideologically constructed, involving conformity to societal norms.”12

Thus children in children’s literature are as much a constructed notion as the idea of
childhood is informed by the cultural conventions which shape children’s literature.
Karin Lesnik-Oberstein’s observation in this respect brings to light the fact that
various forces are implicitly and explicitly are at work in the production, circulation
and consumption of children’s literature:

“The meaning of children’s literature as ‘books which are good for children’ in turn
crucially indicates that the two constituent terms—‘children’ and ‘literature’ —within
the label ‘children’s literature’ cannot be separated and traced back to original
independent meanings, and then reassembled to achieve a greater understanding of
what ‘children’s literature’ is. Within the label the two terms totally qualify each other
and transform each other’s meaning for the purposes of the field. In short: the
‘children’ of ‘children’s literature’ are constituted as specialised ideas of ‘children’,
not necessarily related in any way to other ‘children’ (for instance those within
education, psychology, sociology, history, art, or literature), and the ‘literature’ of
‘children’s literature’ is a special idea of ‘literature’, not necessarily related to any
other ‘literature’ (most particularly ‘adult literature’).”13

Adult control seems to be a central characteristic of children’s literature. It is

produced and its existence is established in order to convey and shape ideology. John
Stephens argues, “Writing for children is usually purposeful, its intention being to
foster in the child reader a positive apperception of some socio cultural values which,
it is assumed, are shared by author and audience.”(Stephens, 3)

Claiming adult thinking about childhood as inherently colonialist, Rose sees adult
attempts in children’s literature to control and manipulate less-knowing children as

43 
 
 

colonial: “children’s fiction has a set of long-established links with the colonialism
which identified the new world with the infantile state of man. ”(Rose, 50)

Nodelman throws light on this colonising role of children’s literature. He sees

children’s literature as an adult tool to produce knowledge of and about children and
for children with the intention to rule over them, to have the power to understand,
control, contain and mould them. “…colonialist thinking imposes a fictional
childhood on children for adult purposes,” he maintains. (Nodelman, 171) He also
points out “a fatal contradiction” (Nodelman, 67) at the heart of adult views of
childhood in children’s literature. Adults consider children different from and even
opposite to them and at the same time view children as continually growing more and
more adult. He traces the origin of this contradiction in the context of the European
colonialist thinking which formed the backdrop for the emergence and development
of children’s literature as we find it now. Colonial thinking operates on two
contradictions: i. The less powerful are seen as different from and opposite to the
more powerful in every way. The powerful are strong, the powerless weak. ii At the
same time the powerless are seen as more primitive than the powerful but are seen to
have the capacity to evolve by way of instruction and improvement. This, however,
ironically reinforces control and oppression of the weak by the strong. The strong
think it obligatory to colonise the weak to help them become stronger. Texts written
for children tend to view childhood as both static and changing and children as
incapable of learning while at the same time in the continual process of learning from
adults who assume to know more. Speaking about this ambivalence one can agree
with what Peter Hollindale says. Quite a few books for children “test and undermine
some of the values which they superficially appear to be celebrating”14

In this literature the qualities positively portrayed in the main characters with whom
children are expected to identify are the qualities any ruler would like his subjects to
possess or aspire for. Adult opinions about children and childhood are generated in
this literature for an unquestioning acceptance and conformity. The strange or alien
nature of ‘childhood’ and the hidden or explicit ruling nature and intent of the adult
attitudes and opinions reflects a colonial relation between the two – the adult and
children – in children’s literature. Like the ‘Orientalist outside the Orient’15 adult
facilitators of children’s literature are outside of childhood as pointed out by
Nodelman. Childhood and children are aliens. They are mysterious and unknowable.

44 
 
 

They are silent about themselves. They are assumed to be there and are addressed.
Adult authority is set up over them thus reflecting a coloniser-colonised relationship.
It is the adults who speak for, about and to children who are assumed to be unable to
do it for themselves. Children’s voice is negated and derecognised. Literature written
for children is filtered through adult reading, editing and reviewing. Thus the adult
(the coloniser) discourse is prioritised and magnified at the cost of or even by
derecognising or changing the discourse of children (the colonised). The texts thus
appeal to and satisfy the needs and tastes of the adults who control children’s readings
and thus wish to condition them to accept adult ideas of the desired child. “The only
way we come to make sense of the world is through the stories we are told. They
pattern the world we have fallen into, effectively replacing its terrors and
inconsistencies with structured images that assure us of its manageability. And in the
process of structuring the world, stories structure us as beings in that world.”16 Since
children know about themselves only through adults who speak for them, the adult
coloniser in children’s literature re-expresses and re-confirms his notions of childhood
and socially acceptable behaviour for children like the ‘Orientalist’ confirms the
‘Orient’ in his readers’ eyes. (Said, 65) Thus children’s literature continually keeps
replicating itself. At the same time it is the former who speaks for the latter again by
negating or derecognising the latter’s voice. It is the adults once again who take it
upon themselves to decide for the children who are not allowed freedom to take
decisions. An essential opposition between the self and the other is established.
Children’s otherness is established by adults in order to define and present themselves
as “rational, virtuous, mature, ‘normal’” (Said, 40) because the ‘other’ is their
opposite. “Childhood exists … to allow adults to be adults – so children’s literature
exists in order to impose childhood on children. … If adults need children to be
childlike in order to understand and confirm their own adulthood, then children’s
literature exists more significantly as part of a system that confirms the childlikeness
of children in order to confirm the adulthood – and the power and authority – of
adults.” (Nodelman, 169) The binaries like superior-inferior, adult-child, ignorance-
knowledge, safety-danger, home-away lead to ambivalence in the text. In that, one of
the two opposites is triumphant at the cost of the other, by negating it and thus
reinforcing the inherent opposition. Winners and losers are clearly marked and
therefore the bipolarity of and within the texts sustains unceasingly. This literature,
whether it performs the ideological, pedagogic or entertaining function, reflects this
45 
 
 

trait of the colonial relationship between adult writers and child readers. It is this
repressive kind of children’s literature which is widely produced and read and is more
dominant the world over. However, on the other hand there have been attempts at
transformation bringing in new forms of writing and changing the face of children’s
literature in particular and of literature in general. There also have been attempts at
producing children’s own writing for themselves. These discourses counter the
ideological function of children’s literature though they face the risk of becoming
‘constructs’ themselves.

Some definitions of children’s literature

‘What is children’s literature?’ seems an apparently quite simple but is in fact a very
complex question. Torben Weinreich maintains that there could be many and various
answers to this question. “There are not quite as many answers as there are
researchers.” (Nodelman,136)

Literature for children emerged a few centuries ago. Discussions on children’s

literature since then however are rampant with attempts to define and also evade
definitions of children’s literature. While Jacqueline Rose negates the possibility of
the term children’s literature, Robert Bator says, “Critics often shun definition
entirely. … it is unfashionable to hold any definition of children’s literature. … To
avoid definition may be to flee ‘rigid’ constraints. But constraint, delimits. Any
literature directed at a special audience is a necessarily limited literature. Literature
for children will remain largely a critically uncharted and confusing territory if its
limitations are not defined.”17 Joan Glazer and Gurney Williams maintain that since
children cannot be defined easily their literature too is beyond definition.18 Lillian
Smith considers the magic of children’s literature elusive enough to make children’s
literature indefinable.19 John Rowe Townsend agrees with Roger Sale who claims that
despite their knowledge about children’s literature writers and critics of children’s
literature fail to define it. “Since any line-drawing must be arbitrary, one is tempted to
abandon the attempt and say that there is no such thing as children’s literature, there is
just literature. And in an important sense, that is true. Children are not a separate form
of life from people; no more than children’s books are a separate form of literature
from just books.”20 Thus in abstaining from or evading definition of children’s
literature Sale and Townsend club this literature with adult literature meant for adult

46 
 
 

consumption too. Michael Steig who maintains that children’s literature is defined by
adult use and not by what children read, goes to the extent of saying that all literature
is “ ‘children’s’ in a fundamental sense.”21 Writers like John Stephens and Rebecca
Lukens find in children’s literature a simple form of adult literature differing only in
degree but not in kind because children themselves, according to them, are “different
from adults in experience, but not in species, … in degree but not in kind.”22 On the
other hand writers like Emer O’Sullivan say, “…the definition of children’s literature
is determined not on the level of text itself, that is to say in the form of specific textual
features, but on the level of the actions and actors involved: texts are identified by
various social authorities as being suitable for children and young people. These
include educational institutions both ecclesiastical and secular, figures active in the
literary market … and those who produce the books.”23 This parallels what Sarah
Trimmer in 1803 maintained: “…children should not be permitted to make their own
choices, or to read any books that may accidentally be thrown in their way, or offered
for their perusal; but should be taught to consider it as a duty, to consult their parents
in this momentous concern.”24 Thus saying Trimmer indirectly suggests a definition
of children’s literature as exclusively that literature which parents select and consider
appropriate for their children. Adult intervention and interests in children’s literature
make Steig call children’s literature “a constructed category…determined by those
who make professional use of it, rather than the children who supposedly read it.”
(Steig,36) Townsend’s ‘practical’ definition of children’s literature echoes these
concerns: “The only practical definition of a children’s book today – absurd as it
sounds – is ‘a book which appears on the children’s list of a publisher.’”25 Marjorie
Hancock defines children’s literature as “…literature that appeals to the interests,
needs, and reading preferences of children and captivates children as its major
audience.”26 Hancock’s definition rests on the assumption that adult producers of
children’s literature accurately understand children’s needs and interests which cannot
be uniform and that children are captivated by the literature produced for them and
presented to them.

These views present the vastness of the field of children’s literature and its lack of
clear-cut boundaries. Perhaps that is the reason why most scholars find it difficult to
define the term. For defining allows exclusion and for exclusion commonalities
between the vast range of texts available need to be identified. However scholars like

47 
 
 

Clifton Fadiman do postulate and prove children’s literature as an independent genre

having its own history and classics and assert that children’s literature can be
identified as a separate entity. This kind of identification as an entity suggests the
possibility of marking specific common characteristics in the texts categorised as
children’s literature and enables its definition. As said earlier defining amounts to
exclusion. Adult perception of children’s limitations leads to exclusion of some texts
from children’s literature. For instance, linguistically complex books considered
beyond children’s cognitive capacities, texts too violent or sexy considered dangerous
for children’s tender sensibilities, innocence and purity, texts too long to hold
children’s attention and so on. Critics who think children’s literature includes only
those texts which intend to offer sheer pleasure to children obviously exclude
implicitly or explicitly didactic writings for children including children’s educational
texts, stories with morals and so on. Critics who think of children’s literature as meant
for children’s enjoyment would focus only on those books which are popular amongst
children leaving out texts which have a literary value. Peter Hunt in his article
“Defining Children’s Literature” argues that what constitutes children’s literature
keeps changing with children’s choices for reading. What children stop reading ceases
to be part of children’s literature. He assumes that these changes in children’s choices
depend on adult concepts of childhood. It is the adults who determine what books are
in vogue for child readers. Changes in their perception of childhood determine which
books are applicable or no longer so to childhood and therefore are of interest to
children or not. “…On the whole, then, that a particular text was written expressly for
children who are recognisably children, with a childhood recognisable today, must be
part of the definition. ” (Hunt, 61-62) Hunt, thus, puts forth yet another exclusionary
view.

However in all these views and attempts at defining as well as evading or abstaining
from definition of children’s literature there seems an undercurrent of common
principles: one that children and adults are different and opposite on the basis of their
levels of knowledge and therefore a special form of literature for children is provided
by adults and two, that existence of children’s literature enables adults who take it
upon themselves as a duty to teach innocent, inexperienced children what they do not
know and what they should, to influence children for making better people out of
them. In this sense, however, children’s literature is necessarily didactic whether

48 
 
 

written for children’s pleasure, enjoyment or enrichment. Adults, whether parents,

teachers, librarians, writers or publishers of children’s literature concerned about
children’s social, emotional, psychological and intellectual upbringing do stress the
educational value of literature they hand over to children. They are concerned about
the morals and messages conveyed in these texts. They expect these texts and their
messages to shape children’s understanding of themselves and others in the world and
in turn their own lives. However, didacticism coated under entertainment is what is
usually preferred. As Charles Temple asserts in Children’s Literature in Children’s
Hands: An Introduction to Their Literature, “many children’s books turn out to be
about something, and it is often possible to derive a lesson from them. But if a book
seems too obviously contrived to teach a lesson, children and critics will not tolerate
it.”27 Explicitly didactic writing has a repelling reaction. Adults want children to enjoy
the literature they read, learn through it and at the same time learn only that which
adults think children ought to know, thus excluding a certain body of knowledge
considered not apt for the innocent world of children – “something the child should be
protected against or something society should prevent the child from finding out
about.” (Weinreich, 56) Thus we see a general expectation of a combination of
entertainment, didacticism and exclusion. Based on this Nodelman defines children’s
literature as “that literature that gives children what they need by not being didactic
about the wrong things – by not teaching them what they cannot or should not know.”
(Nodelman, 158) Thus it wouldn’t be unjustifiable to maintain that children’s
literature is more or less literature for children that talks about adult expectations of
children.

Let us, at this point again, ask questions touched upon earlier in this chapter: Can we
generalise about children? Can we generalise about their wants, needs, tastes etc.?
Can we generalise about their capabilities to respond to literary texts as adults want
them to? Children are different, have different tastes and needs and have varying
abilities to perceive and respond. As Nodelman reflects if at all we think of
‘constructed’ children and child reader, the generalisation that “children are most
significantly a body of differing individuals with different needs, tastes, and so forth
and with the potential to respond to a wide range of literary experiences seems a
positive (and) useful… [and] the best construct to have.”(Nodelman, 160) He also
addresses the question of which children are generalised about. As he firmly

49 
 
 

maintains, since its beginning in the 18th century “children’s publishing has been
primarily a middle class venture, pursued by middle class writers and intended most
centrally and most often for audiences of middle class children.” (Nodelman, 101) He
tries to prove how children’s literature constructs and supports the value of assertion
of private property and individuality which are considered thoroughly middle class
values. On the basis of this assertion Nodelman defines children’s literature as “the
literature produced for and in order to construct the subjectivity of the children of the
middle class.” (Nodelman, 177)

CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF CHILDREN’S

LITERATURE

On the basis of the discussion above one may derive some observable features of
literature written for children:

i. Implied Reader – Children’s literature, as discussed earlier, assumes a

universal, non questioning, unproblematic child as its reader. This reader is
addressed in special ways and the content to be conveyed to him is
specified by the adult writer.
ii. Simplicity of Language and style – The implied child reader is addressed
in simple language and style. Here, a stereotypical view of children’s
limited abilities is assumed. The texts therefore are simple and direct. C. S.
Lewis while justifying why he writes for children, says, “This form
permits or compels one to leave out things I wanted to leave out. It
compels to throw all the force of the book into what was done and said.”28
iii. Minimal Description and Focus on Action – Simple language is associated
with very limited description of events. Rather than focusing on the
process or a series of happenings in an event, the event/action itself and its
consequences, their broad outlines are focussed. For this, considerably
complex actions or a series of similar events are merely quickly summed
up.
iv. Undercurrent of Complexities – Simplicity, directness and
straightforwardness of these texts actually disguise underneath them a
more complex level of text which Nodelman calls a “shadow
text.”(Nodelman,8) Children are assumed not to understand beyond

50 
 
 

the simple text presented to them. However, research shows that they do
have the capacity to understand beyond what they read and hear. It is the
same simplicity and directness which moves children subtly into these
shadow texts. Children thus can be conditioned to accept what adults want
them to believe. This could be seen as the usual form of narrative meant
for children.
v. Strange is familiar - The texts present action in them in such a matter of
fact manner that the strangest events assume a familiar appearance.
Children tend to accept them as a regular, normal course of happenings.
Use of fantasy in children’s literature is instrumental in this kind of
familiarity and acceptance of the strange as normal.
vi. Child Protagonist - The texts present children as their protagonists. The
implied readers are expected to view the events and actions of the text
through its central child protagonist. Generally as readers we tend to
identify with the characters through whose perspective we view the action.
Similarly child readers too identify with their child protagonist and with
what he feels and thinks about events, other characters, his own and
others’ lives, the world and so on. This sort of identification and
controlling of perspective through one focal character is termed as
‘focalisation’ (56) by Nodelman.
vii. Third Person Narration – The focalisation is manipulated by a third person
narrator in the texts. The protagonist’s responses are conveyed, reported
and at times opposed by this narrator suggesting thereby that there exists
yet another, more mature and different point of view which could and
should be accepted as correct. The narrator knows more than the child
protagonist and child readers. The children know less. They should know
and understand about their ignorance and what it means to be so. At the
same time they can and must change, must shed their ignorance and
become mature, become adults. These seem to be the assumptions behind
the presentation of two different perspectives in the texts. As discussed
above these assumptions and attitudes represent colonialist thinking.
viii. Childlike Animals – In many books written for children along with or
instead of child protagonists, childlike animals are centralised and

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the actions are shown through their perspective which in turn is controlled
by the third person narrator.
ix. Interplay of Binary Opposites – The texts suggest the changing nature of
children and childhood. They expect children to change and yet be
childlike, shed ignorance and yet be innocent, make choices but on adult
terms. Children are invited or encouraged to think in oppositional terms:
this or that, freedom or constraint, ignorance or knowledge, safety or
danger, home or away. Children while expected to become adults, are also
seen as in need of adult protection from dangers they are unaware of.
Adults take it upon themselves to provide places of protection for children.
These places are identified as home. A general pattern of action as
revealed in the tales for children presents a child moving away from home
for one reason or another, confronting dangers or undertaking adventures
and returning home again as a more mature being. This line of action itself
provides an opposition between danger and safety, freedom and restraint,
rebellion and conformity, innocence and experience. The texts further
reinforce adult point of view and authority by showing one pole winning
over the other.
x. Didacticism and Entertainment – The end goal of texts meant for
children’s consumption seems to be to influence children with adult ways
of desired behaviour and therefore to educate them about the ‘proper,’
conformist actions and attitudes. This didacticism is achieved under the
guise of pleasure and entertainment. Both pleasure and freedom of choice
are offered to children in a subtly masked and manipulated form. The
contradiction of pleasure coated in hidden didactic intentions could be seen
as the central marker of children’s literature. Adoption of fairy tales as
children’s literature in the 19th century exemplifies this claim. These tales
written for children were originally folktales orally circulated amongst
peasants. The implied audience i.e. the underclass peasants were perhaps
expected to unquestioningly, passively conform to the control and
authority of their rich and powerful masters. This principle of control rules
even the written form of the tales, the only difference being the controlling
authority (adults) and those controlled (children).

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xi. Stereotypical Associations – Fairy tales contain and offer various markers
for literature for children. They present black and white allocation of
punishment and reward. Passivity of a child protagonist is shown to be
admired and rewarded. Those who challenge their fate and act to govern it
are shown miserable, defeated and punished. Weak, ignorant and therefore
good characters achieve what they desire and dream whereas active,
powerful ones get punished and are banned. The stereotypical associations
of beauty and goodness, ugliness and cruelty, passivity and reward, action
and punishment and many more have been bestowed on children’s
literature by fairy tales. These stereotypes and fairy tale motifs are so
powerfully implanted that they have sustained for centuries together not
just in literature for children but even in popular literature, media, cinema,
and so on.

Fairy tales play an important role in socialisation and are considered the “first
poetic form with which people come into contact in their lives.”29 Among the
various forms of folk narratives the fairy tale has grown to be the most dominant
genre. Scholars of fairy tales like K.F. Stone rightly point out the “continuing oral
vitality” of the fairy tales. As Röhrich says, “fairy tales concern everyone, because
they reproduce an Everyman-Reality and Everyman-Ideal.” (Röhrich, 9) This
statement confirms the universal importance of these tales.

As mentioned earlier the adoption of fairy tales in the written form in the 19th
century, marked its entry into the literary world. Since then the fairy tale has
established itself effectively as an accepted literary genre. Bruno Bettelheim for
instance gives the evidence of their literary qualities as follows:

i. Their deepest meaning is different for each person and for the same
person at different stages in his/her life.
ii. They have psychological meaning and impact.
iii. A cultural heritage finds expression in them.
iv. They contribute to the child’s moral education. They indirectly
address themselves in the most imaginative form to essential
human problems.

53 
 
 

Based on this he observes that the delight and enchantment experienced in response to
a fairy tale comes not from the psychological meaning of the tale “but from its literary
qualities – the tale itself as a work of art. The fairy tale could not have the
psychological impact on the child were it not first and foremost a work of art.”30 As
Bettelheim records in his book, G.K Chesterton and C.S. Lewis acknowledge the
importance of fairy tale in their being “spiritual explorations” and thereby “the most
life-like” since they reveal “human life as seen, or felt, or divined from inside.”
(Bettelheim, 24)

Fairy tales are essentially seen as children’s literature though there is not necessarily a
connection between them and children. The deliberate relegation of fairy tales to the
nursery “as shabby or old fashioned furniture is relegated to the playroom, primarily
because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused” is according to
J.R.R.Tolkien “an error of false sentiment,” “an accident of our domestic history.”31
Impropriety of the adult scorn of fairy tales is evident in Jacob Grimm’s assertion that
his tales were not intended for children but adults: “The book of fairy tales is not
written for children at all, but it meets their needs and desires, and that pleases me
immensely.”32

J.R.R.Tolkien too emphasises fairy tales as essentially adult literature. In his essay
‘On Fairy Stories’ he speaks at length about what fairy tales are, about their origin and
their use. He describes them as “the land full of wonder but not information.”
(Tolkien, 109) They are “wonder tale(s) involving marvellous elements and
occurrences though not necessarily about fairies.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica) They
are rather about what Tolkien calls “faerie” – “the pre-eminently desirable land” the
land of desires, “the realm or state in which fairies have their being.” (Tolkien, 113)

Various other scholars have paid serious attention to the study of fairy tales which in a
way proves their significance as serious literature. The Science of Fairy Tales: An
Inquiry into Fairy Mythology (1891) by Edwin Sidney Hartland was one of the first
attempts at defining and discussing fairy tales. The book claims to deal with tradition
and defines fairy tales as “traditionary narratives not in their present form relating to
beings held to be divine, nor to cosmological or national events, but in which the
supernatural plays an essential part.”33 Hartland studies various integral aspects of
fairy tales and throws light on their oral orientation, the difference between sagas and

54 
 
 

fairy tales, the element of witchcraft and magic, ‘the supernatural lapse’ in fairy tales
and so on.

The Swiss folklorist Max Luithi’s contribution in this respect is significant too. His
folk narrative research comprises three major books published in English almost a
decade after the publication of the original: Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of
Fairy Tales (1962/1976), The European Folktale: Form and Nature (1967/1982), The
Fairy tale as Art Form and Portrait of Man (1975/1987). Luithi carefully examines in
these books the aesthetic dimension of fairy tales and undertakes a “humanistic
interpretation of stories as stories.” He believes in the possibility of various
interpretations of fairy tales and negates the view that fairy tales influence children
negatively. On the contrary he considers fairy tales as developing trust, self
confidence and confidence in the world.

Fairy tales from psychoanalytical perspective:

Sigmund Freud in 1913 threw light on the psychological orientation of fairy tales in
The Occurrence in Dreams of Material from Fairy Tales. In 1915 F. Ricklin
discussed wish fulfilment, symbolism and defence mechanisms in fairy tales. T.
Hagglund and V. Hagglund again stressed the psychological importance of fairy tales
and studied the theme of death in them in 1976. They tried to prove that fairy tales
help children deal with the meaning of death.

Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy
Tales (1977) was a very significant attempt at a psychological study and
understanding of fairy tales. Bettelheim speaks about the therapeutic value of fairy
tales for children and adults. He tried to prove that people could find solutions to their
physical and mental ailments by meditating over fairy tales. Like Freud, he claims
that fairy tales are gender free and help children of both sexes to solve their own inner
conflicts and define themselves as human beings. According to him, fairy tales are
significant for children as well as adults as mirrors of their basic emotional response
to problems of maturation. Bettelheim significantly brought out this importance of
fairy tales. However his work was criticised as being reductionist by many critics.

55 
 
 

Fairy tales from Structuralist perspective:

A structuralist approach to folk and fairy tales was attempted in 1975 by Vladimir
Propp. He defined fairy tales as ‘folktales in the strictest sense of the word.’34 Propp
classified folk tales into fairy tales, tales of everyday life and animal tales. According
to him, “…fairy tales possess a particular construction which is immediately felt and
which determines their category even though we may not be aware of it.”(Propp, 5)
Propp analysed fairy tales according to the functions of their dramatis personae. On
the basis of this analysis he graphed a morphology of folktales which in his own
words means ‘the description of the folktale according to its component parts and
relationship of these components to each other and to the whole.’(Propp, 1)

Many structuralists after Propp attempted the study of fairy tales. Amongst them Alan
Dundes structurally analysed folk narratives and applied linguistic theory to this
analysis. Scholars like Ilana Dan and Eleasar M Meletinski followed the Proppian
theory. They applied Propp’s model to their fairy tale analysis. As Anna Tavis holds,
Roland Barthes’ Mythologies also gives semiotic insights into the folklore studies and
Levi Strauss’ speculative and deductive method offers a critical response to Propp’s
empirical and inductive study.

Fairy tales from Marxist perspective:

Marxists also attempted the study of the meaning of folk and fairy tales. Prominent
amongst them was Jack Zipes. He summarised the contemporary Marxist thought on
fairy tales by synthesising the notions of Hoernle, Bloch and Benjamin who opened
up three areas of fairy tale research in the 1960s.

Zipes discusses these notions in three general theses and comments on how the
contemporary Marxists elaborate on them:

i. Woollen Weber, Richter, Merkel, Manfred Klein and Werner Psaar, Ulrike
Bastion, Bernd Dolle and Christa Burger study the changing role of fairy
tales in history and their manipulation to influence the behaviour and
thinking of their readers – both children as well as adults. All these
researchers worked on the assumption that fairy tales share close ties with
real situations of children and they have positive as well as negative
impact in the process of socialisation. They “demonstrate how

56 
 
 

the transformation of the tales and their employment have been

ideologically determined to legitimate the interests of the capitalist
societies.”35
ii. Marxists also worked on the assumption that fairy tales have the potential
to contain elements of political protest and wish fulfilment. These
elements hint at the possible ways in which the oppressed can bear and
overcome the power of the exploitative rulers. The Marxists undertake an
analysis of these elements in the light of their anachronistic and feudal
features. Gottner-Abendroth takes a historical feminist perspective to
analyse the tales. From this perspective he emphasises the patriarchal
nature of the tales. Most of the contemporary Marxists believe in
modernisation and reshaping of the oral and literary fairy tales in order that
they reflect and include a critique of the present society.
iii. In order to preserve the authentic folk tradition, contemporary Marxists
carefully distinguished between the folk and fairy tale. For them fairy tales
are appropriated forms of folk tales. Jens Tisman, for instance, speaks
about the ‘bourgeoisification’ of fairy tales. Friedman Apel discusses the
aesthetics of the fairy tale in relation to bourgeois standards of the time of
Louis XIV.

Zipes draws an important conclusion from these views: Fairy tale of any kind is “a
social product stamped by its times, its power resides in its utopian potential to
illuminate ways by which we can come to terms with injustice and pursue dreams
of a golden age.”(Zipes, 241) He acknowledges Propp’s Marxist writings as
significant for they “link ethnography and folklore ideologically” (241) by
“stressing that the people have cultivated folk art in resistance to the oppression of
the ruling classes.” (241)

In his book Breaking the Magic Spell Zipes studies the socio historical forces
influencing the transition of the oral folk tales into written fairy tales. He bases his
theory on the assumption that fairy tales are basically bourgeois literature
originated as a result of the appropriation of the folktales, which according to him
were the property of the community into the written form as fairy tales. He
examines and argues about this transition and hegemonic establishment of fairy
tales by the bourgeois, dominant classes in order that the status quo is maintained

57 
 
 

and ideas convenient for such maintenance are systematically generated through
the tales. The Marxists like Zipes and the feminists do stress the significance of
the reworking of fairy tales and seek justifications for such attempts.

Fairy tales from feminist perspective:

Fairy tales attracted feminist attention in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the focus
of the attention was not exclusively on fairy tales as the tales were considered one
of the many sources of negative female stereotypes. Therefore we find mere
passing references to fairy tales rather than their detailed analysis in Simone de
Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1953) and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
(1963). In the ’70s however, fairy tales did receive a serious consideration by
feminists. As said earlier in Chapter I Alison Lurie’s articles in 1970 and 71 could
be said to have initiated a serious discussion on fairy tales and their liberating
potential for women. In response to her Marcia Liebermann’s ‘Some Day My
Prince will Come: Female Acculturation through the Fairy Tale’ (1972) could be
seen as the earliest essay attacking the negative female images and stereotypes in
fairy tales and trying to show how these stereotypes, behavioural and associational
patterns are acculturated in children through the tales. Following her Andrea
Dworkin also speaks, in her book Woman Hating, about the negative effects of
fairy tales. However her arguments seem reductionist and limited. As Jack Zipes
mentions, her assumption seems that “the tales are automatically received in fixed
ways and that all fairy tales contain the same message.” 36 Robert Moore’s ‘From
Rags to Witchcraft: Stereotypes, Distortion and Anti humanism in Fairy Tales’
(1975) also emphasises the negative features of the tales. Kay F. Stone in her
essay ‘Things Walt Disney Never Told Us’ (1975) studies the changes made in
the tales through centuries and the reasons behind these changes thus allowing
women to be aware of their own history and to have the possibility to change the
existing socio-political arrangements. She even attempted in her reconsideration
of fairy tales, to replace stereotypical popular princesses with more aggressive
heroines. However this attempt was criticised on the grounds of being a mere
superficial consideration of the tales. Jane Yolen in her ‘America’s Cinderella’
(1977) throws light on how the change of folk ‘Cinderella’ into a literary tale by
Perrault in the seventh century involves the transformation of the originally active,
assertive heroine into a passive, servile, submissive girl. Yolen, in Zipes’ words,

58 
 
 

intends to “rectify history and suggest alternatives to our common picture of

Cinderella so that women could use cultural material to realise their own essence
through art and literature.” (Zipes, 7)Heather Lyon in her essay ‘Some Second
Thoughts on Sexism in Fairy Tales’ (1978) re examines and re discovers
matriarchal features in folk and fairy tales. In 1979 Karen Rowe in the essay
‘Feminism and Fairy Tales’ challenged Bruno Bettelheim claiming that fairy tales
are not gender free but are full of gender stereotypes and as such cannot have a
positive impact so far as an egalitarian social view is concerned. She attacked
fairy tales as “purveyor(s) of romantic archetypes and thereby, of cultural precepts
for young women.”37 The feminists suggested substitution of narrow female
images with more aggressive heroines, strong and enterprising women to
counterbalance stereotypical passive princesses. Writers like Jay Williams, Ethel
Phelps etc did attempt such stories but they remained unrecognised in the feminist
scholarship.

These feminists felt that women in fairy tales were purposely and unjustly
discriminated against by men. The next generation of the feminist writers
however, opted for the reworking on the conventional stories in order to give vent
to the deliberately neglected aspects of the women’s world. Feminist critics of the
early ’70s considered women as naturally separate from and superior to men.
Those of the late ’70s struck a compromise between the two earlier views, thus
maintaining that women and men are naturally separate but not essentially
antagonistic to each other. Books like Patricia Managhan’s The Book of
Goddesses and Heroines (1981), Barbara Walker’s The Women’s Encyclopaedia
of Myths and Secrets (1983), Marie-Louise von Franz’s The Problems of the
Feminine in Fairy Tales (1982) and Madonna Kolbenschlag’s Kiss Sleeping
Beauty Goodbye (1979) furthered the thought put forth by the feminists of the late
70s. Kolbenschlag, for instance, undertakes a radically challenging study and
analysis of femininity and fairy tales. She instigates the readers to think of
alternatives to the socially built up role models. She does not hold fairy tales
responsible for the creation of these role models but sees them as symbolical
forms that strengthen the self destructive, social, psychological patterns of
behaviour in life. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in The Madwoman in the Attic
(1979) use fairy tale motifs to examine the socio-psychological situation of

59 
 
 

women writers in the male dominated discourse of the 19th century. They use
‘Snow White’ as the paradigm for the dramatisation of the conflict between the
witch and the angel, the two types of females – the conflict manipulated purposely
by men by playing off the two types of females against each other.

In the light of fairy tale critique against the backdrop of the discussion on
‘childhood’ and ‘children’s literature,’ the following chapter undertakes to explore
in detail the values and stereotypes for which fairy tales have been attacked and on
account of which the need to retell them arises.

60 
 
 

NOTES

1
W. B. Drummond, The Child – His Nature and Nurture (London: Aldine House,

1900) 16.

2
David Buckingham, Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary

Culture (Cambridge: Polity, 2003) 21.

3
Jyotsna Kapur, Coining for Capital: Movies, Marketing and the Transformation of

Childhood (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2005) 2.

4
David Rudd, “Theorising and Theories: The Conditions of Possibility of Children’s

Literature,” International Companion Encyclopaedia of Children’s Literature, ed.

Peter Hunt (London, New York: Routledge, 2004) 39.

5
Perry Nodelman, The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature (Baltimore:

The Johns Hopkins UP, 2008) 4-5.

6
Torben Weinreich, Children’s Literature: Art or Pedagogy? (Frederiksberg,

Denmark: Roskilde UP, 2000) 34.

7
Jacques Derrida, “The Law of Genre,” Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (New

York: Routledge, 1992) 243.

8
Michael Foucault, “Order of Discourse,” Untying the Text: A Post Structuralist

Reader ed. Robert Young (London: Routledge, 1981) 52.

9
Jacqueline Rose, The Case of Peter Pan; or the Impossibility of Children’s Fiction

(London: Macmillan, 1984) 1.

10
Cynthia McDaniel, “Critical Literacy: A Questioning Stance and the Possibility for

Change,” The Reading Teacher 57.5, (2004): 477.

61 
 
 

11
Peter Hunt, Criticism, Theory and Children’s Literature (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,

1991) 16.

12
John Stephens, Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction (London: Longman,

1992) 3-4.

13
Karin Lesnik-Oberstein, “Essentials: What is Children’s Literature? What is

Childhood?” Understanding Children’s Literature, ed. Peter Hunt (London:

Routledge, 1999) 16.

14
Peter Hollindale, Ideology and the Children’s Book (Stroud: Thimble, 1988): 20.

15
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978) 21.

16
Karen Coats, Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire and Subjectivity in

Children’s Literature (Iowa City: U of Iowa P,.2004) I.

17
Robert Bator, Signposts to Criticism of Children’s Literature (Chicago: American

Library Association, 1983) 5-6.

18
Joan Glazer and Gurney Williams III, Introduction to Children’s Literature (New

York: McGraw-Hill, 1979) 10.

19
Lillian Smith, The Unreluctant Years: A Critical Approach to Children’s

Literature ( Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1976) 12.

20
John Rowe Townsend, “Standards for Criticism for Children’s Literature,” The

Signal Approach to Children’s Books (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1980) 196-197.

21
Michael Steig, “Never Going Home: Reflections on Reading, Adulthood, and the

Possibility of Children’s Literature,” Children’s Association Quarterly 18. I

(Spring 1993):38.

62 
 
 

22
Rebecca J Lukens, A Critical Handbook of Children’s Literature (Boston: Allyn

and Bacon, 2003) 9.

23
Emer O’Sullivan, Comparative Children’s Literature (London: Routledge,2005)

14.

24
Sarah Trimmer, “On the Care which is Requisite in the Choice of Books for

Children,” Children and Literature: Views and Reviews ed., Virginia Haviland

(Glenview, II: Scott, Foresman, 1973) 4.

25
John Rowe Townsend, A Sense of Story (London: Longman, 1971) 10.

26
Marjorie R. Hancock, A Celebration of Literature and Response: Children, Books,

and Teachers in K-8 Classrooms (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill, 2000) 5.

27
Charles Temple et al, Children’s Literature in Children’s Hands: An introduction

to Their Literature (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998) 9-10.

28
C. S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,” Children and Literature:

Views and Reviews, 236.

29
Lutz Röhrich, “Introduction,” Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion and

Paradigm ed. Ruth B Bottigheimer (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1986) 1.

30
Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of

Fairy Tales (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976) 12.

31
J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” The Monsters and Critics and Other Stories ed.

George Tolkien (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983) 130.

32
Rudolf Schenda, “Changes in Communicative Forms,” Fairy Tales and Society:

Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm 87.

63 
 
 

33
Edwin Sidney Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy

Mythology (London: Walter Scott, 1891) 3-4.

34
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale trans. Laurence Scott (Austin:

U of Texas P, 1968) 1.

35
Jack Zipes, “Marxists and the Illumination of Folk and Fairy Tales,” Fairy Tales:

Illusion, Allusion and Paradigm 239.

36
Jack Zipes, Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North

America and England (New York: Methuen, 1986) 5.

37
Karen Rowe, “Feminism and Fairy Tales” Women’s Studies 248.

64 
 
 

CHAPTER - III

Fairy Tales: Generators of Values and Stereotypes

Fairy tales, which speak in a language well understood in the

modern world, remain relevant because they allude to deep
hopes for material improvement, because they present illusions
of happiness to come, and because they provide social
paradigms that overlap nearly perfectly with daydreams of a
better life. (Bettelheim, 13)

C. S. Lewis maintained that many children do not like fairy tales whereas many adults
love to read them. Children are increasingly fascinated by fairy tales from their early
childhood till about the age of ten years. Particularly the age between six and eight
years shows remarkable attraction towards the genre. However, as the child outgrows
or sheds its animalism and egocentrism – Freud is significant in this respect – and gets
engaged with the process of conscious independent social interaction and
socialisation, especially by the age of 10, its interest in the genre starts declining. This
decline continues well till the child reaches adulthood when once again there erupts a
nostalgic attachment to and attraction for fairy tales. These shifts in the love for,
refusal of and a revised interest in fairy tales at different stages of human life are well
recorded by Andre Favat in his Child and Tale using Piaget’s cognitive theory and
approach as the base for explanation. Jack Zipes in his article “The Potential of
Liberating Fairy Tales for Children”1 documents Favat’s exploration of this idea.

Children between 6 and 8 years of age perceive the world around them in a peculiar
way, according to Piaget. During this phase of their development “children believe in
the magical relationship between thought and things, regard inanimate objects as
animate, respect authority in the form of retributive justice and expiatory punishment,
see causality as paratactic, do not distinguish the self from the external world, and
believe that the objects can be moved in continual response to their desires.” (Zipes,
311-312) Favat shows a corresponding relation between such perception of the world
on part of children and the form and content the classical fairy tales of Grimm,

65 
 
 

Perrault and Andersen present. The universe of even those fairy tales which were not
necessarily intended initially for children meet the children’s emotional and
psychological needs and worldview in this phase of development. Children seem to
desire for an ordered world different from the real one which they actually experience.
Favat says that it is possible to see a child’s fascination for fairy tales “as a salutary
utilisation of an implicit device of the culture… [T]he reader invests the real world
with the constructs of the tale.” (Zipes, 312) Children gratify and thereby try to realise
their own selves through the tales. However greater interaction and confrontation with
the real world and increasing cultural socialisation with age result in a rejection of
fairy tales by the age of ten years. The child however, revisits these tales once again
as a young adult to find, recapture and consciously gratify and realise himself/herself
with a similar earnestness of the earlier age. Zipes terms this recurrence of interest in
fairy tales and the fairy tale fantasy as a return to a homeland which, according to
him, is “philosophically… a move forward to what has been repressed and never
fulfilled. The pattern in most fairy tales involves the reconstitution of home as a new
plane, and this accounts for the power of its appeal to both children and adults.”
(Zipes, 310)

The tales this thesis undertakes to consider confine to the Grimms’ collection, the
Nursery and Household Tales. This collection went through as many as seven editions
during the Grimms’ lifetime. The movement and growth (!) of the tales from
manuscript to print in these editions gave the tales a special character. The Grimms
were greatly concerned about the values of their time and responded to these values.
They seemed to be considering the enlightening function of the tales as well. Using
different editorial practices, odd at times, they are said to have “transformed adult folk
materials into a hybrid form of folk lore and literature for children.”2

The movement of fairy tales from folk tales to the printed literary form mainly
marked their shift from adult amusement to entertainment and edification of children
which J.R.R. Tolkien described as fairy tales’ neglect and ‘relegation to the playroom’
by adults. In the process of befitting these tales for the consumption of child readers/
listeners the Grimms adopted such practices as tampering with the language of the
tales, homogenising and stylising this language and investing the tales with morals,
messages, judgements, values and contemporary pedagogic, didactic issues. In their
efforts to recast folktales, the Grimms remarkably changed the texture of the tales

66 
 
 

to suit their literary and social purposes. At times they simply stylistically expanded
and embellished the tales. Commenting on the expansion of ‘Briar Rose’ from its
original version in the first through its final edition, Maria Tatar quotes Max Luithi as
saying that the passage “grew and expanded almost as quickly as the hedge
surrounding the castle.” (Tatar,27) Going beyond such expansion the Grimms even
put forth their own values and ideas about gender roles compatible with the prevailing
patriarchal social set up. For instance, stories in the Nursery and Household Tales
differ incrementally from one edition to another in their presentation of the heroine’s
physical hardship, torment and passive suffering. In the first version, Snow White, for
instance, takes shelter in the dwarves’ house on the promise that she would cook for
them. In later editions the dwarves demand that she should perform all the domestic
chores for them if she wants shelter: ‘If you will keep house for us, do the cooking,
make the beds, wash, sew, knit, and keep everything neat and clean, you can stay with
us and you won’t want anything.’ Tatar claims that these were undoubtedly the
Grimms’ “notions on contractual relations between men and women.”(Tatar, 29) She
further establishes that the Grimms emphasised “the virtue of hard work and made a
point of correlating diligence with beauty and desirability wherever possible.”(Tatar,
30) These features markedly increase from edition to edition.

The fairy tale heroines are beautiful, good, responsible, contrite, soft hearted, passive,
delicate, weak, docile, god fearing and so on. Instead of letting the characters reveal
themselves through their action which is a significant feature of folktales, the Grimms
passed their own value judgements on their fairy tale characters as they went on
editing the tales. Tatar claims, “That we are forever coming across wise monarchs,
compassionate heroes, toiling beauties, and proud princesses has something to do with
folkloric plot patterns, but it also has a great deal to do with Wilhelm Grimm’s
preconceived notions about sex, class and character ”(Tatar, 30)

Scholars have been able to identify these changes by comparing the Grimms’ later
editions of the Nursery and Household Tales with their original manuscripts and the
first edition of the collection in 1812. With every successive edition the tales became
more and more readable but at the cost of the transparency in and proximity to their
oral forms.

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In their attempts to tame the tales from the adult world of entertainment and make
them bedtime stories for children, the Grimms censored those aspects of the fairy tale
world that their value system could not tolerate. This was also done to conform to the
existing social value system of the time. For in their uncensored, unexpurgated
editions intended as bed time stories for children, the Grimms did include graphic
descriptions of murder, incest, mutilation, infanticide, cannibalism, evil ways and
practices of men and women, maternal, paternal and fraternal cruelty and so on. In her
“new history” of the Grimms’ tales Ruth Bottigheimer claims the brothers to be
“unworldly, inexperienced, and like the tales they recorded, generally innocent of
sexual knowledge.”3 She illustrates their naïveté and ignorance of folk world and folk
humour in the inclusion of the story ‘Mrs Fox’s Wedding’ in the first edition for
children. The story includes lewd references which only adults could recognise. The
expression ‘nine tails’ in the innocently funny story has lewd and sexual implications.
However the Grimms were unaware of these implications in German slang usage and
refused to accept that it was a ‘dirty’ tale. “The innocence with which the Grimms –
and Jacob in particular – credited the folk was in fact their own.” (Bottigheimer, 46)
The first two editions of the Grimms tales came under ruthless censure by critics like
Johann Gustav Busching and Fredrich Ruhs. Ruhs claimed that the book was not
appropriate for children, that the stories in it may look short and simple but they do
have the capacity to disturb children and make them uncomfortable.

Relatively unwelcome acceptance of the tales, criticism laid against them and the
Grimms’ own awkwardness and at times ignorance about the issues concerning
“certain conditions and relationships” (Grimms’ Preface) which mainly included
pregnancy, incest, incestuous desires, sexual details, child abuse, cruel punishments
etc paved the way for changes in the tales. Thus cruel parents, maternal malice, sexual
jealousy etc were metamorphosed, modified and made more palatable for children.
For instance, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ was originally a story of parental, particularly,
maternal malice. In the fourth edition however the father of the kids was freed from
the accusation of being cruel and abusive. The wicked mother who wishes to thrive by
sending the kids into the forest to starve was replaced by a heartless stepmother. In
doing so the focus of the story moved from child abuse, childhood anxieties and
abandonment to a cruel stepmother. Similarly Snow White’s mother and the mother
of the heroine in “Mother Holle” were transformed into wicked stepmothers on

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the presumption that children would tolerate the idea of wicked stepmothers more
easily than that of cruel mothers. Such conscious and deliberate alterations challenge
the Grimms’ claim about their hard efforts to preserve the folklores in their pristine
form making evident the appropriation of fairy tales in the literary realm. Offering an
alternative history of fairy tales Ruth Bottigheimer in 2009 questioned the very
assumption of folk invention and transmission of fairy tales. Claiming folk invention
and dissemination of fairy tales as baseless enough to be verified, she maintains
“Literary analysis undermines it, literary history rejects it, social history repudiates it
and publishing history (whether of manuscripts or of books) contradicts
it.”(Bottigheimer, 1) She attempts a “history in reverse” (Bottigheimer, 26) moving
backward in time from the 19th century Germany through France to Italy. She
advocates that all modern fairy tales have print origins and not purely oral ones.

Bottigheimer’s history demonstrates how the traditional history of fairy tales

projected the Grimms’ tales as recordings of the oral folklore heard from folk
informants while in fact most of the best known Grimm tales originated in and were
informed by urban middle class sources. It is in the last quarter of the 20th century that
critical re evaluation of fairy tales began. Heinz Rölleke’s contributory study, in 1975,
of the Grimm brothers’ folk informants and editorial practices brought new insights
into the understanding of the genesis of the Nursery and Household Tales. Comparing
the printed tales through their successive editions with the manuscripts, the scholars
discovered and demonstrated the extent to which the tales were shaped in their
content and ideology by the Grimms themselves through their methods of collection,
selection and editing. Scholars like Bottigheimer challenged the socio historical roots
of the Grimms’ tales in particular and fairy tales in general and their relationship to
the oral tradition. These findings instigated research and critical examination of nature
and methods of collection, selection and edition and destabilised the dichotomous
thinking about the oral – literal opposition. It is this opposition which constrained the
folktale and fairy tale studies. However it is as a response to this conventional cultural
trend of oral- literal divide that some scholars initiated re examination of the fairy tale
tradition, creating and producing new tales which “question, challenge, subvert, revise
and otherwise adapt classical tales.”4

The reason behind elaborating researched facts about the Grimms’ fairy tales is to
show the deliberately manipulative nature of the tales in question for the present
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study. Intending the tales for children’s consumption, modifying them for the same
purpose, and in so doing sowing deep in children’s psyche the seeds of the existing
value system which they would passively accept and not challenge is what the words
manipulation and appropriation of the tales would imply. Consideration of the
possible psychological impact of fairy tales on children which is claimed while
composing tales appropriate for them disregards the possible psychological, emotional
and social impact on the kids of the values generated in these tales. In his 1994 work
on fairy tales and myth Jack Zipes sketches six features of the process of
institutionalisation of (adult) fairy tales for children:

“ a. the social function of the fairy tale must be didactic and teach a lesson that
corroborates the code of civility as it was being developed at that time;

b. it must be short so that children can remember and memorise it and so that both
adults and children can repeat it orally…;

c. it must pass the censorship of adults so that it can be easily circulated;

d. it must address social issues such as obligation, sex roles, class differences, power
and decorum so that it will appeal to adults, especially those who publish and
publicise the tales;

e. it must be suitable to be used with children in a schooling situation; and

f. it must reinforce a notion of power within the children of upper classes and suggest
ways for them to maintain power.”5

All these features signify how conscious manipulation and conditioning of child
psyche is successfully attempted by giving children cultural information about
themselves and others, shaping their self image as desired by the social, political
forces/agencies of authority. As a result children don’t just see themselves in the tales
but more often they are made to see how they should be. Stereotypical and pejorative
images of women, gender roles, poor and middle classes, races and so on frame, shape
and reinforce a belief system for children, their worldviews and perceptions of
themselves and the society they live in.

Textual and visual exposure to images and stereotypes vis-à-vis the notion of good,
bad, beautiful, ugly, worthy, unworthy as reflected in texts and films can have

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a permanent stronghold on the belief system formed by children in their formative

age. It does impact the process of children’s acculturation and socialisation. Social
discrimination, prejudices and biases on the basis of class, caste, race, gender, power
relations etc. get rooted at this age risking the creation of a generation of people who
are unable to see and meet one another as human beings sans any label of class, race,
gender, and so on. Surveys of the extent of these tales’ impact on children have
revealed the enormous efforts needed to undo the adverse negative consequences of
the generation of stereotypes in fairy tales. For instance, E. Yeoman in his study of
school children aged 9-11 years in 1999 demonstrated that children, particularly,
Afro-American children associate the colour white with good, pretty and living
happily ever after. Segura Mora’s study in 2003 points out that the impact of this kind
of association of white as socially worthy and black otherwise and the preponderance
of the white and fair world in fairy tales is not confined to the concerned cultural
groups only but crosses the ethno cultural boundaries. It is not a rare experience, for
instance, to find the desire for fairness, lack of trust for the dark skinned, association
of the fair with lovely/handsome even in the Indian cultural context which does stress
casteist and communal concerns. A flashing glance at any matrimonial column could
serve as enough evidence. This thus reveals a considerably great extent to which fairy
tales indoctrinate children – boys and girls – irrespective of their class, caste, gender
etc to the accepted classist, racist and sexist belief systems.

Children love to read and listen to these tales that have a great potential to acculturate
them to traditional social roles. For children are very quick to grasp and absorb far
more than simply the storylines, they are always very curious to know how the stories
end and how things turn out. They do not just find out what happens to various
princes, princesses, witches, woodcutters and children in the tales but also learn
behavioural and associational patterns, value systems and ways to anticipate and
predict the consequences of specific actions or circumstances. The picture of gender
roles, behaviour, psychology and ways of predicting the result or fate according to
sex, beauty, class and race etc. presented in these tales are internalised by the child
readers/ listeners of fairy tales.

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Stereotypes in fairy tales and their permeation through popular

media:

Ellen Cronan Rose in her ‘Through the Looking Glass: When Women Tell Fairy
Tales’ mentions, “When we turn to fairy tales we are most familiar with, preserved
and transmitted by Perrault and the Grimm brothers, what we see is that in our culture
there are different developmental paradigms for boys and girls. In fairy tales, boys are
clever, resourceful and brave. They leave home to slay giants, outwit ogres, solve
riddles, find fortunes. Girls, on the other hand, stay home and sweep hearths, are
patient, enduring, self-sacrificing. They are picked on by wicked step mothers,
enchanted by evil fairies. If they go out they get lost in the woods. They are rescued
from their plights by kind woodsmen, good fairies, and handsome princes. They
marry and live happily ever after.”6

Fairy tales are preoccupied with the idea of beauty. Their obsession with beauty is
reflected even in the titles of the tales like ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘Sleeping Beauty,’
‘Snow White’ etc. The stories reward the most beautiful and pretty girls. These
beautiful heroines are docile, gentle, meek, and good tempered. Ugliness on the other
hand is associated with evil and villainy. Ugly characters, mainly witches,
stepmothers, stepsisters etc are arrogant, cruel and bad tempered. ‘Cinderella’ is the
evidence.

Children’s – both boys’ and girls’ – concept of sexual/gender roles gets conditioned
by the peculiar treatment of girls and women in fairy tales. In stories depicting a
family of several daughters or a story having several girl characters, the prettiest
usually the youngest is invariably the winner, is singled out and rewarded. Beautiful
girls are always noticed while the others seem almost non-existent. The former may
be oppressed initially but ultimately they are chosen for the reward. This pattern
suggests two fundamental conventions of the tales: i. the youngest child-girl or boy- is
designated with a special destiny; and ii. beauty is focused upon as the most valuable
asset of a girl.

Stories presenting the pattern of reward for the most beautiful girls and bold, active
and lucky boys and vice versa become gendered texts and tend to legitimise and
reinforce the dominant patriarchal gender system. Hence perhaps Judith Lorber

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describes these tales as culturally representing gender in artistic and symbolic

language.

The socially constructed notion of woman’s beauty and physical attractiveness is an

oppressing and subordinating patriarchal value leading to commoditisation of women.
And this value has pervaded fairy tales and has continued to persist not just in tales
but even in other media. Of course for centuries it has conditioned the readers, both
girls and boys. For instance, the obsession with the idea of beauty in our day to day
life is reflected in matrimonial advertisements, advertisements for soaps, fairness
creams, hair oils, shampoos and even insurance schemes.

Greer Fox in the article “ ‘Nice girl’: Social Control of Women through a Value
Construct” presents how this stereotypical ideal of beauty, the value of ‘nice girl’ not
just reproduces gender inequality but operates as a normative way of socially
controlling and restricting women’s lives and behaviour. Women’s potential and
ambition for achieving and exercising “power and control in the world”7 is nipped in
the bud when women as children internalise the value of beauty and passivity
associated with it. This value affects children’s worldview and their perception of
their own roles in society as men and women. While boys would look for beautiful,
homely girls as ideal, any attempt by any woman, beautiful or plain, to defy
homeliness would be condemned as inappropriate, villainous and nasty. Normative
control becomes necessary in a patriarchal set up when women desire to flow against
the current and desire social status and independence. In that, internalised value
constructs would automatically forbid women from crossing the gender boundaries.
This normative control is desired in the system to maintain gender inequality. Fox
observes that the greater the enhancement of women’s status the greater and more
urgent is the demand for normative control through socially constructed values. Fairy
tales perform a significant role in exercising and reinforcing such normative control
thus helping the discriminating system sustain and prosper.

Girls identifying with the beautiful heroines may learn to be suspicious of plain
looking girls (not necessarily ugly, but not fitting the conventional idea of beauty),
who are associated with cruelty, slyness and unscrupulousness. Identification with the
plain female characters on the other hand, would teach the girls to be suspicious and
jealous of the pretty ones, since beauty is fated and not attained. It has psychologically

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been proved that as children and as women girls are scared of being plain. This fear is
at the root of anxiety, diffidence and feelings of inadequacy and inferiority. It could
also be the origin of envy and discord among them. The suggestive link between the
lovable face and lovable character, and the plain face and unpleasant, undesirable
character could be very damaging to a girl’s self esteem and overall growth as a
human being. Literature and for that matter any other material – written, oral or visual
– aimed at children can be easily manipulated by the dominant social set up as a tool
for internalisation of normative values and restrictions. Children’s literature,
particularly fairy tales, does become a useful cultural tool in this respect. For, as
Bettelheim maintained children very effectively assimilate culture through fairy tales
and other stories which implicitly or overtly generate values, messages etc about the
social power structures. Changing power relations shape and get reflected in the tales.
The historical period of time in which they are published impact their presentation.
While Marina Warner calls fairy tales documents of “conditions from past social and
economic arrangements”8, Betsy Hearne views each new version of a tale as “new
variation(s) of culture and creativity.”9 This thus necessitates the consideration of
socio political, economic and cultural aspects and intents of the tales. For changing
social pressures, social norms, mores and manners transform and refigure the tales
and their discourse in order to strengthen, reinforce and be compatible with the
existing dominant power structures in society. Jack Zipes gives extremely fruitful
critical insights into this in his 1988 and 1997 works. Studying socio cultural
references in the revisions of folktales in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, Zipes
reveals that though through these centuries fairy tales moved from a limited audience
and readers to a greater variety and number of masses they have continued to generate
patriarchal values emphasising male domination and female subjection and “contain
symbolic imagery that legitimates existing class, race and gender systems.”10

Lori Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholz in their article on pervasiveness of the

feminine ideal of beauty in fairy tales research the questions ‘Is there a clear link
between beauty and goodness?’, ‘Are there instances where danger and harm are
associated with beauty or desirability?’, ‘Is beauty or desirability the cause?’ Their
analysis brought forth the existence of “association between beauty and economic
privilege, beauty and race, beauty and goodness, and beauty and danger.” (Baker-
Sperry, 716) Cultural associations of beauty not just with gender but even with age –

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it is the younger girls who are presented as more beautiful (Snow White and the
Queen provide excellent evidence) – too are found in the tales. The age and gender
specificity of the idea of beauty encodes messages about being attractive and therefore
desirable. Compared to the consistent and pervasive references to feminine beauty the
fairy tales contain rare, passing references to male handsomeness.

The findings illustrate the clear link between beauty and goodness, ugliness and evil,
beautiful and industrious, ugliness and laziness. Beautiful, docile, delicate heroines
are presented as hardworking whereas the wicked ones who are ugly or relatively
plain are shown to be lazy. Cinderella and her stepsisters present this opposition well.
‘Mother Holle’ begins with the description of Mother Holle’s two daughters: “A
widow had two daughters, one who was beautiful and industrious, the other ugly and
lazy.” (Grimm, 96) Beauty is always rewarded while ugliness/ plainness/ absence of
beauty is most often severely or humourously punished.

Stories like ‘Mother Holle’ associate beauty with race and class as well. While
beautiful heroines necessarily have fair complexion, the plain and ugly ones are
relatively dark. Dark and black are not beautiful and therefore not good and therefore
not socially noticeable or acceptable. The ugly, lazy daughter in ‘Mother Holle’ is
covered in pitch. Cinderella remains unnoticed till she is in cinders. The title ‘The
White Bride the Black Bride’ presents the race binaries and the story shows the ugly
mother and daughter as “cursed” with blackness. Blackness is a curse while whiteness
a reward. These associations carry implications of distribution of social and economic
privileges i. e. classes. Thus fair and beautiful Cinderella becomes a princess, moves
upward in her socio economic status. Also as long as she suffers and works hard or
rather slaves she is in cinders and meets the prince only as a lovely fair girl.

The tales also present the association of beauty with danger and jealousy. Physical
attractiveness is seen as one of the causes of women’s victimisation in the tales. As a
result the beautiful heroines in the tales have to disguise themselves or escape for
protection away from their own household. This and the relation between beauty and
jealousy are best reflected in ‘Snow White’ wherein the mother in her desire to be
“fairest of all” sends Snow White into the jungle to be killed.

Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz conclude, on the basis of these observations that the
image of women’s beauty is so ingrained in fairy tales that “it is difficult to imagine

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any that do not highlight or glorify it. Recent Disney films and even contemporary
feminist retellings of popular fairy tales often involve women who differ from their
earlier counterparts in ingenuity, activity, and independence but not physical
attractiveness.” (Baker-Sperry, 722) Increased emphasis on beauty as a salient feature
particularly in fairy tales of the 20th century, they suggest, may operate as “a
normative social control for girls and women” since “external constraints on women’s
lives diminished” (Baker-Sperry, 722) in this century.

Beauty leads to passivity, a trait desired in women in the patriarchal set up. In fact it is
the main contributor to the latter. Sleeping Beauty is the archetype of female
passivity. In the stories the immediate and desired consequence of being beautiful is
being chosen. A beautiful girl does not have to do anything to be noticed, chosen and
be married to a handsome rich man. She is chosen because she is beautiful. The plain
on the other hand, would have to struggle for every achievement which would be
below the mark set by the beautiful ones. Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel all just
have to wait till their prince charming comes and rescues them from suffering. “Since
the heroines are chosen for their beauty (en soi) and not for anything they do (pour
soi) they seem to exist passively until they are seen by the hero or described to him.
They wait, are chosen and are rewarded.”11

Certain stories do depict women as active and courageous but they are so only after
their men are taken away from them. For instance, Gretel, Hansel’s sister, punishes
the witch who locks up Hansel and plans to eat him. However in the earlier part of the
story she is shown as a weeping girl always comforted by Hansel who finds a way of
escape every time they are in trouble, until he himself is imprisoned by the witch. In
another story a maid kept hidden in a giant’s house knows all the secrets of the giant
and the way out; she can escape if she wishes to but waits for a prince escort to come
and rescue them only with her advice and help.

Thus passivity of one kind or another is always associated with women in fairy stories
thus encouraging passive, patient suffering on the part of women. Victimised heroines
who suffer silently and submit themselves to ill treatment instead of rebelling against
oppression are rewarded and glorified. Andrea Dworkin in Woman Hating points out
that women are desirable when they are asleep, that good men under the influence of
powerful woman can harm their children. The tales seem to convey that “The good

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woman must be possessed. The bad woman must be killed or punished. Both must be
nullified.”12 These associational patterns do have a strong imprint on a child’s mind.

A suffering heroine becomes an archetypal model to be followed by girls and it is

what male children too might grow to expect of their companions unless they question
these ideas themselves.

Women trying to swim against the current are seen as repulsive. Active,
extraordinary, powerful, power seeking women are always seen as unwomanly, bad, a
disgrace to society and are mostly portrayed as witches or stepmothers. Though there
are many male magicians depicted in the stories, magic and witchcraft are associated
with women in most of them.

This reinforces the stereotypical construct of womanhood in literature i.e. women are
intuitive, emotional, irrational etc. Cinderella watches the godmother perform the
magic; Sleeping Beauty sleeps for an unnaturally long period only to be awakened by
the kiss of the prince.

If one contrasts the sleep of Rip Van Winkle with that of Sleeping Beauty one easily
notices the influence of such stereotypical associations in the treatment of men and
women in literature. Unlike Sleeping Beauty Rip Van Winkle wakes up to a
revelation, a discovery of a new America. Sleep here is seen as a metaphor for a
period of physical self-effacement and a voyage of self discovery manifesting itself
upon awakening. Our Sleeping Beauty, however, awakens to no such epiphanic
revelation but only to be accepted by her future husband in marriage.

As mentioned earlier, active and powerful women mainly include witches and
witchlike stepmothers. The wicked stepmother is a stock figure in fairy tales. It is so
typical a figure in these tales that a mere mention brings to the reader’s mind a clear
image of the character and her role. Interestingly this villain of the tales originally was
not necessarily wicked nor was always a stepmother. As mentioned earlier in this
chapter, in the editorial changes from one version to another the Grimms brought in
the wicked stepmothers in the absence of good mothers. In order to make the tales
more didactic the Grimms made room for the wicked stepmothers by killing off the
good mothers. Thus in the folklore tradition mothers of Snow White and Hansel and
Gretel were actually villains but later in fairy tales they were removed and replaced by

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cruel, selfish villains – the stepmothers. Bruno Bettelheim provides a psychological

justification for such replacement. According to him, the “fantasy of the wicked
stepmother not only preserves the good mother intact, it also prevents having to feel
guilty about one’s angry thoughts and wishes about her – a guilt which would
seriously interfere with the good relation with the Mother.” (Bettelheim, 69) Thus
Bettelheim believes that this presentation of stepmothers equips children to handle
their feeling of anger towards a loving parent. Critics consider Bettelheim’s Freudian
reading extremely damaging and limited. For it does not take into consideration the
editorial and historical origins of the cruel stepmother figure. Marina Warner, for
instance, holds the popularisation of Bettelheim’s psychoanalytic approach
responsible for the sustenance of the wicked stepmother as the fairy tale villain: “the
bad mother has become an inevitable, even required ingredient in fantasy, and hatred
of her a legitimate, applauded stratagem of psychic survival. Bettelheim’s theory has
contributed to the continuing absence of good mothers from all fairy tales in all kinds
of media, and to a dangerous degree, which itself mirrors current prejudices and
reinforces them. His arguments, and its tremendous diffusion and widespread
acceptance, have effaced from memory the historical reasons for woman’s cruelty
within the home and have made such behaviour seem natural, even intrinsic to the
mother child relationship. It has even helped to ratify the expectation of strife as
healthy and the resulting hatred as therapeutic.” (Warner, 212-213)

We see the evidence of what Warner says in Walt Disney’s characterisation of the
wicked stepmother as a queen. In 1937 Disney in his film turned Snow White’s
stepmother into a terrifying, wicked queen. Thus with this film the figure of a cruel
stepmother became a typical, famous, villainous figure of the fairy tale tradition. The
stereotype thus was permanently reinforced. Stepmothers and witches are active,
powerful women. These are older women who in the tales are usually more powerful
than men. But their power is of a different nature than that of the latter. They are
powerful and bad older women. Generally female wickedness is associated with
extreme ugliness. Powerful good women are nearly always fairies and godmothers.
They are unapproachable. They appear on the scene only when the young people are
in distress and need to be saved. They are superhuman whereas the powerful bad
women are extra human. Whether human or extra human, the bad ones are shown to
be very active, ambitious, strong willed and almost always ugly. They are jealous of

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women more beautiful than they are. This is obviously because of the power that
beauty carries with it in fairy tales.

Being powerful and active is mainly associated with being unwomanly. Activity thus
gets morally linked to sex. The active boy with a kind heart is assured of success. It is
praiseworthy in men. But the same praise is denied to women. The heroines are
shown as strong sufferers. Their strength lies in their ability to endure and do nothing
to seek to change their lot. The more suffering and passive they are, the stronger are
they called. There is thus a clearly evident bias in the treatment of genders.

Assertive women are also treated as reprehensible and are expected not to be imitated
by children. Young readers could easily grasp the bias against the active and
ambitious women. They could establish a dichotomy between the women who are
gentle, passive and good looking and those who are active, wicked and ugly.
Powerful and good women characters are always fairies, not human. Power seeking
women are always repulsive. Reprehensible women also include princesses and girls
who refuse marriage. They are portrayed as neither admirable nor wicked. They are
spoilt, vain and wilful. Princess Goldilocks exemplifies this. Bellisima in ‘The Yellow
Dwarf’ is even shown to meet a tragic end for her stubbornness which is very unusual
in fairy tales. Wilful girls are shown either to accept marriage or be forcefully tamed
or meet death. Their submission to marriage is presented with a sense of triumph thus
denying and disallowing them the possibility to preserve their freedom and
independent identity. Whether a reward for “good girls” or forceful imposition on the
wilful, marriage is necessarily presented as and reinforced as the ultimate goal of a
woman’s life.

The thought, belief and association of beauty with passivity and reward naturally
culminate into marriage in the tales. In fact marriage with a handsome hero is the
major event of almost all fairy tales. The idea of getting married dominates the heroes
and heroines of the tales. The boys too are shown as heading towards marriage. It is
presented as the ultimate and perhaps the only desired and desirable, self fulfilling
goal in life, particularly for girls. For beyond it is the promising dream of living
happily ever after. However, while the girls are passive in their attainment of the
desired handsome and rich prince, the boys play a very active role and work hard and
cleverly to win princesses and kingdoms.

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The reward system of the tales also contains evident mercenary concerns. The girl
getting married is going to be forever happy because she is getting rich after marriage.
Marriage in the tales is associated with getting rich and richness equated with
happiness. Good, meek, docile and beautiful girls always win rich and handsome
princes. Already rich heroes or heroines marry their equals. Girls are chosen for their
beauty and boys for their charm and bravery. The association of beauty and happiness
with wealth brings forth the commercial advantage to beauty thus allowing the young
readers/listeners to equate being beautiful with being chosen and thus getting rich,
climbing upward the social and economic ladder.

Almost every time, however, the heroine has to go through a phase of passive,
unchallenged suffering. There is glamour attached to this suffering and victimisation
to the extent that there is a fear of girl readers not just identifying with the suffering
kid but even desiring the glamorous hardships. They find women in distress
interesting. Archetypal female behaviour is introduced in the tales in this manner.

Suggesting a reward for submissive, meek, passive female behaviour could have the
effect of sensitising the child reader’s personality, rendering it susceptible to
melodramatic self conceptions and expectations. The thought of marriage as the only
self fulfilling destination for girls is so deeply rooted in the social psyche in many
communities that a girl’s marriage is considered a matter of great concern and worry
even today almost everywhere in our society. In fact, unfortunately it is one of the
reasons for female infanticide in India. Reinforcement and permeation of stereotypical
attributes of femininity, class and racial differences etc found in fairy tales get
imprinted on children thus conditioning the social psyche at an early age.

The deep rooted effects of social stereotypes through various means, fairy tales being
one of them, perpetuated and strengthened for generations together are evident in
mass media too which in turn reinforce the stereotypes even more deeply. Familiar
instances of this are the several Hindi movies which adore fairy tale motifs and
advertisements. Advertisements of soaps, washing powders, washing machines etc
project women as beautiful objects, as secondary to men, aspiring to be ideal wives,
trying to please their men and family whereas men are portrayed as lovers of beauty,
dominant, outgoing, admirers of ideal wives, always conscious of their manliness and
their duties as breadwinners.

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Portrayal of inequality and socio cultural differences between men and women is
evident in the movies too. Many movies do talk about the greatness of women, their
strength and tolerance. But all this has a tinge of glorification of womanhood
ultimately denying women the status of an ordinary human being with flaws and
pushing the readers to the accepted stereotypes. Typical Hindi movies portray girls as
passive recipients of what fate and society offer them. They are beautiful, delicate,
weak, docile, good natured, long suffering, home loving, obedient, self sacrificing,
dumb but the ultimate victors of that coveted prize – the handsome and rich husband.
The heroes on the other hand are clever, brave, handsome, outgoing, active, ready to
do anything to save their beloved, always ready also to teach the girls a lesson, tame
them and show how their own perception of the world is right. For almost always the
woman is wrong and short sighted whereas man being experienced knows a lot and
has a wider view. Those inflicting suffering on the innocent are also almost always
women or are supported by women.

As in fairy tales most of the movies too present women as the ones who passively
suffer and the ones who wickedly inflict or help in inflicting suffering. Like the tales
these films too end with a happy ending showing the lovable, fair, good and therefore
desirable lovers live happily ever after. This formulaic fairy tale ending presumes an
ordered pattern in the universe of a woman – suffer…get ennobled by it… win the
prize and then live happily ever after without any problem. That such projection of
traditional stereotypes is done without any inhibitions through the mass media is an
evidence of a prejudiced upbringing and development not of a single individual but of
the entire social psyche.

Fairy tales as the carriers of a variety of stereotypes particularly gender, class and race
stereotypes can undoubtedly have deep social impact and at the same time can deeply
affect the child under their influence. Young girls, for instance, reading fairy tales and
charmed by their lead characters learn to value looks and material things. The fairy
tale heroines with their pretty dresses and Prince Charming coming to their rescue
strike a chord with little girls who live in their own make believe world. Fairy tale
importance to beauty, material comforts, money and pretty outward appearance sieves
through the genre into movies, advertisements and cartoons increasing and solidifying
the impact of the stereotypes. Apart from the message that being pretty and beautiful
make them successful and happy, a more dangerous message that gets embedded in

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their impressionable minds and that can damage their self esteem is that they have to
suffer passively till a good looking prince rescues them, that they have to rely on a
saviour to make things better for them. Tales focus on pretty and nice things. Girls are
impressed by the romanticism in such tales. They consider themselves at the centre of
the fairy tale universe and are obsessed about the considerations of beauty and its
advantages. Girls seem to be affected thus till adolescence. However if they do not
outgrow this state, it could affect their personality and their value system in the long
run. It may lead them to seek superficial friendships or a controlling lover or in some
cases, to think very high about themselves. They could have superficial ideas about
life and their status in life and society. The desire to be lovely and beautiful could
backfire if they do not turn out to be beautiful. They could be sufferers of a
superiority or inferiority complex. In any case they would cease to grow as respectful
and self respecting human beings. Besides, the impression created on the young male
children could also be shattering. They too would grow up with the expectations of
finding the other sex to be docile, passive, meek and above all pretty. Girls not
fulfilling these criteria would be not just out of their consideration but even the object
of their fun and teasing. The personal, emotional and social impact of the fairy tale
stereotypes thus becomes an important social and literary concern.

Youth, beauty, passivity equated with goodness and projected as deserving to attain
prizes, on the one hand, and old age, ugliness, action equated with wickedness, fear
and punishment on the other emphatically represent women as pitted against each
other and show them necessarily in a competitive relationship with one another. As
Joyce Carol Oates maintains in her article “In Olden Times, When Wishing was
Having,”13 young girls on the verge of womanhood like Snow White or Cinderella are
shown as “the natural targets of the homicidal envy of older women; ubiquitous in the
tales are ‘wicked stepmothers’ who conspire to injure or kill their beautiful
stepdaughters...” (Oates, 248) This kind of representation of women as either
valuable or contemptible is bound to make women see one another as rivals in
constant struggle to win the prize: “... the lot of women in a patriarchal society which
privileges them as valuable possessions (of men), or brands them as worthless and
contemptible, made it inevitable that women should perceive other women as
dangerous rivals.” (Oates, 248-49).

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As Baker-Sperry and Grauerholz remark, “Children’s media can be a powerful

mechanism by which children learn cultural values. Through the proliferation of fairy
tales in the media, girls (and boys) are taught specific messages concerning the
importance of women’s bodies and women’s attractiveness. The messages presented
in the Grimms’ tales portray differing means of status attainment for women and men,
especially white, heterosexual women. The pervasiveness of fairy tales in our society,
through books and movies, suggests that there are many opportunities for these
messages to become internalised.”(Baker-Sperry, 724) Consideration of fairy tales
through a socio political perspective thus becomes necessary.

The indirect portrayal of social reality in the fantasy of fairy tales is remarkable. This
is precisely why the unreality of the fairy tale world should not lead one to consider it
untrue. “For fantasy…is true. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of
them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens all that
is false, all that is phony, unnecessary and trivial in living. They are afraid of dragons
because they are afraid of freedom.”14 Fantasy, Rosemary Jackson maintains, exists in
“symbiotic relationship to the real.”15

Feminist fantasists consider fairy tales as one of the kinds of fantasy used to describe
the experience of women in the contemporary society in the west. The other two types
are “secondary” or “other” world fantasy and horror. Many feminists prefer fantasy to
realism which according to them “naturalise(s) ideological discourses, aligning
ideological practices with conventionally accepted and produced representations of
the real.” (Anne Cranny-Francis, 79) They use fantasy as a means to disrupt the
realistic discourse and disclose its limits. They situate the reader in the position
wherein “the deconstruction of patriarchal discourse is a fundamental strategy.”
(Jackson, 20)

It is the need to react to the realist trends, realistic literature functioning under the
dictates of patriarchy conveying patriarchal, chauvinistic values which urges the
feminists to rework and challenge the traditional fairy tales which to a contemporary
reader seem to be full of “incidents of inexplicable abuse, maltreatment of women,
negative images of minority groups, questionable sacrifices and exaltation of
power.”16

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Writing the tales from a feminist or a woman’s or a Marxist or for that matter any
egalitarian perspective does not necessarily involve the depiction of the reversal of the
roles lest it amounts to another kind of sexism. It involves exploration of the ways
women and the other victimised groups are subjugated openly and subtly, of their
oppression under the patriarchal yoke and an attempt to change the minds and
attitudes of the people, by depicting the victimised humans to be capable of asserting
themselves, as being self dependent and having their own separate identity as human
beings, capable of taking their own decisions actively and deserving an equal status
with all those who are supposedly in power.

Judith Viorst rewrites the story of Cinderella in four lines in ‘…And Then the Prince
Knelt Down and Tried to Put the Glass Slipper on Cinderella’s Foot’:

‘I really didn’t notice that he had a funny nose

And he looked better all dressed up in fancy clothes.

He’s not really as attractive as he seemed the other night.

So I think I’ll just pretend that this glass slipper feels too tight.’17

Jack Zipes in his preface to the book Don’t Bet on the Prince rightly sums up the
nature of the feminist fairy tales and the need to write them: “Created out of the
dissatisfaction with the dominant male discourse of traditional fairy tales and with
those social values and institutions which have provided the framework for sexist
perceptions, the feminist fairy tale conceives a different view of the world and speaks
in a voice that has been customarily silenced.

It draws attention to the illusions of the traditional fairy tales by demonstrating that
they have been structured according to the subordination of women, and in speaking
out for women the feminist fairy tales also speak out for other oppressed groups…
Thus the aesthetics of the feminist fairy tales demands an open ended discourse which
calls for the readers to complete the liberating expectations of the narrative in terms of
their own experience and their social context.”18

Combining Freud, Bloch and Favat’s concepts of Piaget, Zipes sees the emancipatory
potential in the fantasy of fairy tales. Fairy tales do incorporate within themselves a
power to liberate readers and make them return to the primal moments in their lives.

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However this liberating space would become meaningful and the tale would appear
liberating and forward looking only if “it projects on a conscious, literary and
philosophical level the objectification of home as real democracy under non alienating
conditions.” (Zipes, 312) Such a tale would present “human beings in an upright
posture who strive for an autonomous existence and non alienating setting which
allows for democratic co operation and human consideration.” (Zipes, 310) It must be
written with the object of reflecting “a process of struggle against all types of
suppression and authoritarianism and project(ing) various possibilities for the
concrete realisation of utopia.” (Zipes, 312)

What one may argue here is that the attraction for and popularity of fairy tales
amongst human beings in different stages of their growth and the liberating potential
of the genre could and should be manipulated to project, at the expense and instead of
their stereotypical presentation, an egalitarian worldview and a perspective wherein
human beings are treated as human beings without the labels of gender, class, race,
caste and so on. This needs re-visiting, re-viewing, re-writing and retelling the
existing tales in a new light liberating their readers i.e. freeing them from the
controlling social order which commoditises human beings through stereotypes in
order to be manipulated by groups and institutes which rule the public domain so that
the discriminating status quo persists and the vested interests of the groups in power
are systematically served.

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NOTES

1
Jack Zipes, “The Potential of Liberating Fairy Tales for Children,” New Literary

History 13.2, (Winter, 1982): 309-325.

2
Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of Grimms’ Fairy Tales (New Jersey: Princeton

UP, 1987) xxii.

3
Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Fairy Tales: A New History (Albany: State U of New York

P, 2009) 45.

4
Donald Haase, Introduction. The Greenwood Encyclopaedia of Folktales and Fairy

Tales, Volumes 1-3 (Westport, Connecticut, London: Greenwood, 2008)

xxxvii.

5
Jack Zipes, Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as Fairy Tale (Lexington: UP of Kentucky,

1994) 33.

6
Ellen Cronan Rose, “Through the Looking Glass: When Women Tell Fairy Tales”

The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development Eds. Elizabeth Abel

et.al.(London: UP of New England, 1983) 209-210.

7
Greer Litton Fox, “’Nice Girl’: Social Control of Women through a Value

Construct,” Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2.4 (Summer,

1977): 816.

8
Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers

(London: Vintage, 1995) xix.

9
Betsy Hearne, Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale

(Chicago: Chicago UP, 1989) 1.

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10
Lori Baker-Sperry and Liz Grauerholz, “The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the

Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairy Tales,” Gender and Society 17.5

(October, 2003): 714.

11
Marcia R Lieberman, “Some Day My Prince Will Come: Female Acculturation

through the Fairy Tale,” College English 34 (1972): 386.

12
Andrea Dworkin, Woman Hating (New York: Dutton, 1974) 48.

13
Joyce Carol Oates, “In Olden Times, When Wishing was Having,” in

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favourite Fairy Tales

ed. Kate Bernheimer, (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1998) 248-49.

14
Anne Cranny Francis quotes Ursula LeGuin in Feminist Fiction: Feminist Uses of

Generic Fiction (London: Polity, 1990) 75.

15
Rosemary Jackson Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (New York: Methuen,

1981) 20.

16
Jack Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales

(New York: Methuen, 1979) 170.

17
Judith Viorst, If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries: Poems for

Children and Their Parents (New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1981) 29.

18
Jack Zipes, Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North

America and England (New York: Methuen, 1986) i.

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CHAPTER – IV

Reviewing Fairy Tales – Attempts at Fairy Tale

Retellings
This Chapter deals with the analysis of retellings of some well known fairy tales. It is
opportune to admit at the outset here that the intent and principle that drives these
analyses is merely to exemplify or showcase a variety of retellings with the focus on
what is to be argued in the following chapter. Hence strict attention is not paid to the
historically sequential appearance of the retellings as well as to the number of
retellings of each story analysed. It must also be admitted at this juncture that the
Chapter offers but a mere glimpse of the retold tales. Many worthwhile retellings have
escaped mention, attention and interpretation on account of practical considerations
and limitations of the present project. Most prominent among these are the retellings
by Angela Carter who is held up as “the fairy godmother of magic realism”1 and
praised as “high sorceress” and “benevolent witch-queen” by Salman Rushdie.2

Briar Rose/ Sleeping Beauty:

Christa Joyce in her article ‘Contemporary Women Poets and the Fairy Tale’3
(Bobby, 31-43) describes fairy tale heroines as “female characters who sleep through
their lives: vain representations of real women who are cloistered and trapped, they
are commonly flat, one dimensional characters who come to life only through the
actions of a male character.” (Bobby, 31) Sleeping Beauty is a prototype and
incarnation of the stereotypical images and roles that fairy tales promote and prescribe
for women. Actually these stereotypes are reflections of the real life social norms
which are reinstated/ reinforced aesthetically interestingly and therefore subtly
through the tales. Male dominated society and culture expect women to be fragile and
passive and wait for men to make their lives meaningful. This expectation is so deeply
ingrained and rooted in the female psyche that women themselves aspire for it and
consider it fulfilling. Rewriters of the Sleeping Beauty tale acknowledge this fact and
try to subvert the male oriented perception of women in fairy tales by using the tales
themselves as a tool to serve their purpose.

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The Grimm version of ‘Brier Rose’ considered less grim than Perrault’s presents a
protective father-king who orders all the spindles to be destroyed from his kingdom
lest his daughter succumbs to a “bad” fairy’s curse at the age of 15. The birthday
celebration of his long desired for daughter is marked by an evil spell on the girl by an
uninvited fairy who arrives anyway and in a fit of rage proclaims that the princess will
prick herself on a needle and die when she turns 15. Another fairy alters and softens
the curse of death to a deep sleep of a hundred years. Despite the king’s precautionary
measures the princess on her fifteenth birthday finds an old woman spinning at a
spindle and as the abetted curse will have it, she pricks herself and falls asleep for one
hundred years along with the entire kingdom. After this long period is over a prince
from the neighbouring kingdom goes through the briars around the palace and upon
noticing the beautiful princess sleeping kisses her, awakens her and the entire
kingdom. They get married and live happily ever after.

• Anne Sexton’s ‘Briar Rose’4

Anne Sexton subtitles her ‘transformed’ ‘Briar Rose’ as Sleeping Beauty giving a
modern substitute and hinting at a new perspective to look at the story. Diana Hume
George commenting on the two versions of ‘Briar Rose’ says, “The tale Sexton has
transformed here tells us only that the king dearly loved his child and that, because of
this love and fairy’s curse, he overprotected her – a circumstance that, with or without
a fairy’s curse is common enough to be normative in our culture. In her version of
‘Briar Rose’, Sexton plays out the effects of such smothering and overprotective love
on the part of fathers for the ‘purity’ and ‘safety’ of their daughters – effects also
sufficiently common to be normative.”5 Sexton transforms the overprotective and
therefore thoughtless Grimm father into a perpetrator of sexual abuse and shows that
it is the father himself who brings upon the daughter the danger from which he tries to
protect her. As Diana Hume George further says, “…the father of the prologue is the
daylight daddy, a bringer of lollipops as well as that vaguely threatening ‘root.’ …
But the father of the epilogue comes to the daughter at night ‘circling the abyss like a
shark.’ This is the flip side of the daddy who bounces her on the knee.” (George,39)

Anne Sexton in Transformations gives a transformed look to her tales not just in their
content but even in their form. Like other tales in the collection, the verse ‘Briar
Rose’ too has a tripartite structure: a prologue, the transformed tale and the epilogue.

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In the prologue, the middle aged witch-narrator of the entire collection introduces a
new and different Briar Rose who is on a backward voyage into her disturbed and
horrifying childhood – a voyage “rank as honeysuckle” (T,107-108) She is a surviving
victim of sexual abuse by her father. The ‘trance’ girl who “keeps slipping off,”
whose arms are limp and who is “stuck in the time machine” (T,107) desires security
and protection from the abuse and seeks it in her mother’s ‘pocketbook’- the place
where she was conceived, suggesting thereby her lost childhood and a desire to regain
it and start her life afresh, anew. She has been robbed of her ability to speak with the
“gift of tongues” (T,107) and wants to learn to talk again. She feels that her
childhood has been taken away: her arms “limp as old carrots” (T,107) and her
tendency to “keep slipping off” (T,107) into “the hypnotist’s trance” (T,107) suggest
numbness and disorientation; her inability to articulate her experience and her feeling
that suddenly she has become a thumb sucking two year old child “stuck in the time
machine” imply the contradiction in her actual physical and mental age. As she
attempts to articulate her “rank as honeysuckle” journey, her speech is interrupted by
her ‘hypnotist’ father who, exercising his patriarchal power over her by virtue of his
age and relation, asks the “little doll child” to sit on his knee and offers her in return
“kisses for the back of the neck,” “a penny for [her] thoughts” and “a root” (T,107) –
an explicitly phallic image. He invites her to be his ‘snooky’ – a trickster and a lover
as the slang implications of the word suggest. Here is a father who wishes to control
the daughter’s body as well as her mind. He would “hunt” her thoughts “like an
emerald” if she does not oblige to give them in return for a penny. Sexton here subtly
throws light on the commoditisation and bartering of women in patriarchy and also
perhaps hints at the historical evidences of how virgin daughters have been exchanged
“passed hand to hand/ like a bowl of fruit”(T,112) by their fathers for money.

Patriarchy values virginity of a woman and therefore, perhaps, at the same time tends
to silence, suppress and discredit expression of experiences of violation and
incestuous abuse of virginity. Sexton’s prologue hints at this cultural diplomacy and
presents the predicament of a modern day survivor of sexual abuse in childhood. In
the story that follows Sexton bluntly outpours her rage against the culture which
allows sexual abuse of women and tries to take us to the roots of this culture.

The transformed tale omits the original introduction of the Grimm tale wherein a king
and a queen desire a child for a long time; a frog creeps out of the water and

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prophecies that they would have a child; they beget a daughter within a year and the
king in his joy prepares “a great feast.”6 The transformed tale begins thus:

Once

a king had a christening

for his daughter Briar Rose

and because he had only twelve gold plates

he asked only twelve fairies

to the grand event. (T 108)

The Grimm princess who is named Briar Rose because of the hedge of briar roses
growing round the castle where she lies asleep for a hundred years is introduced as
Briar Rose and not as a princess at the outset in the transformed tale. This suggests
Sexton’s assumption of the readers’ foreknowledge of the story. The verse tale teller
does not describe the drama of how the first eleven fairies endow the princess with
different gifts and how the haughty, revengeful thirteenth barges in and curses the
child before the twelfth fairy softens the irrevocable death sentence and converts it
into a long deep sleep of a hundred years. The witch narrator merely gives the details
relevant to the ‘fall’ of Briar Rose which include the reason why the thirteenth fairy
curses the child and her description in a manner which suggests her appearance to be
an embodiment of jealousy and evil:

The thirteenth fairy,

her fingers as long and thin as straw,

her eyes burnt by cigarettes,

her uterus an empty tea cup,

arrived with an evil gift. (T 108)

The thirteenth fairy is thus presented as an a-normal, unusual creature and it is hinted
that perhaps for this reason she is purposely left out of the celebration. The court’s
reaction to this fairy’s prophecy in the verse tale suggests the sexual connotations of

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the girl’s pricking on the spindle on her fifteenth birthday – the age when a girl
reaches womanhood. Her bleeding finger on the wheel suggestive of the broken
hymen is equated with a sexual experience and perhaps the king’s fear is grounded in
the sexual connotations of the prophecy. He does not want this to happen and perhaps
has a desire to violate the girl himself which he actually does later in the verse tale.
His extreme concern for the daughter and care not to allow any stranger to meet her is
suspected by the witch speaker. It smacks of his incestuous attraction for the daughter.
Later in the tale he is shown to have purposely maddened her to fulfil his own foul
intention. Hence he is shown to be more surprised and shocked to hear the prophecy
because

Fairies’ prophecies,

in times like those,

held water. (T 108)

Sexton, through irony in instances like this, ridicules the naïve fantasy of the fairy tale
world and refuses to willingly suspend disbelief. The mitigation of the curse by the
twelfth fairy is similarly sarcastically ridiculed in a tongue in cheek manner:

However the twelfth fairy

had a certain kind of eraser

and thus she mitigated the curse

changing that death into a hundred year sleep. (T 108)

The Grimm king sends out a command that all the distaffs in the whole kingdom be
burnt. In the transformed tale, on the other hand,

each night the king

bit the hem of her gown

to keep her safe.

He fastened the moon up

with a safety pin

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to give her perpetual light. (T 109)

Biting is associated with food, sex, anxiety, violence whereas hem implies boundaries
between the child’s body and the outer world. Biting the hem would imply
maintaining the boundaries. But, in so doing, he does consume the gown and tear it.
His teeth and the safety pin to fasten up the moon imply a physical threat in the
father’s protection. His attempt to keep her in perpetual light and order to prohibit
males “without scoured tongues” make the sexual innuendos obvious. This change
clearly and drastically transforms the king’s character and the theme of the story
making readers view it in a completely different light.

Despite the curse the king and the queen of the original tale are away from the castle
on the very day when the princess turns fifteen. In their absence the princess wanders
about the whole palace and comes to an old tower with a narrow winding staircase
and a little door with a rusty key sticking in the lock. She turns the key and the open
door shows her an old woman spinning on her spindle. The woman tempts her to
touch the spindle and as per the curse the princess falls into a deep sleep which
spreads over the entire castle. These happenings are elaborately described in the
Grimm tale. The verse tale focuses more on the end result of the happenings rather
than the sequence of how it happened. It merely mentions the girl’s fall and
sarcastically describes the consequences of the curse. The sleeping animals, servants,
fire, wind and trees in the Grimm story are reduced to a trance and are “stuck in the
time machine” in the verse tale. The description of the growth of a hedge of briar
roses around the castle, the unsuccessful attempts by many princes to get through the
hedge and their miserable deaths too are sarcastically voiced in the transformed tale.
The growing briar roses form a wall of tacks around the castle, no one can pass
through them and many princes are crucified because they have not “scoured their
tongues.” Thus in spite of the curse and its mitigation the dictates of the king still
pervade and cannot be disobeyed because it is, in fact, he who really desires to dwell
with the princess, as clearly mentioned in the tale later. Biblical figures appear in the
verse tale to describe the successful and unsuccessful princes. While the unsuccessful
ones become Christ figures, the successful prince is compared to Moses crossing the
red Sea to take the Israelites to their promised land of Canaan. The description of time
too receives a sarcastic tone and once again the fairy tale fantasy is falsified:

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In due time

a hundred years passed

and a prince got through

...

[he] found the tableau intact. (T 110)

In the Grimm tale, the princess, everything and everyone else come back to their own
selves when the prince kisses the girl. The two get married and live happily till the
end of their life. The verse tale prince takes the princess out of the prison of Daddy
and brings her to her “promised land”- the land of marriage. But it is not a happily
ever after marriage. The princess becomes insomniac and is scared of sleep as she
associates it with male violence and her sexual abuse. Sleeping beauty becomes afraid
of sleep because it is sexually induced.

“I must not sleep,” she says,

“for asleep I’m ninety

and think I’m dying.

Death rattles in my throat

like a marble. ” (T 110-111)

Her nightmares about having grown old, is a death for her since her whole life has
been based on being beautiful and young. Sexton touches upon the beauty stereotype
here which is stressed and valued in the patriarchal order. Sleeping Beauty is actually
completely stunted and stuck in the time machine, objectified and commoditised to be
passed on from one man to another as they wish. Though she cannot sleep or rather
because she cannot sleep, she is almost always unconscious, injected with Novocain
and has lost all awareness of her existence. So anyone can use her the way they like
and do anything to her. For This trance girl is yours to do with

You could lay her in a grave,

an awful package. (T 111)

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She is benumbed. A single kiss on her mouth (not lips) reminds her of the atrocities
and cruelties meted out to her by her father and she cries “Daddy! Daddy!” She
discloses that it is her father who has abused her.

It’s not the prince at all,

but my father

drunkenly bent over my bed,

circling the abyss like a shark,

my father thick upon me

like some sleeping jelly fish. (T 112)

The “charred spinning wheel” now becomes meaningful signifying her father
“circling the abyss like a shark.” Sexual cruelties inflicted on her by her father make
her call him “another kind of a prison.” Careful analysis of the verse tale leaves a
scope to doubt that all that happens to Briar Rose is a consequence of a deliberately
conspired plan hatched by the father-king and the thirteenth fairy of whom the girl is
scared even in her dreams. For, there is a striking similarity between the description of
the thirteenth fairy and the “faltering crone” in Briar Rose’s dream. They seem almost
identical:

Further, I must not dream

for when I do I see the table set

and a faltering crone at my place,

her eyes burnt by cigarettes

as she eats betrayal like a slice of meat. (T 111)

The omission of the thirteenth fairy with straw like fingers suggestive perhaps of an
eating disorder, cigarette burnt eyes and an empty tea cup like uterus suggesting her
inability to bear children is perhaps a deliberate decision of the king who does not
wish any of these features in his daughter. Usually fairies are good looking and fair.
Sexton subtly points out the unusual leaving out of the thirteenth fairy from the feast.

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Ugliness and the unwomanly aspects of this fairy perhaps are the causes why the king
omits her from the list of guests, Sexton suggests. In the Grimm tale the thirteenth
fairy was inadvertently left out of the party. The verse tale on the other hand doubts
the king for deliberately leaving her out for her frightening looks. Briar Rose’s
identification later in the tale with the faltering crone and her dream that the crone
eats betrayal serve as a reminder that she, (Briar Rose) is betrayed by another woman
and also of the king’s betrayal of the forgotten fairy. Thus theirs is a story of betrayal.
Hence as said earlier by the witch speaker it is actually a tale of every woman’s
betrayal at the hands of powerful men. That is the dominant male order.

Thus the betraying king and the betrayed and yet betraying fairy seem to consciously
stunt Briar Rose’s growth making her a “moon girl”

dwelling in his odour

rank as honeysuckle. (T 109)

She becomes a forgetful insomniac haunting the horrifying cattle prod the palace has
turned into. Her journey makes her permanently afraid of “that brutal place” where
she lies down

with cattle prods

The hole in (her) cheek open. (T 111)

The consequence is amnesia:

There was a theft.

That much I am told.

I was abandoned.

That much I know.

I was forced backward.

I was forced forward.

I was passed hand to hand

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like a bowl of fruit.

Each night I am nailed into place

and I forget who I am. (T 112)

She is a sacrificial figure. Her father nails her into place, crucifies her making her lose
and forget her identity. She becomes an extreme, horrifying representative of
captivity, imprisonment and utter “fall” of women at the hands of the patriarch, the
man, his order and his violence under the guise of smothering sweetness. Patriarchy
exerts control over women, hypnotises them, makes them hysterical, stunts them, and
infantilises them. Briar Rose on her journey “further and further back” victimised by
the undue approaches by her father under the guise of caring protection is made a
lunatic, a hysteric controlled by the moon and is stuck in time to an early phase of
existence which is marked by mere biological, physical awareness. This fall to sheer
animal existence emphasises the traditionally imposed typically male belief in women
as mere objects of sexual desire.

The animal images used in the verse tale and its prologue sufficiently reflect the
assumed status of women in patriarchy and their forced journey towards accepting
that status. For instance, “she is stuck in the time machine … as inward as a snail;”
“she is swimming further and further back/ up like a salmon;” “my father thick upon
me/ like some sleeping jelly fish.” (T 112) Animals mentioned in the description of
the tableau are suggestive of the stoppage of physical activity:

The king and the queen went to sleep,

the courtiers, the flies on the wall.

The trees turned into metal

And the dog became china.

Even the frogs were zombies. (T 109)

Food images in “arms limp as old carrots,” “The fire in the hearth grew still/ and the
roast meat stopped crackling,” the faltering crone eating “betrayal like a slice of meat”
underline the point of physicality mentioned above. The verse tale ends with a
question and in turn raises a series of thought provoking questions about the voyage in

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the minds of the readers answers to which must be sought for the betterment of the
entire (wo)mankind:

What voyage this, little girl?

This coming out of prison?

God help –

this life after death? (T 112)

Through the retelling of ‘Briar Rose’ Sexton attempts a cultural critique and for the
purpose creates a new voice with which to challenge and ask the readers “to consider
personal, cultural and even critical power relationships as inseparable.”7Dawn
Skorczewski in her article on incest in Anne Sexton’s poetry says that the final lines
of the ‘Briar Rose’ tale “question the possibility of speaking within dominant
discourses without being imprisoned by silencing codes and repressive institutions.
This final voice in ‘Briar Rose’ is the voice of one who knows that the personal
trauma and the existing arrangements of speech are part of the same patriarchal plot.”
(Skorczewski 320)

•
Olga Broumas’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’8

Sexuality, sexual discourse, articulation of sexual abuse, incest etc. are, in the
dominant male order, sanctioned on the one hand and tabooed on the other. Language
is essentially a man’s privilege. Man can be expressive and openly articulates his
sexual, physical needs and desires. A woman, on the other hand, is expected not just
to curb and repress her physical needs, desires and her sexual preferences but is even
supposed not to utter a word about and against linguistic and physical abusive attacks
on her. It is interesting here to consider, may be as a point of relevant diversion, the
abusive words in the Indian languages this researcher is familiar with viz. Marathi and
Hindi. At the centre of most of the swear words in these two languages are references
to women and particularly to their sexuality and sexual organs. These words also
reflect demeaning attitudes towards the network of maternal relations which
deliberately humiliate women. It is an example of how language in patriarchy
sexually abuses and ill treats women in general. At the same time when patriarchy
gives a free hand to man to use language to express his sexual feelings, physical

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desires and necessities and allows him to express his anger even in small matters in
sexually abusive language, women’s sexuality on the other hand, is so severely
repressed that women are not just not allowed but are even not able to express it
openly.

Olga Broumas in her re-vision of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ undertakes this issue of female
sexual repression and restraint on its articulation in patriarchy and a possible
resolution to it. Like her ‘Cinderella’ discussed later in this chapter, Broumas’s
Sleeping Beauty is a subversive female character who challenges the given , blindly
accepted and sanctioned gender stereotypes concerning women’s identity and role in
the patriarchal order by probing deep and attempting to bring to the readers’ notice the
silenced, deliberately neglected and repressed aspects of a woman’s existence and
being for centuries in the conventional tales which are constructs of the same
dominant male order. It is by way of this attempt that Broumas endeavours to
articulate and voice the hitherto suppressed female desire. In this articulation she uses
an innovative language which provokes and explicitly attempts to liberate. Broumas
in her re-told ‘Sleeping Beauty’ too presumes the readers’ foreknowledge of the story
and simply alludes to the traditional tale and proceeds to tell her version. The speaker,
Sleeping Beauty, begins the tale with a first person narration mentioning the long
hours of her sleep, the lethargy spread over an extensive period of time:

I sleep, I sleep

too long,…

Broumas strikes a personal chord here by her involvement in the narrative making the
narrative naturally intimate and close to her self. The enjambment in the introductory
lines of the poem implies a deliberately ambiguous structure of the verse stanza
suggesting perhaps a continual entrapment of the narrator and the extreme intensity of
her sleep. The intense sleep for hours which ‘hound’ her also leave her ‘breathless’
with her ‘heart racing.’ Lethargic when she wakes up, the feeling is like momentary
satisfaction of a nap/ sleep peeled off “like a hairless glutton.” She dreams and the
“cold water shocks [her] back from the dream.” However it turns out that what she
calls a dream is actually a real life experience which can be confirmed and evidenced
in the fossilised “love bites” on her neck “that did exist” (italics in the original) and
could be witnessed in the mirror. Though she feels that it is dreamlike, she realises its

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actuality in the visible physical marks of the passionate moments shared with the
lover in a state of delirium. The dreamlike memory of love clings to her like “a
ceremonial necklace” tightly wrapped round and strangling her neck. This necklace of
traditional love and its memory is suddenly “snapped apart.” The lovers’ unbridled
passion is described in the lines that follow: the “vital salt” of body - blood and tears,
the “bitter, metallic” “taste of you” that “sharpens” the speaker’s tongue emphasise
the physicality of their bonding and again appear to her “dreamlike.” Nonetheless she
is aware (“I know”) as she sleeps, that her blood runs clear as salt in the lover’s mouth
and her eyes which open to a new awakening which is no more personal/ private or
hidden but in the midst of a crowded city amid traffic. This awakening is different
from the one in the original traditional tale.

This Sleeping Beauty is not choiceless and voiceless. She exercises her choice and
voices her desire in public. This Briar Rose is awakened not by a charming prince’s
kiss but a “public kiss” by her woman lover Judith’s “red lips.” The pedestrians
gathered beneath the red light are shocked to behold the public demonstration of
homoerotic love. Broumas’s mention of the red traffic light and its implication in “our
culture” – the male dominated culture – is remarkable. She underlines the significance
and implications of “red” in patriarchal culture. The red traffic light orders us to stop.
The shocked pedestrians gathered under the ‘red’ light suggest the fact that the
customary, reactionary response to this kind of bold deviation from the “sacred law”
of the male order would be to stop such blasphemy. The culture which would react
thus considers red as a warning and “men threaten each other with final violence.”
Red for them implies a sign of danger and betrayal. They are there under the red
signal signalling to the “deviant” women not to cross their ‘given’ bounds. For the
women lovers the same red colour connotes erotic desire, passionate love and
conscious, deliberate transgression of social norms and accepted customs in
patriarchal order and conventions. Broumas’s Sleeping Beauty defies the order and its
code system. And in defiance she boldly declares, “I will drink your blood” and
accepts her woman lover’s kiss in front of the shocked society’s open eyes suggesting
a total determination to not conform with the social laws guided by the male order.
She finds in this act “unspeakable liberties,” – to be her own self, to articulate her
sexuality, to defy social restraints and taboos, and above all to be able to make her

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own choice consciously. The woman’s kiss liberates this Sleeping Beauty; she gains
the power to defy and transgress.

Unlike the Grimm Briar Rose Broumas’s Sleeping Beauty does not have to wait till
the prince comes through the brambles to save and free her. Instead she herself
chooses to “wake” to her female lover’s “public kiss.” Judith, her lover, is not her
saviour. Sleeping Beauty is not saved; her happiness is not controlled by anyone else.
Rather she chooses to awaken mutually with Judith’s kiss. Both are each other’s
equals in this relationship. It is a relationship where the two women have their own
individuality intact; neither exercises control over the other; there is no suppression
but liberty and free choice which revitalises both of them. As Nancy Walker puts it,
“Broumas’s revisions reverse the central gender relationships of the traditional tales.
Men are not rescuers, but rather intruders; women are lovers and nurturers of each
other instead of jealous competitors.”9 Hence the name Judith too achieves
significance and becomes connotative. With its biblical associations the name Judith
implies feminine heroism, bravery, adventure and recklessness. The deliberate choice
of the biblical Jewish heroine who liberated her clan from oppression implies the
democratic and egalitarian approach Broumas sees inherent in a lesbian relationship.
Delighted in her new freedom and triumph they

cross the street, kissing

against the light, singing, This

is the woman I woke from sleep, the woman that woke

me sleeping.

It is thus a happy awakening for this Sleeping Beauty who is very much unlike
Sexton’s mainly because Sexton like many other re-tellers emphasises the theme of
sleep more than her awakening. Broumas does recognise Briar Rose’s sleep but
remarkably shifts her focus and the readers’ attention to a lively awakening of the girl
providing a sort of resolution to the passive reliance of women on male favours. In
doing this Broumas offers for her awakened Beauty an alternative, a possibility of a
vital and liberated life which she can live on her own terms.

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Lesbian defiance is a conscious political stance against the accepted norms of

heterosexuality. It is presented as a rebellious attack on the existing establishment
which has a rigid set of norms concerning gender and sex relations, which are
oppressive and degrading. It also serves as a feasible and liberating substitute for the
establishment and its hetero-normative values. Homosexual relationship between
women is shown in this re-vision of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as a means of redemption of
women. Broumas’s Sleeping Beauty attains awakening through a woman who is not
her saviour but a companion on par with the girl. Thus the lesbian, homosexual
relationship offers a democratic, egalitarian option to the subordinating and
discriminatory male order. In this sense it becomes a conscious political stance. Also
the female lover and her “public kiss” in the presence of shocked believers in
patriarchy under the symbolic red light underline the feminist motto “the personal is
political.” Feminist movement considers the public articulation of the ‘private’ as an
important presupposition for creating self awareness amongst women about their
systemic suppression and entrapment and forming a community of women bound
with solidarity and a feeling of sisterhood. Broumas in her retelling brings to the
centre the peripheral aspects of womanhood that remain unarticulated in the male
dominated culture. She gives Sleeping Beauty a new alternative and a new identity
remarkably enough not through a man but by her own choice. By exercising her own
choice without affecting the other’s individuality and freedom Sleeping Beauty and
through her, Broumas utter a political statement of defiance of the order and culture,
which sanctions and represses abuse of women and demean their status as free,
individual human beings.

In ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Broumas, by demonstrating woman’s right and freedom to

exercise her choice provides women with a political statement for challenging the age
old gender stereotypes and re-define and re-establish their place, role and status in the
male dominated world.

• Sara Henderson Hay’s ‘Sleeper’10

Sara Henderson Hay’s ‘Sleeper’ is an instance of appropriation of the sonnet – a

poetic form and tool widely used by men in the history of literature. In her new vision
of the conventional tale presented in her sonnet based on the tale, Hay tries to reveal
Sleeping Beauty’s future. Sleeping Beauty when she wakes up is dissatisfied with

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the changed world she finds herself in. She hates the chaos in this “new and noisy”
world which surrounds her and wishes that “the prince had left me where he found
me.” She has also lost her peace and tranquillity that she experiences while asleep.
She was happy in her “cloistered world,” in her “rosy trance … charmed and deep.”
In fact, she is irritated with the prince who breaks her tranquillity and removes the
lovely brambles around her palace which give her a feel of being secure and safe. She,
therefore, calls the prince a “clumsy trespasser” causing her discomfort. This implies
her unwillingness to wake up to a chaotic world from a tranquil and pacifying sleep.
She has loved her “cloistered world” for a century and has set her own “pattern” of
dreams of her own. It seems a trespasser’s scheme to tread upon this world and tear
apart the pattern of her dreams just “with a kiss or two.” The princess is determined.
She will not allow anything of this sort to happen. She has decided not to wake up
from her world and break or violate her own heartfelt wishes and desires. She will not
let her privacy be encroached upon by the intervention of apparent love of man. She
will not sell her privacy in exchange for man’s deceitful love – deceitful because
under the guise of love is a plot to invade her private world wherein her mind and
body are at liberty to exercise her needs and desires on her own terms. Besides, in
such intervention and offer of love, her wishes are not taken into account or respected
and hence she rejects man in her world and his role as a rescuer and a saviour.

…if he thinks that with a kiss or two

He’ll buy my dearest privacy, or shake me

Out of the cloistered world I’ve loved so long

Or tear the pattern of my dreams, he’s wrong. (Hay 10)

She refutes the general claim that Sleeping Beauty needs to be saved by man. She
refuses the heroic role of man in her life and as such considers any such attempt as an
intervention and invasion. She is firm in fulfilling her heart’s desires and not letting
anyone control her body:

Nothing this clumsy trespasser can do

Will ever touch my heart, or really wake me. (Hay 10)

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She thus is not a woman without voice passively guided by her fate and conditioned
by the male ideas of a woman’s happy life. She wakes up but does not like being
awakened. She utters her disillusionment in this awakening. She refuses to be fully
awakened by the prince. In not bartering her “dearest privacy” with the prince’s kisses
she reserves her right to marry him.

Scratching the surface, one can see that at a deeper level this revised tale too hints at a
rape, a molestation of the girl’s modesty and virginity by the prince. The violation
seems to provoke her rage against the prince. The invasion of her privacy and her
being are unacceptable to her. Though the prince is responsible for her waking up, she
is not grateful to him. She has been invaded against her wishes when she was asleep.
Besides, she dislikes the world around. The girl’s anger is against the object she has
been made into when she slept. Unlike Basile’s 16th century Sleeping Beauty who
after a hundred years’ sleep gives birth to two children soon after waking up and
accepts the prince in marriage, this Sleeping Beauty refuses to accept the relation
established through sexual violation against her conscious wish. Sleeping Beauty here
thus dares to challenge her fate preordained by the fairy’s curse and blessing and
decides to exercise her own will. This is yet another portrayal of the Sleeping Beauty
seeking her own independent universe.

Sara Henderson Hay also voices the prince’s feeling and opinion after being rejected
by Sleeping Beauty. The partial awakening of Sleeping Beauty and the unmasking of
the prince’s real goals and his generous guise of a saviour, rescuer disappoints him
and leaves him annoyed at the refusal of his role and heroism in the act of rescue.
Thus in ‘The Sleeper -2’12 the prince himself wakes up to realise “far too late”

How sound she sleeps, behind a thorny wall

Of rooted selfishness, whose stubborn strands

I broke through once to kiss her lips and hands,

And wake her heart, that never woke at all. (Hay 11)

He realises that he was wrong to have considered the “slumberous look” on her face,
“the dreaming air, the drowsy-lidded eyes” during her sleep were “nothing more” than
an “artless affectation.”

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The prince represents the male order, which in the event of defeat and denial by
female rebellion attempts to accuse the defiant woman of being selfish, hypocritical,
and corrupt and of using their feminine assets to beguile men “to cling about, to
strangle, to destroy.” His irritation at Sleeping Beauty’s refusal to admit man’s
heroism, her determination and positive assertion makes him wish that he had left her
before learning how she had used her sleep and beauty to hide her revolt:

I wish I’d gone away that self-same hour,

Before I learned how, like her twining roses,

She bends to her soft, implacable uses

The pretty tactics that such vines employ

To hide the poisoned barb beneath the flower,

To cling about, to strangle, to destroy. (Hay 11)

Hay, thus, records the typical male reaction to any woman’s attempt at self assertion
and claiming the right to privacy and freedom of self.

•
Sara de Ford’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’12

Sara de Ford’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is another poetic version of ‘Brier Rose’ presenting
yet another Sleeping Beauty “no one can wake…no sound can shatter.” (171)De Ford
too presents a dormant and powerless beautiful maiden induced to sleep sexually and
experiencing a life of torpid unconsciousness – a shatterproof trance. “Pricking” male
relationship presents explicitly the sexuality hinted at in the original tale. In her
variation De Ford presents Sleeping Beauty as the youngest princess. Her elder sisters
are bestowed with the gifts of “goodness,” “quick bright wit,” “dower of wealth,”
“long life” and so on while Sleeping Beauty is left with only the gift by the “sly
witch,” the cruel “malignant” fairy “the spindle prick of sex.”(171) This gift would
leave her doomed in a “stuporous” life of deathlike unconsciousness. The prick is
sexual. She however, is not going to remain youthful but is destined to grow older
with time while asleep through life, her “torpid unconsciousness” (171) She is thus
left to a fate of a living cadaver – motionless, benumbed, dormant, hibernating with

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latent consciousness. She is neither dead nor alive. She sleeps all through their life on
account of the “keen wound” of love.

The story in a subtle way presents a representative state of womankind living

hopelessly in a trancelike state throughout life her desires, wishes and feelings
governed by the male dominated value system.

• Robert Coover’s ‘The Briar Rose’13

Robert Coover’s ‘The Briar Rose’ is an instance of a male attempt at rewriting the
story of the Grimms’ ‘Brier Rose’ and Perrault’s ‘The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.’
Coover in a very interesting and novel manner exposes the sexual meaning of the
original classics through the thoughts of the prince, dreams of the princess and stories
told by the old crone/ fairy who takes care of Briar Rose during the century of her
sleep. It is an allegorical playful parody left open for the readers’ decoding and
interpretation. It is like a game used as a strategy to awaken the readers, to provoke
them to undertake critical examination of cultural norms, values, codes and
“established patterns of thought.”14

To begin with, like the rewrites mentioned earlier in this chapter Coover too assumes
readers’ foreknowledge of the original Grimm, Perrault and Basile’s versions of the
tale, begins in media res and ponders on the sleep metaphor but completely strips it
bare. The retelling attempts to take us into the psychological depths of the characters’
thoughts and dreams – their conscious and sub/unconscious psyches.

Before the well known Grimm version of ‘Brier Rose’, which became more famous
with its more reductive adaptation by Disney, the 17th century Neapolitan writer
Giambattsta Basile in his 1636 collection of 50 stories in Pentamerone included ‘Sun,
Moon and Talia’ on which Charles Perrault based his version ‘La belle au bois
dormant’ translated as ‘The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods’ in 1697. It is said that the
elements of this tale type were found in an earlier version in the 14th century French
Arthurian story Perceforest.

Whereas the Grimm tale simplistically presents and focuses on the enchantment and
release of the fairy tale heroine after a hundred years and a ‘happy ever after’ end, the
earlier Basile and Perrault versions present the heroine impregnated in her sleep.
Besides, the stories do not conclude with her awakening. The princess and her two

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children are persecuted by the cannibalistic Queen, Beauty’s mother-in-law. They are
rescued and reunited with the prince. Basile’s story has Talia, impregnated by a
married king. She gives birth to twins – Sun and Moon – during her sleep. One of the
infants sucks from Talia’s finger the flaxen fibre which had caused the enchantment.
With the removal of the fibre she wakes up. On discovering this, the king’s wife tries
to eat Talia’s children but is not successful. Perrault’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is relatively
less explicit and violent. It shows Sleeping Beauty having twins named Dawn and
Day born after the prince weds Beauty when she wakes up. Perrault ends his story
with a moral which Angela Carter translates as follows: “A brave, rich, handsome
husband is a prize well worth waiting for; but no modern woman would think it was
worth waiting for a hundred years. The tale of Sleeping Beauty shows how long
engagements make for happy marriages, but young girls these days want so much to
be married, I do not have the heart to press the moral.”15

Robert Coover in his hyper textual attempt at the rewrite of the tale combines all three
versions and mainly usurps the gaps in the legend with respect to the issue of Sleeping
Beauty’s dreams, which Perrault mentions parenthetically while writing his version.
Consciously inter-textual, intensely psychological, clearly postmodern in its
references to the pre-existent narratives and at the same time subverting these
“bourgeois”16 narrative traditions and “challeng[ing] linearity” (707) by creating
‘hyperspace’ for his ‘hypertext,’ Coover indeed offers a revived look to and comment
on the tale of Sleeping Beauty. Undertaking the innovative form of writing Coover
infuses the theme and content with the hypertext form and vice versa. As he himself
mentions in The End of Books “the most radical new element that comes to the fore in
hypertext is the system of multidirectional and often labyrinthine linkages we are
invited or obliged to create.” (707) So does his tale flow in many directions and make
the readers create meaning and author the tale themselves. This novel hyperfiction is
“so radically new it is hard to be certain just what it is. No fixed centre, for starters –
and no edges either, no ends or boundaries. The traditional narrative time line
vanishes into a geographical landscape or exitless maze, with beginnings, middles and
ends being no longer part of the immediate display ... topless (and bottomless)…
paragraphs, chapters and other conventional text divisions are replaced by evenly
empowered and equally ephemeral window-sized blocks of text and graphics…”
(707)

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Hypertext with its nonlinear or non sequential segments called lexias allows an
interactive, graphic, multivocal discourse and aims at empowering the reader to
interact, interpret and organise the given text “…freeing the reader from the
domination of the author,” (706) making reader and writer “co-learners or co-
writers…in the mapping and remapping of the textual…components, not all of which
are provided, by what used to be called the author.” (706) Coover, in his ‘Briar Rose’
illustrates all his insights about the hypertext thus making the retold tale itself a
metaphor for hypertext and represents it with newer intricacies and complexities.
Coover deconstructs the source tale, its story, plot and narration, and at the same time
attempts its critique targeting the arbitrary perpetration in it of archetypal social and
gender roles, identities and the archetypes of ‘appropriate’ sexual behaviour which
gets blindly transmitted in and adopted by society as morally and politically correct.
Deviating from linear, logical and causal structure, this novella offers 42 lexias which
begin in the middle and cease to move ahead of the moment where they begin. Indeed
nothing happens. There is no progression of events in either time or space. The story,
like the hypertext format itself is circular and entrapping like the young prince caught
in the thorny brambles around the castle wherein the princess lies asleep (?) dreaming
(?) entertained by the good/bad fairy with her apparently varied tales. At the end of
the novella (if one can call it an end) nothing or no one has moved on. We along with
the characters in the retold tale return to the same point where we had started. The
narration and characters are stuck in the moment and place and so are we when we
read the tale. “This one point in time, however, cannot pass, and the characters and
the reader remain right there for the length of the book.”17

In a very subtle and interesting manner Coover follows the fairy tale technique of
repetition and variation to debunk the fairy tale. His retelling itself is a re-viewed
variation on the three varied versions of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as mentioned above.
Within it are repeated variations of the Sleeping Beauty myth. The old crone keeps
telling Briar Rose stories all of which begin with the moment in which Coover’s own
narration is caught thus delineating multiple possibilities of the ways Briar Rose can
awaken and the consequential responses to those awakenings from the prince and the
princess. These possibilities are furthered by and in fact inspire Briar Rose’s dreams
in her sleep. The fairy’s stories, the prince’s thoughts on heroism, his vocation,
adventure and frustration and the princess’s dreams keep occurring cyclically and

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perennially in a repetitive/repeated structure rendering to the retold tale what Coover

calls, “ fluidity, contingency, indeterminacy, plurality” (709), circularity sans centre
and a “dimensionless infinity.” (709)

The prince is “hopelessly in the flesh-rending embrace of the briars” (L 24) that he
slashes but they grow back “doubly forked; rearmed, he slashes them again, he must
strive.” (L 24) Heroism is his vocation and disenchanting the princess from her
century long sleep just with his magical kiss “(he has a talent for it, women have often
told him so)” (L 24) is his “fabled adventure.” (L 28) He undertakes his adventure,
therefore, with his sense of vocation and not for the fabled reward – “what is another
lonely bedridden princess?” (L 1) Though described in a sexually provocative
language the adventure, for the Prince, is not desired for the sexual pleasure but to
confront “the awful powers of enchantment…To tame mystery. To make … his
name.” (L 1) He thinks or “prefers to think” (L 3) that perhaps he is the chosen one,
that the object of his heroic quest is “Honour. Knowledge. The exercise of his magical
powers” (L3) and of course, love. He is uncertain and rather doubtful about the
outcome of his adventure. The prospect of suffering, pain and cruelty at the end of the
adventure excites him, incites him: “if there be any truth in these century-old rumours
from benighted times, this adventure could end, not in love’s sweet delirium, but in its
pain, its infamous cruelty. This prospect, however, does not dissuade him. On the
contrary. It incites him.” (L3) For, he is proudly obsessed with the fabled “heroic
task” (L6) – that of not just crossing the hurdles but on reaching the sleeper,
awakening her to the knowledge about herself and getting rewarded with the
princess’s unconditional love and honour for his favour. The embracing briars which
he slashes are the impediments that entice and lure him away from the prize inside
and dissuade him from playing “the fabled fool” (L6) for choosing an imagined prize
over “a real and present one” (L6) i.e. “the immediate gratification of flesh” amidst
the briars that “voluptuously caress him” (L9) He moves on with his manly resolve
presuming “I am he who will awaken Beauty!” (L9), thinking that it “is a marvellous
and emblematic journey beyond the beyond, requiring his unwavering courage and
dedication, but promising a reward beyond the imagination of ordinary mortals.” (L9)
As he continues to be ‘caught’ in the gnarled, entwining briars that he continues to
slash away “valiantly” (L16) it dawns upon him that the ‘beautiful’ is “a deadly
illusion.” (L14) His erotic longing for the princess is now replaced with “sympathetic

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curiosity” (L14) for her. He equates his life “driven by his dream of vocation and
heroic endeavour and bewitched by desire” (L14) with the possible “strangely
timeless and insubstantial” (14) existence of Briar Rose if no one reaches her to
awaken her from her dreams. His vocation is replaced by the fear that the journey
would be timeless and insubstantial and his doubt about whether the castle and the
princess really exist and whether the princess there is beautiful and loving or just “the
wicked fairy’s wicked creature, more captor than captive, more briar than blossom.”
(L16) However “he will remain a hero to the end.” (L21) Unable to release himself
from the “flesh-rending embrace” (L24) of the briars and imagining his “fabled” (L6)
victory and the consequent fame and happiness that would “naturally flow therefrom”
(L24) he hears the bones of his predecessors stuck and lost in the brambles, speak
about “the vanity of all heroic pursuits and of the dreadful void that the illusion of
immortality, so called, cannot conceal.” (L24) They describe the essence of heroism
as “willing self-delusion, masks, artifice, a blind eye cast toward the abyss.” (L24) He
is aware but still would ‘strive’ to make his name “for love of love.” (L24) He expects
that Briar Rose would appreciate his strife for love since she too is chosen as he
himself is or he thinks he is. Both are repeatedly pricked and stripped naked. In his
imagination – the only asset he is left with – he visualises the completion of his
“fabled adventure” and the “ever after” that follows including “the disappointments
and frustrations and betrayals, the tedium, the doubts (was it really she after all? was
it really he?), the disfigurement of time, he draining away of meaning and memory,
the ensuing silences, the death of dreams; and enrobed in pain, wilfully nameless, yet
in his own way striving still, he slips back into the briars’ embrace.” (L28) By and by
he seems utterly exhausted to the extent that he doesn’t even wish to reach her and
awaken her. Still his vocation compels him to move on. He thinks of the tranquillity
and peace in his life before this adventure and resents her “for getting him into this
mess.” (L30) In Lexia 33 the prince thinks, imagines or perhaps indeed has escaped
the briars, scaled the walls, explored the castle, found the princess, is already at her
bedside and has awakened her. Surprised as he himself may be, we too wonder
whether “he is generating this illusion himself, or if it is fairy magic.” (L33) He finds
her as per his fabled imagination and expectations: “beautiful, gentle, innocent,
devoted, submissive.” (L33) Humorously Coover presents him as “suffused with love
and desire” wanting “to take a nap” (L33) He is lost in his thoughts about his quest
while the princess tells him what a flying goose foretold her: “You will never awaken
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because the story you were in no longer exists.” (L33) The prince doubts his role as
the chosen saviour and feels that he might as well face the same fate as his
predecessors whose rattling bones talk to him about the vanity of the quest which ends
in an anonymous death/eternity “forever after.” Continuously shifting between
determination and resignation, repeatedly he imagines and thinks in his imagination
that he has broken the princess’s spell only to realise in a while that he is still caught
in the briars.

“Nothing in this castle is simply what it is, everything here has a double life,” he
realises by Lexia 35. Everything is masked, hidden and complex. He believes that the
princess would bring him out of the “thorny maze” (L35) but her questions, “When
will this spell be broken?” “When will my true prince come?” (L35) awaken him to
the realisation that “as he feared, he is not the one.” (L35) If he is not, he would like
to ‘become’ the one she dreams of but she holds a mirror up to him wherein he sees
that he is a “hairy, toothy” (L35) beast. His self-reflection “Who am I? What am I?”
(L23) is answered here. She dresses him up for the ball “with all the needles left
inside” (L35) and leads him by the paw. The hall which he enters is the perilous edge
of the world and he realises that from here “there will be no departing.” (L38)
Engulfed in pain he howls for help and release. Still trapped in the brambles, he feels
he has rescued the sleeping princess and “feels substantially unrewarded for all his
pain and suffering.” (L38) The rescue of the princess appears such “a long ago”
happening that “his memory of it is as though a borrowed one.” (L38) He analyses the
reason why he remained entrapped in the hedges: “I feel the reason I never escaped
the briars was that, in the end, I loved them, or at least I needed them…. They grew
on me…” (L37) The blossoming briar hedge is the princess’s double whom the prince
has been experiencing sensually ever since he begins his quest which for him initially
seems very easy. The briars “part like thighs, the silky petals caress[ing] his cheeks.”
(L1) Throughout Coover playfully exposes the sexual elements and symbolism in the
hero’s quest constantly referring to the spindle in association with the penis and
violation of Briar Rose’s virginity in each of her dreams of awakening. The prince
thinks he is the one chosen for the heroic task of making his name. But so did all the
preceding princes who die entrapped in the brambles: “all around him, the pendulous
bones whisper severally in fugal refrain: I am he who will awaken Beauty! I am he
who will awaken Beauty!” (L9) The princess awakens again and again and is still in

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the castle sleeping; so does the prince repeatedly reach her passing through the
brambles and scaling the walls and yet is caught, trapped, stuck, “hopelessly
enmeshed” in the hedges wounded by the pricks of the briars.

Coover in his humorous presentation of the prince in the brambles sarcastically

criticises and deconstructs the fairy tale hero and the fabled adventure of the hero as
well as the fabled notion of heroism. The hero’s task of rescuing the princess and
“making his name” (L 1,9,32, 33, 42) itself is challenged and questioned. The hero
and heroism are denied in this rewrite. Coover mocks the fabled hero and his fabled
heroic adventure. The hero here is destined to remain entrapped in his own
understanding of the happily ever after – “a fall into the ordinary” – “whether he
makes his name or not (what does it matter?)” (L28) When he ultimately feels/
imagines he has reached the princess and is stunned by her beauty, “[H]e is thinking
about the quest that brought him here. Has he made his name then? If so, what is it?”
(L33)

The princess: “She awakens to repeated awakenings as though trapped in some

strange mechanism.” (L39) She experiences repeated stabbings by the treacherous
spindle and is “impregnated with … despair” (L3) Each Lexia that presents the
princess’s dream brings near the closure of the spell but right there she is pulled back
again into a new beginning, a restart of another dream narrative, which moves round
and round (like the spinning wheel) with no hope of reaching a happy (or otherwise)
conclusion.

The princess describes herself as the one “that hurts” (L4) since she has no other
answer. She craves to know who and what she is, why she is fated to experience “an
endless stupor and its plague of kissing suitors.” (L8) “Throughout the long night of
the hundred year sleep” (L8) she confronts these questions and the fairy tries to
answer them: “You are such a door, accessible only to the adept, you are such a secret
passageway to nowhere but itself.” (L8) It is thus difficult to fathom the truth about
this Briar Rose.

Coover’s Briar Rose wakes up every time after a sexual assault “on her lifeless body”
(L19) by a band of ruffians, by “her prince or some prince anyway” (L22), by a wild
bear, by a monkey, by her king father in alliance with her mother and so on. She is
entrapped in the confusion between the dreams and awakening. “She longs to bring it

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to a standstill” (L39) but every time she wakes up with varied feelings only to realise
that it had been yet another dream sequence. Her awakenings are deceptive; the
happy endings are delusive. They torture, traumatise or mock her as well as the
readers who desire such endings. She feels destiny has been unjust to her and curses
it. To this, “her ancient friend” the fairy reacts in a consoling tone and suggests to her
that she has meted with a better fate than others: “You are one of the lucky ones, the
old crone says, wagging a gnarled finger at her. Your sisters were locked in iron
towers, lamed and stuck in the kitchen, sent to live with the savage beasts. They had
their hands and feet cut off, were exiled, raped, imprisoned, reviled, monstrously
deformed, turned to stone and killed. Even worse, many of them had their dreams
come true.” (L17) Coover in a delightfully sarcastic comment mocks the “fabled”
dream and the prize for the beautiful princess. The prize of marriage with the
handsome prince is mocked in the tale as a shattering and severe fate for the winning
beauty. Paradoxically enough the awakening - the happy end with disenchantment,
rescue, kiss and wedding of the princess - is shown as a nightmare, a horror.

Tired of the evasive and deceptive happy endings “all she longs for, as she tells the
old crone in the tower, is to sleep again.” (L42) She is again restored to her dream
wherein the fairy would lull her to sleep with yet another version of ‘Briar Rose.’ The
sleeping princess closes her eyes to such a cruel fate, but as always, it is as if she has
opened them again, and now to yet another prince arriving, bloodied but exultant, at
her bedside. “… Yes, yes, that’s right, my prince! And now, tenderly if you can,
toothily if need be, take this spindled pain away …” (L42). The novella ends on this
note of continuity and circularity suggesting “the eternal re-enactment” (L42) of Briar
Rose’s fate and her desire to rid herself of the spindled pain.

Coover perhaps depicts representatively through his ‘Briar Rose’ the continual
eternity and eternal re-enactment of painful destiny of the womankind determined by
and in the male dominated order for centuries past and to come. The princess’s and so
every woman’s “longing for integrity… is itself fragmented.” (L2) Being stabbed
again and again “by the treacherous spindle, impregnated with despair from which,
for all her fury, she cannot awaken” (L2) and she will never as the plucked goose in
one of her dreams prophecies in Lexia 33. She thus represents the male ordained fate
of women in patriarchy: “the object of male gaze or even rape.” (Redies 23), a
helpless victim of violent male sensuality and violence. “[A] band of drunken

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peasants … intent on loot … commenced to strip her, of her finery and naturally one
thing led to another and they all had a turn on her, both before she was kissed and
after.” (L15) Another band of ruffians who in fact are “her father’s household
knights” all have “a go on her lifeless body, sometimes more than one at a time.”
(L19) The answer to Rose’s and in turn every woman’s “Why?” is because “you
won’t listen!” (L19) Coover takes a trivial detail to a larger, vaster canvas to represent
the plight of women as helpless, passive victimised patriarchal subjects and at the
same time plunges into the typical male psyche and reveals the derogatory,
demeaning and dehumanising attitudes of patriarchy towards women.

As mentioned earlier in this analysis Coover in his rewrite has worked on the
suggestive, suggested and unexplored links in the tales by Basile, Perrault and
Grimm. Perrault’s tale mentions the good fairy amusing the sleeping princess with
pleasant dreams during a century long sleep. Working on this idea Coover presents a
fairy who is a combination of many female stereotypes in fairy tales. The good fairy is
also a wicked, bad, old crone. She is the one who curses her, the witch; she is the one
who blesses her, a mother figure. She is the enchanter, she, the amuser. She has
magical or at least medical powers and is at the same time a nanny with the power to
spin tales. In Lexia 19 Rose calls her mother: “Oh mother, she groans, why am I the
one? Because you won’t listen! cries the ill tempered old crone” who after a while
apologises to the child “as though to right the wrong.” She is a surrogate mother as it
were. The loving old crone is “hideously ugly and vaguely threatening, yet dearer to
[Rose] in her dreams than any other, even courting princes.” (L4) Hurt at being called
ugly, however, the good-bad fairy sarcastically thanks all those who consider her so
including the beautiful princess and without inhibitions exposes the factual issues
involved in a hundred year long sleep and the retention of the princess’s beauty: “Has
that smug sleeper paused to consider how she will look and smell after a hundred
years, lying comatose and untended in an unchanged bed? A century of collected
menses alone should stagger the lustiest of the princes.” (L5) It is this crone who
maintains the princess’s beauty during her sleep. She feels obliged to “freshen her
flesh and wipe her bum, costume and coiffure her, sweep the room of all morbidity
and cushion her for he who will come in lustrous opulence.” (L5) She nurses the
princess and amuses her too by ornamenting her dreams with moral lessons in her
stories. The stories are but “mere fancies invented for her own consolation while

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awaiting that which she herself, in her ingenerate ambivalence, has ordained.” (L5) In
a way she too is trapped and desires rescue, a way out. She too is “castle-bound as the
dreamer.” (L29) She is “a caster of spells and a manipulator of plots.” (L18) With her
talents she imagines and describes for Rose “a rich assortment of beauties and princes,
obstacles, awakenings, and what-happened-nexts, weaving in a diverse collection of
monsters, dragons, ogres, jests, rapes, riddles, murders, magic, maimings, dead
bodies, and babies… the illusion of boundaries, above all that the body has been …
thereof.” (L29) Many of her tales are about “infanticide and child abuse,
abandonment, mutilations, mass murder and cruel executions, and, in spite of the
subjects, not all endings have been happy.” (L31) She is aware that her stories
necessarily linger on suffering “often intolerable and unassuaged suffering.” (L31)
This is her wickedness.

However, her cruel façade hides a practical and well meaning intention, that of
preparing her “moony charge” for the real, the actual and the harsh. Reality is not so
simple and easy as “a quick kiss” followed by a wedding party and happy ever after
life. It is much more complex and unusual. Goodness of this wicked fairy lies in her
intention to hold before the princess a mirror that reflects the challenges of real life.
Hence she has told her “the story of the musicians at Beauty’s wedding feast who
distracted the bride with their flutes and tambourines and kettledrums, while their
dancing girls were off seducing the groom, thereby sending him to his nuptial bed
with a dreadful social disease. She has told her (also forgotten) of a monstrously evil
Sleeping Beauty and of the horrors unleashed upon the prince and all the kingdom
when he awakened her, as well as of the hero under a beastly spell who ate Beauty
immediately upon finding her so as to avoid returning to his dreary life as a workaday
prince, adding a few diverting notes about his digestive processes just to stretch the
tale out.” (L31) The princess, as the fairy tale reader, used to the formulaic romantic
tales with happy endings distrusts and doubts the tales: “it doesn’t seem right” (L32),
“she doesn’t like this story.” (L32), “That’s not how stories are” (L32), “It just
doesn’t sound right … Real stories aren’t like that. Real princes aren’t” (L26), “it’s
terrible” (L11) She clearly does not believe the tales but is repeatedly drawn to them
“back for more of the same.” (L23) The fairy loses her temper to see how despite her
promises and reprimands, the princess either bewails or doubts or dreads her fate. She
can appreciate the child dreading what she longs, as princely heroes are generally

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“unreliable and often beastly.” (L18) However the princess’s doubts about the arrival
of the prince to awake her suggest, for the fairy, “that she underestimates her own
legendary beauty and its power to provoke desire in men.” (L18)

The fairy, however, with a conviction perhaps that “the sugar coated fairy tales” are
“escapist and numbing constructions” (Redies 21) keeps on inventing and repeating
new variations of the tale having the same plot. She is frustrated to see the “empty
head” not learning “her dreamtime moral lessons” (L18), which talk of the pleasures
got from withheld satisfaction. As Brian Evenson points out Coover deconstructs the
fairy tale inside and through his story: “the text illustrates the attack on the myth as
well as the stubborn adherence to the tradition in the relationship of the old crone and
the sleeping beauty.”18

The retold tale debunks fairy tale traditions and even the conditioned expectation
/desires of the fairy tale readers mainly for structure, linearity and meaning. Rose’s
dismissal of the fairy’s tales as wrong and terrible because they deviate from the fairy
tale structure and happy endings can actually be seen as the responses of the readers
accustomed to the classical fairy tales, their traditional structure and happy endings
with sugar coated escapism.

Coover’s narrative strategy involves the fairy telling many variations in her repeated
tales. Historical development of oral tales constituted such endless variations within
repetitions. Coover through his narrative strategy “reveals layers upon layers of
historical development in the tale, older versions and bawdy elements found in Basile
and Perrault that were sanitised away in the Grimms’ version.” (Redies 21)

In Lexia 8 Coover makes the fairy define beauty with a capital ‘B.’ The fairy’s
answers to Rose’s questions, “Who am I?” “What am I?” could be related to what
Coover wishes to suggest cynically about the character of the fairy tale itself: “You
are all things dangerous and inviolate. You are she who has renounced the natural
functions, she who invades the dreams of the innocent, she who harbours wild forces
and so defines and provokes the heroic, and yet you are the magical bride, of all good
the bell and flower, she through whom all glory is to be won, love known, the root out
of which all need germinates. You are she about whom the poets have written: The
rose and thorn, the smile and tear: / The burden of all life’s song is here. […] You are
that flame, flickering like a burning fever in the hearts of men, consuming them with

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desire, bewitching them with their radiant and mysterious allure.” (L8) What the fairy
does not utter for the fear of terrifying the princess are the words: “You are Beauty.”
This would terrify even the readers who realise the undercurrent allusions, in these
remarks, to the form, nature and character of the fairy tale itself. The wish fulfilment
and desire for structure in the traditional, classical fairy tales produces individuals
who are “integrated into a (social) structure: desire gone wrong but transformed and
reintegrated within an accepted value system.”(Redies 25) Coover’s fairy tale desires
this gratification and attacks our adherence to the fairy tale traditions.

This hyper-textual retelling serves different purposes like parodying and at times
cynically challenging the ideas about the hero, the heroic and heroism; exploring the
notion of beauty and the beautiful in fairy tales; critically attacking the traditionally
burdened roles of fairy tale characters; commenting on the “shifting depiction of
sexuality and of male and female desire: female purity combined with passivity versus
male conquest and possession,” (Redies 25); failing, breaking down and debunking
traditional desires and expectations of the readers from the classical fairy tale and
above all deconstructing the myth, the fairy tale, its predetermined story lines and
narratives paradoxically through the redundant narratives of the old crone. The
beautiful world of the fairy tale is proved “a deadly illusion” (Redies 14) in Coover’s
attempt at this rewrite. Coover tries to explore and reveal a variety of possible
alternative approaches to and versions of the Sleeping Beauty tale by challenging the
traditional and old conventions and set rules of the fairy tale genre. As Jaroslav
Kusnir in his article maintains, Coover’s ‘Briar Rose’“ expresses the desire to
overcome the traditional, old sensibility, represented by old narrative forms; and at the
same time, […] establishes a new sensibility and new approach to reality and its
representation.”19

In Lexia 37 the princess is shown to be sitting beside the king, “the crowned and
bearded stranger” (L32) at the dining table with her heavy crown on her head. A lot of
time seems to have passed since her awakening or she is perhaps still sleeping and
dreaming the fairy’s yet another piece of entertainment. Sighing, belching and
“scratching his hairy belly” he says, “Happily ever after… It’s never quite like you
imagine it. She nods. A mistake.” (L32)

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The rewrite presents a dream reality. Within the dream many other dreams with a feel
of reality are presented/ dreamt. The prince, the princess and the fairy are forever
trapped within the tale. There is no escape from the entrapment. The circularity keeps
rolling: the prince imagines reaching the princess and still finds himself struggling
with brambles; the princess finds herself in yet another dream just when one feels she
is about to wake up; the fairy is trapped in the act of spinning the same stories with
variations repeatedly. There is no end to the story. It rolls on forever repetitively. One
could see it as Coover’s comment on and mockery of the “forever aftering” in a
manner exactly contrary to the fairy tale “happily ever after” ends.

“What is happily ever after, but a fall into the ordinary, into the human weakness,
gathering despair, a fall into death?... He imagines the delirium… the death of
dreams.” (L28) Just when the prince imagines he has fulfilled his vocation, he doubts
that perhaps he has come to a wrong castle and asks the princess, “What is your
heart’s desire? To live happily ever after, she replies without emotion.” (L33) Coover
makes fun of the happily ever after in the prince’s pinching response to the princess’s
desire to live happily ever after: “Of course, he replies, it’s yours for the asking. And
also I wonder if you’d mind watching the babies for a while? Babies - ? !” (L33) Later
in one of his imaginings he hears the princess telling him, “It doesn’t last, forget
happily ever after…” (L35)

“The bad fairy, who is also the good fairy” in Lexia40, begins her story with a happily
ever after life of a prince and a princess: “Once upon a time, she says with a curling
smile, her wicked side as usual taking over, there was a handsome prince and a
beautiful princess who lived happily ever after.” Terrified to hear this Briar Rose
objects to such a start and is repelled from the story. The witch in response
admonishes: “Happily ever after… may not be worth a parched fig, my daughter, but
it hides the warts, so don’t be too quick to throw it out!” (L40) She continues the
story.

Coover presents the cruelty of the “ever aftering” in the combination of the good and
the bad in the same fairy. She is a good fairy because she had blessed this child with
death “before suffering the misery of the ever-after part of the human span.” (L40) It
is the wicked fairy in her who keeps going the ever-aftering pain: “… the wicked fairy

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in her, for the sake of her own entertainment, transforming that well-meant gift to
death in life and life in death without surcease.” (L40)

Coover thus turns the fairy tale characters and the fairy tale endings topsy turvy
revealing the essential, hidden deception in both, in an exceptionally novel and
wonderful manner. The prince seems to have escaped but is actually trapped,
continually possessed by his vocation and desire to “make his name;” (L1) the
princess demands to wake up and be rescued but longs to sleep again and dream; the
crone endlessly spins the yarn reproducing the same tale differently. Like the
characters the reader too gets trapped and lost in the hyperspace of the text realising
like the prince, “it’s too hard to know what is real and not.” (L36)

Every new version, repetition and variation of the old tale is so intricately spun and
fused in the narrative of this ‘Briar Rose’ that an attempt to pick one of the variations
out of the many as the real or true story “just lands you in this self-reflexive thicket,
with the thorns tearing at your clothes.”20 The narrative thus becomes a metaphor for
the art of spinning the tales pricking us, entrapping us in the brambles like the prince
and at the same time like the princess keeping us in a constantly trance like state
entertained with variations on the tales for centuries to come. The book, the narrative
will continue to go on forever. At the end (?) of the tale the reader is exactly in the
same condition as of the prince at the start of the book – wondering like him “how
easy it is” (L1) to penetrate the thicket but eventually getting trapped. The spell, thus,
is never broken either for the characters or for the readers.

• Jane Yolen’s ‘Briar Rose’21

Jane Yolen’s ‘Briar Rose’ is an allegorical novel which intertwines the theme of the
Grimm fairy tale with the traumatic tale of the Holocaust. A postmodern allegorical
appropriation of the Briar Rose tale and the wielding and syncretisation of a tale of
horror with a literary genre results in an interesting and a refreshingly new outlook on
the age old tale. The fusion of the two extreme opposites suggestive of the fairy tale
of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in a horrifying manner is striking. However it does demand an
exploration of the common grounds between the Holocaust and the fairy tale genre:
Bruno Bettelheim, the author of a legendary book on the uses, meaning and
importance of fairy tales and a well acclaimed psychiatrist himself was a
concentration camp survivor. He grew up listening to the Grimm fairy tales from his

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Viennese mother. Both as a witness to the Holocaust and a student of psychiatry and
fairy tales, Bettelheim in his book acknowledges and proves that fairy tales become a
means for a child to express its existential anxieties like the fear of death. A fairy tale
protagonist, with whom children identify, finds himself/herself in a world beyond
his/her comprehension and is threatened by the possibilities of death and triumph over
it. The fairy tale world appears threatening and incomprehensible. The plot of the
fairy tale involves a struggle to survive in the midst of a terrorising environment. The
fairy tale protagonists are themselves ordinary human beings having fears,
weaknesses and are involved in an existential struggle against odds and fatal dangers.
They are very often helpless and cast out. Such commonplace characters and their
plight in the horrific world are the commonalities between the Holocaust horror and
the fairy tale humour. The fairy tale thus also bridges the horrific world of the
Holocaust and the simple, ordinary world of the readers.

Yolen’s ‘Briar Rose’ is set in Nazi occupied Poland. It centres on the characters of
Gemma and Becca. Gemma the grandmother is a survivor of the Holocaust, almost
brought back to life from the jaws of death. However she has never conveyed to her
family about this past of hers. She is obsessive about the tale of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and
repeatedly tells it to her granddaughters. She has in fact lost her memories of the past
and tries to re-live it through the fairy tale: “I have no memories in my head but one…
a fairy tale,” she says. (Y 211)

Yolen looks upon fairy tales as a means for retelling the past metaphorically. Like
herself she makes Gemma encode her hidden memories of the horrific past
experiences using the Briar Rose metaphor. Allegorically thus the theme of the
Holocaust is depicted through Gemma’s real life story discovered through Becca’s
quest to trace Gemma’s history in Poland and to reach the truth and depths of the
coded narrative. Becca the most committed of Gemma’s granddaughters, feels on
account of the obsessive repeated telling of the story of Briar Rose, that Gemma’s
story has meaning beyond the literal. Her doubt is answered when Gemma on her
deathbed reveals that she “was the princess! ...In the castle. The prince kissed me.” (Y
16) She leaves behind her just a box of old photos and documents as clues for Becca
to explore and unfold Gemma’s past. In her quest Becca comes to know about three
different names by which Gemma was known. All of them meant or referred to Briar
Rose or princess: Gemma’s nickname Dawna or Dawn (Y 29) means Princess Aurora;

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her name recorded officially on the immigration card is Gitl Rose Madelstein (Y 62)
meaning Briar Rose and Becca discovers to her surprise another of her names,
Ksiezniczka, which means ‘princess’ in Polish. (Y 65) As children, Becca and her
sisters are impressed with the tale of the sleeping beauty for its confrontation with the
theme of death, victory over it and the power of love. As with the tale Gemma
remains connected to her terrible past and the comforting present, so does Yolen
bridge, using a fairy tale, the unimaginable Holocaust experiences of her protagonist
with her present day. The coded narrative of horror serves as an entertaining tool for
the children. For the teller the tale works as a stress reliever and a means of
expressing her feelings associated with her horrific past and at the same time, for the
listeners it resolves their own childish existential issues and anxieties.

Writers of the holocaust narratives believe and find that ordinary language falls short
of adequately expressing experiences of the unbearable and unspeakable horrors so
that they could evoke empathy in the readers. Besides, direct depiction of the
holocaust could repel the reader than make them understand the plight of the victims.
In such a situation fairy tales with their metaphoric richness serve the purpose of
appropriately conveying the horrors to and eliciting the desired responses and
emotions from the readers. Jane Yolen achieves exactly this by using a fairy tale for
portraying the unrepresentable and evoking empathy from her readers. Hence this
successful infusion of the extreme narratives.

Yolen quotes Jack Zipes to introduce and describe her novel: “Both the oral and the
literary forms of the fairy tale are grounded in history: they emanate from specific
struggles to humanise bestial and barbaric forces, which have terrorised our minds
and communities in concrete ways, threatening to destroy free will and human
compassion. The fairy tale sets out to conquer this concrete terror through
metaphors.”22 Based on this conviction she uses a variety of fairy tale motifs to
metaphorically hint at different facets of the Holocaust horror. Using them efficiently
she both describes as well as disguises the horror to attain aesthetic results. For
instance the sleep motif takes on many connotations suggestive of forgetfulness,
unawareness, indifference, death which occupied the entire German nation. It
symbolises the sleeping of the conscience, of feelings of sympathy and empathy
towards fellow human beings. Gemma refers to the image of mist and fog
alternatively to make the sleep metaphor more comprehensive to include

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the indications of the Holocaust terrors. It is interesting to see how Yolen appropriates
the sleep metaphor to suggest a nationwide indifference and lack of empathy. Gemma
says, “A mist. A great mist. It covered the entire kingdom. And everyone in it – the
good people and the not so good, the young people and the not so young, and even
Briar Rose’s mother and father fell asleep. Everyone slept: lords and ladies, teachers
and tummlers, dogs and doves, rabbits and rabbitzen and all kinds of citizens. So fast
asleep they were, they were not able to wake up for a hundred years.” (Y 43-44)

Gemma refers to sleep and mist again on her deathbed: “I was the princess in the
castle in the sleeping woods. And there came a dark mist and we all fell asleep.” (Y
16) The woods, the castles and forest which are commonly found in fairy tales and
presented as dangerous, dark, mysterious and fatal too appear in her tale. She uses the
word ‘schloss’ meaning castle to describe the manor house of Kulmholf/Chelmno.
The forest is the place where all the gassed Jews, homosexuals and other marginalised
are dumped and buried. Even the thorns metaphorically imply the barbed wire around
the concentration camps and also the refugee camps in Oswego. (Y 80) The cover
page of the novel very suggestively presents this barbed wire image.

Yolen shows Gemma hiding the harsh details of her survival in the magical fairy tale
thus using the tale as a coating for the horrific experiences. The two narratives
however coexist mutually. Yolen uses the fairy tale language as a reminder of this
thematic arrangement. For instance, the fairy tale language is used in Becca’s
conversation with Stan at the airport. The names that Josef gives to the partisans in his
story of Gemma’s rescue bear resemblance to the fairy tale names. Gemma’s retelling
of the tale is unusual and repetitive. It is different in details from the traditional tale.
This irritates and terrifies the granddaughters, particularly the two elder ones. Like in
many classical fairy tales the older sisters are unsympathetic to listening to the same
story told again and again and like in such tales it is the youngest that shows goodness
and empathy towards Gemma and her story.

Gemma is Briar Rose because her names echo the meaning of princess, and Briar
Rose; her hair is red “the crown of red hair” (Y 14) and on her deathbed she whispers
“I am Briar Rose!” (Y 17) Becca, fascinated by Gemma’s account of the tale, realises
that Gemma chooses her to find the truth and identifies herself with Gemma. She thus
becomes her double and in that sense, a Briar Rose with a difference. The castle

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where the fairy tale Briar Rose lay sleeping is the extermination camp – the schloss at
Chelmno. Hitler and the Nazi soldiers of his army are equated with the bad fairy
cursing the maiden princess: “Not the bad fairy. Not the one in black with big black
books and silver eagles on her hat.” (Y 19) The partisans coming to her help could be
seen as good fairies. She being a Jew in the Hitler regime was cursed to be gassed in
the trucks on the way to Chelmno, cursed to death “from the exhaust piped in” (Y
210) In her story Gemma would refer to “[U]ncles, aunties, cousins, family… I curse
you Briar Rose, your father, mother, cousins and aunts” (Y 19) and to the effect of the
curse “everyone slept … and all kinds of citizens.” (Y 43) These people in her coded
narrative are all the Jews, gypsies and the gay who were ruthlessly massacred.

“[A] briary hedge [beginning] to grow with thorns as sharp as barbs” (Y 58) in
Gemma’s story are actually suggestive and symbolic of the spread of concentration
camps: “higher and higher the thorny bush grew…” (Y 58) Gemma in her story refers
to the prince coming riding by his troops and on seeing the hedge trying to see over it.
In her own real life, Josef Potocki is her saviour. Coming out of the woods with the
partisans he sees a heap of gassed Jews unloaded from the trucks and very (s)lightly
breathing Gemma, who they believe, could not be saved. “However, he put his mouth
on hers and as he did so it was in Josef’s mouth that she, at last spluttered and
coughed.” (Y 207) Josef’s attempt at “giving her breath for breath” (Y 238) awakens
her. Josef turns out to be her prince who causes her disenchantment and helps and
supports her till she is completely rid of the Nazi terror. When she feels completely
freed she is with child from her lover husband, Aron, one of the partisans known
mainly as the Avenger who dies a heroic death. Gemma, after her disenchantment,
experiences a considerably warm and happy ever life (till her death) with a supportive
and loving family.

Becca realises Gemma’s telling of an old version of the Briar Rose tale as a metaphor
for Gemma’s life. The fragments of her tale interspersed in the narrative create
suspense and mystery in the novel. References to the fairy tale deepen Gemma’s story
of sufferings and make it representative of the Jewish plight. Apart from Gemma’s
version of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ told in the novel through extracts there are two more
distinct narratives which Yolen interweaves with one another: the story of Becca’s
quest to find true meaning of Gemma’s tale, of her discovery and adventure; and
Josef’s narrative which provides Becca and the readers of the novel with answers

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to all the questions raised by Gemma’s coded narrative. In her search for the
knowledge of the past, Becca’s own engagement with a fellow journalist, Stan and a
mature relationship that grows between the two is presented as suggestive of likely
happy ending for Becca. Thus unfolding Gemma’s life story leads her to find her own
happy ever after tale as well and for the readers softens the effects of the traumatic
narrative of the Holocaust suffering.

Through Josef’s essential narrative, Yolen debunks the idea of glamorous hero,
heroism and courage. Given the centrality of this narrative Yolen’s second purpose –
apart from the first of presenting the unimaginable wounds of the Holocaust survivors
– of debunking and mocking the stereotyped ideas of the hero and the heroic are
underlined in the inclusion of the character of Josef and his narrative. She makes Josef
frequently refer, in his account of his Holocaust experience, to his views on heroism,
courage, human spirit and survival: “this is a story of survivors, not heroes … a man
is not a hero if he scrabbles to stay alive, if he struggles for one more crust of bread,
one more ragged breath. We were all heroes of the moment.” (Y 163) The Holocaust
brings forth in him disillusionment with what he romantically believed to be ideals of
strength and courage. He grows to a mature understanding of these notions and
experiences truly the states of being fearless. His escape from Sachenhausen gives
this feel: “he was not afraid … he had no fear left.” (Y 185) The war experiences
bring about a change in his attitudes towards survival and courage and also within
himself as a human whom the horrors of the Holocaust have numbed but at the same
time made stronger than what he was before.

The realistic touch given to Yolen’s hero serves as a comment on and a critique of the
fairy tale concept of the ideal hero, a figure perfect in every possible way, in all
matters of life and at all times. Yolen’s characters in this novel including the ‘prince’
are imperfect human beings, ordinary people with ordinary wishes and desires in life.
Josef, the hero, who resuscitates Gemma to life by actually breathing into her mouth
and helps to rescue her, is a homosexual who would never marry the princess whom
he saves. He comes to a better realisation and understanding of the heroic and heroism
and is a more enriched human being at the end of his experience of suffering and
trauma. He is an ordinary fellow trying to survive against certain death and in the
event saves and rescues Gemma. As a homosexual and as a mere layman struggling
for survival, he is far from the ideal stereotypical hero prince of any fairy tale.

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When Becca tells him he is indeed a hero though he has been modestly denying it, he
says to her, “Your own American writer Emerson said: ‘The hero is not fed on sweets
but daily his own heart he eats.’ If that is a definition you can accept, then I will tell
you I have dined long and hard on my own heart. And it is bitter.” (Y 230) Such
portrayal of the hero seems to serve an important purpose of debunking the fairy tale
concept of the hero and defining heroism anew while bringing forth the factual detail
about the Holocaust that apart from the Jews many other marginalised sections like
the homosexuals, gypsies, and mentally and physically challenged too were victims of
the Nazi terror.

Yolen thus achieves multiple aims by depicting the Holocaust through a fairy tale.
Besides such portrayal of the holocaust as would evoke empathy, she also undertakes
a successful attempt at breaking and critiquing the fairy tale stereotypes of the hero,
the heroic, heroism, the princess, her beauty and passivity. The princess of the Yolen
story is as active and determined in her escape as the unusual prince of the tale. The
values of loyalty, faith, love and commitment figure in the depiction of relations
between the characters. These values are fragmented in this rewrite. The characters
are thus appealing to the readers and therefore they empathise with the Holocaust
victims’ sufferings as well.

The two stories – the fairy tale and Gemma’s tale – run parallel to each other. The
courage and strength presented in them is the strength of the human spirit trying to
overcome difficulties and at the same time making the strugglers humbler.

Cinderella:

“… [T]he Cinderella type heroine was changed during the course of four
millennia – approximately 7000 B.C. to 3000 B. C. – from a young active woman
who is expected to pursue her own destiny under the guidance of a wise, gift-
bearing dead mother; into a helpless, inactive, pubescent girl, whose major
accomplishments are domestic, and who must obediently wait to be rescued by a
male.” 23

• Anne Sexton’s ‘Cinderella’ (T 53-57)

Anne Sexton places ‘Cinderella’ at the centre of her verse fairy tale re-visions. The
prologue to her retold ‘Cinderella’ lists casually the similar stories of luck as of

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Cinderella’s – from rags to riches – a much hackneyed theme in fairy tales, literature
and other entertaining media particularly, films. The refrain “That story” is repeated
in the prologue and is used even at the end of the story. The stories listed in the
prologue are the stories reflecting the so called ‘American Dream’, which seem mere
accidental strokes of good fortune. All these stories are cumulatively summed up in
the expression “That story.” They are described in terms of modern, cultural symbols
viz. “From toilets to riches,” “Form diapers to Dior,” “From homogenised to martinis
at lunch,” “From mops to Bonwit teller. / That story.” (T 53-54) The familiarity with
the story leaves little for the witch speaker to convey. She assumes our knowledge of
the tale and our ability to predict as reflected in the lines such as “Next came the ball,
as you all know,” “That’s the way with stepmothers,” “so she went, which is no
surprise,” “These events repeated themselves for three days,” “That’s the story with
amputation,” “Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after.” etc. (T
53-57)

The transformed ‘Cinderella’ observes a predictable pattern. It does not give the
relevant details on account of the readers’ foreknowledge of the classical tale.
However, a number of authorial comments are sprinkled throughout the transformed
tale.

The Grimm tale emphatically presents Cinderella as good and devout as per her dying
mother’s wishes. It also explains why Cinderella is called by this name and describes
Cinderella’s ill treatment by her step mother and step sisters. In the transformed tale
the details about Cinderella’s hard work and harassment are described in one brief
line: “Cinderella was their maid” followed by the reference to her father’s
indifference to her. Sexton’s story shows the father bringing the twig for Cinderella
on his own and precious gifts for the other two daughters:

Her father brought presents home from town,

jewels and gowns for the other two women

but the twig of tree for Cinderella. (T 54)

The transformed tale describes the utility of the tree the twig has grown into and the
dove which sits in it:

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Whenever she wished for anything, the dove

would drop it like an egg upon the ground.

The bird is important, my dears, so heed him. (T 54)

The ironic tone in the lines presents the narrator as a mocking modern reader who
would not believe in such a fantasy. It is through the tone that she displays her
unwillingness to suspend disbelief. The witch narrator describes the king’s
proclamation of a three day festival when his son would choose a bride for himself in
a “marriage market” where all marketable, beautiful objects – the beautiful girls of the
kingdom – would willingly display themselves for sale. As mentioned earlier the goal
of happy marriage as the only good and secure future for girls is so deeply ingrained
and rooted in the female minds through socialisation and social expectations that
women on their own unquestioningly offer themselves to be objectified.

Sexton deletes the Grimm details of how Cinderella’s step mother asks her to collect
the lentils she has thrown in the cinders and refuses to take her despite the fact that
Cinderella accomplishes her task twice with the help of the doves, “all the little birds
under heaven.” (Grimm 65) She simply sums it up in one verse line: “That’s the way
with step mothers.” (T 55) implying thereby all the connotations that the step mother
stereotype carries with it. Sexton describes the crying Cinderella as crying “like a
gospel singer” (T 55) and sarcastically comments upon the bird’s act of dropping
down a golden dress and delicate little gold slippers:

The bird dropped down a golden dress

and delicate little golden slippers.

Rather a large package for a simple bird.

So she went. Which is no surprise. (T 55)

The personal aside comments on Cinderella’s feminine desire to be in the ‘market’

and be displayed to be chosen by the prince: She “begged to go too.” She follows the
accepted well trodden path. Hence “no surprise.” Sexton describes the intentions of
the prince in these lines:

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He would find whom the shoe fits

And find his strange dancing girl for keeps. (T 56)

Perhaps he fears the competition for gaining hold of the commodity he desires. The
verse tale unlike the Grimm shows the eldest girl cutting off her toes to fit into the
slipper on her own. It doesn’t show the mother asking her to do so. Despite the
prince’s openly businesslike attitude towards marriage, the sisters compete to win him
and his favour that could earn them a privileged and a respectable place in a male
dominated society. Sexton satirises and mocks their attempts to fit into the slipper:

The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on

But her big toe got in the way so she simply

sliced it off and put it on the slipper.

The prince rode away with her until the white dove

told him to look at the blood pouring forth.

That is the way with amputations.

They don’t just heal up like a wish. (T 56)

The other sister “cut off her heel/ but the blood told as the blood will.” (T 56) Sexton
mockingly emphasises how women caught in the trap of patriarchal values and
unaware of their victimisation and objectification unquestioningly and in an extremely
docile manner go to the extent of sacrificing and physically torturing themselves to
meet the demands of the male gaze and standards in return for which they get
compensated with a so called happy marriage. It is this patriarchal snare, which puts
women in “horizontal hostility”24 toward one another as displayed in the rivalry
between the step sisters to earn a place of respect and privilege in a male dominated
society. Masculine culture instructs women to be rivals – rivals in becoming more
acceptable in a male society. The aesthetic demands of the male gaze reside within
themselves and they willingly ‘normalise’ themselves as per male orientation. In the
process they victimise themselves and are unaware of it. In their attempt to win a
privileged position in a male dominated social structure they do not realise the extent
to which their lives are shaped by external oppressive forces in the system.

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This is precisely what Sexton seems to convey when she so emphatically presents the
ways the sisters try to fit into the slipper by hurting themselves brutally.

The mockery continues in the description of the prince tired of trying the slipper on
girls:

The prince was getting tired.

He began to feel like a shoe salesman.

But he gave it one last try.

This time Cinderella fit into the shoe

like a love letter into its envelope. (T 56)

The verse tale repeatedly critiques through mockery the naïve fantasy of the fairy
tales particularly the dove’s deeds in this story:

At the wedding ceremony

the two sisters came to curry favour

and the white dove pecked their eyes out.

Two hollow spots were left

like soup spoons. (T 56)

The falsity and unreality of the “happy ever after” end is suggested and criticised
through the mockery. As Bernard Hall calls it, such ending is “an illusion.”25
Leventen in “Transformations’s Silencings” maintains that parting shot of this story –
“Regular Bobbsey Twins/That story” – serves as an instance of Sexton’s
understanding of “the aridity of once-upon-a-time’s happily-ever after resolution.”26
Sexton does present the happily ever after as but an illusion causing the fall of both
Cinderella and her prince into a bondage and prison of a stereotype of an ideal couple
imprisoned in a museum case like “Regular Bobbsey Twins” suggesting entrapment,
objectification and passivity. Cinderella and the prince are objectified into mere dolls
implying perhaps that sudden riches or sudden transformation from rags to riches does
not make real the romantic fantasies in fairy tales with delusive promise of happiness.

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Cinderella is the prince’s “dancing girl.” They dance the dance of passion which
ultimately causes the fall of both into “a kind of coffin.” Her desire for passion is
fulfilled by the dove. Bruno Bettelheim points out that the white dove stands for “the
Holy Ghost” in religious symbolism.27 The Grimm tale may have used this
implication. However, the transformed tale seems to imply the sensual more than the
religious i.e. the dove in this tale is portrayed as an agent in helping Cinderella
achieve her sensual goals in the “marriage market.” The bird sits on the twig planted
on her mother’s grave. She calls it a turtle dove. Her desire to go to the ball where she
lures the prince and disappears into a “pigeon house” when he follows her is very
much a passionate desire intending to attract and entice the man. The turtledove
becomes the means of fulfilment of this desire. The animal symbolises here the
sensual.

The story of Cinderella as said at the beginning is placed at the centre of the
collection, the Transformations suggesting perhaps the central concern of the poet in
rewriting the tales – the concern with patriarchal codes for marriage, its drudgery and
boredom, and the objectification of women. This story goes a little further in stressing
the concern with objectification. In that, she presents the commoditisation of men too
in patriarchy:

Cinderella and the prince

lived, they say, happily ever after,

like two dolls in a museum case

never bothered by diapers or dust,

never arguing over the timing of an egg,

never telling the same story twice,

never getting the middle-aged spread,

their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.

Regular Bobbsey Twins.

That story. (T 56-57)

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Sexton subtly ridicules the ludicrous elements in ‘Cinderella.’ This last stanza
presents Cinderella and her prince’s ever-after existence in a museum case far from
experiencing domestic tribulations or even death. However, this too furthers the
stereotypical gender roles in patriarchy. They, the people uphold, preserve, are caught
up in and content with the patriarchal way of thinking about the sexual stereotypes.
The traditional viewpoint is so deeply ingrained in them – both men and women – that
it becomes unthinkable for them to discard not just these patriarchal gender
stereotypes but even the belief in them. They perpetually believe that a woman
marrying a rich and charming man and a man marrying a beautiful woman have a
happy and fulfilling life till the end. Sexton questions the perpetuation of stereotyped
romance in the last stanza. Frozen in time and space like “two dolls in a museum
case” both Cinderella as well as the prince maintain the gender stereotypes but in the
process become objectified and dehumanised. Their human existence and qualities are
stagnated and further stressed in their description as “Regular Bobbsey Twins.” These
are the main characters in a series of children’s novels written during 1904-1979 by
many writers under one pseudonym Laura Hope. These characters are repeatedly
shown to live happily in about 72 volumes. Reference to them suggests Cinderella and
her prince’s happy ever after life as phony, artificial and lacking in individuality and
life. It is a lifeless inanimate existence. The so called success story – That story –
upholding the male centred perspective and the tenets of patriarchy tricks, captivates,
immobilises and dehumanises people of both the sexes. Sexton attempts successfully
to suggest through the doll figures with “their darling smiles pasted on for eternity”
that patriarchy which openly victimises women is as much threatening for men too.
The male centred culture captures and holds in its thrall both women and men
draining them of their individuality, and stagnating them to the extent of they being
commoditised and immobile. In showing the prince too getting tricked into the
dehumanising trap the witch poet successfully suggests the captivating and
suffocating impact of the patriarchal snare on men as well. Men captured in systemic
thrall too are forced to remain as silent and “powerless victims frozen in – and fated to
act out – the prescribed social roles” (Leventen, 140) as women victimised by the
patriarchal culture. Unless this is realised and pondered upon “That story” continues
to seduce both men and women, captivate them and render them immobile and lifeless
in life. Being at the centre of the collection the tale reinforces and strengthens
Sexton’s concerns and claims she wants to convey through her retellings.
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However, though critically censured, the stereotyped gender roles are not drastically
revised in the retold tale by Sexton. An insight into the effects of patriarchal snare is
offered but no alternative is suggested. Perhaps the witch narrator does not intend to
do it. However, taking her cue from Sexton, Olga Broumas rewrites ‘Cinderella’ with
yet another distinct perspective attempting to provide an alternative to the
heteronormal happy endings of the tales. By opening her rewrite with a quote from
Sexton as an epigraph, Broumas connects her retelling with Sexton’s to suggest
further strengthening of the liberation of the tales from the patriarchal thrall:

…the joy that isn’t shared

I heard, dies young.

-Anne Sexton, 1928-1974.

• Olga Broumas’s ‘Cinderella’28

Broumas in her ‘Cinderella’ speaks for ‘sisterhood,’ for solidarity amongst women
who are separated from one another by the patriarchal/male order making them judge
their own kind as “inadequate, bitchy, incompetent, jealous, too thin, too fat.” (B 58)
Broumas attacks the patriarchal strategies, which use women to victimise other
women and create such constructs as ‘women are their own enemies.’ The step
mother and step sister figures portrayed in ‘Cinderella’ and for that matter in most
fairy tales and literary works, are wicked, jealous, inconsiderate and not beautiful as
per the male standards. Cinderella’s marriage with the prince is always presented as
her release from the prison, ill treatment and abuse at the hands of women. Broumas’s
Cinderella however, is emotionally hurt on account of her bondage with the sisters
being snapped and feels being estranged from her mother. She has a close sense of
belonging to her mother and sisters and hence after her marriage with the prince she
finds herself all alone amongst men in their house:

Apart from my sisters, estranged

from my mother, I am a woman alone

in a house of men

who secretly

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call themselves princes, alone

with me usually, under cover of dark. (B 57)

Broumas right at the outset defies the patriarchal construct of “horizontal hostility”
between women before demystifying the prince fantasy. Marriage with the prince is
disillusioning and unhappy for her. Broumas through Cinderella’s disillusionment
demystifies and subverts the prince fantasy and the happily ever after that follows the
arrival of and union with the dream lover. Stereotypically portrayed in fairy tales this
fantasy of the prince rescuer is shockingly challenged and attacked in Broumas’s
version. Her tale begins at the end i.e. after Cinderella’s marriage with the prince. She
becomes aware of the feelings of separation, estrangement and loneliness even though
surrounded by men. In “the house of men” she feels the absence of feminine bonding.
There she is in “a state of [domestic] siege” (B 57) like the classical Cinderella. There
is also a similar longing to escape this miserable condition. However, unlike the latter
this Cinderella does not seek her escape in marriage with a prince. In fact, on the
contrary, she has come to experience the drudgery of what is perceived as ideal,
rewarding and fulfilling for a girl. It is in this state of disillusionment that Broumas’s
Cinderella is filled with a sense of loneliness, isolation and entrapment. She is “the
one allowed in/ to the royal chambers” (B 57), yet she is lonely, apart from her sisters
and mother. Entrapped and alone in the company of princes in the royal chambers she
feels “as one piece of laundry, strung on a windy clothesline a/ mile long.” (B 58)
This hyperbolic auditory image indicates her extreme and unbearable solitude and
objectification. This feeling seems an outcome of the fact that her intelligence and
efficiency in “cracking/ the royal code” (B 57) goes unacknowledged by the men
round her. The princes praise her instead for her “nimble tongue” (B 57) – the
expression that deliberately hides sexual connotations behind its literal implications of
eloquence. She thus is a mere sexual object. Her disillusionment with the happily ever
after marriage is sharpened when she says,

What sweet bread I make

for myself in this prosperous house

is dirty, what good soup I boil turns

in my mouth to mud. (B 58)

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Despite the prosperity and comfort in her life with the princes in the royal chambers
she feels dislocated. She has no sense of belonging to the household and its male
inhabitants. There is a realisation that she has been lured into the “house of men” (B
57)by being pitted against her “own kind,” by being “co opted by promises: the lure/
of a job, the ruse of a choice,” (B 58) by being “forced/to bear witness, falsely/
against my kind.” She realises the patriarchal deception of women by allowing some
of their kind “whose small [feet] conveniently/ fill[s] the slipper of glass” (B 57)to
enjoy the seemingly happy and cosy royal pleasures and in the process keep them in a
constant state of competition and rivalry judging one another as “inadequate, bitchy,
incompetent,/ jealous, too thin, too fat.” (B 58)

Any dominant system for its own flowering and sustenance needs its victims, the
‘others,’ to remain under siege, divided and competing amongst themselves. The
dominant system accuses the victims of victimising themselves and their kind by
creating hierarchies among them and making them judge one another thus placing
them in a state of battle. Broumas here presents Cinderella as a representative of the
entire womankind isolated by choosing her conveniently to fill “the slipper of glass”
and used by the male dominated society as a tool against her “own kind.” Her
allurement into the trap is attained by the princes speaking in “their father’s language”
(B 57) and promising her rewards for her “nimble tongue.” Once entrapped, she
realises her deception in being praised, apparently for her linguistic dexterity, but
implicitly focusing on her sexual competence. She is reduced to a mere sex object.
She also realises that the recognition and identity that she gets in this social set up is
always in terms of her relation with a man:

The woman writer, the lady

umpire, the madam chairman, anyone’s wife. (B 57)

A lonely woman in the battle, she desires to re-unite with her sisters, to be with them
again. She prefers a life of hardships and her sisters’ hut to the comforts and the
princes’ royal chambers. She wishes to rid herself of the superficial and suffocating
existence in the men’s world:

…Give

me my ashes. A cold stove, a cinder-block pillow, wet

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canvas shoes in my sisters’, my sisters’ hut. (B 58)

She demands an escape lest she dies young

like those favoured before me, hand-picked each one

for her joyful heart. (B 58)

Writing in the 1970s Broumas’s retelling has a backdrop of the rising feminist
movement. Using the basic elements of the classical version of ‘Cinderella’ Broumas
challenges the cultural values and ideology of patriarchy, demystifies the happy
ending and questions the dream of fulfilment necessarily in heterosexual coupling
alone. Going against the accepted heteronormal code, she shows her heroine’s
disillusionment with and suffocation and suppression in patriarchal heteronormal set
up and stresses the importance of women’s solidarity. She desires a change – a change
in attitudes both of men and women. She doesn’t want women to be “hand-picked”
for their “joyful heart[s]” and be used against their own kind to be victims and be
victimised at their own hands. The story has a rich symbolic significance. Cinderella
symbolises and represents all women, her sisters the female community. The princes
symbolise all men dominating women’s personal, social and professional walks of
life, determining and directing women’s success and fulfilment. The royal chambers
symbolise the male dominating spheres of society or for that matter the entire society
while the glass slipper symbolises the male or patriarchal preferences. As long as she
fits the male centred standards a woman is allowed to enter the royal chambers i.e.
acquire a social status and identity only in her relation to any man. Broumas uses the
Cinderella metaphor and tale to critique the patriarchal practice of defusing female
solidarity by under-representing or not representing women as society and as
individuals. Society refuses to acknowledge a woman’s autonomous, individual
identity and sees her fulfilment in being bound domestically as “anyone’s wife” and a
mother. Worse still is the fact that solidarity amongst women is sabotaged by pitting
them against one another breaking all the female bonds. Women are confined and are
expected to confine themselves necessarily to the domestic sphere. Hence
professionally successful women are perceived as exception to the norm. Hence the
nouns identifying any profession need gender specifying modifiers in case a woman
in a particular profession is to be mentioned. As such women are usually “anyone’s
wife” or the “woman writer, the lady umpire, the madam chairman” and so on.

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Broumas attacks this discriminating value system and as an alternative offers a

community of women solidly resting on the feeling and bond of sisterhood. In the
process she subverts and demystifies the heterosexual ideal projected in the happily
ever after end in fairy tales. Bruno Bettelheim perceives the happily ever after ending
as an important factor in children’s socialisation. However other scholars of fairy tale
impact on children also see an implicit message to children through such endings and
that is that heterosexual is normal, natural and fulfilling. Any other type of union is
abnormal or a-normal, unnatural, strange and ‘queer.’ Heteronormalcy is a patriarchal
social ideal. Through fairy tales children are encouraged to believe, follow and pattern
themselves necessarily after “the omnipresent and omnipotent heterosexual script” for
their ‘good’ future.29 Happy and good future assured through heterosexual coupling
attach morality to sexual identity. “Heterosexuality is good and right.” (Lester 61)
Lester tries to prove that a child not fitting and aligning with the heterosexual ideal of
the fairy tale is negatively affected as the tale infuses him/her with a sense of guilt of
being morally wrong. With heterosexual marriages at the end, the tales condition
children’s idea of happy future – getting married and producing children. This
heterosexual norm which excludes those who do not conform with it is critically
defied by Broumas’s Cinderella who prefers impoverished sisterhood (cold stove,
cinder-block pillow, sister’s hut) to being surrounded by princes speaking “their
father’s language,” keeping her under siege in their royal chambers. Based on the
knowledge she has gained from experience – “I know what I know” (B 57) - she
confidently asserts this preference and expresses her desire to rejoin her sisters.

Broumas thus uses the fairy tale to profess her feminist agenda through her revision of
the tale. As said earlier Broumas provides an alternative to the heteronormal model of
relationship wherein both men and women as well as those who do not conform to the
heteronormal codes are oppressed. Critiquing the heteronormalcy implied in the
‘happily ever after’ fairy tale endings and defying the reinforcement of the social
belief that such endings hint at, Broumas offers an alternate ending in the form of
female solidarity and sisterhood – an alternative wherein the future of human beings
is not scripted or better still they are allowed to live life on their own terms without
getting cowed down by the oppressive social norms.

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•
Emma Donoghue’s ‘The Tale of the Shoe’30

Like other tales in her collection, Donoghue in this remaking takes the deeply familiar
tale of Cinderella and unspins it to weave its older version together and tell it anew
with an unexpected twist. The common feature of the thirteen transformed tales is that
they read between the lines of the older known fairy tales and strongly react to the
male dominated fairy tale canon. ‘The Tale of the Shoe’ initiates the polyphonic
volume in which anonymous female narrators of different ages, circumstances and
sexual orientation share and pass on their own tales sequentially, each one starting at
the point where the preceding narrator stops. Each narrator is speaker to the following
and a listener to the earlier narrator. Each one has a voice and is heard. Each one
confides in her listener while responding to the story heard earlier. Thus one woman’s
story generates and promotes and prompts another’s creating a strong bond between
women tellers and listeners.

Donoghue’s interest in women’s relationships and her intent to recast these relations
in a positive manner and explore further possibilities are reflected in her subtle
retelling of ‘Cinderella,’ ‘The Tale of the Shoe.’ The shoe motif, the story line,
innovative ideas, quotations from and allusions to various retellings of ‘Cinderella’ in
the narrative and the unexpected twist at the end function as hints that help the reader
identify the tale as a remaking of the old ‘Cinderella’ tale. It is the first anonymous
female narrator’s personal life story. This narrator knows the ‘Cinderella’ tale and
presents her own tale in the pattern of the ‘Cinderella’ plot line. As a girl her inner
and internalised voices tell her the ways of behaviour and thinking but a woman who
has the looks of a witch and a heart of a good mother and who turns out to be her
foster, god mother and later a lover patiently and lovingly prompts her to seek her
own desires and fulfil them. It is then that the girl gains courage and changes the
course of her life and of the old tale of ‘Cinderella.’ She attains a sense of
independent identity of her own self and defying her internalised voices uncovers and
reaches her own free, independent voice that with allusions to various retellings of
Cinderella attempts to emancipate her from the pre written texts and at the same time
plays with the idea of rewriting as dress making. Donoghue’s Cinderella grows from
self-loathing to self-confidence. Her female saviour offers her love and independence.
The former, unlike the traditional male hero, does not have the high handed attitude of
a saviour and a ‘giver’ but creates confidence in the girl that she herself sought her
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own freedom and hence she should take her life in her own control: “You think I have
saved you, but the truth is that your need has conjured me here…. The thing is to take
your life in your hands.” (D 11)

‘The Tale of the Shoe’ begins with the sentence: “Till she came it was all cold.” (D 1)
stressing the warmth brought in by the arrival of the woman who helped her confront
the misery and coldness she feels in life. However, at the time of narrating her
experience this Cinderella has come to awareness that her punishments were inflicted
upon her by herself: “…nobody punished me but me. The shrill voices were all inside.
Do this, do that, you lazy heap of dirt.” (D 3) The step mother and step sisters of the
Grimm tale are present within her as patriarchal voices instructing her about her
socially accepted behaviour. She has internalised these voices that keep insulting her.
She feels rejected, alienated and utterly isolated. As a result she loathes herself so
much so that not just her clothes but even her speech she feels is loathsome and
repulsive: “Every word that came out of my mouth limped away like a toad. Whatever
I put on my back now turned to sackcloth and chafed my skin.” (D 1) Realisation of
these psychological and emotional conditions is an aftermath of the loss of her
mother. Her perception about herself and her internalised voices come to the surface
in the permanent absence of her mother and her love. There is neither stepmother nor
any stepsister. However out of her sense of self-loathing she imposes upon herself the
chores and trials which in the traditional tale are inflicted by the stepmother. In
removing completely the characters of the cruel women of the Grimm tale, Donoghue
explicitly suggests that women conditioned in and by patriarchy do not need rival
women to victimise them but are themselves their own enemies. So is her Cinderella
responsible for her own abjection. And to rescue her from her self-created problems
and self-inflicted tribulations, Donoghue creates another female character whose
arrival brings warmth, self-realisation and a longing for a meaningful life for
Cinderella: “She took me into the garden and showed me a hazel tree I had never seen
before…. My old dusty self was spun new.”(D 3) The helper figure profoundly
transforms Cinderella inside out. Cinderella re-fashions herself and Donoghue, the
classical text. Since the sentence echoes and underlines the subtitle of Donoghue's
collection- “old tales in new skins,” its utterance in the initial story sparks the
beginning of the process of newly re-dressing both the fairy tale heroine and the fairy
tale tradition and text. The metaphor of spinning a new self and identity continues in

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the immediate reference to Cinderella’s new dress: “This woman sheathed my limbs
in blue velvets. I was dancing on the points of a clear glass.” (D 3) Happiness at the
idea of transformation and re-dressing is conveyed using the glass shoe metaphor. The
helper woman lets the narrator Cinderella to come to her own realisation and does not
preach or instruct her. She makes her sense, on her own, the vanity of her internalised
voices. Hence it is on Cinderella's asking that she takes her to the ball. Narrator
Cinderella's self-conscious question “Isn’t that what girls are meant to ask for?” (3)
and later her knowledge and observance of the socially accepted behaviour and
etiquettes reflect Donoghue's condescension and social comedy of the expected
gender roles and relations as well as the narrator’s awareness that she is playing a role
in a well known story: “I knew just how I was meant to behave. I smiled ever so
prettily… I refused canapé and kept my belly pulled in…. I danced with ten elderly
gentlemen who had nothing to say but did not let that stop them. I answered only,
Indeed and Oh yes and Do you think so?” (D 4) On the second night she “tittered at
the king’s jokes; … accepted a single chicken wing and nibbled it daintily… danced
three times with the prince, whose hand wavered in the small of (my) back. He asked
(me my) favourite colour, but (I) couldn’t think of any. He asked (me my) name, and
for a moment (I) couldn’t remember it.” (D 5) She describes the third night as
follows: “That night my new skin was red silk, shivering in the breeze. The prince
hovered at my elbow like an autumn leaf ready to fall…. I danced… and smiled till
my face twisted. I swallowed a little of everything I was offered, then leaned over the
balcony and threw it all up again.” (D 6)

It is the shrieking voices within her which keep prompting her to seek her future in the
balls and hence she asks the helper motherly figure to take her there. On the first two
nights the gentle helper repeatedly asks her “Had enough?” (D 4, 5) to which the
narrator, her “barking voices” (D 5) prompting her within, responded with the desire
to go back to the ball the next day. On the third night, however, when the prince
proposes to her, “As soon as the words began to leak out of his mouth, they formed a
cloud” (D 6) in which she saw her future. In the midst of the voices which were
shrieking “Yes yes yes say yes before you lose your chance you bag of nothingness”
(D 7) she realises that she had “got the story all wrong.” (D 7) She does sense and
admit the comfort and absence of insecurity in the prince’s proposal but a new
realisation dawns upon her. Wondering how she could see the beauty of the helper

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woman she “reaches out” for her. The older woman surprisingly asks her, “What
about the shoe?”(D 7)

“It was digging into my heel, I told her.

What about the prince? she asked.

He’ll find someone to fit, if he looks long enough.

What about me? She asked very low. I’m old enough to be your mother…. You’re not
my mother, I said. I’m old enough to know that.” (D 8)

She throws the other shoe into the brambles and both of them go home together. The
narrator Cinderella’s growth and self realisation are gradual and progressive. Excited
first at the prospect of going to the ball, she prepares nervously for the last one. Her
growing discomfort is suggested in the change in the nature of the voices inside her.
The voices jabbering at first start barking in the end. It is on the third night that she
gathers courage to completely defy social conventions and correct the “all wrong”
story. She is fed up to the extent of being nauseated. The same musical tune being
played “over and over,” her dance like a “clockwise ballerina,” the forced smile
twisting her face, all suggest her physical discomfort and nervous tension which
culminates into the act of vomiting everything that she “was offered.” It is symbolic
of her disgust with and rejection of the social conventions, good behaviour, polite
manners, courtship and romance – everything that the ball stands for. By the third ball
she has developed the ability to objectively assess the situation from a distance and
give a courageous response. The conventional voices urge her to accept the proposal
so that she a “bag of nothingness” could become “somebody” thus suggesting that it is
only through conformity can a woman achieve an acceptable status in society. It is
important here to know that never ever once in the story is the narrator protagonist
named or called Cinderella. She is anonymous and describes herself depreciatingly as
“sackcloth,” “heap of dirt” and on her self- realisation, too retains and reclaims this
anonymous status in a bolder way. The prince’s proposal, the heterosexual norm and
the “voices” of convention are mutely refused in her failure to speak when the prince
proposes and physically denied in her act of vomiting. She runs away to free herself
from the prince and the patriarchal and heterosexual imperatives that he represents.
She runs away to reach out to the motherly stranger who gradually makes her realise

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her own independent self and replace her self-loathing, self-deprecatory image with a
self-asserting and self-respecting one.

The sense of self-esteem that the anonymous narrator gains in the company of the
older woman figure is significant. The heterosexual relationship is completely devoid
such a sense. Secondly this relation is of dominance and domination which is absent
in the relationship of the two women. Their relationship acknowledges and respects
equality, freedom and the growth of the both involved in the relation. This sense of
liberation attracts the anonymous narrator-protagonist. In her act of transgressing her
desire for her female helper she not only rebels against the accepted social behaviour
and norms but also radically deviates from the traditional plot of the old tale and
offers an alternative to its stifling, oppressive end. The new story breaks the powerful
spell of “the constraining discourse of social advancement and compulsory
heterosexuality.”31

The speechlessness of the two women on their reunion is perhaps because of the
inadequacy of the existing language and the want of a language which could articulate
their love story. To her amazement the girl narrator protagonist realises that the story
she confronts now had always been there, she had got it wrong. She fends for words
but finds that she “must have dropped all [the] words in the bushes.” (8) Her
dumbfoundment substitutes words with touch and “I reached out,” she says. The old
body of the tale and of the female protagonist-narrator are literally given new skins as
the subtitle of the collection intends to do. Her act of throwing the shoe “into the
brambles” symbolises the refusal of the conventionally prescribed role of a fairy tale
heroine and those readers who identify with her. She approaches her happy end – so
much insisted in the fairy tale endings – in seeking and attaining self-fulfilment and
happiness.

Donoghue manipulates the emancipator potential and the subversive dimension of the
classical tale and the pre existing mockery of aristocracy imbued in Perrault and
Grimm versions. She manipulates fairy tale magic and metamorphosis to challenge
social identities, gender roles, and binary oppositions. She favours love, friendship,
sisterhood and solidarity among women while at the same time stressing the creative
role of the readers in the process of creative appropriation of old tales.

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•
Francisca Lia Block’s ‘Glass’ (2000)32

Francisca Lia Block in her ‘Glass’ (2000) presents a version of heterosexual love
story wherein the protagonist comes to a self-realisation and self-assertion through a
motherly strange woman as in ‘The Tale of a Shoe.’ ‘Glass’ is a third person
narrative. The young girl protagonist is a home maker and likes to be so. She loves to
be at home and perform domestic chores: “And she had tasks. She loved to plant…To
arrange flowers…To make the salmon in pomegranate sauce; the salads… the golden
vanilla cream custards; the breads and pie crusts that powdered her with flour. She
loved, even, to dust the things, to feel them in her hands, imagining their history.” (Bl
56-57) It is her stories which bind her with the sisters with affinity. “She had the
stories she gave to her sisters which made them love her. Or need her at least.” (Bl 56)
She is different from them. “They care more for the eyes and ears and the mouths
whispering – beautiful, beautiful.” (Bl 55) She wonders why it matters at all. “She
was free, still, like a child, the way it is before you are seen and after that you can
never remember who you are unless someone else shows it to you.”(Bl 56) She comes
across a strange woman, a fairy “who was not old, not young, who was red roses,
white snowfall, who was blind and saw everything, who sent stories resounding
through the universe” (Bl 70) This woman who “laughed at her own sorrow and wept
pearls at wedding” (Bl 60) teaches her to come out and assert herself: “You cannot
hide forever, though you may try… you are the one who transforms, who creates. You
can go out into the world and show others. They will feel less alone because of you,
they will feel understood, unburdened by you, freed of guilt and shame and sorrow.
But to share with them you must wear shoes you must go out you must not hide you
must dance…” (Bl 61)

The self-asserting new Cinder girl attracts the attention of the prince which makes her
sisters feel jealous of her. When she realises her sisters’ jealousy on account of the
prince’s attraction to her, she commits an act of sacrifice by way of running away,
losing her shoe and deprecating herself. Ultimately, however, the pursuing prince
finds her “even without her enchantments, her stories, her dress, her shoe.” (Bl 68)
Witnessing “how he looked at her, how he needed her” (Bl 69) the sisters realise the
vanity of their envy and jealousy. The story ends with the strange woman saying,
“You must reach inside yourselves where I live like a story, not old, not young,

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laughing at my own sorrow, weeping pearls at weddings, wielding a torch to melt

sand into something clear and bright.” (Bl 70)

On the whole the story transforms the Cinderella tale within the heterosexual
patriarchal confines unlike Donoghue’s ‘Tale of the Shoe.’ However in both the
retellings the focus is not on passive suffering of a girl but on her self-affirmation and
assertion by means of an elderly wise woman whose intervention and guidance lead
the young girl to discover her true self.

‘Cinderella’ being perhaps the most famous of the fairy tales has been equally
fervently retold by contemporary writers with an either feminist or sceptical bent.
Besides the three instances above there have been considerable attempts at retelling
‘Cinderella’ with the attitude to rather “correct” the story

cooked up years and years ago,

And made to sound all soft and sappy

Just to keep the children happy.33

Revisionists Iring Fetscher, Richard Gardener, Jay Williams, Judith Viorst, Jane
Yolen share Roald Dahl’s sentiment of reframing the Cinderella plot to explore and
reveal to the readers “the conditions underlying the heroine’s passivity.” (Brothers
Grimm 199) The retellings like those of Emma Donoghue reflect and suggest the need
to change cultural attitudes to gender roles and step motherly figures. Gail Carson
Levine, Priscilla Galloway, Philip Pullman, Francesca Lia Block could be cited as
instances of such revolutionary retellings. Their retellings either portray the female
protagonist as a young girl who learns to shape her own destiny or despise/ criticise
her for not actively controlling her own life. Levine, Pullman and Galloway replace
the female Cinderella with a male hero. While Levine’s ‘Cinderellis and the Glass
Hill’34 (2000) is humorous and predictable Philip Pullman in his ‘I was a Rat’35
(1999) harmonises the traditional fairy tale features of the Cinderella tale with a
contemporary late 20th century context and setting. It is a revision of Perrault’s
‘Cinderella.’

Galloway’s ‘The Prince’36 (1995) provokes the readers to believe that the pathetic
prince in the story would bring nothing but troubles and sufferings for Cinderella.

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A self-indulging prince with a foot fetish narrates this tale. This prince is highly
narcissistic, self-obsessed and self-absorbed. In his first person narrative he reveals
his homosexual affair with his tutor Stephen whom his father punishes with a death
sentence since he does not approve of the relationship. The king arranges a ball for the
prince wherein he would choose a wife for the prince if the latter fails to do it himself.
The prince does not desire to marry and takes an oath he would not. Still he dances
with the princess wearing glass slippers. The princess’s toes remind him of Stephen
and his own foot fetish. The glass slipper left behind by Cinderella induces his
obsession with finding the girl.

Throughout the story the focus is on the prince’s narcissism and his foot fetish. His
quest for Cinderella too is self-satisfying and obsessive. Hence it is suggested towards
the end that even if Cinderella gets him as her husband she cannot hope to be happy,
but on the contrary would invite troubles and sufferings. Galloway thus brings forth
the ambivalence of the happy endings of this particular tale and fairy tales in general.

Babette Cole’s ‘Prince Cinders’,37 Ellen Jackson and Kevin O’Malley’s ‘Cinder
Edna’38 and Melissa Kantor’s ‘If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where’s My
Prince?’39 are re-workings which relocate the Cinderella tale in an easily recognisable
context of the 20th century reality. Ann Jungman in her humorous feminist re-vision
‘Cinderella and the Hot Air Balloon’40 presents Ella who knows and pursues her
mind’s desires. It is she who actively helps Bill, the prince, who wants to run away
from his dominating father. Ella helps him in his endeavour and because she starts
liking him flies off with him in a hot air balloon. The humour in the tale serves two
purposes of bitingly exposing, criticising the gender biases prevalent in the traditional
tale and thereby reverting gender identities but with an acceptable human(e)
perspective.

•
Roald Dahl’s ‘Cinderella’41

Roald Dahl who begins his Revolting Rhymes with the Cinderella tale calls the
classical tale ‘phoney.’ The “first bit” of the tale till Cinderella's departure leaving
behind her shoe, he says, is “right”. The rest of the tale he assures the readers “was
cooked up …just to keep the children happy” (RD 5)

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Dahl’s Cinderella authoritatively dictates the “Magic Fairy” to get her to the Ball well
dressed and decked up in a coach. She is shown to hold the prince

very tight and pressed

herself against his manly chest.

The prince himself was turned to pulp,

All he could do was gasp and gulp. (RD 6)

Thus even the part of the traditional tale that he calls “right” is reformed by showing
Cinderella quite assertively expressing her desire to attend the ball with the intention
to impress and entice the prince and make him fall for her. At midnight when she
hastily rushes away from the prince he grabs her dress “to hold her back.”

As Cindy shouted, ‘Let me go!’

The dress was ripped from her head to toe.

She ran out in her underwear,

And lost one slipper on the stair. (RD 8)

Then the prince makes the famous announcement of marrying the girl who fits the
shoe. From here on Dahl’s story changes. He calls his version real, “much more
gory.” (RD 5) The prince puts the slipper “rather carelessly” (RD 8) on a crate of
beer. One of the Ugly Sisters, “the one whose face was blotched with blisters” (RD 8)
flushes the dainty shoe quickly down the loo and replaces it with her own slipper
smelling “a wee bit icky.” (RD 9) After trying it vainly on “thousands of eager
people” (RD 9) the Ugly Sister’s “hot and sticky” foot fits the slipper:

…The Prince screamed, ‘No!’

…went white from ear to ear. (RD 9)

The girl persists: ‘Oh no you don’t! you made a vow!

There’s no way you can back out now!’ (RD 10-11)

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The prince orders her head to be chopped off. The prince’s pervert and cruel nature is
revealed when he is shown to be pleased with the act of extermination:

This pleased the Prince. He smiled and said,

‘She’s prettier without her head.’ (RD 11)

The second Ugly sister too is beheaded at once. Cinderella working in the kitchen
comes out hearing the “thuds/of bouncing heads upon the floor” (RD 11) She is
startled and troubled at the Prince’s cruelty and insensitivity:

Poor Cindy’s heart was torn to shreds.

My Prince! She thought. He chops off heads! (RD 11)

What follows depicts a girl wise enough to change her decision and practical enough
to change her criteria while choosing her man:

How could I marry anyone

Who does that sort of a thing for fun? (RD 12)

The Magic Fairy who intervenes before the prince victimises Cinderella asks her to
make a wish which she promises to fulfil. Cinderella wishes for “a decent man…hard
to find” (12) She desires “No more Princes, no more money.”(12) Her wish is fulfilled
and immediately she is married to a simple and lovely ‘feller’, a jam-maker “who sold
good home-made marmalade.” (RD 12)

Hers is a successful happy marriage:

Their house was filled with smiles and laughter

And they were happy ever after. (RD 12)

Giving an original comic twist to the classic tale and calling this tale real, Dahl
surprises and shocks the readers, who passively relish and pass on the traditional tale
with all its hidden biases and values. Dahl breaks the readers’ complacent acceptance
of the classic tale and hilariously presents the revolting tale “with bite.” (Cover page 2
of the book)

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Judith Viorst’s tale too has this biting and revolting quality with which it shakes the
accepted reception of the tale. The title of her Cinderella tale is of almost half the
length of its content. In fact it could be read along with and as part of the tale that
follows. The title ‘…And Then the Prince Knelt Down And Tried to Put The Glass
Slipper On Cinderella’s Foot’42 assumes the readers’ foreknowledge of the incidents
in the tale and at the same time discounts the importance of the happenings till the
prince reaches Cinderella. The focus of the story is on Cinderella’s decision and the
surprising and amusing twist. The four verse lines that the retold tale constitutes are
eloquent and depict a sensible, wise and assertive Cinderella who has made up her
mind to deny the prince on the pretence that the glass slipper does not fit her. Though
she takes this decision on account of his physical looks, which she does not notice
earlier, the fact and point that she has the courage to decline the prince with all the
social and economic benefits that accompany him and follow her mind’s voice puts
before us a thinking Cinderella who has her say anyway:

I really didn’t notice that he had a funny nose.

And he certainly looked better all dressed up in fancy clothes.

He’s not nearly as attractive as he seemed the other night.

So I think I’ll just pretend that the slipper feels too tight. (29)

Dahl’s and Viorst’s funny feminist renditions employ humour to mock outdated sexist
notions in the classical tales, which have still retained their impact on adults who
delightfully relate the stories to the young ones. These humorous attempts ironically
present the farcical aspect of the sexist attitudes and expectations the traditional tales
perpetuate.

Little Red Riding Hood:

Continual retelling of different versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in the western
world is seen by Jack Zipes as a consequent offshoot of the issues raised in the classic
tale about “gender identity, sexuality, violence, and the civilizing process in a unique
and succinct symbolic form that children and adults can understand on different
levels.”43 These issues, according to him, play a vital role in establishing “principles
of social justice and gender equality that have not been satisfactorily practised in

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Western societies.” (TT 343) and hence we get repeated attempts at addressing these
issues in variant retellings of the tale.

This tale orally emanated in the 17th century Europe, particularly France, Tyrol and
Northern Italy, where women told tales of sexual and social initiation while sewing.
These tales led to the rise of warning tales explicitly intended at children. Zipes cites
Marianne Rumpf’s research on the social emergence of the tale. Rumpf points out
instances of werewolf trials during 15th, 16th and 17th century France and traces the
origin of the ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ tale in the regions where these trials were
practised and the fear of werewolves was widespread. She maintains that it was
Perrault who replaced the werewolf villain of the original French tale to a simple
ferocious wolf (TT 19) since werewolves were no longer significant and relevant after
the practice of witch hunting had stopped or declined. Perrault also expurgated a
number of violent elements in the oral tale, namely for instance, the werewolf killing
the grandmother and keeping a slice of her flesh and blood for the girl to eat, the girl
consuming her nanny’s flesh and blood and later strip teasing herself and asking the
wolf where to keep each of the garments she removes and so on. Perrault “refined”
and “civilised” the tale for the upper class audience who upheld values, standards and
a worldview different from those of the poor. Zipes also cites Gottfried Hensses who
while exploring the oral tales of warning in Europe and Asia which might have
influenced Perrault, points out that in the oral versions of the tale the motif of red
hood and red colour was absent and the girl was not killed by the wolf or saved by her
father or the hunter but she herself “outwits the wolf and saves herself” (TT 23) The
act of the girl consuming her grandmother’s flesh and blood in the oral tale has been
interpreted as a symbolic act of self assertion by replacing the grandmother. Literary
versions of the tale simply reduce the grandmother to a sex object. This reduction is
not intended at in the oral tale. On the contrary “her death in the folk tale signifies the
continuity and reinvigoration of custom, which was important for the preservation of
society.” (TT 24) This aspect along with the ones mentioned earlier suggests that the
oral tale of the masses stresses self-assertion and self-dependence or independence of
a young girl rather than the normative sexual behaviour and consequences of breaking
away from it as focused in the literary tale developed from Perrault onwards.

Against the backdrop of newly emerging awareness of the difference between the
terms ‘child’ and ‘adult’ and changes in the process of civilisation, Perrault

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completely transformed the character of the little girl from a shrewd, brave and self
dependent peasant girl to a completely defenceless, helpless, spoilt pretty girl. The
Red hood gifted by the grandmother was a major addition by Perrault, suggesting the
spoilt nature of the girl who is held subconsciously responsible for and inviting her
own rape by talking and listening to the wolf, amusing herself and lingering in the
woods while on her way to the grandmother’s house. Writing for both children and
adults like the other French fairy tale writers of his time, Perrault sought to set
standards of virtuous behaviour and bourgeois aristocratic values to improve the
minds of children by depicting model characters and manners in the tales. In keeping
with his intent, he infused the tale and character of the girl with a new ideological
content. He appropriated the folk tale and motifs therein to suit and teach the upper
class child audience and at the same time amuse the adults. Perrault’s own male
chauvinistic views and opposition to women’s independence and assertion also
contributed to the shaping of the tale and the character of Little Red Riding Hood. The
literary tale thus is “a projection of male phantasy” (TT 31) and the changes in its
discourse indicate real shifts, conflicts and ruptures in the Western civilising process.”
(TT 31)

Changes in the ideas about prudent and prudish child rearing in the 19th century
brought about a transformed Little Red Riding Hood in the form of Grimm Brothers’
Little Red Cap. The prevalent social ideas of socialisation of children made the
Grimms revise the content and intent of the tale. The Christian and male lessons of
the Perrault tales were to be retained and at the same time the explicit cruelty,
sexuality and tragic end were needed to be expurgated. The Grimms did so and
produced a more helpless, naive, beautiful, little Victorian girl who is punished for
her disobedience, temptations and indulgence in sexual pleasures of the woods.
However, unlike in the Perrault tale, she is saved at the end first by the hunter and
then by the old grandmother without whom she would be totally lost. Thus by saving
her she is shown at the end of the tale to be grown to a rational child who promises
not to “wander” (sexual repression) and obey the normative standards of behaviour
set for her by adults. So by the end of the 19th century “a frank oral tale about
sexuality and actual dangers in the woods became...a coded message about
rationalising bodies and sex.” (TT 34) It is assumed that the Grimms infused the tale
with a political suggestion while transforming the French Perrault version.

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Symbolically Little Red Cap is seen as the German youth attracted by the French
revolutionary and once in his grip, repulsed by his violence, harshness and
barbarism. The Grimms obliquely present the temptations of and destruction at the
cost of Revolution and justify absolute conformity with and reverence for law, order
and patriarchal rule. The Grimms’ puritanical revisions suited the Victorian middle
class values better and hence despite Perrault’s popularity the Grimm versions of the
tales became more viral and fashionable in the upcoming bourgeois society of the
19th century. General middle class ideas about childhood, maidenhood, child rearing
and behaviour are voiced in the Grimm version. Interestingly, a majority of the later
adaptations and translations of this tale are based on the Perrault and Grimm
versions. Both the model versions and their adaptations present a male idea and
image of childhood, maidenhood, sexuality, standards of behaviour and conformity
with these. A general middle class acceptance of these ‘male’ cultural notions and
fear of consequences of non-conformity led to an unchallenged, unquestioned
reception of the tale for almost three centuries more. Though the Perrault and Grimm
versions still exercise their influence over the minds of readers – old and young
alike, in the early 20th century the dominant traditional plot was started being revised
and radicalised. Most of these were intended for adult readers. However almost till
the 50s strict obedience of law and order and conformism were still the implicit
messages of the revised tales.44 Towards the 1950s however, the tale saw radical,
rebellious changes throughout Europe and America.

Zipes points out three major currents in the revisions of the ‘Little Red Riding Hood’
tale during 1950-1993 viz.: 1) Retellings that projected Little Red Riding Hood
growing into an independent girl without any help from men. The girl in these
different adaptations is not disobedient, helpless and innocent but on the contrary,
quite brave, brilliant and confident. She is able to learn and grow through experience
and be independent of male help and support. Merseyside Fairy Story Collective’s
‘Red Riding Hood’ (1974), Tony Ross’s ‘Little Red Hood: A Classic Story Bent Out
of Shape’ (1978), Anneliese Meinert’s ‘Little Red Cap’ (1965), etc could be cited as
some examples belonging to this current. 2) Tales which tend to “rehabilitate the
wolf.” (TT 59) These tales present the wolf’s perspective and challenge his bad
reputation in Perrault and Grimm versions. The wolf is shown in these tales to help
the girl or to teach human beings a lesson or to reveal the wolf in us in order to

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suggest the extinction of human species in technological progress. He is not

presented as a threat in these revisions. Rudolf Otto Weimer’s poem ‘The Old wolf’
(1976), Tomi Ungerer’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ (1974), ‘Little Aqua Riding Hood’
by Philippe Dumas and Boris Moissard (1977) with the moral “certain men are more
dangerous than wolves” (TT 63) could be seen as such revisions seeking the wolf’s
rehabilitation. 3) Revisions which sought to liberate readers to question the
traditional cultural patterns presented in the classic tale. These tales completely
debunk the traditional narrative and contents of the tale and mock and criticise
conventional ideas of socialisation, social behaviour, sexuality, and gender roles.
Jean Merrill’s ‘Red Riding’ (1968), Anne Sexton’s ‘Red Riding Hood’ (1971),
Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves’ (1979), Olga Broumas’s ‘Little Red
Riding Hood’ (1977) fall into this current.

All these revisions have more or less radically challenged the powerful and enduring
influence of the tale which Zipes describes as “a cultural configuration of legalised
terror.” (TT 74) Some of these stories here are analysed to demonstrate how this
challenge is managed by the re-writers of the tale. It is interesting to see however,
that despite these radical revisionist currents the ever dominant Perrault and more so
Grimm versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ continue to capture even the 21st
century audience. It takes a long time to accept changes and defy the ideas so
strongly rooted in the social psyche. As Zipes rightly says: “...it took 200 years of
hunting witches and werewolves to give birth to the traditional helpless Red Riding
Hood and restrictive notions of sex and nature, then another 200 years to establish
the proper bourgeois image of the obedient Red Riding Hood learning her lessons of
discipline; it may take another 200 years for us to undo all the lessons Red Riding
Hood, and the wolf as well, were forced to learn.” (TT 81)

• Anneliese Meinert’s ‘Little Red Cap 65’ (TT 239-240)

‘Little Red Cap 65’ by Anneliese Meinert depicts a spoilt Little Red Cap “a friendly
person” (TT 239) who despite her unwillingness to carry cake and whiskey to her
granny zooms through the woods in her sports car without stopping for the wolf who
signals “to hitch a ride” (TT 239) and almost running him over. Granny is not happy
to see her since she has a bridge party nor does she want cake and whiskey since she

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is on a diet. “Get that stuff out of here before I’m tempted,” she says. (TT 239) To
Red Cap’s questions Granny gives interestingly funny answers:

“Granny, how come you have such sparkling eyes?”

“So that I can see you better,... Contact lenses. They’re much better than glasses.”

“How come you wear such big ear-rings?”

“So that I can hear better. This is the latest invention. The hearing aids are built into
the ear-clips.” (TT 239)

About the unusual mouth she says, “That’s so I can eat you better! No, that’s not it.
I’ve got new dentures...” (TT 240)

After this conversation Little Red cap drives off to meet her date – Hans Hunter. He
questions her for being late and asks if she didn’t meet anyone on the way to which
she answers, “Oh, just old Mr Wolf. He wanted to hitch a ride, and I almost ran him
over.” (TT 240) Hans eats the cake and drinks the whiskey on the way through the
woods over the highway. Neither he nor Little Red Cap notices the pretty flowers
along the roadside and under the trees. In fact, Red Cap had never noticed them even
before. “How could she, especially when one is going a 100 miles an hour!” (TT
240)

The revision presents a somewhat rash and careless but liberated independent Red
Cap who is her own person and does not bother about the old ‘wolves’ and shares an
equal status with her man. The neglect and almost running over of the “old” wolf
could be seen to symbolise irreverence of the old conformist ideas, views and values.
The light-hearted, casual treatment of the classic tale and the humour in the revision
serves the purpose of mocking the excessive importance, and value attached hitherto
to the traditional tale and its implicit messages.

• Merseyside Fairy Story Collective’s ‘Red Riding Hood’ (TT 251-255)

Feminists Andrey Ackroyd, Marge Ben-Tovim, Catherine Meredith and Anne

Neville present in their revision a Red Riding Hood who grows to overcome her
timidity and fear of the dark and of the wolves. Little Nadia who wears her great-
grandmother’s thick red cloak with a hood and therefore called Red Riding Hood is

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a quiet and shy girl. She loves to visit granny living in a cottage in the forest but is
extremely scared to walk through the forest alone. She is frightened by many other
things like going to bed alone, dogs, thunder and strangers. As such she is portrayed
as a representative of all children who too are unusually scared of these things. Her
parents mock her for her fear of the forest and wolves. But her great-grandmother
trusts her and tells her that the speaking guy wolves exist. She confides in her that as
a strong and agile child she fought and killed the wolf with her hatchet. Now that she
is very old and weak she needs others to cook for her and to accompany her. As such
Red Riding Hood goes to her everyday either with her parents or with some other
children. Her fear of cutting herself on a sharp knife deters her from making a winter
jacket in school. While other children in school proudly cut and stitch their own
jackets for the bitter winter, Red Riding Hood wishes to wear the worn out red cloak
and hood which can hardly protect her from the harsh weather. While the parents are
worried great-grandmother promises to make a sheepskin lining for her cloak when
she goes to her after school the next day. Now Red Riding Hood would have to go to
the granny alone since the parents have other engagements. So though she is happy
at the thought of getting a new sheepskin lining done, she is frightened of the
prospect of going through the forest all alone. Throughout the next day she is
haunted by this fear so much that she does not even eat at the dinnertime. Out of fear
though in the morning she prepares to go to great-granny with brown eggs,
chocolate, blackberry jam, a special needle and thread and a sharp knife in her
basket, she changes her mind against her wishes. As she starts walking back towards
her home, however, she hears grey wolves howling and becomes worried about the
lonely great-grandmother who is no longer young and agile. She turns around and
starts running toward great-granny’s cottage when she hears a cold voice asking her
to run back home. “This is the night of the wolf.” (TT 253) Just before reaching the
cottage she sees a streak of grey moving towards it. Tired, with great efforts she
drags herself to the cottage. The well known conversation between Red Riding Hood
and the wolf in the guise of granny takes place. However while asking her last
question about great-granny’s big teeth she backs away and as the wolf leaps from
the bed to catch her she hears great-grandmother calling her from outside to open the
door. The old woman pulls a blazing branch from the stove to frighten the wolf with
the flame. The thoughtful Red Riding Hood imagines what would happen once the
branch burns out completely. She remembers how other children cut through
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the animal skins to make their winter jackets. She pulls out the sharp knife from her
basket and heroically just at the right moment kills the wolf. At a very critical
moment she emerges absolutely fearless. Her timely rush to the forest and killing of
the wolf with a sharp knife brings her face to face with her inner courage, presence
of mind and confidence. She grows to self-awareness and an awareness of her own
brave spirit. She grows to realise the vanity of her fear of the dark, the wolves, the
knives and everything else.

While skinning the wolf and making a lining of his fur the old woman tells Red
Riding Hood “…this cloak now has special powers. Whenever you meet another
child who is shy and timid, lend that child the cloak to wear as you play together in
the forest, and then, like you, they will grow brave.” (TT 255) The little girl does so
and for many years explores deeper and deeper into the forest.

The revisionist Merseyside writers convert the tale and its message and transform its
protagonist into an exemplary model to be followed by other children who should
shed the fears of the dark, the unknown and the wolves with all their symbolic
connotations in the traditional tale and instead confront them fearlessly. Departing
from the traditional tale and its message, the group of re-writers here depict a fearless
old woman and little girl who confront the challenges before them independent of
any male support and emerge victorious. The message is the need for women and
girls to gather courage and fight the oppressive forces intending at threatening and
consuming/devouring their very being. Susan Brownmiller in her book Against Our
Will (1976) says, “Fairy Tales are full of a vague dread, a catastrophe that seems to
befall only little girls.” (TT 350) This retelling in a way suggests a solution to
overcome these fears. It completely overlooks and does away with the “male
oriented sexual pedagogization” (TT 39) and the loaded warnings for children of the
traditional tale in this revision.

Conventional male attitudes reveal that men and patriarchal system in general
consider women responsible for their rape. Even if men are the victimisers, imposers
and offenders, women are made to appear a willing party to the act of their own rape;
they are shown to desire being raped. Moreover it is some man who comes forward
to protect the helpless victim. Thus as Brownmiller contends, men establish and
assert “the supreme rightness of male power either as offender or protector.”

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(TT 351) The two retold tales discussed above challenge this codified male ideology
in the classic versions and present a girl attaining mature understanding and a
fearless spirit for fighting independently without any male help. They demonstrate a
confident and intelligent Red Riding Hood who is able to grow and learn through
experience, help herself and gain an independent self-identity.

As said earlier some revisions take into account the wolf’s perspective and present it
to expose the falsity of the classic tale which projects the wolf as a male predator.

• Rudolf Otto Weimer’s ‘The Old Wolf’’ (TT 265)

In this very short verse retelling Weimer presents the “now piously old and good”
wolf complaining to Red Riding Hood, when they meet again, that ‘wild’ stories are
spread about him and he blames the Brothers Grimm for his bad reputation:

... Incredible, my child,

What kinds of stories are spread. They’re wild.

As though there were, so the lie is told,

A dark murder affair of old.

The Brothers Grimm are the ones to blame.

Confess! It wasn’t half as bad as they claim. (TT 265)

The wolf’s order ‘confess’ perhaps makes Little Red Riding Hood shiver and remind
her of the old incident. She looks at the wolf’s bite and stammers in agreement to
what he says:

Little Red Riding Hood saw the wolf’s bite

And stammered: “You’re right, quite right.”

Whereupon the wolf, heaving many a sigh,

Gave kind regards to Granny and waved good-bye. (TT 265)

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The ironic tone comments on how the tale has been appropriated by the Grimms and
their followers. However at the same time the wolf’s command and Red Riding
Hood’s stammering affirmation are suggestive also of the terror that the wolf was
and is capable of inflicting upon/ generating in the minds of Red Riding Hood and
her kind. It seems that Red Riding Hood’s expected positive response to his
complaint keeps him cool and he satisfactorily bids her good-bye. His sighs may be a
sign of regret at the past act, or perhaps the sigh about the ‘wild’ false lies spread
about him. It however shows his changed, good being.

• Tomi Ungerer’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ (TT 261-264)

The attempt at rehabilitating the wolf is more emphatically witnessed in Tomi

Ungerer’s “Re-rumination” of Little Red Riding Hood.45 Ungerer’s re-rumination
begins “once upon many times.” (TT 261) At the centre of the tale is the wolf –
“mean, broody and ferociously ferocious.” (TT 261) The story presents him as the
ruler and owner of a castle in a “godforsaken forest.” (TT 261) He doesn’t have a
wife or an heir and looks forward to having one. One day a watchcrow brings him
news about a girl “dressed in reds all over like a stop sign,” picking berries off his
domain. The wolf happy to hear this goes off to meet the girl – Little Red Riding
Hood. The writer expressly acknowledges the readers’ familiarity with the character
of Red Riding Hood but wants them not to consider her because this Riding Hood, he
says, is “not the one you might already have read about. No. This Little Red Riding
Hood was the real, no non-sense one, and this story is one-hundred-to-a-nickel
genuine.” He describes her beauty using funny comparisons and metaphors: her
blond hair shone like fresh bread. Description of her beauty is followed by one
pinching statement – “Besides, she had wit and sense.” (TT 262)

Ungerer discounts all the hitherto notions and connotations of the red hood which the
original Red Riding Hood wears as her grandmother’s gift. He mocks the idea of
being in reds all over: “She was dressed in red because it was one of her mother’s
outlandish notions that her daughter might easily be spotted that way. Little Red
Riding Hood didn’t mind. She thought it made her special.” (TT 262) It is also
shown as the mother’s gift rather than grandmother’s since the grandmother is
portrayed later in a very negative and dark light. She is “mean and cranky” (TT 262)
and needs “a weekly supply” of hogheads, rendered lard, applejack and bread.

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She superstitiously believes that “smithereened voice” could be restored by eating

pig heads. Disgust about her character is intently and comically suggested by
Ungerer in the statement “Her place was buzzing with flies who liked pigs’ heads,
too, in summer especially.” (TT 263) Little Red Riding Hood hates her grandma and
her visits to her. She calls the old woman “vicious to the core.” (TT 263) She carries
the bluish marks of the old woman’s beatings and bitings on her tender skin and in
order to delay reaching there she purposely stops in the shade of the forest and picks
berries: “I might just as well stop and be late and rest.” (TT 263) After all what she
gets there is “blows and insults” and accusations for things she hasn’t done “and so
beside the point, the comma, and the asterisk.” (TT 263) The comic undercurrent
continues throughout the tale. Quite a few things in the original tale are reversed. For
instance, there Little Red Riding Hood has to carry simply a piece of cake and a
bottle of wine to her grandmother but in this revision she has to carry a number of
things mentioned above every week. In the original classic it is the wolf who tries
and succeeds in distracting her attention and persuading her to linger and loiter in the
woods. In the revision however, she herself decides to slow down and linger in the
forest to delay the experience of what is in store for her – blows, insults and
accusations. The kind and loving grandmother of the old classic is atrocious, wicked
and almost witch-like in this retelling and the malicious wolf, on the other hand, is a
kind hearted, helpful duke in search of a lady love. Startled by the wolf’s sudden
appearance, Little Red Riding Hood tries to justify her unawareness about whose
bushes she was picking the berries from and tells him about her visit to her “mean
old grandmother who lives by the green fly pond.” (TT 263) Asking her to call him
Duke instead of Prince as she does, he offers to carry the heavy baskets in his “strong
arms” not to the old woman’s house since “her reputation is worse than mine” but to
his own castle. He promises her all the comforts and luxuries she could dream of.
“I’ll make you happy, you’ll make me happy, as in a fairy tale.” (TT 264)

Ungerer’s mockery continues throughout: Not knowing the meaning of reputation

Little Red Riding Hood seeks an explanation. “A reputation is what people think you
are. Reputations come in all sizes. Some are good, some are bad or very bad, like
mine.” (TT 263) When in distrust Little Red Riding Hood expresses her fear of being
eaten by the wolf with his big mouth, he calls this fear “a mere slander. ...Wolves
feed only upon ugly children, and then only on special request.” (TT 264) She goes

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on asking him further questions about his enormous jowls and the pink tongue. He
tries to satisfy her quest. However, as she goes even further as in the original tale, he
interrupts her saying, “Stop asking foolish questions.... Questions are bad for your
happiness.” (TT 264) Lifting the baskets he asks her to accompany him. Little Red
Riding Hood willing to go with him asks him, “What happens to my parents and my
mean grandmother?” This question also in the minds of the readers is answered by
the wolf cleverly: “Read the end of this story, and you’ll find out.” (TT 264) As per
the end they invite Red Riding Hood’s parents to the wedding. “Off they went to live
happily ever after. They did get married and they had all sorts of children who lived
happily, too.” (TT 264) The old woman left to herself, without food “shrank and
shrank until she was just six inches high. When last seen, she was scavenging
someone’s larder in the company of a Norway rat. And, tiny and hungry, she was just
as mean as ever.” (TT 264)

In this attempt at rehabilitating the wolf the re-teller of the tale positively suggests
that the wolf is not a predator and that on the contrary, the girl is victimised by her
parents and grandmother with their fears and needs. By making her happy and by
understanding her, the wolf attempts to erase his ‘very bad’ reputation and proves
that the grandmother representing old morals and conventions perhaps is worse
reputed than he. The focus of the conventional tale and its interpretations is
completely shifted in this retelling from the symbolic sexual innuendos and rape to a
more positive acceptance of one’s own sexuality and lack of fear of sex. Little Red
Riding Hood in this revised tale learns to trust her own senses and that is the lesson
Ungerer wishes to convey. Hence the slandered wolf is shown not as a carnal symbol
but as a helpful, considerate though moderately shrewd being with human emotions
and ability to give happiness.

Tomi Ungerer’s retelling does successfully convey his non-conformist stance and
values. Radical revisions like his tend not to present the wolf as a real threat. Zipes
offers two major explanations for this reversal: 1) Wolves have been almost extinct
in Western societies and therefore do not represent any threat any longer. 2)
Symbolic carnal connotations associated with the wolf no longer hold in the present
since with greater scientific control over the body fear about sex has reduced and
acceptance and expression of one’s own sexuality has increased. Thus in the versions
rehabilitating the wolf “the assumptions of the traditional cultural pattern” (TT 63)

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are undermined. This trend continues even in the third current of re-visionist
retellings of ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’

• Anne Sexton’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ (T 76-79)

Anne Sexton’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ centres on the theme of deception.
Naturally the deceiving wolf is presented as the hero of the “transformed” tale. The
prologue for the tale begins casually affirming the existence of a number of deceivers
and listing some of them. The list includes the suburban matron in the supermarket
pretending to perform household duties but actually thinking of her lover and
planning to meet him in the church parking lot, two apparently respectable ladies
who rob an old woman of her savings, the stand up comic who entertains the
audience at night but commits suicide the very next morning. In this list she includes
herself as well: “And I, I too.” She admits that behind her suave appearance hides a
self which undergoes an open heart surgery in its head and the heart. This heart is an
eyeless (I-less) beetle which is dissected by the head. The open heart surgery thus
implies that the rational tries to open up the I-less self-less other. There is a kind of
deception even when the speaker Dame Sexton builds a “simple A frame house.”
Description of this experience of being haunted by the reproaching figure of the
mother echoes the lines of Emily Dickinson:

One need not be a chamber to be Haunted

One need not be House

The brains has corridors – surpassing

Material Place...46

Concern with the mother-daughter relation which Anne Sexton comments on in her
other “transformed” tales is touched upon and rendered trivial in ‘Red Riding Hood.’
The instructions given to Red Riding Hood by her mother in the Grimm tale are
dropped in the transformed story because that is not the point that the tale wants to
establish or stress. The witch-narrator calls it a digression and decides to begin the
story at its ‘proper’ beginning:

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In the beginning

There was just Red Riding Hood

so called because her grandmother

made her a red cape and she was never without it. (T 76)

Her mother sends her to the grandmother with wine and cake:

Wine and cake?

Where’s the aspirin? The penicillin?

Where’s the fruit juice?

Peter Rabbit had camomile tea.

But wine and cake it was. (T 76)

Red Riding Hood’s love for her red hood and greater love for grandmother (But
more than she loved her riding hood/ she loved her grandmother) and the detailed
description of the redness of the blanket in the verse tale make explicit the
associations of the red colour with sexuality and at the same time suggest a sexual
attraction and attachment between the two women. The sexual undertones deepen
with the description of the grandmother’s house:

There among the roots and trunks

with the mushrooms pulsing inside the moss

he planned how to eat them both,

the grandmother an old carrot

and the child a shy budkin

in a red red hood. (T 77)

The verse tale describes Red Riding Hood’s wandering off deeper and deeper into
the forest in psychological terms. It does not moralise about this wandering off the
path despite the mother’s warnings, which too are omitted from the verse tale.

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The wolf’s act of donning grandmother’s night dress and cap is seen as a sexual
abnormality in his character. He is a deceptive fellow engaging in transvestism. This
transformed aspect of his nature is what introduces him at the beginning of the tale:

Long ago

there was a strange deception:

a wolf dressed in frills

a kind of transvestite.

...

A deceptive fellow. (T76)

His odd looks in grandmother’s clothes are ironically and comically described:

Grandmother looked strange

a dark and hairy disease it seemed. (T 77)

Red Riding Hood’s questions to the strange grandmother are all summed up in just a
couple of verse lines in this retold tale:

Oh Grandmother, what big ears you have,

ears,eyes,hands and then the teeth.

The better to eat you with my dear. (T 77)

The comic manner in which the wolf’s gluttony is described focuses on the relation
between the two women and on the wolflessness of the wolf while asleep. The word
‘wolfless’ is stressed by isolating it:

Now he was fat.

He appeared in his ninth month

and Red Riding Hood and her grandmother

rode like two Jonahs up and down with

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his every breath. One pigeon. One partridge.

He was fast asleep,

dreaming in his cap and gown,

wolfless. (T 78)

Red Riding Hood’s destination is among the “roots and trunks.” She is made to look
at and collect bloodroot, bunchberry and dogtooth. Her journey through the woods
becomes a sexual exploration whose destination is the dark belly of the wolf. It has
explicit echoes of animality, sexuality. The two women, Red Riding Hood and her
grandmother, are united in the kingdom of the belly for a short time and are released
again by a huntsman. He suspects the loud and ‘contented’ snores of the grandmother
and hearing them believes that “that was no grandmother.” (T 78) The word
‘contented’ is stressed perhaps to suggest the supposition that women can never be
contented or cured. For it is the ‘ill’ grandmother who the huntsman believes cannot
sleep peacefully. It suggests eternal dissatisfaction of women in life. The verse tale
almost imitates the source tale in its discussion of how the hunter decides to shoot
the much wanted wolf but thinks of saving the grandmother except the short
narratorial comment that describes the cutting open of the wolf as “a kind of
caesarean section.” (T 78)

The ‘carnal knife’ brings out Red Riding Hood from “kingdom of the belly” like
poppy and grandmother also comes out still with the desire to have wine and cake –
again an indication of discontent. The wolf dies of the weight of the stones. The
moral of the story becomes clear that if one deceives the weight of deception kills
him. “Many a deception ends on such a note.” (T 79) The story does not end here.
Sexton further comments on what happens to the grandmother and the girl. The two
with the huntsman sit down by the wolf’s corpse and have a meal of wine and cake:

remembering

nothing naked and brutal

from that little death,

that little birth

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from their going down

and their lifting up. (T 79)

This takes us back to the story’s end where the two women are substituted by stones.
Outside the dark belly too the two are stone like as their indifference to the dead wolf
and the way they have their wine and cake shows. This equates them with the stones
they are replaced with. Perhaps that is the reason why the wolf does not realise the
difference when he wakes up and tries to run away only to be killed by the weight.
The two women do not learn anything from the “naked and brutal” journey of and
experience of death and birth. They do not even remember it.

Omissions of the mother’s instructions to the girl in the verse tale logically invites
the absence of the lesson that the Grimm Red Riding Hood learns and therefore
decides not to wander off into the forest when her mother forbids it. No lesson is
given at the end of the verse tale except the possible implication that women keep
committing the same mistakes as in the past because they do not learn from their
experiences and remember nothing from it. They will continue to fall a prey to
deception, despite experiencing its consequences.

• Olga Broumas’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ (TT 272-273)

Olga Broumas’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ amounts to a poem of self-expression with
personal references revealing unawares quite a few things about herself as a woman.
She represents women who are free of men and their ideas of sexuality. Within the
framework of the Grimm tale Broumas critically and minutely observes the
phallocentric exclusive notions of womanhood and femininity. These notions in
patriarchy exclude women who love women because the idea of femininity in this
system can be attained necessarily with male involvement that results in the birth of a
child. Critical interpretations of the old tale ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ focus, as
mentioned earlier, on the sexual initiation of the girl, her disobedience and the
implicit connotations of her rape as a consequent punishment. However that the girl
is brought out of the wolf’s belly and is born again is not stressed much. Anne
Sexton makes a tangential reference to the “caesarean section” in her retelling. But it
is Broumas, however, who brings this circumstance of Little Red Riding Hood’s
birth cycle to the focal point and discusses the idea of male centric femininity and

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womanhood. Little Red Riding Hood is born from a man (the wolf) and delivered by
a man (the huntsman) and as such she is produced for men and is tied to male
sexuality. Olga Broumas compares her own birthing experience with Little Red
Riding Hood’s. She is delivered not by a male doctor but a midwife. Her emergence
into the world is naturally “guided” by the midwife’s hands rather than forcefully
pulled by the forceps of the doctor:

... I slipped out like an arrow, but not before

the midwife

plunged to her wrist and guided

my baffled head to its first mark. (TT 272)

As such, unlike Little Red Riding Hood, she is free of the ties of male sexuality and
has a say in her own being, her own existence. She is free to “become” and
determine her own self. The midwife’s hands “guide” her. The “good woman”
however, does not do what the “high forceps” of the doctor can:

... High forceps

might, in that one instant, have accomplished

what you and that good woman failed

in all these years to do: cramp

me between temples, hobble

my baby feet.(TT 272)

By birth she is not hobbled to a male defined womanhood nor are her rationality and
intellect cramped by the high forceps. The symbolic value of forceps and the word
hobble cannot be overlooked. The forceps cramping her temples suggest control over
her ability to think and be rational and hobbled feet suggest control over her actions
and movements. The fact that she is guided into this world by a midwife and not the
forceps implies that she is no longer owned or marked by men for men. She is
autonomous. She is free of men. Dressed in her red hood – the blood – she evades

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the male bondings and grows more and more skilful at the act of evading male
forceps in life.

... Dressed in my red hood, howling, I went—

evading

the white-clad doctor and his fancy claims: microscope,

stethoscope, scalpel, all

the better to see with, to hear,

and to eat – straight from your hollowed basket

into the midwife’s skirts. I grew up

good at evading.(TT 272-73)

Echoing the wolf’s lines in the Grimm tale Broumas personifies the doctor as a wolf
and at the same time equates him with the huntsman who performs a C-section on
the wolf for ‘re-producing’ Little Red Riding Hood.

As per her mother’s instructions she keeps to her self-determined road.

... When you said

‘Stick to the road and forget the flowers, there’s

wolves in those bushes, mind

you get there.’ I

minded. I kept

to the road.... (TT 273)

She defines and determines her own course of life. It is her own decision to keep her
femininity and womanhood untouched by men:

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... I kept

...

the hood secret, kept what it sheathed more

secret still. I opened

it only at night, and with other women

who might be walking the same road to their own

grandma’s house, each with her basket of gifts, her small hood

safe in the same part. (TT 273)

The hood has direct implications of the hymen kept protected from men and exposed
only to other women of her kind. She refers to her autonomously accepted lesbian
affiliations and sexual preferences. She has the satisfaction of determining and
following the path of her own life. However there is a sense of grief and grievance
she feels within and seems to seek an answer to the stagnated question in her mind.
With the growing age she seems to be filled with a feeling of incompleteness.
Without a child of her own she has no one to send to her mother with her “laden
basket of love” on the one hand and on the other, not a mother herself she finds
herself growing “old,old” without her mother, “the landscape of her heart.” There is
pain and grief of loneliness in the repeated expression of old. She addresses both her
own mother “the architect of my body” and the mother that she could not be. Her
mother gave her body a structure and her body was structured to be a mother. Her
autonomous self struggles with this sense of loss and lack of attachment of that
womanhood which patriarchy prescribes and subscribes to. She wishes to “conceive”
some other gesture which would match with this idea of womanhood:

... what other gesture

can I conceive

to make with it

that would reach you. (TT 273)

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With an intercourse with this substitute gesture she wishes to reach her lonely mother
awaiting her. The two are apart from each other. She wishes to reach out to the
mother alone and waiting:

... across this improbable forest

peopled with wolves and our lost, flower gathering

sisters they feed on. (TT 273)

As per patriarchal prescriptions she is not a complete woman. However she seeks to
go across, beyond this brutal system, the “improbable forest” run by “wolves” that
feed on “our lost, flower gathering sisters.” The system, in its idea of femininity and
womanhood, discounts women like her. As such she does not fit this idea of
femininity nor is her conception of femininity accepted by the system. She needs a
way to find a substitute gesture that would accommodate women of her kind and
their femininity. She yearns for such a more accommodating ‘conception’ and
generous acceptance of this womanhood.

• Roald Dahl’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ (RD 36-40)

Roald Dahl takes a comic, ironic take on the classical tale and presents a new tale
whose main character – the girl, is carried on to the next revolting tale in his
collection. The revolting ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ first introduces the wolf who
wants to have “a decent meal” and eats up grandma in “one big bite.” However he
doesn’t feel full enough and waits for Miss Red Riding Hood to arrive so that he can
have “another helping.” The story begins in-media-res. The readers’ foreknowledge
of the tale is taken for granted. The mother’s instructions to the little girl are omitted.
In fact, the characters of parents and the hunter are totally dispensed with in the
‘revolting’ version. The hungry wolf is depicted in a comic light and almost like any
human being or more like a hungry child. The wolf is not given any attributes that
the Grimm tale and many other adaptations have. He is just a wolf with a capital
‘W.’ He is hungry and almost as a matter of fact he goes to grandmother’s house to
eat her up:

As soon as Wolf began to feel

That he would like a decent meal,

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He went and knocked on Grandma’s door.

...

He ate her up in one big bite.

But Grandmamma was small and tough,

And Wolfie wailed, ‘That’s not enough!’

‘I haven’t yet begun to feel

‘That I have had a decent meal!’

He ran around the kitchen yelping,

‘I’ve got to have another helping!’ (RD 36)

His frightening, scary nature too is defused with the use of humour. To have a
second helping he decides to wait for Little Miss Red Riding Hood. He would wait
as her Grandma would and hence he dons her clothes which is quite wittily and
connotatively mentioned:

He quickly put on Grandma’s clothes.

(Of course he hadn’t eaten those.)

He dressed himself in coat and hat.

He put on shoes and after that

He even brushed and curled his hair,

Then sat himself in Grandma’s chair. (RD 38)

On the arrival of the “girl in red” the famous “What big...” conversation between her
and the wolf takes place and through this dialogue as the wolf imagines how the girl
would “taste like caviare” the tale takes an unexpected and interesting twist:

Then Little Red Riding Hood said, ‘But Grandma,

what a lovely great big furry coat you have on’ (RD 38)

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Little Red Riding Hood strays from the old script and the wolf chides her for that:

‘That’s wrong!’ cried Wolf. ‘Have you forgot

‘To tell me what BIG TEETH I’ve got?

The Wolf knows by heart the sequence of the old tale, his role in it, the questions the
girl would ask, his own answers to them and what follows as per the canonical text.
He is clearly aware of being in a frequently told tale and playing his part. Like an
actor annoyed at the fellow actress for forgetting her lines, he tries to “correct” her.

An interesting thing happens at this juncture. In that, the readers who too are aware
of the story and its sequential development into its supposed end are identified or
equalled with the Wolf. Their expectations fail as the Wolf’s. Like the Wolf the
readers too expect that at any cost the Wolf would eat her up:

‘Ah well no matter what you say,

‘I’m going to eat you any way.’ (RD 40)

However nothing happens as both expect. The final twist in the plot surprises both
and while it turns out to be fatal for the Wolf, it amuses and delights the readers. This
identification with the Wolf, however, serves the purpose of killing, like the Wolf,
their own belief in the old text and its implicit messages.

The girl’s smile at the Wolf’s confident compliance with the canon and the expected
consequence is very suggestive. She strays much too far from the “given” text:

The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.

She flips a pistol from her knickers.

She aims it at the creature’s head

And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead. (RD 40)

Dead is the Wolf and so are the established notions about the helpless naive girl and
her lessons generated by the classic tale. The surprising twist continues as the
narrator of the revolting tale appears on scene:

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A few weeks later, in the wood,

I came across Miss Little Riding Hood

But what a change! No cloak of red,

No silly hood upon her head.

She said, ‘Hello, and do please note

‘My lovely furry WOLFSKIN COAT.’ (RD 40)

She has dropped her “silly hood upon her head” after her successful encounter with
the Wolf. The implicit sexual connotations here and earlier in drawing the pistol
from her knickers are suggestive of the naive girl’s growth to mature womanhood
with the changing times. This mature and worldly wise riding girl without hood
reappears in Dahl’s next and last of the revolting tales of three little pigs who are
threatened by a wolf. This wolf huffs and puffs and blows down the stick and straw
houses of two “juicy little pigs.”(RD 43) The third, the wisest, calls the wolf killer,
Red Riding Hood still called and remembered as ‘Miss Hood’:

‘I know you’ve dealt with wolves before,

And now I’ve got one at my door!’ (RD 46)

The “brave Miss Riding Hood” comes to the piglet’s rescue:

Once more the maiden’s eyelid flickers.

She draws the pistol from her knickers.

Once more, she hits the vital spot,

And kills him with a single shot. (RD 47)

However a more unexpected twist in the tale occurs when the end suggests violation
of the piglet’s trust in the girl. She is now seen in the forest with two wolfskin coats
and a PIGSKIN TRAVELLING CASE. The story of Little Red Riding Hood ends
here in the real sense of the term. Her true nature is revealed in this tale. That she is
no longer innocent and naive was already established in the first tale but here her
heroism is tinged with selfishness and shrewdness. Her selfish materialistic

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ambitions make her villainous. Her wickedness presented in a humorous light

acquires a garb of practical wisdom for accomplishing her practical, materialistic
needs. Without much male intervention this Riding Hood over a period of more than
a couple of decades is shown to have grown self-dependent, practical, worldly wise
and materialistic.

A more serious instance of a retelling of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ with the girl
shooting the wolf dead is Francisca Lia Block’s ‘Wolf.’ Canonical fairy tale
narrative discourse, its motifs, contents and conservative values and expectations are
torn apart by these revisionist writers. Let us consider one more such anti-canonical
revision to conclude the analysis of the retold ‘Little Red Riding Hood’

• Gianni Rodari’s ‘Little Green Riding Hood’ (TT 256-257)

Readers’ age-old conditioned expectations are defused in this retold version of ‘Little
Red Riding Hood.’ The narrator of this tale is an old man who mixes up the
narrative, content, plot and characters of the old tale. The grandchild well-versed
with the oft heard story keeps correcting him every time and in the end accepts the
new details “all the same.” (TT 257) Grandpa begins with a little girl called Little
Yellow Riding Hood. “No! Red Riding Hood!” the child says. Despite corrections
the old man refers to the little girl in the tale every time by colours other than red –
yellow, green, black. Grandpa corrects himself and gives yet another wrong detail to
be corrected by the listening child: “Oh yes, of course, Red Riding Hood. Well, one
day her mother called her and said: ‘Little Green Riding Hood’

‘Red!’

“Sorry! Red. ‘Now, my child, go to Aunt Mary and take her these potatoes.’”

“No! It doesn’t go like that! ‘Go to Grandma and take her these cakes.’” (TT 256)

This goes on. With every wrong detail like – the girl meeting a giraffe in the woods,
the wolf asking her, ‘What’s six times eight?’ – the child gets annoyed and says,
‘What a mess you are making of it!’ (TT 256) However even after the grandchild
correcting him, this time Grandpa substitutes the wolf with a horse which gives the
girl lost in the woods following directions: ‘Take the 75 bus, get out at the main
square, turn right, and at the first doorway you’ll find three steps. Leave the steps

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where they are, pick up the dime you’ll find lying on them, and buy yourself a packet
of chewing gum.’ (TT 257) By this time the child is quite fed up with the mistakes
and the act of correcting them. He certifies the grandfather as a wrong and bad
storyteller and doesn’t seem to be interested in listening to him ahead. He says,
‘Grandpa, you’re terribly bad at telling stories. You get them all wrong. But all the
same, I wouldn’t mind some chewing gum.’

‘All right. Here’s your dime.’ And the old man turned back to his newspaper. (TT
257)

Both the grandpa as well as the grandson get rid of the story: neither the child wishes
to go ahead with the wrongly told old tale nor is the old man interested in continuing
with his own totally new version of it. The casual giving up of the tale half-way by
both is suggestive of the denial of the tale – old and new – with whatever messages it
conveys. The traditional narrative discourse is completely dispensed with displaying
a view that it hardly matters if the tale is told wrongly or left untold. One of the most
remarkable aspects of this short retold version is that except for the last sentence the
entire tale is in dialogic form and it is only through the dialogues that we come to
realise the characters’ relation with each other. Also, it is only once and that too in
the last sentence of the tale that the grandpa is referred to as ‘the old man.’ Neither of
them is given a name which makes them representatives of the generations past and
present while the tale itself becomes a representative defying discourse of revolt.

Snow White:

In a very impressive and important discussion of ‘Snow White,’ Sandra Gilbert and
Susan Gubar underline the relevance of this multilayered tale that could illustrate
how two female archetypes devised by men “to lessen their dread of [a woman’s]
‘inconsistency’ and ... to possess her more thoroughly”47 are constructed and
possibly subverted.

• Anne Sexton’s ‘Snow White’ (T 3-9)

Anne Sexton calls her ‘transformations’ “an enlarged paper clip” with a potential to
become “a piece of sculpture.” This implies as suggested earlier in this analysis and
later, in the following chapter, the new retellings intend to broaden the earlier
perspectives on and perceptions of the classic tales. The previous parochial, narrow

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views are magnified so that the readers/listeners can see the yet unprobed or
overlooked subtleties more clearly. It has been a daring endeavour on part of the
revisionists. Anne Sexton herself raises a doubt about the aesthetic potential of her
retelling efforts and herself pacifies and reaffirms their creative authenticity and
aesthetic potential:

Transform? As if an enlarged paper clip

could be a piece of sculpture

(And it could!) (T 2)

Her revolutionary take on the classic tales reaffirms the “black art” of spinning the
yarn and validates it. The preface raises our expectations and curiosity. Following
this prefatory tale ‘Snow White’ initiates Sexton’s transformed tales each of which
begins with a prologue wherein she finds space for addressing social issues and
whatever thoughts the tales evoked in her. “[T]hat’s where ... I expressed whatever it
evoked in me.”48 It is the prologues which greatly help us understand the transformed
elements of the tales and Sexton’s stand on various issues. More than her direct
sardonic comments and hints throughout the stories, it is the prologues which offer
us the context and clues to interpretation and introduce the context of the tales
providing a thematic focus for the following stories. Their indentation suggests their
supplementary nature. It appears that the traditional tale does not offer Sexton
enough space to articulate her views and accommodate the transformed tale. The
prologues provide her with this extra space wherein she directly expresses what she
only hints at in the transformed tales. Sexton perhaps doubts the ability of the
transformations to prove the point she wants to make and so she uses an additional
tool and space of the prologue to make a clean breast of her perception of the tales
and her interpretations of them. Hence perhaps they appear irrelevant and do not
necessarily seem to pass a comment, except tangentially, on the stories to follow.
However a close study of the retold tales and images therein establishes the link
between the tales and the prologues.

It is the description of a “ lovely virgin” in the prologue to the transformed ‘Snow

White’ that connects its prologue with the tale and explicitly determines the line of
Sexton’s sardonic attack on the presentation of women in fairy tales. The unsoiled,

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white as bonefish virgin with fragile cheeks, delicate arms and legs, enticing lips and
rolling china-blue doll eyes is a desirable object (“number”) irrespective of the kind
of life she lives. This description of the lovely virgin in the prologue is at once
followed by the beginning of the transformed tale:

Once there was a lovely virgin

called Snow White. (T 3)

The very first line announces the expected transformation of our perception of the
classically represented innocent, virtuous, good Snow White. The implied meaning
of the expression ‘lovely number’ as defined in the prologue at once gets associated
with the character of Snow White. She is a girl with all the qualities the expression
implies suggesting clearly passive objectification, dumbness, fragility, concern with
beautiful appearance like a china-blue doll and fear of male domination and phallic
thrust. All these implications recur throughout the transformed tale. The transformed
Snow White is a beautiful adolescent girl of thirteen unlike a seven year old in the
Grimm tale. She is soon to replace/succeed the middle aged queen who “eaten...by
age” (T 3) is no longer beautiful as per the accepted standards of male society and
who dies in the hot iron shoes for losing her status of acceptance. The change in the
age of transformed Snow White hints at Sexton’s aim of showing a slow
transformation of an innocent virgin unaware of her beauty into a beauty conscious
woman; of a daughter into her mother; of innocence into corruption; of an unaware
innocent virgin into a cautious, conscious, corrupt woman; of a living woman into an
object of beauty and desire, which is left unnoticed once its utility is exhausted.

Sexton does not mention Snow White’s own mother who, in the Grimm tale, desires
to have a beautiful child with skin “as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as
black as ebony.” (Grimm, 70) It is this desire however, that triggers her definition of
the beautiful virgin in the prologue and the presentation of Snow White as a lovely
virgin. The girl is not seven but thirteen years old, as mentioned earlier. As such both
the mother and the daughter are at a crucial phase in their lives: one, the older, on the
verge of being rejected by the social system that is conscious of a woman’s utility
value on the basis of her beauty and the other, the younger, on the verge of being
welcomed by the same society only to be rejected later once she steps into her
mother’s shoes. The mirror in the transformed tale is “something like a weather

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forecast” (T 5) implying thereby perhaps the traditional metaphor of stages in human

life corresponding with the four seasons of the year. The question regarding beauty
addressed to the mirror receives similar answers both in the Grimm and the
transformed tale, with just a difference of one pronoun. The Grimm answer “You are
fairest of them all” (Grimm 70) becomes “You are fairest of us all.” (Italics mine) (T
5) Sexton’s witch-narrator perhaps wishes to include herself among the women
contesting for acceptance in ‘male’ society.

Sexton describes the proud, overbearing nature of the stepmother in expressions like
“pride pumped in her like poison.” (T 5) Sexton deflates the stepmother’s pride and
abruptly sums up her jealous reaction to the mirror’s rejection of her as the fairest
woman:

Until that moment Snow White

had been no more important

than a dust mouse under the bed.

But now the queen saw brown spots on her hand

and four whiskers over her lip. (T 5)

Brown spots and whiskers, the indicators of ugliness, repulsiveness and jealousy,
replace the description of the queen’s jealousy in the Grimm tale. Jealousy and
hatred however, are less focussed in the transformed tale than the queen’s hurting
disappointment with herself on becoming less desired than the step daughter. It is the
idea of losing the status of “the one (and the only) beauty of the land” (T 5) that
disturbs her more and compels her to condemn Snow White to be “hacked to death.”
(T 5)

Elaborate description of the hunter’s reactions to Snow White’s pleas and his act of
mercy is covered in a single verse line:

The hunter, however, let his prisoner go

and brought a boar’s heart back to the castle. (T 5)

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The queen chews it up “like a cube steak” while Snow White fearfully walks in the
dark and lonely unacquainted places. The much discussed hidden, psychological
connotations of Snow White’s fright are made explicit in the transformed tale in the
expressions like “the wild wood,” “doorways,” “hungry wolf” lolling out his tongue
“like a worm,” lewd calls of the birds “talking like pink parrots,” snakes hanging
down in loops. Sexual undertones of this description are quite clear. The queer little
house that the Grimm Snow White reaches accidentally is in the transformed tale
suggested almost as her chosen destination:

On the seventh week

she came to the seventh mountain

and there she found the dwarf house. (T 6)

The clean and pretty dwarf house described in great detail in the old tale becomes in
this retold version a “droll...honeymoon cottage” again suggesting sexual undertones
in Snow White’s confrontation with the dwarfs who are described in the verse tale as
“little hot dogs” (T 6) walking around her three times as dogs do around a bitch. The
phallic implications of the dwarfs are explicit. As Bettelheim mentions, “Anne
Sexton’s poetic rendering of ‘Snow White’ suggests their phallic nature, since she
refers to them as ‘the dwarfs, those little hot dogs.’” (B 210)

These dwarfs have a businesslike attitude towards her and consider her a “good
omen.”

She told them

about the mirror and the killer queen

and they asked her to stay and keep house. (T 6)

Their warning to her is stressed in the verse tale:

Beware of your stepmother

...

While we are away in the mines

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During the day, you must not

Open the door. (T 7)

The queen’s disappointment, her anger, jealousy and thought of Snow White’s
murder on hearing from the mirror about Snow White being alive are briefly and
speedily summed up:

The mirror told

and so the queen dressed herself in rage

and went out like a peddler to trap Snow White. (T 7)

Snow White’s “dumbness” in buying the lace is stressed suggesting her slow
realisation of and attraction to the norms of beauty and physical appearance. She is
slowly moving towards her transformation into a beautiful object, which is
emphasised by references to the modern consumer culture of America:

The queen fastened it tightly

around her bodice,

as tight as an Ace Bandage

so tight that Snow White swooned.

She lay on the floor, a plucked daisy. (T 7)

Her attempt at beautification objectifies her to “a plucked daisy.” After the dwarfs
unlace her she “revives miraculously” and is as “full of life as soda pop.” On many
occasions like this one Sexton through sarcasm notes down the inability to ‘suspend
disbelief.’ Assuming the readers’ familiarity with the Grimm tale Sexton hastily
mentions the other two instances of the queen’s attempts to ‘trap’ Snow White:

Looking glass upon the wall...

once more the mirror told

and once more the queen dressed in drags

and once more Snow White opened the door.

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...

but the mirror told,

the queen came,

Snow White, the dumb bunny,

opened the door. (T 7-8)

More than the stepmother’s wickedness it is Snow White’s dumbness, impulsiveness

and vulnerability to the idea and thoughts of beauty that are emphasised. Snow White
dumbly lets the disguised queen comb her hair and falls unconscious. The dwarfs
remove the “curved eight inch scorpion” and she revives miraculously again opening
her eyes “as wide as Orphan Annie” (T 8) The queen’s third and last attempt to kill
Snow White is presented as the near completion of Snow White’s objectification:
“She lay as still as a gold piece.”(T 8)

Sexton describes all the attributes of Snow White’s beauty in terms of objects –
number, cigarette paper, Limozes, Vin Du Rhoe, China-blue doll. She is an
“unsoiled” doll, a sleeping virgin, a gold piece, a plucked daisy; she is associated
with soda pop, Orphan Annie; she becomes “it” – “the glass Snow White,” “a good
omen.” This objectification in turn leads to and implies helplessness and passivity.
As such Snow White is rendered an epitome of passivity that is closely associated
with the idea of beauty. She becomes passivity incarnate, a personified object. This
objectification is aggravated by the various “falls” of Snow White. She falls for
beautifying objects. The lace and the comb – pointers of beauty – cause the first two
falls and the final fall is a result of an apple bite objectifying her completely, turning
her into a gold piece lying in the glass coffin till her prince arrives. It has
implications of complete entrapment, constraint and captivity. The objectified
captivity, the various falls and revival only by external efforts concretise Snow
White’s intellectual dumbness as well.

The dwarfs in the transformed tale are shown to bear a business minded attitude
towards Snow White’s still existence:

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The seven dwarfs could not bring themselves

to bury her in the black ground

so they made a glass coffin

and set it upon the seventh mountain

so that all who passed by

could peek in upon her beauty. (T 8)

Her last miraculous revival by the prince results in her marriage with him: “And thus
Snow White became the prince’s bride.” (T 9) She attains the status of a queen and
as such her ultimate transformation from an unaware innocent object-like virgin to a
conscious beautiful object is complete. On her “becoming” the queen, the other
queen has to perish. She is now a worn out object and is no longer required. This
queen was aware of her fate and hence undertakes all types of endeavours to
maintain her status as a socially accepted entity. Her feelings of jealousy and hatred
on her realisation that she is no longer the most beautiful one are given a slight twist
and a detailed description of the burning queen follows:

First your toes will smoke

and then your heels will turn black

and you will fry upward like a frog

she was told.

And so she danced until she was dead,

a subterranean figure,

her tongue flicking in and out

like a gas jet. (T 9)

Snow White witnesses her predecessor dying out of passion for beauty and
acceptance from society. However, she cannot and does not learn to defend herself
against such fate. While the wicked queen is dying Snow White holds court,

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rolling her china blue doll eyes open and shut

and sometimes referring to her mirror

as women do. (T 9)

A cycle of victimisation and objectification will continue. Ironically, also the queen
herself who is cautious not to let Snow White surpass her beauty makes the girl
aware of her own beauty and its value in a social system ruled by men. The mirror
makes a woman objectify other women. Snow White is made a representative of the
entire womankind who thus objectifies and is objectified at the “mirror’s” bidding.
As Carol Leventen says, “Sexton is hardly sanguine about Snow White’s ability to
break the cycle. Just as the girl succumbs to the step mother’s proffering of
conventionally feminine ornamentation (the laces and the comb), she succumbs to
the temptations of the mirror; her future is her (step)mother’s past.” (Leventen 144)
Women’s “simple passion” for beauty ruins them and they continue to fall a prey to
such ruinous scheme. As Barbara Swan mentions, the mother in the transformed tale
is shown to symbolise “the universal problem of aging beauty, needing every prop
available, and the young girl, smug and indifferent, temporarily secure in her
glorious youth. ... you know that twenty years later she, too will face a middle age
crisis.” (Swan 86) Snow White holds and consults the same mirror which dictates a
step by step death dance of the queen. It is the mirror that objectifies and makes
women objectify themselves and others. Through the mirror the verse tale does not
emphasise narcissism as much as it does its male voice and male gaze determining
the social acceptability and utility of women as the basis of male standards of beauty.
This essence of the transformed tale is concentrated in the picture of Snow White
referring to this mirror “as women do.” Ellen Cronan Rose’s remarks on this are
quite relevant and insightful: “The cool mockery of Sexton’s tone might seem to be
directed against women, were it not for the evidence in the prologue and throughout
the poem, that the cause of female narcissism is a male dominated culture that
perceives women as objects and conditions them to become objects.”49

Taking their cue from sexton’s revolting re-vision of the old Grimm tale Sandra
Gilbert and Susan Gubar in 1979 called the mirror’s voice as the king’s, the
patriarch’s: “His surely is the voice of the looking glass, the patriarchal voice of
judgement that rules the Queen’s and every woman’s self-evaluation. He it is who

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decides, first, that his consort is ‘the fairest of all,’ and then, as she becomes
maddened, rebellious, witch-like, that she must be replaced by this angelically
innocent and dutiful daughter, a girl who is therefore defined as ‘more beautiful still’
than the Queen.” (GG 38) At the root of women’s objectification by the male power
is man’s fear of female power. Men do not want women to overpower them and
hence as part of power strategy women are kept constantly struggling with one
another for their acceptable social status and in the process are objectified. They are
objectified because though men fear women they cannot abolish the latter altogether.
They need women, glorify and adore them but at the same time want them to be
powerless. Hence the male system builds “constructs” to ward off its fear by
objectifying women. Folk and fairy tales become conveyors of such constructs as
Nancy Chodorow points out: “Although a boy fears [a woman], he also finds her
seductive and attractive. He cannot simply dismiss and ignore her. Boys and men
develop psychological and cultural/ideological mechanisms to cope with their fears
without giving up women altogether.”50

For Gilbert and Gubar the conflicting – “essential but equivocal” relationship
between Snow White and the queen is centrally so dominant a theme of the tale that
they would rename it ‘Snow White and Her Wicked Stepmother.’ It is, according to
them, the relationship between “the angel woman” and “the monster woman” that
instigates the central and the only action of the tale:

“... the central action of the tale – indeed, its only action – arises from the
relationship between these two women: the one fair, young, pale, the other just as
fair, but older, fiercer; the one a daughter, the other a mother; the one sweet,
ignorant, passive, the other both artful and active; the one a sort of angel, the other an
undeniable witch.” (GG 36) These two female characters, the “two mythic masks”
(GG 17) and the conflict and competition between them are foregrounded while the
father though physically absent from the scene actually is the driving force, in the
persona of the mirror, behind the fight. The women’s entrapment within a patriarchal
frame is symbolically suggested in ‘the transparent enclosures’ of the glass window
frame, “a magic looking glass (and) an enchanted and enchanting glass coffin.” (GG
36) For Gilbert and Gubar these are the tools that patriarchy indirectly instigates
women to use against themselves to ruin themselves leaving ‘man’kind blameless.

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As patriarchal subjects and objects women are fatally set against one another within
a patriarchal frame. Angela Carter rightly says:

To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case.

To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case – that is to be killed.

This is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman.51

Gilbert and Gubar point out that the mirror – the patriarch, patriarchy – determines
women’s fate and rules over them. As such ‘he’ is the author and the authority and
thus becomes a metaphor for textual paternity as well. Through the tale of Snow
White the mirror “reproduces a cultural script in which women are enmeshed in a
discourse connecting beauty, death, and femininity. Beauty as reflected in the glass
and seen through the coffin, may be attractive, but its seductions have a sinister,
lethal side.”52 Also the objectified, passive, inert body of a woman itself becomes a
mirror projecting and reflecting male desire and ego. A systematic, schematic
elevation of the female body contributes paradoxically to the debasement and
dehumanisation of women. Cold, static, inert and silent female body fascinates and
arouses men as an art object. They look upon it not as a human being but as an
enchanting object of beauty and desire to be enchanted by it. Patriarchal tendency
and agenda to objectify women in its thrall dehumanises them at their own hands and
refuses them a right to a dignified life of their own desires and its fulfilment. The
magic mirror’s strategy of objectifying women affects and victimises not just women
but even and perhaps more stifles the men themselves. Robert Coover in his rework
‘The Dead Queen’53 (1973) undertakes the attempt to explore and reveal these effects
of the objectifying strategies of patriarchy on women as well as men.

• Robert Coover’s ‘The Dead Queen’ (704-711)

Coover’s revision is a first person narrative by the prince. The story opens on the
second day of the prince’s wedding to Snow White. It is the occasion of the queen’s
funeral. The glass coffin in which Snow White was lying till the wedding day now
contains her dead stepmother. As he speculatively looks at the dead queen in the
glass coffin he narrates this narrative using flashbacks. The very initial image of the
glass coffin containing Snow White and now the queen is suggestive of what Sexton
and the feminist critics have said about women’s fate in patriarchy – continuation of

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the cycle of objectifying and getting objectified, replacing and being replaced by
more desirable objects. However depicting lifelessness and objectification of women
has an added facet of how they could impact even men.

Coover invests the queen with the power and energy of an immaculate artist, a
schemer, a plot-maker and its director. One is not sure but perhaps like Anne
Sexton’s ‘Snow White’ Coover’s rework too offered interpretive clues to Gilbert and
Gubar when they said that the queen is “a plotter, a plot-maker, a schemer, a witch,
an artist and impersonator, a woman of almost infinite creative energy, witty, wily
and self-absorbed as all artists traditionally are.” (GG 38-39) Coover’s prince
looking at the grin on the dead old Queen’s face at the time of her burial in the
mountains says, “I knew then it was she who had composed this scene, as all before,
she who had led us, revelers and initiates, to this cold and windy grave site, her the
design, ours the enactment, and I felt like the first man, destined to rise and fall, rise
and fall, to the end of time.” (C 704) She “the master of disguises” (C 708), “the old
clown” (C 711) is likely to have no feelings – either of love or hatred – towards
Snow White at all, considers the Prince. “And thereby (she) hatch(es) a plot” (C 705)
which she ends ironically with her own cruel death dance in the red hot iron shoes.
However while probing the drives that compel her to design the tale the Prince says,
“... she had lusted for ... a part in the story, immortality, her place in guarded time.
To be the forgotten stepmother of a forgotten princess was not enough. It was the
mirror that had fucked her, fucked us as all. And did she foresee those very boots, the
dance, that last obscenity? No doubt. Or something much like them. Just as she
foresaw the Hunter’s duplicity, the Dwarfs’ ancient hunger, my own weakness for
romance. Even our names were lost: she had transformed us into colours, simple
proclivities; our faces were forever fixed and they weren’t even our own. ... we’ve all
been reduced to jesters, fools; tragedy she reserved for herself alone.” (C 705-6)
Appreciating her subtlety the Prince calls “her use of a princess with hair as black as
ebony, a skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, ... her use of miners of gold” (C
711) and her use of the mirror “as a door” a “Great Work.” (C 711) The Prince
breaks away from the traditional one-dimensional, unquestioning role of a hero. He
is inquisitive, curious and reflective.

At the wedding feast the night before the Queen’s funeral, he is puzzled by Snow
White’s reaction to her “stepmother’s terrible entertainment,” (C 704) her death

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dance in the red hot iron shoes. He wonders at her cheeks becoming even rosier with
the merriment and cheerfulness at the sight of the “awesome execution.”(C 705) Her
excitement, squealing applause and clapping make him wonder whether despite all
their “watchfulness” (C 705) the innocent child had “become the very evil she had
been saved from.”(C 705) He wonders whether she has become heartless and her
“good and simple soul envenomed” (C 705) enough to vindictively arrange for her
tormentor’s “death dance” or whether she is the same innocent child unaware of any
pain, malice or risks. He cannot really understand her. He suspects that she has
become corrupt from within and by no means can he probe deep into her true self: “I
could vouch for her hymen from this side, bur worried that it had been probed from
within.” (C 705) On the wedding night he is troubled by the true meaning of the
name Snow White, “her taste for luxury and collapse,” (C 707) and also the
compulsion leading him to the mountain, “the birdshit on the glass coffin.”(C 707)
The revelation comes to him at last and he realises for the first time in his life that
Snow White is a “frozen void,” (708) that she is an inaccessible, heartless virgin
beyond change or growth, as lifeless as the dead Queen. The Prince’s gaze into the
mirrors to view Snow White’s “paradigmatic beauty” (C 709) reflects not the girl but
the old Queen “flailing about madly in her red hot shoes.” (C 705)

After a passionate wedding night the Prince in a state of “delicious annihilation”

finds at dawn “the bed unmussed and unbloodied, her hymen intact.” (C 710) Intense
speculations lead him to think that “she’s suffered no losses, in fact, that’s just the
trouble, that hymen can never be broken, not even by me, not in a thousand nights,
this is her gift and essence, and because of it, she can see neither fore nor aft, doesn’t
even know there is a mirror on the wall. Perhaps it was this that made the old Queen
hate her so.” (C 705)

Thus the Queen was fully aware of the mirror’s authority and power but Snow White
is taken in by this authority and framed by it unawares, completely unconsciously.
The grip of the mirror on them is so strong that though with all her creative energy
she plots and struggles to escape the mirror she has to remain within the narrative
frame that sentences her to death. No matter how desperately she may try to free
herself and “to jump out of her skin” (C 706), she has to return to the “mirror.” She
tries to break away from the mimetic conventions and narrative norms of the fairy
tale genre but is herself captured and victimised by it. The prince says, “... it could be

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argued that she had invented, then pursued the impossible, in order to push the
possible beyond her reach, and thus had died as so many have believed, of vanity,
but ... the fact is she was her own consummation, and we, in effect, had carried out –
were still carrying out – our own ludicrous performances without an audience.” (C
706) He feels that the Queen “had poisoned us all with pattern. In the end, in spite of
everything, she had been accepted as part of the family, spared the outcast’s shame,
shrouded simply in black and granted her rings and diadems.” (C 706)

Like the Queen the Prince too is victimised. His questions: “Why did things happen
as though they were necessary?” (C 707), “Why hadn’t I been allowed to disenchant
her with a kiss like everybody else?” (C 709) show his irritation with disallowance to
conform. He questions the narrative in which he plays a part, resists it, recognises the
role of the mirror in the Queen’s rivalry with Snow White, and identifies the Queen
as a constructor of this narrative, however, fails to see the Queen’s own conformity
with the narratological, framed, mimetic conventions of the fairy tale. Against his
father’s disapprobation and disapproval he too desires and attempts to change the
plot: “the old Queen had me now, ... I knew now the force that had driven her, that
had freed me, freed us all, that we might live happily ever after, though we didn’t
deserve it.” (C 711) Out of this revelation he kisses the dead Queen with a hope to
disenchant her. Trying to reject the old narrative he is ironically caught in it. His
expectation to disenchant reflects the romantic disenchantments by the fairy tale
heroes: “If I had expected something, it did not occur. She did not return my kiss,...
I’d been wrong about her, wrong about everything...” (C 711) He could not, was not
allowed to resuscitate Snow White. And now to the dismay and horror of the
onlookers including his father who is angry and in tears and Snow White, who faints,
the Prince out of pride and affection rather than expectation and hope, kisses the
stinking Queen for the second time. Nauseated and hopeless, the Prince wants to try
once more thinking this time it would work, when he is whisked away from the dead
Queen. He pleads; the guards restrain him; his father utterly unhappy about the son’s
act turns his back. “The Queen’s corpse [which had tumbled down is] dumped
hastily back into the coffin and quickly interred, everyone holding his nose.”(C 711)
The story ends with the Prince thinking: “if this is the price of beauty, it is too high. I
was glad she was dead.” (C 711)

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Thus in fact, the conventions and norms of a fairy tale hero and narrative that the
Prince wishes to part with, he observes in the most conventional manner possible. He
desires a romantic role of a hero and an act of disenchantment. His disillusionment
with this expectation makes him say, “It was the mirror that had fucked her, fucked
us all.” (C 705)

The mirror restricts choices of both women as well as men. The framework of the
mirror maddens everyone. It victimises and stifles all. Most of the contemporary
retellings and critical thinking on ‘Snow White’ discounts magical meaning and
function of the mirror. As seen earlier in this analysis the mirror has been invested
with metaphorical meaning and function. It stands for authority. Different retellings
and interpretive criticism see beyond its literal reflective function. As discussed
earlier Gilbert and Gubar call the mirror’s voice the voice of the father, the patriarch.
Bettelheim sees the mirror as a symbol of the young girl projecting her oedipal
feelings on her mother. For Shuli Barzilai the mirror stands for the inner voice of the
Queen who cannot accept the natural phenomenon of ageing and her daughter’s
growing independence.54 While Steven Jones maintains it is the voice of both Snow
White’s and society’s,55 Girardot hears the voice of truth in the mirror56. Irrespective
of what the mirror is learnt to stand for it definitely is a powerful, dictating image
and an intertextual link between the retold tales and the old Grimm tale.

Mirror as a mouthpiece of patriarchy:

Patriarchy sustains by controlling women with restrictions on her body and mind.
Her continued confinement alone could ensure its existence. As a result the system
pits women against one another and keeps them in a continual competition/ rivalry.
The three female figures in ‘Snow White’ - Snow White herself, her own mother, the
Queen and her stepmother, the wicked Queen – are all entrapped in glass enclosures.
Snow White’s mother looks through a window at snow while wishing for a child, the
new Queen consults her magic mirror whereas Snow White is placed in a glass coffin
till her resuscitation. The continuity of entrapment is symbolically suggested in the
succession of one female figure by the other. The magic mirror’s patriarchal voice of
judgement and gaze determine the Queen’s and thereby “every woman’s self-
evaluation.” (GG 38) It is his rule that the “maddened, rebellious, witchlike” Queen
be “replaced by [his] angelically innocent and dutiful daughter, a girl who is

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therefore defined as ‘more beautiful still’ (my italics) than the Queen.” (GG 38) Six
years before Gilbert and Gubar’s interpretation of ‘Snow White’ in these terms,
Coover had thematically articulated the above mentioned thought in his retelling. He
presents not only the evaluation of the Queen but even a suggestive confirmation of
the Queen’s status and spirit /traits in Snow White. The fixation of angel-monster
images of women finds an explicit expression in the tale. Prince Charming, the
narrator of the tale and the to be king and patriarch, trembles at the incomprehensible
expression on the dead Queen that is suggestive of greater power than she is
expected to have. He looks at his father who reassures him: “no, it was a mere
grimace, the contortions of pain, she had suffered greatly after all, torture often
exposes the diabolic in the face of man, she was an ordinary woman, beautiful it is
true, and shrewd, but she had risen above her merits, and falling, had lost her reason
to rancor.” (C 705)

Patriarchy masks women’s revolt and positive self assertion as madness, irrationality
and aggression. Their attempts at voicing themselves are sidelined and their
sufferings are stressed. The King in the tale too masks the Queen’s superiority by
stressing her suffering, thus suggesting that she is not victorious but defeated.
Remarkably enough the Prince mentions that he sees that the Queen is “masked to
hide her eyes, which to what my father called a morbid imagination might seem to be
winking, one open, the other squeezed shut.” (C 706) The dead Queen’s wink is
indicative and ironical. It is suggestive of the subversive indications underlying the
surface of the masks that patriarchy imposes on women. Prince Charming does not
believe in the mask his father tries to force on the Queen’s face: “But I did not
believe him, I could see for myself, did not even entirely trust him, this man who
thought power a localised convention, magic a popular word for concealment, for
though it made him a successful King, decisive and respected, the old Queen’s grin
mocked such simple faith and I was not consoled.” (C 704)

Gilbert and Gubar in their assessment of the tale identify Snow White and the wicked
Queen and argue that in patriarchy every angelic woman has a monster hidden
within. Coover too thematises this idea when his Prince Charming witnesses traits of
the Dead Queen in his bride. While he recognises the whole experience of the
Queen’s death and his wedding as a plot hatched by the Queen herself and realises
himself playing a role determined by her, when he sees Snow White full of joy and

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“outrageous” (C 705) excitement at the Queen’s death dance, he suspects Snow

White of plotting this end for her mother in order to replace her: “... was it she who
had invited her old tormentor to the ball, commissioned the iron slippers, drawn her
vindictively into that ghastly dance? Or did she simply laugh as the righteous must to
see the wicked fall? Perhaps her own release from death had quickened her heart,
such that mere continuance now made her a little giddy. Or had she, absent, learned
something of hell?” (C 705) “Mere continuance” is the fate of all women in
patriarchy. The “inexorably and inescapably monstrous” (GG 31) traits of Snow
White’s character are suggested through her association with hell.

What patriarchy deems punishable in women is actually their potential to act and to
create. It is actually the artistic potential of the Queen, her desire to have “a part in
the story” for which she is termed wicked and punished. Snow White too is seen by
the Prince as a plotter, and artist who will confront a similar, inevitable fate.

On their wedding night the Prince sees Snow White and the Queen almost merged
with each other in the mirror: “I gazed into the mirrors to see, for the first time, Snow
White’s paradigmatic beauty, but instead it had been the old Queen I’d seen there,
flailing about madly in her red hot shoes.”(C 709) The mirror prophecies Snow
White’s future by reflecting the dying Queen in her place. Later in the tale the
interchange between the two women characters’ fate is shown to be mutual. Like
Snow White turning into the Queen, the latter too is buried in the same glass coffin
which displayed Snow White before her revival to life. The Prince even imagines
deliberate purpose in her dying in this manner: “to lead me away from the merely
visible to vision, from the image to the imaged, from reflection to the projecting
miracle itself, the heart, the pure Snow White...!” (C 711)

Considering himself to be the focus of her art, the Prince slips into a patriarchal
reading of the tale. He imagines that it is for him that the Queen died and now
assumes the role of a traditional hero, a disenchanter and an awakener. When he
cannot awaken the Dead Queen he confirms the message of the traditional tale that
the Queen had to pay the price for wanting to be the fairest in the world. His
disgusting attempts at kissing the stinking Queen with the hope of awakening bring
him to realise the vanity of imagining the Queen to have lived and died for him and
awaited him. Though his illusion is unmasked as “the mask fell away from her open

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eye, now milky white,” (C 711) and he is rendered comic, his revelation critically
underlines and deconstructs the traditional assessment of the Queen and Snow White.
It presents Snow White as not really angelic while the Queen not that monstrous.
With her mastery in disguises the Queen succeeds in subverting patriarchy and
shaking monarchy. While the King loses his composure, is enraged and ashamed at
the act of the son, the future king’s dignity is lost to the extent that he might not be
considered worthy enough to succeed the throne. Everyone including Snow White is
disgusted with him. The Queen thus undermines patriarchy and as such is victorious
in subverting male-order. She triumphantly kills the patriarchal ideals of beauty,
innocence and resignation that Snow White represents.

•
Patricia Carlin’s ‘The Stepmother Arrives’ (2002)57

The unidirectional transformation of Snow White into her stepmother, of the angel
into a monster is cyclical. It is suggested in many retellings including the ones
discussed above. As Gilbert and Gubar explicitly point out Snow White “in fiery
shoes will do a terrible death-dance out of the story, the looking glass, the transparent
coffin of her own image.” (GG 42) Patricia Carlin in her retelling shows this pattern
but even expresses the wish for this cycle to stop. For the purpose perhaps she very
emphatically and forcefully relates the end of the two women:

The stepmother dies

in her burning shoes. Her dancing

days are over. The girl acquires

a castle, a kingdom, a mirror,

and a new daughter.

She dances away her days in the castle.

“Mother, my glass eyes

are open,” she sings

at night in her silent dream mouth.

The face in the mirror changes.

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It’s time for an ending.

Upstairs they are heating the iron shoes. (47)

Snow White in Carlin’s retelling “acquires” after her stepmother’s death the rewards
of beauty and innocence along with a mirror and a new daughter to continue the
cycle. In the quiet of the night she calls her mother to tell her that her eyes are open.
There is a clear intertextual reference to Anne Sexton’s retelling wherein Snow
White is described as having china-blue doll eyes rolling open and shut. Besides, it
suggests on the one hand, the girl’s awareness of her forthcoming fate and on the
other, an insightful moment of awakening. Writing in 2002 with a reference to
Sexton’s revolutionary retelling of the 1970s, Carlin presents how Sexton’s Snow
White who at the end of the tale looks into the mirror “as women do,” has changed
over time and come to understand her mother. Her “glass” eyes strike an association
with the mirror. She too now opens up to the looking glass. The ambiguity of this
image continues in the line that follows:

“The face in the mirror changes.”

It could mean, on the one hand, a change in Snow White; both physical and
psychological/attitudinal and on the other, that she is being replaced by her “new
daughter.” The pessimistic assertion of the cyclical pattern also expresses the
urgency to end this fate for women. Though it literally suggests that Snow White’s
days are over, the line “It’s time for an ending,” indicates the ending of the poem, of
Snow White and mainly the urge and desire to put an end to the cyclical pattern.

• Emma Donoghue’s ‘The Tale of the Apple’ (1997) (41-58)

Emma Donoghue in her retelling retains most of the motifs in the original tale and
specifically presents intertextual links with the mirror in an interesting manner.
Explicitly in tune with Gilbert and Gubar’s views on the mirror as a mouthpiece of
patriarchy Donoghue literally puts the words of the mirror into the king’s mouth.
There is no mirror in the tale. However when the King sees his daughter and
newlywed bride in his bed, he says, “Two such fair ladies,..have never been seen in
one bed. But which of you is the fairest of them all?...Tell me,...how am I to judge
between two such beauties? ” (D 47-48) It is this question of his that sets the two
women “like mirrors set opposite each other, making a corridor of reflections,

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infinitely hollow.” (D 48) It is the father’s comparison that instigates rivalry between
the two of them: “We looked at each other, she and I chimed in the chorus of his
laughter. Am I imagining in retrospect that our voices rang a little out of tune?” (D
47) Before his words the women, particularly Snow White, prejudiced against each
other have started building a bond of friendship. Fragility of this bond is on account
of first, preconditioned beliefs Snow White has gathered from her childhood songs:
“...I knew from the songs that a stepmother’s smile is like a snake’s, so I shut my
mind to her” (D 46) and second, it is she who is more jealous for being replaced by
the new Queen: Before she came “it was me who was mirrored in my father’s fond
eyes; mine was the first apple from the orchard.” (D 46)

Donoghue in her work puts a share of blame on Snow White too. It is rather the
“infinitely hollow” standards of beauty dictated by the King-father who desires a son
and curses both the Queens for failing him and the internalisation of these standards
by both the women that really sets them apart. Donoghue implicates Snow White in
the growth of rivalry between her and the Queen. For at one point Snow White says,
“I know now that I would have liked her if we could have met as girls, ankle deep in
a river. I would have taken her hand in mine if I had not found it weighted down by
the ruby stole from my mother’s finger. I could have loved her if, if, if.”(D 46) It is
Snow White who is more jealous of her new mother: “... I could tell she would be my
enemy. There was only room for one queen in a castle.” (D 45)

The Queen initiates friendship and softens Snow White. Slowly the closeness
increases. She would lace up Snow White’s stays, comb her hair and feed her fruit.
However Snow White is hesitant in the relation: “Though I never trusted her, I took
delight in what she gave me.” (D 47) The father initially “cheered” to see them so
close later rifts them apart to the extent that when the Queen fails to bear a child even
after a year of marriage, he forbids her “to go walking in the orchard [with Snow
White], or lift a hand, or do anything except lie on her back and wait to find herself
with a child, the child who would be his longed-for son.” (D 48-49) From here
onwards the Queen snaps her bond with Snow White and after a year when the king
is sick past caring, cursing his enemies, wives and the son he cannot beget, the
Queen asserts her power and wishes Snow White to disown her right to it. The tussle
between the two displays the challenge they throw to each other and is interspersed
with intertextual references:

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“Say that I am queen, she said.

You are my father’s wife, I replied.

I will be queen after he is dead, she said.

I made no reply.

Say that I am queen, she repeated, her fingers whitening around the sceptre.

If you really were, I told her, it would need no saying.

She stood on the pedestal above me.

The moment I am a widow, she said, I could have you cast out.

Indeed.

If you cross me in this, she said confidingly, I could have a huntsman take you into
the forest, chop your heart, and bring it back on a plate.

Strong meat, I murmured.

I can do it, she howled, I have the power.

I said nothing.” (D 50-51)

To prove and assert herself and her power the Queen gets the King killed the same
night. Here the retold story takes a new twist.

Snow White sensing the threat to her life decides to leave the castle and manages to
escape: “I decided to leave it all to her, and leave her to it. I filled my hems with gold
pieces and slipped away.” (D 51) In the forest beyond the castle wandering for many
days she is picked up by a gang of woodsmen. Just as her practical wisdom is
displayed in her timely decision to run away from the castle, so is it reflected even
when she defends herself against the possible sexual assault on her by one of the
woodsmen: “One of them asked what was in my skirts to make them so heavy, and I
said, Knives, and he took his hand off my thigh and never touched me again.” (D 52)
She works hard for them to keep the bad memories at bay. However she is haunted
not by her father but the stepmother and to her surprise, picturing to her mind the
stepmother’s life as the Queen, she sees strangely striking similarity in their lives:

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“long days in charge of fire, and iron, and water. Her hands would stay smooth as
lilies while mine were scrubbed raw day by day, but we were living much the same
kind of life.” (D 53) Slowly Snow White gets sympathetic towards the stepmother
though she fears being killed by her: “The thread between us was stretched thin,
wound round trees and snagged in thickets, but never broken.” (D 54) The Queen
comes searching for Snow White apparently, to her, to kill her. However she is
different. The first time she comes she seems to have changed: “There was nothing
of the wife about her when she smiled.” (D 54) Snow White refuses entry to her into
the household but when out of curiosity looks out to see whether the queen has gone
she sees her still there under a tree. She lets her in for a moment. The stepmother
tells her, “I keep breaking mirrors.” (D 55)

Female bonding is shown to form between the traditionally polarised angel-monster

figures. Gilbert and Gubar do not deem it possible in patriarchy. Donoghue, in her
attempt to put new skin on the old tale shows this possibility gradually building in
the breaking of mirrors. Snow White while sitting by the fire with her stepmother
gets nostalgic about their relation. The stepmother laces up her stays tightly. Snow
White is lost in a stupor like state. The men who never bother to know what is in her
mind get angry to see no food cooked for them. This visit becomes a sort of one of
Snow White’s daydreams till after some weeks her mother visits her again. This time
“there was nothing of the queen about her.” (D 55) She urges Snow White to return
home. For life without her is “like dancing in shoes of red hot iron.” (D 56) Snow
White turns down her offer. With her jewelled comb the Queen starts combing Snow
White’s hair, “patient with all the burns and knots my new life had put in it.” (D 56)
Snow White shuts her eyes and lets her comb dig into the scalp “scraping down to
the kernel of memory.” (D 56) It puts her to sleep and thus again when the men come
home they curse the Queen calling her a “witch to put such poison of idleness in
[Snow White’s] head.” (D 56) They warn her to stay inside the house and not let
anyone in. As she resumes her life as per their dictates her hair knot again and her
stays hang loose. The stepmother returns after a few weeks in early autumn. This
time “there was nothing of the mother about her.” (D 57) She has a half ripe apple –
one side green the other red – in her hand. She bites into the green side and Snow
White the red. The latter begins to choke with fear and excitement and swoons.
When she wakes up she realises she is being carried in an open coffin to another

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kingdom, as the men tell her, to be treated like a princess. Her mouth is full of apple
and as she chews it she realises that it is not poisonous but is “the first apple of the
year from [her] father’s orchard.” (D 58) This last act of her stepmother softens her
completely. The Queen symbolically returns to Snow White her rightful place in the
kingdom and biting into the green part of the first ripe apple and offering Snow
White the ripe side she shows her willingness to accept her secondary status to Snow
White. Above everything else she initiates to re-establish and strengthen the fragile
bond with Snow White and patiently waits for Snow White’s willing acceptance of
this bond. Realising the stepmother’s loving attempts at winning her heart and her
true sacrificial love for the stepdaughter, Snow White chooses to join the Queen: “I
made them set me down, and I got out of the box, deaf to their clamour. I stared
around me till I could see the castle, ... I turned my face toward it, and started
walking.” (D 58) Her observation “there was nothing of the mother about her” points
to the dissolution of the mother-daughter relationship between the two and its
substitution with a bond of sharing, love and care.

The traditional tale of Snow White and most of the retellings including the ones
considered above generally focus on the individual character of Snow White and her
happiness. This is true about other tales and their retellings as well though in feminist
retellings personal choices of the heroine could be seen as representative. For
instance, Marxist retellings present a utopia not for an individual character but with
their anti-royalist, anti-capitalist messages they desire and design a happy existence
for the entire society. Merseyside Fairy Story Collective’s ‘Snow White’ undertakes
this Marxist agenda in combination with the feminist concerns of gender equality.58
Egalitarian thought incorporates emancipation of all the suppressed and the
victimised. As such retellings with a Marxist agenda attempt to assert women’s right
to liberation while also at the same time voice loudly the suppressed voices of the
lower classes and bring to the fore oppressive and artificial class differences. In
doing so these retellings intend to advocate an absolutely non-discriminating social
system that gives everyone his/her due. Mary Maher’s ‘Hi Ho, It’s Off to Strike We
Go!’(1982)59 and ‘Snow White’ by Merseyside Fairy Story Collective (1972)
exemplify and represent retellings, which attack idealised values of beauty, riches
and royalty in the classical tales. They present a different view on happiness.
Breaking away from the traditional happy ending which focuses mostly on the royal

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couples these retellings end with happiness in society at large and suggest
revolutionary political changes substituting monarchy with democracy and
capitalism with socialism.

• Merseyside Fairy Story Collective’s ‘Snow White’ (74-80)

Merseyside Fairy Story Collective’s ‘Snow White’ presents a Snow White who
rebels against monarchy and successfully fights for the rights of the poor and the
low. The Queen here is an epitome of oppression and cruelty. She has power and
uses it tyrannically. Her question to the magic mirror that she always carries in her
hand and that reflects everything happening in her kingdom which leaves very little
scope for her subjects to act against her wishes, echoes the question in the traditional
tale. However ‘fairness’ of the original question is replaced by happiness. She returns
to the mirror always to ask:

‘Mirror, mirror in my hand

who is the happiest in the land?’

She would be pleased to hear the mirror announcing each time:

‘Queen, all bow to your command,

You are the happiest in the land.’ (74)

Nothing useful and beautiful belongs to the people. They have to offer everything
they own and make to the Queen of the Mountains. Everyday people in long
processions toil the steep path to the castle to submit things they have made of which
the Queen keeps the best to herself and allows the subjects to take whatever is “left
over or spoiled.” (74) Pale little Snow White belongs to the mining community living
in “the diamond mines beside the distant sea” (75) and is a skilled jewellery
designer. The Queen forces the miners to mine diamonds and present to her a
chestful of them every year. She accumulates these jewels in glass jars.

The story presents the year when Snow White accompanies the seven little dwarfs.
When the Queen learns that the beautifully well-made diamond necklace is made by
Snow White she orders her to “stay in the castle as a jewellery maker.” (75) Snow
White, her pale cheeks turning red, is about to cry “No!” when all the dwarfs putting

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their fingers to the lips warn her to be silent. They are led to the workshop where
jewels are stored. The light from the accumulated jewels gives Snow White a
headache. While bidding her goodbye the dwarfs call her lucky, for henceforth she
would no longer be poor or lead a hard and dangerous life toiling underground for
long and weary hours: “Here servants will wait on you. You will sleep in a soft,
scented bed and be brought whatever delicious food and drink you want. And, if the
Queen is especially pleased with your work she will give you rich rewards.” (75-76)
Snow White however does not long for such happiness. Her happiness and comfort is
where her poor fellowmen are, despite the hardships and misery that accompany
such a living. She works to please the Queen and win a reward. But for her the “rich”
reward is to go back home. The Queen angrily disallows and shows her in the mirror
the dwarfs and others toiling in the mines. She does not understand Snow White’s
idea of happiness in longing to return to the miserable existence: “You could have
anything your heart desires and yet you ask to return to that miserable life!” (76) The
Queen’s (Capitalist) mentality of enjoying comforts and happiness at the expense of
others’ hard labour and by exploiting those who toil for her makes Snow White
restless. She makes one more beautiful piece of jewellery for the Queen so that she
calls her before the throne. When the Queen does so and asks Snow White to speak
her heart’s desire Snow White replies, “Majesty, ... what I ask for is this: take only
what you need from the people of the kingdom and let them keep the rest so that they
can no longer be cold and hungry and miserable.” (76) Controlling her anger, since
she does not want to lose the skilled artist useful to her, the Queen makes Snow
White look into the mirror that reflects a strange image of Snow White wearing a
rich gown and adorned with pearls and rubies with a golden crown on her head the
Queen says, “You could be a princess.” (77) However this possible future does not
tempt Snow White. She remembers the words of a song she would sing with her
friends while returning from mining:

Emerald’s green but grass is greener.

Sapphires pale beside the sea.

No jet as black as the wild night sky,

No ruby red

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No ruby red

No ruby red as hearts which cry to be free. (77)

She like her friends and fellowmen longs for freedom which the Queen has denied to
them, freedom which every human is naturally endowed with, freedom which every
human is entitled to. The closeness to nature that these miners share is contrasted
with the Queen’s appreciation of artificial beauty: “No flower in all my gardens is as
delicately shaped as these ear-rings you have made,” (77) she says. Snow White
keeps making beautiful jewellery for the Queen but does not ask for any reward. The
Queen tempts her to be a princess but Snow White’s denial enrages her and she
tightens the vigil on Snow White. After a year Snow White sees the dwarfs carrying
up the castle the chest of diamonds. However she is not allowed to meet them. While
the Queen keeps a watch on the dwarfs through the mirror, Snow White empties the
chest herself and manages to escape the tower. The Queen watches the dwarfs go
further and further away from the castle and by the evening is shocked to hear the
mirror tell her:

Though all bow to your command,

Snow White is the happiest in the land. (78)

The Queen sees Snow White joyfully appearing out of the chest of drawers and is
filled with terrible rage. After ordering the soldiers waiting on Snow White to be
thrown from the castle walls for their negligence and thinking overnight how to
punish Snow White, she orders her soldiers to seal up the entrance of the diamond
mines so that Snow White and her companions would die underground while at
work. The soldiers are horrified but dare not disobey her. She sees in the mirror how
the soldiers seal up the way out of the mine and is happy. The news spreads and
people gather in crowds to witness the Queen’s cruelty. Throughout the night a great
crowd of people waits at a distance from soldiers guarding the mine and whisper in
low voices about the cruelty of the Queen. However suddenly they hear a tapping
sound and see a rock moving. Soon one of the dwarfs appears from a narrow passage
and is followed by all others, Snow White one among them. The oldest of the dwarfs
is reminded of another way out of the mine and all of them dig up in the dark until
that way is opened up. The people as well as the soldiers are amazed to see this

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happen. People start cheering. Some of the soldiers join them too. However some
soldiers ask Snow White to surrender and return to the castle. Before this huge crowd
Snow White refuses the soldiers point-blank and speaks out people’s mind aloud: “I
will not go back to the castle and we will send no more diamonds to the Queen.
Everyone will keep the things they make and send nothing to the Queen of the
Mountains.” (79) On being threatened to be killed she courageously confronts them
saying, “You may kill some of us... but in the end you will lose for there are far more
people than there are soldiers.” (79) She has given vent to the people’s suppressed
emotions as a result of which people join Snow White’s rebellion and dauntlessly
surround the soldiers to snatch the weapons from them. The Queen is enraged to see
the people rising against her and expresses her anger at the instigator of this rebellion
by breaking into pieces all the jewellery made by her. The uprising renders even the
mirror disobedient. When she orders it to “Make them bow to my command,” the
mirror expresses its inability by saying,

‘Queen who was so rich and grand

The people cast you from the land.’ (80)

So saying the magic mirror mists over and beyond the mist the Queen can see
nothing but herself. She tries to fling the no longer useful mirror from the castle wall.
But the mirror is stuck to her hand and as she lifts it above her head and throws it,
she falls with it screaming deep down until she is shattered into pieces on the rocks.

The story ends with the Queen’s end before which Snow White has announced the
beginning of a social structure where one would reap and own the fruits of one’s
labour. A utopian revolutionary social set-up without any authoritarian, oppressive
control is imagined and projected in the tale. The Queen and the mirror are
identified. They end together and in a similar manner. Their complete destruction
symbolises total denial of centralised power which affects the marginalised sections
of society and introduces a rift between classes. A classless society where everyone
would be treated equally and everyone would fulfil his/her needs and be happy, is
dreamt and established at the end of this retelling.

Though the focus of the tale is political it does not do away with the feminist concern
with gender. It does not have a prince nor is the mirror a patriarchal voice.

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However that it is Snow White who acts as a rebel and a spokesperson of equality
and that the mirror and the Queen who is the epitome of power are identified, hint at
the feminist aspects of the tale since patriarchy necessarily denotes power and
authority concentrated in the hands of men. Thus through its Marxist agenda this
revision of the traditional ‘Snow White’ touches upon gender issues as well.
Marriage with a rich prince or a dream of being a princess is just dispensed with and
happiness is seen not necessarily in financial well being. Traditional happy ending in
marriage here is replaced by a revolutionary political change suggesting a profound
change in the status-quo.

As rightly observed by Vanessa Joosen many retellings of ‘Snow White’ like Gilbert
and Gubar’s analytic discourse on the tale view it in a broader literary context; depict
the character’s psychological depth rather than presenting them in black and white
shades; fill in the gaps like the disappearance of the king from the tale; challenge or
question the happy endings by presenting alternatives and lastly, rationalise the
supernatural role of the magical mirror.60 Many of Gilbert and Gubar’s concerns are
reflected in these retellings, particularly in the depiction of the wicked Queen as a
creative plotter/schemer. In most cases she is presented in a positive light while it is
the King, physically absent but exercising his authoritative role through the mirror,
who is assigned negative features.

Retellings like those of Donoghue's ‘The Tale of the Apple,’ Grainne Healy’s ‘Snow
Fight Defeats PatriArki’61 (1989) offer female bonding as an alternative to the
traditional happy ending. Retellings like Coover’s present a male character’s
perspective maintaining a distance from the narrative. Writers like Hubert Schirneck
in his ‘The Latest News from the Seven Dwarves’62 (2000) present ‘Snow White’
from the dwarves’ perspective. Herein the dwarves see Snow White as an ungrateful
child. This retelling aimed at children invites children to self-critically identify
themselves with Snow White rather than see her either as a victimised or idealised
role model.

Retellings of ‘Snow White’ range in narratological perspective from the Queen,

Snow White, the dwarfs, the prince and in some cases the mirror63 and even the
apple64. However, no retelling has been attempted through the king’s or the hunter’s
perspective. That fairy tale retelling has been greatly influenced by feminist criticism

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and the limited role performed by the two characters in the original tale could be the
reasons why retellings from their viewpoint are absent.

It is in their 1994 book No Man’s Land that Gilbert and Gubar return to ‘Snow
White’ and its retellings. They confirm the need to retell the old tales (not just ‘Snow
White’) in order to understand the variety and complexity of roles women have been
and are able to play as authors and characters: “... the old fairy tales about relations
between men and women have mutated in increasingly complicated ways, so that
many of us – feminist critics, cultural historians – seem to be lost in a forest of
stories about the future of sexuality and sex roles.”65 Feminist literature and criticism
have remarkably shaped the attempts at retelling fairy tales. Gilbert and Gubar
themselves at the end of the book present retellings that “crystallise controversies
about the erotic that have persisted from the turn of the century to the present.”66
Readers, particularly women, are offered a choice to select their favourite retold
version and even visualise and create their own stories. Thus retelling provides
writers and readers with a means through which socio-political and humanitarian
perspectives could be discussed though to some extent at the expense of literariness
of the tales.

As said above this Chapter showcases a few varieties of retelling and through their
analysis, particularly of the tale ‘Snow White,’ also attempts to project the creative
and critical interaction that occurs within the scope of fairy tale retelling.

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NOTES

1
Johnson Daniel, “Books Barely Furnish a Room,” The Times 16 Sept. 1992:3.

2
Salman Rushdie, “Angela Carter, 1940-1992: A Very Good Wizard, A Very Dear

Friend,” The New York Times 8 Mar. 1992. 13 May 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/27/specials/carter-rushdie.html

Carter was not much analysed in this project also because she deals with the

Charles Perrault tales and the present project mainly assesses the Grimm fairy tales.

3
Christa Joyce, “Contemporary Women Poets and the Fairy Tale,” Fairy tales

Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings, ed. Susan Reddington Bobby (North

Carolina: McFarland, 2009) 31-43. Subsequent references are given parenthetically

as (Bobby, ).

4
Anne Sexton, “Briar Rose,” Transformations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971)107-

112. Subsequent references are given parenthetically as (T, ).

5
Diana Hume George, Oedipus Anne: The Poetry of Anne Sexton (Urbana: U of

Illinois P, 1987) 38. Subsequent references are given parenthetically as (George, ).

6
F. Jacobi, Fairy Tales of Jacob Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen (New York:

Modern Library, 1952) 48.

7
Dawn Skorczewski, “What Prison is This? Literary Critics Cover Incest in Anne

Sexton’s ‘Briar Rose,’” Signs (Winter,1996, 309-342): 320.

8
Olga Broumas, “The Sleeping Beauty,” Beginning With O (New Haven: Yale

UP, 1977) 50-53.

9
Nancy A. Walker, The Disobedient Writer (Austin: Texas UP, 1995)60.

201 
 
 

10
Sara Hendersen Hay, “Sleeper,” Story Hour (Fayettville: U of Arkansas

P, 1998)10.

11
Sara Hendersen Hay, “Sleeper - 2,” Story Hour (Fayettville: U of Arkansas

P, 1998)11.

12
Sara de Ford, “The Sleeping Beauty,” JSTOR and Poetry Foundation, 171.

13
Robert Coover, “Briar Rose,” (Hypertextual version)

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM/people/scholes/Briar
Rose/texts/BRhome.html 1-42 Subsequent references are given parenthetically as (L

) L for Lexia.

14
Larry McCaffery, The Metaphorical Muse: The Works of Robert Coover, Donald

Barthelme, and William H. Gass(Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1982)14.

15
Angela Carter, The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (London, US: Penguin,

1977, 2008) 25.

16
Robert Coover, “The End of Books,” The New Media Reader, ed. Noah Wardrip-

Fruin and Nick Montfort (London: The MIT Press, 2003) 707. Subsequent

references are given parenthetically.

17
Sunje Redies, “Return With New Complexities: Robert Coover's ‘Briar Rose,’”

Marvels and Tales, 18.1 (2004:9-27)14.

18
Brian Evenson quoted by Redies, 25.

19
Jaroslav Kusnir, “Subversion of Myths: High and Low Culture in Donald

Barthelme’s ‘Snow White’ and Robert Coover's ‘Briar Rose,’” European Journal

of American Culture, 23:1 (2004): 47.

202 
 
 

20
Michael Gerra, “The Awakening,” The New York Times Books, (February 16,

1997) 2.

21
Jane Yolen, Briar Rose (New York: TOR Book, 1992) Subsequent references are

given parenthetically.

22
Jack Zipes quoted from Spells of Enchantment on the introductory page of Yolen’s

novel.

23
Jack Zipes, Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World (2nd ed.

New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2002) 195. Subsequent references are given

parenthetically as (Brothers Grimm ____).

24
The term has been used often by feminists since the 1970s to refer to factionalism

and infighting within feminist movement which mostly is instigated by men or

patriarchal interests directly or indirectly.

25
Caroline King Bernard Hall, Anne Sexton (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989) 106.

26
Carol Leventen, “Transformations’s Silencings,” in Critical Essays on

Anne Sexton ed. Linda Wagner-Martin, (Boston: G K Hall, 1989)136.

27
Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy

Tales (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976) 102.

28
Olga Broumas, “Cinderella” 57-58.

29
Neal A. Lester, “(Un)Happily Ever After: Fairy Tale Morals, Moralities and

Heterosexism in Children’s Texts,” Journal of Gay and Lesbian Issues in

Education 42(2007): 69.

30
Emma Donoghue, “The Tale of the Shoe,” Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New

Skins (USA: Joanna Cotler Books, 1997) 1-8.

203 
 
 

31
Susan Reddington Bobby, ed. Fairy Tales Re-imagined: Essays on New Retellings

(USA: McFarland &Co.Inc, 2009) 24.

32
Francisca Lia Block, “Glass,” The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold (New

York: Joanna Cotler Books, 2000) 53-70.

33
Roald Dahl, Revolting Rhymes 1982, Illus. Quentin Blake (New York: Puffin

Books, 2009) 5.

34
Gail Carlson Levine, Cinderellis and the Glass Hill (New York: Harper Collins,

2000).

35
Philip Pullman, I Was a Rat! Illus. Kevin Hawkes (New York: Dell Yearling, 2000).

36
Priscilla Galloway, “The Prince,” in Truly Grim Tales (New York: Bantam

Doubleday Dell, 1995).

37
Babette Cole, Prince Cinders, 1987, (London: Puffin, 1997).

38
Ellen Jackson, Cinder Edna Illus. Kevin O’Malley (New York: Lothrop, 1994).

39
Melissa Kantor, If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where’s My Prince? (New York:

Hyperion, 2005).

40
Ann Jungman, Cinderella and the Hot Air Balloon Illus. Russell Ayto

(London: Lincoln, 1992).

41
Roald Dahl, “Cinderella,” 5-12.

42
Judith Viorst, If I Were In Charge of the World and Other Worries: Poems for

Children and Their Parents (New York: Alladin Paperbacks, 1981).

43
Jack Zipes, ed. 1983Trials and Tribulations of Little Red riding Hood 2nd ed. (New

York: Routledge, 1993) 343. Subsequent references are given parenthetically as

(TT _).

204 
 
 

44
Ibid, 49-58.

45
Zipes describes the title of his retold tale as ‘Little Red Riding Hood-Re-ruminated
by Tomi Ungerer’, pg 261.

46
Thomas H Johnson, ed., The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (Boston: Little

Brown, 1960) 333.

47
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer

and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale UP, 1979) 17.

48
Steven E Colburn, ed. No Evil Star – Selected Essays, Interviews and Prose (Ann

Arbor, Michigan: U of Michigan P, 1985) 145.

49
Ellen Conan Rose, “Through the Looking Glass: When Women Tell Fairy Tales,”

The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development eds. Elizabeth Abel et al (London:

UP of New England, 1983) 215.

50
Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and Sociology

of Gender (Berkley: U of California P, 1975) 183.

51
Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (New York:

Pantheon, 1979) 76-77.

52
Maria Tatar, The Classic Fairy Tales (New York: Norton, 1999) 77.

53
Robert Coover, “The Dead Queen,” Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Tales of

Western Culture, ed. Jack Zipes (New York: Viking Penguin, 1991) 704-711.

54
Shuli Barzilai, “Reading ‘Snow White’: The Mother’s Story,” Signs 15 (1990): 515-

534.

55
Steven Swann Jones, “The Innocent Persecuted Heroine Genre: An Analysis of Its

Structures and Themes,” Western Folklore 52.1 (1993): 13-41.

205 
 
 

56
N J Girardot, “Initiation and Meaning in the Tale of Snow White and Seven

Dwarfs,” Journal of American Folklore 90 (1977): 274-300.

57
Patricia Carlin, “The Stepmother Arrives,” The Poets Grimm: Twentieth Century

Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales, eds. Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Claudia Carlson

(Ashland: Storyline, 2003) 46-47.

58
Merseyside Fairy Story Collective, “Snow White,” Don’t Bet on the Prince:

Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, ed. Jack Zipes

(New York: Routledge, 1989) 74-80.

59
Mary Maher, “Hi, Ho, It’s Off to Strike We Go!” Rapunzel’s Revenge: Fairy Tales

for Feminists eds. Anne Claffey, et al, (Dublin: Attic, 1985) 31-35.

60
Vanessa Joosen, Critical and Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual

Dialogue between Fairy Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Retellings (Detroit,

Michigan: Wayne State UP, 2011) 291.

61
Healy Grainne, “Snow Fight Defeats Patri Arky,” Sweeping Beauties: Fairytales for

Feminists eds. Elaine Crowley, Rita Kelly and Maeve Kelly (Dublin: Attic, 1989)

39-45.

62
Hubert Schirneck’s “The Latest News from the Seven Dwarves” is an originally

German retelling. This reference is taken from the translated extracts of the tale and

its analysis in Vanessa Joosen’s book mentioned above in note 59.

63
Examples: a) Mette Ivie Harrison, Mira Mirror (New York: Speak, 2004).

b) Alice Friman, “Snow White: The Prince,” 1984, Beaumont and

Carlson, 218.

206 
 
 

c) Thylias Moss, “Lessons from a Mirror,” 1989, Beaumont and Carlson,

169.

64
Sue Owen, “The Poisoned Apple,” Beaumont and Carlson, 110.

65
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer

in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale UP, 1994) 359.

66
Ibid, 363.

207 
 
 

CHAPTER – V

Towards An Understanding and a Better Acceptance

of the Theory and Attempts of Retelling Fairy Tales
There is considerable scope to believe that the idea of ‘fairy’ may have existed in the
human mind and may have been called by a different name before d’Aulnoy coined
the term in the 17th century and along with other contemporary conteuses and male
writers included the fairy in their tales. As said earlier d’Aulnoy and other salonnieres
exploited the subversive potential of the fairy tales also to attack the narrow
religiosity and misogynist tendencies of Louis XIV’s court. Different kinds of fairies
that they created in their tales – just, witchlike, evil, sympathetic, dirty etc – subtly
challenged the court, the Catholic church and the pietistic reign that Louis’s wife
insisted on practising at court. “... [I]n the context of a pietistic fin de siècle, the fairy
tale constituted a defence of fashionable secular society. Its portrayal of earthly luxury
and happiness and its reliance on the supernatural powers of fairies, sorcerers, and
other ‘pagan’ figures obviously run counter to a Christian world view. And yet, as a
narrative form associated with children and the lower classes and championed largely
by women writers, this defence of secular culture appeared largely innocuous, at least
if the lack of the extended critiques is taken as any indication. Still, the unsettled
political and social climate of the time partially explains the appeal of the genre,” say
Lewis Seifert and Donna Stanton in this respect.1

They projected through these fairies their innermost rage against the non-secular
attitudes of the court and Louis’s wife. It is interesting to note here the fact that these
early women writers of fairy tales referred to themselves in their frontispieces as
sibyls or fairies.2

Evolution of any cultural manifestation, be it literature, language, music or any other

art, is possible, according to Kate Dustin, owing to the strikingly unique ability of the
human mind “to extract information from one context and manipulate it in another,”3
which could lead to the convergence of the old species resulting in the emergence of
new ones. It is human nature to acquire, discretely share and reflect on the shared
information. It is from this process that cultural evolution springs. D’Aulnoy

208 
 
 

successfully attempted a creative and innovative dissemination of the terms fairies

and fairy tales, which were culturally informative units – known as memes – with
which she was familiar. Applying Dustin’s views on cultural evolution Zipes proves
that D’Aulnoy discretely shared her inherited information with her contemporary
salonnieres, readers and writers of her society and consequently readers of other
linguistic societies as well. These contemporaries reflected on the shared information
and spread it by recreating tales about fairies in extraordinary ways that helped the
genre to flourish and expanded the meaning and growth of fairy tales. In the process
of cultural evolution the original significance attached to the conte de fees in the late
17th century French society is lost today and has assumed extremely different
meanings and associations. However it is still remarkably significant and necessary
even today. It has become more and more complex and expansive with its
commercialisation in the form of Disney films on the one hand and various innovative
experiments in literature, theatre, film etc on the other. However with its increasing
expansive cultural evolution and necessity of its existence in the human society, it still
retains its complexity to make its scholars puzzle over why fairy tales are so very
necessary and relevant.

Zipes claims that the critical and utopian function of fairy tales is “to suggest
imaginative ways to alter our lives.”4 The aristocratic salonnieres used fairy tale
telling as a means of self-portrayal and representation of their own interests, interests
of aristocracy as well as proper aristocratic social manners. In the process they not
only displayed their intelligence, education and linguistic abilities but many times
opposed the set male standards that governed their lives. Thus besides amusement and
aesthetic enrichment and enhancement the aristocratic conteuses used fairy tales as
symbolic gestures to subvert and question the ruling male standards of taste, values
and social behaviour. Their attempts at imaginatively presenting ideal behaviour,
manners and attractive standards and values laid the foundation for the
institutionalisation of the literary fairy tales. What established itself as a literary fairy
tale had begun as an aristocratic conversational game in the parlours and salons of the
mid 17th century. Though both men and women participated in and enjoyed the game
where challenges of new inventions and refinement were thrown at the tellers, it is the
women who particularly manipulated the opportunity to improve their linguistic,
conversational, imaginative and oratorical abilities to portray ideal morals, manners,

209 
 
 

tastes and etiquettes and also to exhibit their rebellion against the existing oppressive
male standards and values. They would display their knowledge of and familiarity
with folk tale motifs and also invent new tales. These linguistic games started as a
social amusement also offered the conteuses scope to portray themselves and
imaginatively project their innermost thoughts about their oppressive experiences. For
effective self-expression they set their own rules of narration, one of them being
impromptu telling of even a known tale/motif in an innovative manner.

Thus converging new ideas, motifs etc with the old ones the conteuses also wrote
down the tales. This paved the way for the fairy tales to be an institution. On the other
hand the oral tradition continued too. In fact there was a healthy interaction between
the oral and literal traditions. While the written tales appealed with foreknowledge
and transformation of their oral counterpart, the orators circulated the truncated
versions of the literary tales. Major writers of fairy tales were women who told them
in the highbrow parlour games with a purpose, apart from their entertainment, to
project their imaginative picture of improved alternative social system. The writers
included men as well; prominent among them was Charles Perrault (1697). These
tales were necessarily for adult consumption and aimed essentially at adult responses.
We could derive two important observations here: one, that the institutionalisation of
the fairy tale cannot be historically traced back to Perrault’s publication of his
collection of fairy tales in 1697 but mainly to women conteuses namely Madame
D’Aulnoy (1697), Mademoiselle La Force (1697), Mml L’Heritier (1696), Chevalier
deMailly (1698), Madame de Murat (1698) who promoted this game; and two, that
this institutionalisation of fairy tales was not for children but for adults. It began with
the adult addressee and later i.e. only in the 18th century children were thought of as
prospective consumers of fairy tales.

As said earlier though the oral tradition of tale telling continued alongside the written
literary tradition, the shift from the oral to the written and institutionalisation of the
genre diversified the attitudes to the tales. It amounted to violation and appropriation
of the oral story telling resulting in or intended at the establishment of the
bourgeoisie. Besides with the literary form of the fairy tale the public and loud act
increasingly started becoming private and silent, the communal, social gatherings
shrank to individual, personal amusement and above all social classes were separated.
Literacy and ability to read were limited to very few particularly of the elitist classes

210 
 
 

and hence the French literary fairy tale that served the interests of the aristocrats and
aristocracy sowed the seeds of social separation. The ‘folk’ thus became elitist. It
became exclusive, restricted to the literate and moved away from the non-literate
masses whose oral tales were social and represented recognisable themes and
characters, ordinary wishes and desires especially of peasants. The literary fairy tales
became individualistic and depicted the concerns, tastes and values of the rulers. The
tales were collectively and socially received by the aristocracy and bourgeoisie.
However gradually the same tales which could voice aristocratic women’s
disillusionment with the then existing codes and standards of behaviour and manner
and their presentation of how they should be, now were thought of, in the hands of
men writers and to the detriment of the women, a means by which patriarchal codes of
civilitÁ could be enforced on children. There was a shift in the implied reader of the
literary tales. The focus shifted from the adults to the children of the upper classes,
few in number and able to read and write. Fairy tales for children till the early 18th
century were orally transmitted. The literary tales intended for adult readers and
emphasising values of civilitÁ in France were thought of as adept means by which
children could be influenced and moulded to accept the ruling standards of taste and
behaviour, the status-quo. However though the existing stories talked of mores and
values of French civilitÁ, they were connotative and suggestive on so many different
levels that they were considered unsuitable for children on this account. And it is due
to this same reason that the tales for children were “sanitised and expurgated.” (Z, 14)

To repeat once again, institutionalisation of the literary fairy tale was initiated by
Madame D’Aulnoy and not Perrault as usually and quite mistakenly assumed. (Z, 25-
26) Madame D’Aulnoy was familiar with many different folk tales. In her salon
games she consciously undertook to present through her tale a woman’s perspective
on love, fidelity, sincerity and other values forced upon women by a male dominated
culture. Thus while putting forth her views on aristocratic manners and civility in her
tales she made them a vehicle for representing her ideas of how women can govern
themselves and determine their own fates. She was by no means a rebel against
patriarchy nor was she a feminist. However, by exposing the irrelevant decadent
aristocratic practices and behaviour she simultaneously created and offered in her
tales a space for women where they could display their individual potentials and
realise themselves as independent individuals. As such D’Aulnoy in all her tales

211 
 
 

invests all her women characters with special powers. The all powerful entity in her
tales is not a patriarchal god but a fairy or a group of fairies. It is the fairies in her
tales who judge men and women, reward or punish them for obeying or violating the
rule of “fairy civility.” (Z, 28) However the women in her tales are shown to assert
themselves only within the constraints of the patriarchal code; the female desire is
tamed and shaped as per male standards of industriousness and fairness reflected in
the endings of her stories. As Zipes puts it, “Active submission to a male code
qualified by tenderness does not lead to autonomy.” (Z, 28)

The institution of the literary fairy tale underwent changes in their social function
from social amusement in the form of games and discourses through self
representation and through generation of the patriarchal code of civility to a form of
individual amusement. What began with Madame D’Aulnoy as an art of social
amusement and a means of self-representation in the latter half of the 17th century
became in the 18th an art intended at amusement and instruction of an isolated reader
reading in private. The institution of fairy tale created by women and its social
function changed. It is in these changes that the fairy tale for children originated.
Around 1720s and 1730s simultaneously the literary tale became a privilege of the
literate aristocrats and bourgeois and didactic moral tales were composed and
distributed for young aristocrats. The social function of the literary fairy tale thus
shifted to instructing children through entertainment. With these changes fairy tales
became one of the prime means by which paternal rule could be subtly and
consistently reinforced. While discussing the institutionalisation of fairy tales Zipes
points out that the story “‘Beauty and the Beast’ has been especially instrumental in
rationalising male domination, gender polarity and violation because of its formation
in the 18th century when the middle classes were restructuring family and society in
specific patterns that would be internalised through literary socialization.” (Z, 36)

Madame Le Prince de Beaumont’s version of the Beauty and the Beast tale in 1756
was one of the first fairy tales written exclusively for children. She had condensed and
altered the earlier version of the tale and targeted it towards young girls to teach them
how to become ladies. The tale seems to have been aimed at conditioning girls to be
subservient and boys to be in a position of power and domination.

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Beauty in the tale is an obedient girl who accepts her father’s decisions
unquestioningly. She is willing to serve and be ruled by her father who is the final
authority for her. She desires to please her father and hence out of her unquestioned
acceptance of her father’s rule and her desire to please him, she sacrifices herself to
the beast. She is passed on from one male master to another. Willingly and without
complaining she accepts the rule of another father-figure and sacrifices her body to
the Beast who desires it. Beauty selflessly allows herself to be ruled and sacrifices
herself in obedience to and worship of the male authority. As a result the fairies
reward her with a perfect husband. Beauty thus becomes an exemplary figure –
selfless, nameless, the submissive and loving wife. As time passed the printed literary
tale received the attention of the illustrators. The illustrators mostly reinforced the
message of the tale. With the spread of literacy and technology the printed word and
the illustrated image paved the way for the stereotypical ideas and patriarchal values
to percolate deep into the social psyche. With technological advancement in the 19th
century in the form of films the visual animated image emphatically reinforced the
word of the text and the illustrated message. The fairy tale became mythicised in
order to instruct its consumers about the stereotyped gender roles and behaviour to
serve and sustain patriarchal rule.

The rising bourgeoisie expected extremely didactic stories for children. Though
stories were being told and written for children on a small scale in the mid 18th
century the debate on the use of printed tales exclusively for children continued from
the 17th and 18th centuries till the 19th throughout Europe and part of America.
However by the 19th century the attempts at tailoring the oral tales and their fantasy
and magic to suit and sustain the norms, needs and expectations of bourgeois reader
and culture were triumphant and thus while the Grimms’ tales were famous in
Germany in the 19th century, Hans Christian Andersen’s tales were more popular in
England and America. The tailored, mended and ironed tales in a male-dominated
discourse had great social and ideological ramifications for the process of civilisation
in the west.5

Jack Zipes summarises the crucial functions that the literary fairy tale as institution
performed in and for the middle class society by the end of the 19th century as
follows:

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“1. It introduced notions of elitism and separatism through a select canon of tales
geared to children who know how to read.

2. Though it was also told, the fact that the fairy tale was printed and in a book with
pictures gave it more legitimacy and enduring value than an oral tale which
disappeared soon after it was told.

3. It was often read by a parent in a nursery, school, or bedroom to soothe a child’s

anxieties, for the fairy tales for children were optimistic and were constructed with the
closure of the happy end.

4. Although the plots varied and the themes and characters were altered, the classical
fairy tale for children and adults reinforced the patriarchal symbolical order based on
rigid notions of sexuality and gender.

5. In printed form the fairy tale was property and could be taken by its owner at his or
her leisure for escape, consolation, inspiration.

6. Along with its closure and reinforcement of patriarchy, the fairy tale also served to
encourage notions of rags to riches, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, dreaming,
miracles and such.

7. There was always tension between the literary and oral traditions. The oral tales
continued and continue to threaten the more conventional and classical tales because
they can question, dislodge, and deconstruct the written tales. Moreover, within the
literary tradition itself, there were numerous writers such as Charles Dickens, George
MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, and Edith Nesbit who questioned the
standardised model of what a fairy tale should be.

8. It was through script that there was a full-scale debate about what oral folk tales
and literary fairy tales were and what their respective functions should be. By the end
of the 19th century the fairy tale had expanded as a high art form (operas, ballets,
dramas) and low art form (folk plays, vaudevilles, and parodies) and a form
developed classically and experimentally for children and adults. The oral tales
continued to be disseminated through communal gatherings of different kinds, but
they were also broadcast by radio and gathered in books by folklorists.

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Most important in the late 19th century was the rise of folklore as an institution and of
various schools of literary criticism that dealt with fairy tales and folk tales.

9. Though many fairy tale books and collections were illustrated and some lavishly
illustrated in the 19th century the images were very much in conformity with the text.
The illustrators were frequently anonymous and did not seem to count. Though the
illustrations often enriched and deepened a tale, they were more subservient to the
text.” (Z, 74-75)

By the turn of the 20th century however the institutionalisation of the fairy tale genre
was revolutionised further by the film technology when it usurped the printed word to
replace the dominant word/text with an animated image. By institutionalisation is
meant in Zipes’s words “the manner in which a certain type of literature develops
conventional narrative motifs, themes, semantic codes and character types that are
easily recognisable (despite variations); sets up a customary social system that calls
for its use in socialising and amusing children in schools or at night time and in
providing pleasure for adults, who can recall childhood experiences or experiment
with more complicated versions of the genre; and engenders a production and
distribution system that responds to market conditions.”6 The cinematic
institutionalisation has helped in bringing about the process of mythicisation of the
fairy tale genre to its completion – a point when and where a tale becomes and is
accepted as natural and eternal.

Myth as Roland Barthes defines it is “a system of communication,” “a type of speech

chosen by history,” “a message,” “a mode of signification,” “a form.”7 According to
him since it is not the object of its message but the manner of the utterance of the
message and its intention that defines myth, everything can be a myth as long as “it is
conveyed by a discourse.” (107) By discourse he does not mean simply oral speech
but extends the term to include written, pictorial, cinematic, journalistic, advertising
communication. Myth he says, “is made of a material which has already been worked
on so as to make it suitable for communication” (108). As such myth is “a second
order semiological system” (113) since it works on a system which already exists
before it. Thus the material that the myth uses viz. language, picture, rituals, posters,
objects etc start functioning as signifiers as soon as “they are caught by myth.” (113)
The form and meaning of the mythical signifier are never contradictory or split.

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“The meaning is always there to present the form; the form is always there to
outdistance the meaning.” (122)The form of the mythical signifier is thus “empty but
present” and its meaning is “absent but full.” (122)As such myth acquires the status of
a “value.” (122)

As mentioned earlier it is its intention rather than its literal meaning, which
determines and defines myth. Yet the intention of the myth is “frozen, purified,
eternalised, made absent by this literal sense.” (122-123)The freezing offers it an
innocent look. In fact in order to appear neutral and innocent it freezes, “suspends
itself, turns away and assumes a look of generality... stiffens” (124) just at the
moment of reaching its recipient. “This is because myth is a speech stolen and
restored,” Barthes says. (124) However the restored speech is not the same as that
was stolen. It fakes itself. The moment taken for this “surreptious faking” (124) gives
myth its frozen, “benumbed” look. This freezing is freezing into something natural.
Myth naturalises the concept when it has to choose between either unveiling or
liquidating the concept. This is the main principle and function of myth. It naturalises
the concept; “transforms history into nature;” (128) gives a natural justification to a
historical intention. Naturalisation of the concept is the essential function of myth and
since its intentions are naturalised, not hidden, myth is “experienced as innocent
speech.” (130)Such naturalisation and innocence make myth “imperfectible and
unquestionable; time or knowledge will not make it better or worse.” (130)The
characteristic feature of the stolen speech that myth is, is to invade meaning and to
transform it into form. Myth robs language, in other words. It insinuates itself into
meaning and rests and prospers there. It is “a robbery by colonisation.” (132)The
meaning, which attempts to resist mythical capture, is bodily carried away by myth
i.e. the language. The object that “resists completely yields completely.” (132) Poetic
language resists myth but in turn becomes “an ideal prey for myth: the apparent lack
of order of signs, which is the poetic facet of an essential order, is captured by myth,
and transformed into an empty signifier, which will serve to signify poetry.” (133)
Myth thus talks about things, “purifies them ... makes them innocent ... gives them a
natural and eternal justification [and] ... a clarity which is not that of an explanation
but that of a statement of fact.” (143)The passage, in myth, from history to nature
leading to an eternal and innocent appearance, Barthes equates with the process of
bourgeois ideology. He calls bourgeois society “the privileged field of mythical

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significations.” (137) Different types of bourgeoisie, share at a deeper level, “a certain

regime of ownership ... order ...ideology.” (137) Bourgeois society hails and functions
as per a certain ideology; it obliterates its name in its ideological manifestation.
Ideologically it is nameless. Bourgeoisie is “the social class which does not want to be
named.” (137) Bourgeois ideology spreads over everything, obliges that which is not
bourgeois to borrow from the bourgeoisie. This is its way of ex-nominating itself,
losing its name without the risk of being erased. It therefore can achieve non-resistant
inclusion/ merging within itself of bourgeois theatre, art and humanity. The bourgeois
becomes completely nameless when “there is only one single human nature left”
(138). This nature, the Man who emerges from this nature is the “Eternal Man” that
the bourgeois ideology upholds. This Eternal Man is neither proletarian nor
bourgeois. The bourgeoisie sets its norms “in everything in everyday life;” (139) it
“has and makes us have” (139) its own representations of the relations between man
and the world. These representations are “normalised.” The avant-garde revolt, the
militants act, the intellectuals quarrel. However these are fractions of the same
bourgeois society and their intolerance of the bourgeoisie is limited and more or less
abandons the “normalised forms” which then “gravitate towards the enormous mass
of the undifferentiated, of the insignificant, in short, of nature.” (139) Spread and
practice of the bourgeois norms on a national level give them a look of the laws of a
natural order thus causing a complete absorption of the bourgeoisie to the extent of
total loss of its name. It is in this anonymity that the bourgeois ideology flourishes and
prospers. In fact, being nameless, losing the name itself is the bourgeois ideology –
“the process through which the bourgeoisie transforms the reality of the world into an
image of the world, History into Nature.” (140) Bourgeoisie attempts this
namelessness by penetrating the intermediate classes. The bourgeois norms and their
representations are slowly sowed into the social psyche of the lower middle classes.
Through the press, the news, and literature these norms become the very norms “as
dreamed, though not actually lived” (140) of the lower classes. “The bourgeoisie is
constantly absorbing into its ideology a whole section of humanity, which does not
have its basic status and cannot live up to it except in imagination, that is, at the cost
of an immobilisation and an impoverishment of consciousness.” (140)The bourgeoisie
converts reality into an image. The world presents the bourgeois society with its
reality and in return receives its inverted image in which man is shown as universal,
eternal; humanity and nature are presented as unchanging and unchangeable.
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Bourgeois ideology is “scientistic or intuitive” i.e. “it records facts or perceives

values, but refuses explanation.” (141)

Barthes draws parallels between bourgeois ideology and myth. Myth in a bourgeois
society is a “depoliticised speech.” Just as bourgeois ideology offers the world’s
reality into a natural image of this reality, just as the former gains its identity through
obliteration and disowning of its name so in myth do the things lose their historical
quality, “the memory that they once were made.” (142) Like the bourgeois ideology
the myth completely transforms reality, empties it of history and fills it with nature; it
removes human meaning from things and is perceptibly absent. Like this ideology,
myth in the process of passing from history to nature, “acts economically: it abolishes
the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, it does away
with all dialectics, with any going back beyond what is immediately visible, it
organises a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, ... it
establishes a blissful clarity: things appear to mean something by themselves.” (143)
To sum up in Barthes’s own words: “Myth consists in overturning culture into nature
or, at least, the social, the cultural, the ideological, the historical into the ‘natural.’
What is nothing but a product of class division and its moral, cultural and aesthetic
consequences is presented (stated) as being a ‘matter of course;’ under the effect of
mythical inversion the quite contingent foundations of the utterance become Common
Sense, Reason, Right Reason, the Norm, General Opinion, in short the doxa (which is
the secular figure of the Origin).8

The classical fairy tale – the ones analysed in Chapter III are examples – has been
mythicised, dehistoricised and depoliticised to represent and serve the interests of the
bourgeoisie: Thinking of fairy tales the well-known tales come to everyone’s, even a
child’s mind, as if they were part of our day to day life and our nature. These tales
have acquired a universal, natural and eternal status in human society and with a
neutral and innocent look give their readers what Zipes calls a feel “that we are all
part of a universal community with shared values and norms; that we are all striving
for the same happiness; that there are certain dreams and wishes which are irrefutable;
that a particular type of behaviour will produce guaranteed results, - like living
happily ever after with lots of gold in a marvellous castle, our castle and fortress,
which will forever protect us from inimical and unpredictable forces of the outside
world. We need only have faith and believe in the classical fairy tale...”9

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Like the myth which works with already existing material the fairy tale mythicised
into the classical fairy tale has worked on the material which belonged to and was
orally transmitted by archaic, pagan societies, tribes and communities. It hardened the
oral word into a written script – a “Christian and patriarchal” script. (Brothers Grimm,
211) like myth which desires its historical, political and systemic development despite
the fact that it continues to undergo such development, the classical fairy tale has
undergone and continues to undergo systematic and intentional “process of revision,
reordering, and reinforcement.” (Brothers Grimm, 211)

“All the tools of modern industrial society (the printing press, the radio, the camera,
the film, the record, the videocassette) have made their mark on the fairy tale to make
it classical, ultimately in the name of the bourgeoisie, which refuses to be named and
denies involvement, for the fairy tale must appear harmless, natural, eternal,
ahistorical, and therapeutic. We are to live and breathe the classical fairy tale as fresh,
free air. We are led to believe that this air has not been contaminated and polluted by
a social class that will not name itself, wants us to continue believing that all air is
fresh and free, and all fairy tales spring from this air.”(Brothers Grimm, 211) It is
because of this mythicisation of the fairy tale that classical fairy tales like the myth,
continue to fascinate human beings and have remained almost an inescapable part of
the conscious human existence till date. Mircea Eliade in his Myth and Fairy Tales
demonstrates how the two share a symbolic connection. According to him myths set
ideals for human beings and their behaviour and have the potential of offering to
humans genuinely religious experiences, an awareness of the deep roots of history and
time. They mainly serve a religious and sacred function in society. Oral folk tales and
literary fairy tales on the other hand are secular narratives presenting a mere
“structure of an exemplary behaviour.”10 They do not point at a particular cultural
phase or stage. They appropriate mythic notions and motifs thus suggesting that
myths preceded folk and fairy tales. Eliade further sees parallels between the religious
myths and the secular fairy tales. He suggests that the fairy tale is an imaginary
continuation of the religious initiation in the myth “recreating the ‘initiatory ordeals’
on the plane of imagination and dream.” (202) As such to him, the fairy tale becomes
“an easy doublet for the initiation myth and rites.” (202)

The blending of myths and folk tales in the oral tradition and modern literature have
blurred the distinction between myth and fairy tale and in a way have rendered them

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nameless. Like mythical speech fairy tales work on the already available material and
are continually and purposefully “re-framed” to suit ideological communication
which seems non-ideological. It is in this sense that Zipes calls fairy tales
“contemporary myths” (Brothers Grimm, 209) “a stolen and frozen cultural good”
(Brothers Grimm, 211) “open for appropriation by society.” (Barthes, 107) The
‘universal’ appeal of the fairy tales can thus be seen as an outcome of the systematic
construction of the tales as “mythic constellations.” “They are constantly rearranged
and transformed to suit changes in tastes and values, and they assume mythic
proportions when they are frozen in an ideological constellation that makes it seem
that there are universal absolutes that are divine and should not be changed.”(Z, 19)

It is the conteuses who prominently produced and wrote fairy tales for more than a
century starting from the late 17th century. Their tales were considered the models to
be followed. In their attempt at establishing the genre they worked on and at times
questioned the earlier romantic patterns found particularly in the tales of Straparola
and Basile in Italy and were fully aware that they were creating and establishing a
new genre. Charles Perrault who was part of the salon games and interested in the
budding form too simultaneously modelled on it his own tales. However one wonders
why the conteuses, their tales and the inventive mode of their story telling that have
been influential and ideal for more than a century were gradually eclipsed, why their
attempts and efforts at establishing this genre were forgotten and sidelined if not
wiped out and why it is Charles Perrault instead whose tales and model got projected
prominently as the original institutionalising model.

The systematic and perhaps deliberate disappearance of the women storytellers,

writers and their fairy tales perhaps amounts to what Zipes terms as
“patriarchalisation” (Brothers Grimm, 194) not just of the matrilineal tales, and
literary tradition but of matriarchal society at large. In patriarchalisation of literary
tradition female protagonists are replaced by male heroes; rituals celebrating
goddesses are substituted with rites upholding male gods and their superiority; and the
sun god takes the place of the moon goddess. In fairy tales particularly,
patriarchalisation demonises the goddess assigning demonic qualities to the virtuous
princesses of the matrilineal tradition, replaces the major heroines with heroes,
reinforces patrilineal marriage, degrades female ritualistic symbols, disfigures

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the mythic structure based on moon worship and transforms young active women into
helpless, domesticated, inactive or passive, obedient observers of the male rule.

Patriarchalisation laid the foundation for bourgeoisification of the fairy tale in the
literary tradition. This process contributed to and consolidated the institutionalisation
of the fairy tale leading to appropriation of the literary tale and its re-appropriation
when it was (and is) orally transmitted at home, in school or in the theatre. In fact,
appropriation was an important mode for the bourgeoisie to create its own institutions
and conventions. It meant usurping the property, goods and cultural forms of lower
classes, mending, tailoring, refining and at times altering them to suit the needs and
sensibilities of the bourgeois culture. As a matter of fact, historically every ruling
class and all colonialists have used this mode over the people and cultures they have
dictated and governed or colonised. However in case of bourgeois appropriation,
literary education and technological advancement were greatly effective in
dissemination and institutionalisation of bourgeois ideas, views and practices. The
bourgeoisie could establish its rightful place in German society only by using its
culture as a weapon to assert their demands and needs. It was successful in this
attempt and as a result bourgeois attitudes and practices were accepted widely by
people of other social classes as almost natural standards of behaviour. Attempting to
prove one’s merit, to rise in social status and being successful through industriousness
or at times even shrewdly became almost natural standards of behaviour to be
followed by everyone. It is these seemingly natural ideas generated by the bourgeois
appropriation of the oral folk tradition that are reflected in the Grimms’ tales. The
socio-historical context, the existing social norms, accepted behaviour and prevalent
ideologies play a significant role in the shaping of a tale at a certain point of time in
history. They affect the oral communication of the tales which in turn influences and
results in “new literary rearrangements within an institutionalised discourse.”
(Brothers Grimm, 198) Thus there is a constant interaction between orality and
literacy which needs to be considered in the study of the literary fairy tale. For it is the
oral narratives which get arranged in a particular order as literary tales in which social
norms, accepted behaviour and thinking of the dominant class are depicted thus
rendering the tales representative and exemplary. They are used as ideal role models
to be followed by children. The manner in which these arrangements are achieved to
form literary tales is termed by Zipes as “semiotic constellations” or “semantic

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consolidations.” These constellations and consolidations however are again subject to

ambivalence or subversion in the oral communication leading to yet more and newer
literary rearrangements of the tale. The cycle continues.

Taking the example of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ one could see such arrangements and
rearrangements in the literary tradition shaped and influenced by the prevailing social
factors exemplifying the process of mythicisation mentioned above. The first recorded
appearance of the Sleeping Beauty in literature was in the 14th century Italian works
Perceforest by an anonymous writer and Giambattista Basile’s “Sun, Moon and
Talia” in Pentamerone. Perceforest presents a knight taking advantage of the sleeping
woman and violating her whereas in Basile’s tale sleeping Talia’s beauty arouses a
king, he carries her to a bed, abuses her, leaves her asleep and returns to the kingdom.
Violation of a sleeping woman became a material which the later writers used and
revised shifting their focus to a moral act of the woman’s salvation. So in 1697
Perrault in his version presented a prince, a man whose mere arrival and kneeling
down beside the girl was enough to end the enchantment. “He approached trembling
and admiring, and knelt down. At that moment the enchantment having ended, the
princess awoke and bestowed upon him a look more tender than a first glance seemed
to warrant. ‘Is it you, my prince?’ she said. ‘You have been long awaited.’”11

Brothers Grimm in 1812 added the kiss to revive their Brier Rose. The 14th century
versions reflect the social reality of the Baroque period wherein the power of princes
and knights to exploit sleeping women and fulfil their sexual passion was socially
permissible and was condoned. Hence the salvation of the helpless girl was not the
focus of the tales in this period. In the 17th century, in keeping with the social norms
of not openly justifying women’s violation and trying to present appropriate
behaviour, Perrault did away with the violation and presented the princess’s salvation.
However he also included in his tale a cannibalistic Queen – ogress who desires to eat
Talia and her sons. The “proper” way in which women could be saved was depicted
only in the 19th century in the Grimm version ‘Brier Rose.’ After Perrault Grimms’
version perfectly fit the bourgeois myth and was frozen and restored neglecting,
forgetting and making us forget the ancient literary traces of the tale in the 14th
century. The tale’s history was lost; it was naturalised, made to look neutral and
innocent, turned into a myth and frozen as an ideologically classical tale.

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This classical version and its ideology are now virally spread and duplicated
differently in media, print and daily interactions at home and in public.

The bourgeoisiefied tale was greatly mythicised and patriarchalised by the

“mythomaniac” (Brothers Grimm, 214) Disney in his films in the 20th century, which
conveyed several apparently neutral and innocent mythic messages that remain intact
even in the present. Zipes notes down the following mythic messages that the tale of
the Sleeping Beauty has generated for centuries till date:

1. “Women are all naturally curious, and, as we know, curiosity kills cats and
even sweet innocent princesses.
2. Men are daring, persistent and able to bestow life on passive or dead women
whose lives cannot be fulfilled until rescued by a prince.
3. Women are indeed helpless without men. And without men they are generally
catatonic or comatose, eternally waiting for the right man, always in a prone,
deathlike position, dreaming of a glorious marriage.
4. Male energy and will power can restore anything to life, even all the people in
an immense kingdom. We just need the right man for the job.” (Brothers
Grimm, 214)

The classical tale of Sleeping Beauty is thus further mythicised into a tale about
gender stereotypes, male hegemony, heterosexual and patriarchal resolution.

However though it stresses the Sleeping Beauty motif, mythicisation also cannot deny
the motif of resurrection, revival, immortality and an uprising to the knowledgeable
existence of a girl. The original utopian impulse of the tale cannot be completely
erased and it is this indelible memory of the original tale that allows scope for
“resurrection,” “revival” and “re-creation” of the tale by innovative re-tellers and re-
writers of the tale. Thus new and innovative arrangements of the tale keep taking
place and patriarchalisation in the literary tradition is challenged by these innovative
endeavours that try to break and move beyond the male discourse and the mythical
ramifications it generates. Whereas patriarchalisation continues in duplications of the
tales in which structures and norms of the classical tales are repeated and decadent
modes of thinking and believing are reinforced, a parallel anti-mythical and “non-
male” discourse is established in the “re-visions” of the same tales in which attempts
are made “to alter the reader’s views of traditional patterns, images, and codes.” (Z, 9)

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Beyond being culturally significant re-vision is “an act of survival” as Adrienne Rich
puts it, not just for women but even for men or male writers: “Re-vision – the act of
looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical
direction – is for us more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival ...
[a] drive to self-knowledge, for women, ... more than a search for identity: it is part of
her refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society. A radical critique of
literature, feminist in its impulse, would take the work first of all as a clue to how we
live, how we have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our
language has trapped as well as liberated us; and how we can begin to see – and
therefore live - afresh.”12 In her assessment of women writers of 20th century and
earlier Rich recognises that women writers saw love as the source of their suffering
and victimisation instead of Man’s rule over women and power to dominate, terrorise,
choose or reject her for his pleasure. The myth-making romantic tradition has been
patriarchal, male dominant. Man did not appear as a ‘sex’ in women’s writing but the
opposite was quite common: “[A] culture controlled by males, has created problems
for the woman writer: problems of contact with herself, problems of language and
style, problems of energy and survival.” (Rich, 20) The charismatic power of Man has
fascinated and terrorised the woman under his control. The sexual identity established
in a male-dominated culture needs to be changed if the old political and cultural order
is to be kept at bay and dissuaded from re-asserting itself. Writers, particularly
women, therefore “need to know the writing of the past, and know it differently than
we have ever known it; not to pass on a tradition but to break its hold over us.” (Rich,
19)

Rich wrote this article in 1972 – a period that witnessed emergence and progress of
the second wave of feminist thinking. The fairy tale genre could hardly miss the
attention of the feminist critics. They could see fairy tales generating expressions of
proper gender behaviour and social expectations for women. They undertook criticism
of these tales and the myths they generated while determining through them women’s
lives and hopes. The dangerous and self-destructive ideas of passivity, uncomplaining
and non-resistant self-abnegation, patience, servitude and sacrifice suggested through
the prominent fairy tale heroines like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White etc
came under feminist censure during this period. Patriarchal assumptions and
bourgeois attitudes reflected subtly as well as explicitly in the tales, particularly

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the Perrault, Grimm and cinematic Disney versions have been attacked by the
feminists since the 70s. It was the time when women writers and even some men had
started thinking and writing differently. As Rich expected the writers particularly
women writers in the 70s changed and challenged through their writings patterns that
the earlier male writers had established. The “disobedient writer” does not conform
with the traditional pattern and attempts to break its hold on her. This disobedience is
not a privilege simply of women but even of men.13 Nancy Walker points at this
process of modification and re-vision of traditional literary patterns at the hands of
women as well as men writers, however differently: “Appropriating a literary genre in
order to revise or even reverse its assumptions, ideologies, or paradigms is one of
several ways in which a writer may alter an inherited tradition, and such a method is
by no means the exclusive property of women. Indeed, literary history – particularly
the history of fiction – is frequently constructed by successive writers turning to their
own purposes the patterns and materials created by other writers. And yet it is also
true that women’s relationship to such an inheritance has normally been
fundamentally and dramatically different from that of men.” (Walker, 4)

Once again, at this point, it should be noted that by re-vision and retelling here is
meant critical questioning of the existing forms and cultural assumptions that shape
the tales. The stories chosen for analysis in the earlier chapter are such retellings
which go beyond mere revision of the canonical tales. Writers of contemporary fairy
tales, both women and men, in the 19th and 20th centuries targeted the dominant
canonical fairy tale mode established by the tales of Perrault and the Grimms.
Particularly Grimm fairy tales had a great impact and grip over the German and the
entire European social psyche so much so that their texts were considered sacred.
Even in the modern western culture the classic tales of Perrault and Grimm are
revered and tampering with their texts, the traditionalists consider, “tantamount to
sacrilege”14

The Grimms were very much interested in old German literature and folklore. They
looked upon the old German literature and tradition as constituting basic truth about
German culture and having the potential to bind the Germans together through
customs and laws of their own making. Devoted to the idea of a united Germany the
Grimms who were groomed in the reformed Calvinist religion desired to restore and
reconstitute the old German tradition in its ‘pure’ form and this desire at

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an unconscious level could have been a wish to assert and validate their own values
which were conditioned by the patriarchal control that they experienced and practised
at home and observed in public. Various circumstances in their childhood and early
manhood during 1802-1812 influenced their literary works particularly on folk and
fairy tales.15

Interested in seeking and restoring truths about old German culture, the Grimms had
never intended to collect and publish tales for children. It was Clemens Brentano, a
very well-known German poet who in 1806 requested the Grimm brothers- known for
their study of and command over the old German literature and folklore- to collect old
tales for him. Brentano had already published a collection of old German folk songs
titled The Boy’s Wonder Horn in 1805. In the second and third volumes of the book in
1808 he published some songs which the Brothers had collected. In 1807 as per
Brentano’s request the Grimms started working on the tales with the view and
intention to reproduce authentic folklore for adults and thus through the tales
document and preserve etymological and linguistic truths about the German people’s
customs and practices and their genuine ties to the oral tradition. In the course of their
investigation of the history of German literature and culture they discovered the deep
international and intercultural connections of the tales, realised and brought to the
surface the meaning of the true folk tale. They however sought to bring into reality
their imaginary notion of the ideal Germany, the Fatherland. They directed this
project at nation building. It is evident in the letter of appeal to their friends and
scholars to collect, select and forward any songs, rhymes, tales, legends, festivals,
mores, games, proverbs, superstitions, dreams or expressions stemming from German
peasantry: “Our fatherland is still filled with this wealth of material all over the
country that our honest ancestors planted for us, and that, despite the mockery and
derision heaped upon it, continues to live, unaware of its own hidden beauty and
carries within it its own unquestionable source. ... it is extremely important that these
are to be recorded faithfully and truly, without embellishments and additions,
whenever possible from the mouth of the tellers in and with their very own words in
the most exact and detailed way. It would be of double value if everything could be
obtained in the local live dialect.”16 They thus desired to record and save the natural
and pure folklore and “celebrate a paternal heritage of a fatherland” (Brothers Grimm,
28) The Grimms invited various storytellers to their home and on hearing once or

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many times the tales told by them would note the tales down. Most of their informants
and storytellers were educated young women of the middle or aristocratic classes.
They were “familiar with the oral tradition and literary tradition of tale-telling and
would combine motifs from both the sources in their renditions. In addition to the
tales of these storytellers and others who came later, the Grimms took tales directly
from books, journals, and letters and edited them according to their tastes, preferences
and familiarity with different versions.” (Brothers Grimm, 29)

Working for Brentano they did send him 49 tales that the former did not consider and
abandoned. Eventually as they continued to research the tales and collect them, they
sought permission from Brentano to publish the tales themselves. As a result the first
volume of Kinder-und Hausmarchen (Children’s Household Tales) came out with
elaborate annotations in 1812. Fully annotated second volume of the tales came up in
1815, second edition with 170 tales in 1819, followed by five more editions till the
last edition with 211 tales appeared in 1857.

After 1819 it was Wilhelm Grimm who exclusively revised, edited and shaped the
tales. He would compare different versions of a tale and would alter, refine and
synthesise it. It was he who particularly tried to idealise the messages they captured
from the tales and attempted to represent them to suit and appear more proper for the
bourgeoisie. Ironically thus in their endeavour to “restore” the truth they idealised it.
Heinz Rölleke, who published in 1974 the 49 handwritten tales that the Grimms had
collected for Brentano and that were discovered in 1920, reveals subtle contradictions
and changes of meanings in the tales from the original handwritten texts to the last
edition of 1857. He points out how the Brothers introduced great changes in shaping
the tales to their purpose. Rölleke calls synthesising and changing process a
“contamination” in the positive and creative sense of the term: “To contaminate an
oral folk tale or a literary fairy tale is... to enrich it by artfully introducing
extraordinary motifs, themes, words, expressions, proverbs, metaphors, and characters
into its corporate body so that it will be transformed and form a new essence.”17
Folklorists use the term ‘contamination’ to indicate addition or inclusion of foreign or
alien ingredients into a seemingly pure narrative. This addition could be enriching
leading to something new, genuine and unique in and by itself. Though the Grimms
intended to restore the true essence of the Germanic tradition of language and lore and
though the Germanic essence and character of their tales have been researched,
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discovered and rediscovered, the Brothers themselves admitted their fascination of

numerous other cultures and folk traditions and how they saw great varieties among
the Germans themselves and their dialects and customs. As mentioned earlier they
shaped their tales by comparing different versions from different cultures. As Zipes
records in Brothers Grimm many of the Grimm tales had French origin. (Brothers
Grimm, 29) Haase too records that “Some of the Grimms’ most significant informants
have turned out to be educated bourgeois women from families of French Huguenots
who had settled in Germany after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.” (Haase, 360)
Their knowledge of ancient myths and tales from different oriental societies and
cultures did affect and influence and at times was consciously employed by them in
their revision and edition of the tales. They were aware of this and hence, Rölleke
claims that the Grimms did not use the word German in the title of their books on
fairy tales. They did seek to establish a great legacy and cultural heritage of and for
the German readers and people in general. However their conscious emphasis on the
Indo-Germanic roots of the tales and their passion to trace back to the most ancient
times through the tales from different cultures made their tales socially relevant not
just to Germany but to the entire world. Worldwide these tales were and are
considered ideal in the fairy tale form and content. These tales became a national
primer for the unified Germany after 1871 and were upheld as important in school
education. As Haase quotes Carl France in his essay, “To the spirit of German school
children the tales have become what mother’s milk is for their bodies – the first
nourishment for the spirit and imagination ... Through such genuine German diet must
the language and spirit of the child gradually become more and more German ...”
(Haase, 355) But critics like Vincent Brun viewed the use of fairy tales for education
instead of amusement as a perversion and in 1945 the Grimms’ tales were condemned
for their “Teutonic” nature. Their publication was banned by the forces in Germany
considering them responsible for and leading to the atrocities, crimes and cruelty of
the Nazis. Even the Germans during this period thought of the tales as inappropriate
for children since they were seen as giving children a false conception of the world
and making them irrational and inhuman. However eventually the ban was lifted and
soon the tales became popular throughout the world and since then for more than the
last 150 years they have been preferred as a best seller next only to the Bible. The
Grimms’ tales came to be regarded as “classical” fairy tales; they surpassed even the
significant Perrault and Andersen collections in popularity, and thus for the model and
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proper fairy tale scholars refer more to the Grimms than the rest. The Grimms’ tales
have been greatly challenged, contested and revised in Europe and America. It is
perhaps the result of the creative and artful contamination of these tales by the
Grimms themselves in the process of their collection and edition that in the 19th and
20th centuries these tales were increasingly revised, reformed and innovatively retold
by experimental contaminators of the fairy tale. Various socio-political developments
since 1945 could be addressed just on account of contamination that the Grimms
attempted in the tales. The innovative, extensive and experimental revisions brought
about a great change in the structure and contents of the contemporary fairytale
leading to change in the attitude toward fairy tales in general. They are no longer
discarded as children’s elementary stories but are considered appropriate for all age
groups leading to institutionalisation of the genre in the sense mentioned earlier.

Whether it is the Brothers Grimm, Perrault, Andersen or any other major collectors
and writers of fairy tales like Andrew Lang, Oscar Wilde, A. A. Milne or J.R.R.
Tolkien the fairy tale discourse quite open, however, has tended to persist in the
shadow of male-dominated institutionalised conditions though women fairy tale
writers have been quite influential in the last four decades. In case of the Grimms’
tales though they were spread and made popular through translations worldwide, their
Americanisation could also be accounted for their extreme popularity as an
institutionalised literary genre. Particularly the cinematic form these tales assumed in
the hands of Disney converted and re-contextualised them into mass culture with a
stronghold of male domination. Disney transformed them into “entertainment
commodities...[and] brought about significant changes by celebrating the virile
innocence of male power; emphasising the domestication of sweet, docile, pubescent
girls; and extolling the virtues of clean-cut, all American figures and the prudent, if
not prudish life.” (Brothers Grimm, 60) Other cinematic and animated productions of
fairy tales followed suit.

Fairy tales are produced and received within the constraints of the conditions of
institutionalisation and are ruled by male myths about the appropriate social and
gender roles and nature: Disney in his film based on the Grimms’ ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Snow
White,’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’ allots the heroes prominence and dominance. Unlike in
the written Grimm texts the male rescuers do not play merely an incidental role. But
on the contrary their role, adventure and ultimate triumph are at the centre of the film.

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In the Grimms’ tales the male heroes appear very late in the narrative and are rarely
described at length. Disney films on the other hand introduce the men very early in
the tales, project them as having all the ideal qualities a man is expected to display in
patriarchy and offer them a fuller role to play in the plot of the tales. The female
protagonists after whom the tales are named are on the other hand reduced to passivity
and mere faithful waiting for a male god. The heroes in the films defeat the evil,
which is necessarily personified in uncontrolled female characters of witches,
stepmothers and stepdaughters. The rescue of the industrious and suffering heroine at
the hands of a strong male hero is a reward for her patience, purity of heart and
faithful waiting. It is men in this mass-mediated versions of the tales who bring about
order and harmony: “In celebrating the moral innocence of the white Anglo-Saxon
male, made in America, Disney projected his ideological vision of an orderly society
that could only sustain itself if irrational and passionate forces are held in check, ...
Instead of associating evil with the oppressive rule of capitalist or fascist governments
or with in-egalitarian socio-economic conditions, it is equated with the conniving,
jealous female, with black magic and dirty play, with unpredictable forces of
turbulence that must be cleaned and controlled. Though the intention was not
malevolent, the Disney films were meant, to distract viewers from grasping the evil
they confronted in their daily lives, and pointed to illusory possibilities for happiness
and salvation.” (Brothers Grimm, 61) Important here is the fact which cannot be
overlooked that Disney deliberated his efforts not just at young viewers but
prominently also at an adult audience. He wanted adults to believe in the “once upon a
time” fairy tale messages that he would convey through the films: “As we do it, as we
tell the story, we should believe it ourselves. It’s a ‘once upon a time’ story, and I
don’t think we should be afraid of a thing like that.”18 And it is mainly because his
intended audience included people of all age groups and interests that his cinematic
versions of the tales are still available. He reinterpreted the tales and transformed their
characters: “I’d make Cinderella a sparkling, alive girl, even going so far as to give
her a few human weaknesses. In this way we can prove that Cinderella really did live
and that she still lives in the heart of every young girl who dreams ... we wish
Cinderella to have a certain strength of character quite unlike the fairy story version of
the heroine.” (Disney, 28)

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As said earlier the heroes of the three cinematic tales are also changed in their
appearance and role and are given greater importance than in the Grimm version. The
Americanised girls and boys in the stories are pitted against ambitious, cruel,
frightening women villains. Even in the tale of Sleeping Beauty he introduces wicked
women whereas the Grimm version presents but an angry fairy. Besides presenting
the contrast between the good heroine and a bad villainess, passive and active women,
Disney infuses the tales with an element of humour by way of small, secondary
characters, may it be some animal or dwarfs who mediate between the hero/heroine
and the villains. Kay Stone in her article on Walt Disney’s Americanisation of the
fairy tale points out the traits of the North American story telling tradition in the three
tales. The element of humour and intervention of the secondary characters in the main
action of the narrative are typical North American traits. Besides these features
Disney also incorporated two more of these traits and they are diminishing magic and
downplaying royalty. He mocks the two and creates humour at their cost. Stone in her
research has repeatedly pointed out on the basis of her interviews with fairy tale
readers that people are mainly influenced by the romantic aspects of the fairy tales. In
fact, the tales are popularly viewed as love stories. It is this popular belief that Disney
manifests in his cinematic versions of the tales. It strikes a chord with the audience –
young as well as adult – and thus very effectively Disney’s romantic vision is
realised. Sentimentality and cute, colourful presentation infused with humour
facilitate Disney’s romanticisation and Americanisation of the tales. However in so
doing Disney has not offered anything new. Rather, on the contrary, he has magnified
the popular romantic view of and attitude to the fairy tale. The dreaming young girls
in Disney's magic land can actually expect to live happily ever after with their
respective princes.

Disney’s fairy tales are amusing and popular with the audience of all age groups.
However, their fantasy is false. They do not challenge the audience. In fact, the
romanticisation and sanitisation of the tales in Disney films are dangerously harmful
since the utopia of the happily ever after that they present is perverse and does not
leave scope for hope, for changes as the traditional Grimm tales do. The latter are
more forceful in their address mainly to the adults and can be variously interpreted by
listeners/ readers of differing levels of ages and understanding. The multilayered
semantic, symbolic, psychological nature of the folktale and the classical fairy tale

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and the possibility of multiple interpretations from superficial to profound make them
challenging. Beneath their dreamlike simple facade, “[t]hese tales deal with
mysterious magic and with real and frightening conflicts with one’s self – conflicts
not simply resolved with the appearance of a lover. The ‘happily ever after’ meaning
of the fairy tale is not about finding one’s prince or princess, but finding one’s self.
You will not find that in Disneyland” (Stone, 35)

The Grimm tales though tailored and therefore heavily criticised by fairy tale
scholars, sometimes even as ‘fakelore’19 are defended by Zipes as artful
contaminations created and reworked for readers unfamiliar with the oral tradition.
Each of the Grimm tales has in its narrative structure multiple representations and
voices. The known, unknown voices of all those who created, passed on, informed
and narrated the tales to the Grimms, the Grimm Brothers’ own different voices as
editors, writers and re-viewers of the tales and the voices even of the experimental,
innovative retellers of classical tales could be heard in the literary world only on
account of the creative “contamination” mentioned above. This variety of voices in
different developmental periods of the fairy tale assertively prove the riches of this
genre in offering new reactions, interpretations and perspectives at any stage of life.
The ‘Germanicised’ nature of the tales and their “nationalistic” character were
apparently dissolved, with time, in their universal appeal. Their variety, mediation by
educated people and their re-formation as literary products offered them an
international and interrogational appeal and flavour. The Grimms’ tales also attracted
ideological attention of and debate from various scholars ranging on the one hand,
from the conservatives like “Josef Prestel and Karl Spiess, who used them to promote
a racist ideology, and on the other, radical critics such as Ernst Bloch, Walter
Benjamin, and even Antonio Gramsci, who sought to grasp their revolutionary
appeal.” (Brothers Grimm, 69) The only flaw that Zipes records in the universal
popularity of the Grimm tales is the tendency to isolate the tales from their historical
context while appreciating and appropriating them. The tales are endowed with more
magic than they actually possess. The Grimms’s “enchanted forest, created to
illuminate and celebrate the basic truths about German culture, was turned into and
still is a pleasure park, where people stroll and pluck their meanings randomly, with
complete disregard for the historical spadework of the Grimms.” (Brothers Grimm,
69)

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Dismissal of historical conditions of the narrative formation restricts the exploration

of greater ramifications of the tales. For instance, psychoanalytic study of a Grimm
tale could be deeper if one tries to locate the historical conditions in which the tale
was shaped i.e. institution of European family in the 18th and 19th centuries and the
actual experiences of the Grimms themselves, their personalities and their
psychological issues. It is necessary to ground psychoanalysis of the Grimm tales in
their social history in order to understand the reasons and manner of the role these
tales play in the process of children’s socialisation as well as their influence on adults.

Socio-historical approach and awareness enable us to understand the purpose and

rationale of the innovative contemporary attempts at re-visiting, retelling and
transforming the Grimm tales by the experimenters, scholars and critics of the
classical fairy tales. These reformed, re-told tales are innovative, radical, unusual,
strange and artificial. They defy the patterns set by the classical fairy tale. They de-
mythologise the fairy tale and themselves are “anti-mythical.” They “disassemble” the
mythic components of the fairy tale and re-assemble them into something anti-
mythical. As such they are bound to be short-lived in the public memory but their
appearance and existence are required: “The resurrection must take place, take its
place outside the mythic framework in ... re-creations...” (Brothers Grimm, 216)

As myth the fairy tale sinks deep into the individual and social psyche and lulls its
readers and listeners to complacent, unquestioning acceptance. It is as it were to wake
up the “comatose” “undersea” consumers of the tales that the innovative acts of
retelling the tales from new perspectives are performed. Anne Sexton, Olga Broumas
and many other writers of the 1970s were “disobedient” writers who attacked and
questioned the gender biased, patriarchal, racial and stereotyped fairy tale discourse
and patterns of the classical fairy tale. Patriarchy and its discriminatory attitudes
toward women and other marginalised, weaker sections of society reflected in the
tales prominently become the butt of the re-tellers’ attack and criticism. The
presuppositions about gender, hero, heroism etc reflected in the classical fairy tale are
questioned by means of varied attempts at retelling. These revised, re-visioned,
renewed tales that open up new perspectives on the original tales and break down
their negative elements are described as “de-Grimmed” tales by Eric Kaiser and
renamed as “re-utilised” tales by Zipes. (Brothers Grimm, 245)

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Zipes roughly categorises these experimental re-utilisations within Germany into six
overlapping categories viz.

i. Social satire; ii. Utopian tales; iii. Pedagogical tales; iv. Feminist tales; v. Comic
parodies; vi. Spiritual tales. (Brothers Grimm, 245) It would be useful here to consider
this categorisation: (Brothers Grimm, 246-255)

Social Satire: Fairy tale retelling under this category includes attempts of re-tellers to
satirise the Grimm tales and their ideology by debunking the style employed in the
tales. These tales critically comment on the former West German social conditions.
They expose through satire the hypocrisy and destructive aspects both of the Grimm
tales and the then (west) Germany society. They provoke the readers to question the
status of the Grimm tales as classical fairy tales and reflect on the relevance of
contemporary social conditions. The tales are subversive and challenge the readers.
However they do not offer any solutions to the problems they raise nor do they
suggest any alternatives to the contemporary social issues. German writers of retold
tales viz. Taxler, Maar, Janosch, Max von der Grun, Iring Fetscher, Peter Paul Zahl
are cited by Zipes as writers writing satirical retold fairy tales.

Utopian Fairy Tales: Retold utopian tales do not present the hopelessness about social
change that the satires do. These tales, on the contrary, implicitly criticise the Grimm
tales and present possibilities of alternative modes of living. They demonstrate the
possibility of social change through collective efforts and democratic share in the
benefits of such action. They thus shift the focus of the tales from individual
happiness and power to collective action and democracy. They use humour to convey
a utopian message that oppression can be overcome. Tales by Basis Verlag, Friedrich
Kar Waechter, and Irmela Brender are said to have attempted retold fairy tales with
utopian messages.

Pedagogical Fairy Tales: Along with the positivity of the utopian tales retold
pedagogical fairy tales convey didactic messages for children of growing ages. They
object to the Grimms’ ideas of good socialisation. As a result these stories tend to
delete violence, sexual references, racism and other elements that could affect
children’s healthy psychological growth. They aim at a healthy growth and therefore
in many of these tales the closures are changed to suit their didactic purpose. For
instance, Otto F Gmelin, who was the most prominent re-teller of this story type,

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changes the end of “Little Red Riding Hood” by transforming the wolf into a young
boy who lives with Little Red Cap and her grandmother. Gmelin in his version of
“Hansel and Gretel” removes the wicked stepmother, transforms the cannibalistic
witch into a banished old woman in the forest who does not want to eat or exploit the
children, deletes the children’s act of killing the so-called witch and presents children
as returning to both the parents. Gmelin titles his collection of these tales Fairy Tales
for Brave Girls (1978).

Feminist Fairy Tales: Retold feminist fairy tales confront the sexist ideology of the
Grimm tales. These revisions suggest non-sexist behaviour by rejecting male
manipulation. They also suggest the possibility of establishing female solidarity
against patriarchal control. Most feminist revisions of fairy tales radically change the
Grimm tales while some tend to simply alter passive roles and sexist ideology of the
tales. Christa Reinig, Svende Merian, Ines Kohler-Zulch, Christine Shojaei Kawan in
West Germany are reputed to have revised fairy tales from a feminist perspective.

Comic Parody: Comically parodied versions of fairy tales mock and debunk classical
fairy tale conventions, characters and their virtues. While these tales simultaneously
mock the Grimms’ tradition, ideology as well as contemporary mores they do not aim
at providing any message. Mockery of the romanticism in the classical tales by means
of wit and humour alone is critically biting and effective. Zipes gives instances of
three typical parodies viz. Uta Claus and Rolf Kutschera’s Total Dead House (1984),
Heinz Langer’s Grim Fairy Tales (1984), and Chris Schrauff’s The Wolf and His
Stones (1986). These writers focus on the hidden implied meanings of the Grimm
tales and their relevance to the contemporary readers.

Spiritual Tales: Spiritually told tales are more precisely spiritually re-interpreted tales
for the upliftment and edification of individual reader of the tales. “Fairy tales are
counsellors and anticipatory images of the most different situations and difficulties of
life. That is why we can use them with trust to orient ourselves because there is no
personal intention of a particular author behind them.” (Brothers Grimm, 255) Zipes
mentions Johann Friedrich Konrad’s “modern and amusing” revisions of 9 Grimm
tales which are intended at adolescents “to help in connection with other media and
texts to free sex and eros from egotism, exploitation, and boasting, and also from

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inhibition, besmirching and smut and to enable them to form a partnership that lives
from consideration and fulfilment.” (Brothers Grimm, 255)

Somewhat similar categories could be devised to include retellings of the classical

tales by various writers all over the world. Whatever the category, the retellings tend
to convert and change not just the tales retold but the ideologies, conventions, views
and attitudes they generate. As Karl Kroeber says, “Storytelling is perhaps humanity’s
primary tool for changing reality.”20 Each retelling is an attempt to change and bring
about a change by foregrounding that which the original tale does not or cannot
express. The gaps left in the original narration are filled in by the retellings which
offer a new perspective on the same tale. Karl Kroeber points this out in his book:
“Each retelling of a story permits the articulation of deeper possibilities that exist
because they were not expressed in the original telling.” (Kroeber, 48)

The retold versions of classical tales analysed in Chapter IV of this thesis show this
concern of the retelling project to express implicit, repressed and new possibilities at
the root of the original tales. One of the earliest attempts at transforming the Grimm
tales in America was undertaken by Anne Sexton who chose to re-frame 17 of her
daughter’s favourite Grimm tales. She begins her retellings with the last tale in the
Grimms’ final collection ‘The Gold Key.’ In other words she begins where the
Grimms stop. Interestingly the young boy who is the hero of the Grimm tale is
transformed into an Everyman, “each one of us/ I mean you./ I mean me.” (T, 2) The
Grimm boy has a key which fits a box inside which are many wonderful things kept
hidden from us as suspense: “We must wait until he has quite unlocked it and opened
the lid, and then we shall learn what wonderful things were lying in the box.”
(Grimm, 200) The key in the transformed tale “opens this book of odd tales/ which
transform the Brothers Grimm.” (T, 2) Her book of Transformations constitutes “odd”
retold tales. She transforms the omniscient, invisible third person male Grimm
narrator into a middle-aged witch with whom Sexton explicitly identifies – Dame
Sexton the witch calls herself in the transformed “The White Snake” – and who uses
her witchcraft, here her art of poetry, to bring about her desired transformation. Thus
using verse to re-tell the tales Sexton transforms the look, the style and medium of the
tales as well. At the same time the witch-narrator transforms the Grimm characters,
modifies their nature and alters their circumstances before presenting them in the
verse tales. Thus the deliberately transformed tales in her collection have a strikingly

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different look and nature with strikingly transformed characters in them. Her pose as a
witch-narrator ready to tell a story or two is significant since it seems to have behind
it her obsession with the witch persona throughout her literary career: “I am a witch,”
she says in her letter to Paul Brooks, “an enchantress of sorts and have already been
worshipped and hung.”21 It also reflects her awareness and perhaps an experience of
social condemnation and literary stereotyped presentation of outgoing creative women
as witches:

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

...

A woman like that is not a woman quite,

I have been her kind.22

A feminist theory concerning witches believes that women rebelling against

patriarchy, the first feminists so to say, were accused of being witches and were
actually hunted for being so by the male-oriented society which felt threatened by the
increasing influence of these ‘witches.’ There is no evidence whether Sexton was
influenced by this feminist thought nor did she herself claim to be a feminist but
surely the budding feminist discourse in the America of the 1970s must have touched
the sensitivities of the rebel spirit in her. As a social outcast, one who does not comply
and therefore shunned by society, the witch-narrator sympathises with the outcast
figures in the tales. For instance, in Rumpelstiltskin, conceived and perceived
traditionally as a wicked being, the witch-narrator sees signs of social hatred and
victimisation. In fact, she uses her witchcraft in a way that her stories appear radically
transformed within their original, classical plot and storyline. The verse form of the
tales and their bipartite presentation – an indented prologue followed by the
transformed tale, offer the retellings a transformed look. The tale-teller “tangled on
[my] two great arms,/ [my] face in a book/ and [my] mouth wide” (T,1) unfolds the
aim of the book in the prefatory tale ‘The Gold Key.’ With her face in the book she is
“ready to tell a story or two.” (T, 1) Like the French conteuses Sexton here is referring
to a book and speaking to an audience. She thus sets herself in both written and oral
traditions of tale transmission. With a mouth wide open she would tell tales from the
book or devour. She asks the audience to “draw near.” Quite admittedly the audience

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is “comatose” and “undersea” adults who need to be reminded of this state of theirs.
With her power to speak and narrate the tales – the power of black art of spinning
tales – she would invoke the adults’ memories of the childhood stories and shake
them out of their perceptions in which they seem to be locked and trapped:

I have come to remind you,

all of you,

Alice, Samuel, Kurt, Eleanor,

Jane, Brian, Maryel,

all of you draw near.

Alice,

at fifty-six do you remember?

Do you remember when you

were read to as a child?

Samuel,

at twenty-two have you forgotten?

Forgotten the 10 p.m.dreams

where the wicked king

went up in smoke?

Are you comatose?

Are you undersea? (T, 1)

She wants to disturb their complacency, drag them out of their entrapping perceptions
and provoke them to confront the unquestioning adolescent in them. Hence she
deliberately chooses and reutilises the Grimm boy with a key to a casket of wonderful
things. He is everyone of us whom the writer addresses. She seems to show a boy on
the verge of adolescence – a time of strongly emerging sexuality (The secrets of

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the key whimper like a dog in heat) and identifying him with everyone of the readers/
listeners she provokes the adolescent in each of us. Perhaps she also intends to show a
boy who has not fully grown to be a patriarchal subject, who would educate himself
by seeking answers to the unanswered questions, by his inquisitiveness and will
“transform” himself and the society around. He could be viewed as a representative of
the future men, much more rational, reasonable, egalitarian, non-prejudiced member
of a society that needs to be freed from the parochial views and values prevalent in it.
Sexton insists on asking questions and finding answers. She desires a transformed
social order and for that insists on the complacent minds to “transform” themselves
and consider the new perspective she presents in the transformed tales. The ever
inquisitive boy represents Sexton’s desire and longing to go beyond what he seems to
know. Such inquisitiveness she expects in the comatose adults the adolescent in
whom would seek more and more unsought for questions and find answers for them:

Upon finding a nickel

he would look for a wallet

...

Upon finding a string

he would look for a harp. (T, 2)

The answers would unfold themselves as the boy turns the gold key. The Grimm tale
keeps the contents of the casket hidden as a surprise and never discloses them.
However Sexton’s Gold Key opens the book of the odd transformed tales which bring
to the adults’ notice the “whimpering secrets” of the tales. She definitely expects that
the comatose, adult consumers of these tales examine critically what the tales with a
new perspective reveal to them. The “odd tales” are joined by “an enlarged paper
clip” that the witch has. Through these tales she seems to produce and provide a new
paradigm of contemporary tales. This paradigm examines the life of women in
patriarchy, by casting sarcasm and cynicism on their passive and helpless existence in
this order.

Sexton’s attempt at re-visiting the tales, transforming them and sarcastically

criticising them makes explicit her awareness of the power exerted by fairy tales on

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individuals, particularly women. She never liked to be called a feminist nor did she
write these tales from a feminist perspective yet her tales do reflect her feminine
concerns and her iconoclastic stance and critique of patriarchal culture and its social
and moral conventions. Her explicit social criticism of patriarchal indoctrination and
of its adverse impact mainly on women and the marginalised and also on men as
suggested in Chapter IV certainly takes her very close to the feminist agenda of
deconstructing narratives that are conditioned by the patriarchal system and
expectations that curtail and repress any expression of freedom and equal status. Her
tales reveal her consideration and awareness of the fairy tale potential to normalise
and socialise female and male readers to accept the socially expected notions of
“femininity” and “manhood.” Fairy tales can subtly and implicitly but extremely
effectively win the young readers’/ listeners’/ viewers’ compliance with the existing
cultural discourses. “[M]uch of Sexton’s achievement in Transformations stems from
her recognition of the impact of socialisation process on women and her decision to
focus on the socio-cultural context – on the way her protagonists are cast into roles
and proceed to play them out.”23 For this, Sexton retains the original structure of the
Grimm tales which she has revised and yet within the original frame provokingly
hastens “a transformed view of traditional social values, particularly those associated
with the feminine life patterns: love and marriage, beauty, family and most radically,
the idea of goodness and moral responsibility, all of which she slices through like
butter.”24 She brings to the surface the subtexts hidden in the tales and demystifies
them as well as the culturally and traditionally assigned roles of the protagonists –
male and female.

The transformed tales are subversive and provocative. The provocation is amplified
by the use of black humour and irony. The strong authorial voice in the prologues to
the transformed tales and the interpolations added to them guides the readers/ listeners
of the transformed tales to the extent of directing and conditioning their responses,
compelling them to meditate on, re-examine and challenge ideas and views implicitly
generated through the classical fairy tales and firmly embedded in the collective
psyche. Besides, she also makes use of highly graphic, modern images, blunt,
colloquial language, at times slang expressions, and references to famous American
brand names and trademarks of the 1960s like “sanforised,” “Bab-O,” “Duz,”
“Muzak,” “Ace Bandage,” “Soda Pop,” “Orphan Annie,” “Coca-Cola,” “regular

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Bobbsey Twins” and so on. As William Pitt Root says, taken out from the dark
Germanic woods these stories are reinstated in “the well-lit but equally dark places at
the heart of American consumer culture.”25 Language plays an important role in
subverting the tales for her own purpose: “Through language the poem’s speaker
rebuilds the original Grimm materials reconstituting them into something all of her
own.”26 Apart from sarcasm Sexton employs casual, offhand and colloquial attitude to
explicitly display her irreverence of the traditional tales and their ideology. Caroline
King Bernard Hall calls Sexton’s tales “a pop-art creation, true to the cartoon nature
of fairy tale character and situation.” (Hall, 96) The cartoon nature of the transformed
tales is intensified by the colloquial and slangy language besides explicit references to
characters from comic strips. For instance, ‘Z’ buzzes from the mouth of the sleeping
Hansel and Gretel, One Eye has an eye “like a great blue Aggie,” Rumpelstiltskin
“does” the trick etc. In order to combine her own universe with that of the Grimms
she creates “a different language, a different rhythm” as she writes in one of her
letters. (Linda Sexton, 367) This language and the content it shapes, together
contribute to the transformations offering the book a look of “an enlarged paper clip,”
“a piece of sculpture.” (T, 1) Bernard Hall uses the analogue of fun-house mirror to
describe the sculpture-like aspect of the tales: “like a distorting mirror that enlarges
and collapses parts of the original image reflected in it, both amusing and frightening
the viewer, Sexton’s Transformations distort the original Grimm tales amplifying and
magnifying some details, contrasting and eliminating others.” (Hall, 103) The
thematic transformation lends modernity to the text and is achieved through the male
and female characters seen in a completely new light e.g. the courageous, innocent
heroes and heroines become “dumb bunnies,” “regular Bobbsey twins,” the witches
and the like characters become sympathetic figures, the good and kind king marrying
the cripple is seen to be self-serving, Briar Rose on her release from the curse is not
happy but scared to death etc. Talking about the prologues Harries says, “She has
transplanted them into apparently alien, even contaminated soil, where they ‘take
root’ and send out new and unexpected shoots. The supermarkets, parking lots,
cocktail parties, and mental institutions of her prologues – so far from the Grimms’
villages and dark woods – become the modern matrix for her ‘small, funny, and
horrifying’ versions of the old stories. Without these deeply ironic introductions, her
tales would lose their tensile roots in contemporary American culture.”27 Thus the
prologues contribute to the modernisation of the tales since it is in them that Sexton
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records all the “unconscious messages” she received while reading the tales. In fact,
what she could not accomplish in the body of the tales seems to get incorporated in
the prefatory notes to the re-formed stories and the personal comments and twists at
the end which we may call epilogues. To say it in her own words, “...if I got, as I was
reading it, some unconscious message that I had something to say, what I had fun
with were the prefatory things ... that’s where I expressed whatever it evoked in me –
and it had to evoke something in me or I couldn’t do it...”28 She liked but ruled out the
possibility of using the prologues as epilogues as suggested by Stanley Kunitz. She
claims in her letter to him, that the stories “seem to grow out of the prologue to, as it
were, take root in them.” (Linda Sexton, 371) The prologues offer a contemporary
context to the transformed tales. They play a dominant role in transforming the
classical tales as the poet wishes. Being a confessional poet, Sexton successfully
attempts to juxtapose here too the personal and the universal.29 She says, “it would...
be a lie to say that they weren’t about me, because they are just as much about me as
my other poetry...” (Linda Sexton, 362) In yet another letter to Kurt Vonnegut, she
asserts, “I think they end up being as wholly personal as my most intimate poems, in a
different language, a different rhythm but coming strangely for all their strong sound,
from as deep a place.” (Linda Sexton, 367) Her bold use of very personal imagery
throughout the text, occurrence of the recurring themes in her poetry, which make her
a confessional poet, for instance seduction by the father, mother-daughter relationship
and references to her most private experiences of insanity and images based on them
make the tales personal, and at the same time they are intended to be publicly, socially
consumed, read, heard and reflected on by adult listeners. Thus there is a circularity
i.e. the tales that originally belong to the public are appropriated and made personal
but are meant for public consumption; the social is made personal for a universal
appeal and application. Personalisation, however, heightens and enriches the appeal of
the transformed tales.

Sexton’s transformations of the classical tales are revolutionary and revolting.

However though they challenge and criticise they do not offer resolutions. The
transformations work within the constraints of the masculine power. The witch’s
sarcasm and sardonic humour fall short of total defiance of this dominant masculine
discourse in the tales. Despite her provocation both of women and men to deconstruct
the stereotypes of a patriarchal culture, at times the witch-narrator shows conformity

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to the patriarchal ideology. The princess in the transformed “Frog Prince” for
instance, views prince as an “old waddler.” He is a “tradesman” having no power
whatsoever. Still he embodies a patriarchal tenet that men dominate women. The tale
ends with the lines:

Thus they were married

After all he had compromised her. (T, 99)

The Frog Prince continues his dominant masculine role by hiring

a night watchman

so that no one could enter the chamber

And also has the well

boarded over so that

never again would she love her ball. (T, 99)

Thus the rebellion of the Transformations does not transgress the boundaries of the
patriarchal ideology. As a result though the transformed tales raise a defiant voice
against the original tales, they do not offer solutions or alternatives to the
discriminating masculine power. An important reason behind this hesitant, reluctant
stance of Sexton’s is her own experiences as a woman who could not be independent
of male support in life and her own sense of entrapment in marriage. As Christa Joyce
says, “Relying on the state of entrapment that she felt in her marriage, Sexton creates
female characters who, while sardonically showing the underbelly of the tales, do not
find freedom or enlightenment.”30

It is Olga Broumas, the Greek American fairy tale re-teller, who furthered the view
and the task taken up by Anne Sexton. Taking her cue from Sexton’s work and
outlook, she proceeds to elaborate on the themes Sexton touches upon, expands
Sexton’s characters “as if she has carefully taken each of Sexton’s women and with a
fresh, more contemporary feminist view, has allowed choices that are not necessarily
in line with the status-quo of society, particularly the patriarchal society that created
the best known classic fairy tales.” (Joyce, 41) For instance, Broumas begins her
“Rapunzel” with a quote from Sexton’s transformed “Rapunzel”:

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A woman

who loves a woman

is forever young. (T, 35)

While Sexton, when she wrote so apparently had in mind her subtle relationship with
her own great aunt Nana and very delicately hinted at sexual bonds between Rapunzel
and Mother Gothel and vitality of such a relation, Broumas shows the two women as
lovers able to flourish and revel in an idyllic union. While Sexton’s women are
estranged from each other as the young girl is shown to accept the tenets of a
traditional, patriarchal way of life, Broumas's women “choose to maintain the union
that seems almost divine, with both women able to grow in each other’s light.”
(Joyce, 41)

Heterosexuality as the normal feminine sexuality is the widely imposed and accepted
patriarchal tenet which “colonises” women’s bodies.31 Universal observance of this
tenet obviously marginalises and outcasts the non-conformists – homosexuals and
lesbians. As a result these sections particularly lesbians are “driven ... into secrecy and
guilt, often to self-hatred and suicide” (Rich, 225) despite the fact of historical and
physical existence of erotic love among women: “Before any kind of feminist
movement existed, or could exist, lesbians existed: women who loved women, who
refused to comply with the behaviour demanded of women, who refused to define
themselves in relation to men. Those women, our foresisters, millions of whose names
we do not know, were tortured and burned as witches, slandered in religious and later
‘scientific’ tracts, portrayed in art and literature as bizarre, amoral, destructive,
decadent women. For a long time, the lesbian has been a personification of feminine
evil.” (Rich, 225) Sexton could read the hidden undercurrent of erotic love between
Rapunzel and the witch Godmother in the original tale and ably brought it to the
surface but did not carry it to end as an alternative to the patriarchal tenets of
heterosexuality though she mocked them. This was perhaps on account of her own
sense of entrapment in the bonds of male-oriented ideology and hence perhaps
the hesitation or fear of going against the “normal” notions of sexuality.

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Broumas however, boldly defies these norms and almost explodes what Sexton
delicately and at times timidly touches upon.

As “a woman committed to/a politics/ of transliteration”32 Broumas re-forms the old

tales using her own “new language.” She seems to assume that the existing language
and its expressions are not adequate enough to articulate the re-imagined visions of
and perspective on the old tales. Transliteration, which she calls “the methodology/ of
a mind/ stunned at the suddenly possible/ shifts of meaning” (Artemis, 24) can be
attained only by “finding” words to express accurately the new meanings which can
emerge in the re-formed traditional discourses. “Transliterating” writers place the old
tales into unusual, unexpected patterns working often on the most subtle, peripheral
details and bringing them to the centre thus generating more novel, liberal meanings.
Feminist critics of fairy tales saw the classical tales as prescriptive, conveying and
expecting an allegiance to harmful roles for women. As discussed earlier, lives of
women (as well as of men) are directly affected and influenced by the fairy tales they
read or listen to or are made to read or hear. Women in thrall of fairy tale ideology
and happy ever after endings willingly let themselves be objectified and passed on
from father to husband/ lover. Helen Cixous holds the impact of repetition of the
“once upon a time”s – “ the same story repeating woman’s destiny in love across the
centuries with the cruel hoax of its plot” (Harries, 138) responsible for the creation of
gender hierarchy, which humiliates women resulting in women themselves lacking
self-respect. It is these repetitive plots that transliterating writers like Sexton and
Broumas re-frame using a different language in new and contrasting contexts and thus
changing the focus and significance of the plots. Sexton uses the methodology of
retelling the tales with her own spin to the plot while retaining their original structure.
Broumas’s however, is different. Her poetic ‘methodology’ takes her back to her
personal history, to Greek mythology, and to fairy tales. She ‘transliterates’ or re-
forms the old stories, omitting some elements, emphasising some others, to make
them part of her new and dangerous vision of the world.” (Harries, 135) As Harries
sees it, Broumas’s quest is “urgent: there is no time to lose” because to contain her
own re-visions the prevailing language is insufficient: “we must/ find words/ or burn”
(Artemis, 24); she needs “to invent a language” (Harries, 135) wherein lies the act and
essence of her transliteration. Like an archaeologist, as Mary Caruthers maintains,
Broumas in her re-visions, discovers “fragments and remnants” of a language, which

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is nowhere to be found, lost forever. (cf Harries) In her retellings of seven well-known
fairy tales she offers completely new patterns and forms to the images in the familiar
fairy tale narrative patterns. She isolates the familiar iconic images, shapes and
transforms them “into letters of an unfamiliar language” and re-places them in new
patterns. She does not end her poems with happy ever after heterosexual weddings but
with a sense of faith in strong sisterhood and feminine solidarity. “Her transliterations
demand that we read the images in a new cultural framework, a framework that not
only questions the traditional patterns of what Sexton calls ‘that story’ but creates new
patterns for stories women can tell.” (Harries, 152)

In 1997 with her book Kissing the Witch: Old tales in New Skins the Irish writer
Emma Donoghue attempted to “queer” the fairy tale canon, a step further ahead of
Broumas’s. Like Sexton and Broumas, Donoghue re-frames the tales but unlike them
her tales are aimed at “young readers” and are not made contemporary. However she
does challenge the stereotyped discourse of the fairy tale and stereotypical
representation of characters particularly of women characters. Following Sexton she
creates the persona of a human but vulnerable witch. She explores the relation
between the popular tales and the system of gender in society. Challenging the
representation of witches in the traditional tales constitutes her project. However
unlike Sexton and more so Broumas, she does not invent new expressions but rather
retains the simple language of the classical tales and their settings. She subverts the
patriarchal language to attain her goal of re-fashioning the tales in her own stride.

Being a lesbian herself, Donoghue revisits thirteen tales from a lesbian feminist
perspective. In her re-visions she mocks the norms of heterosexuality, challenges the
authority of the classical tales and social, cultural norms represented in them, and at
the same time while appropriating and “queering” the canon deviating from their
patterns she also exploits the emancipatory potential of these tales and demonstrates
that the tales have within themselves a critical dimension. This emancipatory potential
of the canonical tales offers her room to present new possibilities, cover the tales with
a “new skin” and offer alternative to the traditional fixed roles and identities in favour
of more positive ones. She contests the patriarchal canon with “the lesbian continuum,
i.e. a rich and diverse spectrum of love and bonding among women, which also
includes female friendship, mother-daughter relationships, and women’s social
groups.” (Bobby, 27) As analysed in the earlier chapter, while Broumas’s Cinderella

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against her wishes and pining for her sister’s hut continues to live among men
estranged from her mother and sisters, Donoghue’s Cinderella determinedly goes
back to and shares her helper’s house as their own: “She took me home. Or I took her
home, or we were both somehow taken to the closest thing.”33 Donoghue does not just
oppose the socially sanctioned heterosexual norm suggested in the traditional happy
ever after weddings and endings, she offers an alternative ending that places lovers on
an equal footage as human beings. All the narratives in her re-visioned tales project an
answer to the male canon of the fairy tale. Thirteen tales are structured in a sequence
of interlocking first person female narratives. Each anonymous woman tale teller
passes on her tale to another and thus each story is the personal story of the prominent
female character of the previous tale. The book thus becomes a story of multiple
narratives intricately chained to one another. Like the tales their women narrators too
become strongly bound to one another. The bond between them is strengthened with
each one hearing and being heard. By means of the interlinked chain of narratives
within the frame of a single story Donoghue creates a space where she could relate
different intimate female voices, painful feminine experiences and choices. She
recasts women’s relationships in a positive light and demonstrates the possibility of a
better and happier existence for them in a lesbian world where they could “take [their]
own life in [their] own hands” (Donoghue, 11)

On the textual level Donoghue pays homage to and deviates from the female tradition
of writing established by writers like Jane Austen, Cristina Rossetti, Virginia Woolf,
Anne Sexton, Angela Carter, Olga Broumas and Adrienne Rich. Her creative re-
making of the stories includes intertextual allusions to her literary predecessors. These
literary women ancestors guide and instruct her on how to escape the patriarchal
behavioural model of a woman. Amidst the various retellings of the tales by women
writers Donoghue finds her own voice following their legacy and at the same time
varying and escaping from them. For instance, Donoghue’s mysterious woman helper
in the tales, the witch of the title of her collection and the use of the term
“transformations” by her Cinderella to describe the positive influence of this older
woman on her mind are all reminiscent of Anne Sexton’s middle-aged witch and her
Transformations. Donoghue reverently acknowledges the impact, on herself, of earlier
women writers and at the same time presents her furthered views than theirs by
reversing or altering the situations and ends of the re-told tales and also by offering

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an alternative world of female solidarity. Thus she “re-dresses” the pre-written texts
in a “new skin.”

While attempting this transformation Donoghue, as Joyce demonstrates, seizes the

“what if” moment in the heterotexts and puts forth her own lesbian perspective to
overturn the patriarchal discourse of social advancement through heterosexual
romance. Joyce quotes Bonnie Zimmerman to explicate lesbian appropriation of the
pre-written traditional tales: “There is a certain point in a plot or character
development – the ‘what if’ moment – when the lesbian reader refuses to assent
anymore to the heterosexual imperative; a point in the narrative labyrinth where she
simply cuts a hole and follows her own path.” (Joyce, 23) Donoghue thus creatively
works on “the silences of the text.”34 These silences mutely articulate the stress of the
ideological agenda of any text. Donoghue beautifully and in fact, socially
significantly manipulates these silences to re-tell the tales so that a new awakened
view on the traditional tales could be offered. Thus she drags the reader of her tales
too into the process of narration. She expects and stresses that the reader should be
active and alert in reading these tales. She intends to develop a new awareness, a new
awakening through her retellings. Thus she does not just challenge the fixed, given
social roles and identities and question them but she tries to involve her audience to
participate in the process of questioning and voicing their own experiences to develop
a new creativity. While insisting on the need to change, re-dress and re-fashion the old
tales in order to give vent to painful personal experiences and difficulties involved
and strength required in making individual choices, the female narrators of
Donoghue’s tales emphatically demonstrate how creatively the tales could be read and
reinterpreted from every perspective. Hence at the end of the book the narrators invite
the readers to tell their own stories, their own experiences expressing Donoghue’s
trust in the readers’ impact and power on fairy tales: “This is the story you asked for. I
leave it in your own mouth.” (Donoghue, 211)

Reader’s creative attempt at telling the story from her own perspective would allow
an even deeper probe into and manipulation of the critical and subversive edge in the
classical tales. Advancing Sexton and Broumas’s attack on gender discrimination in
patriarchy in a novel way, Donoghue emphatically depicts homosexuality as a
liberating force by giving a variety of textual examples and showing how lesbian
relationships can function towards female redemption. What Ellen C Rose says about

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feminist retellings of fairy tales holds true for Donoghue’s tales which “force us to
consider the possibility that lesbianism is not deviant but a natural consequence of the
undeniable fact that a woman’s first love object, like a man’s, is her mother.”35

Whether it is Sexton, Angela Carter, Broumas, Robin McKinley, Sara H Hay, Tanith
Lee, Donoghue or for that matter any not so known modern re-framer of the classical
fairy tales, all use the technique of subversion to question how classical fairy tales
have been appropriated and mythicised to instruct and reinforce patriarchal rule and a
middle-class social code. Since the 1970s retellings and experimentations with the
fairy tale genre have focussed prominently on the issues of gender. Most of them are
feminist renderings of and against the patriarchal canon. But as Zipes expresses his
fear, “just as feminisms and the feminist movement have been culturally exploited
and compromised by the mass media and turned against themselves, the fairy tale that
seeks to maintain its utopian purpose and social critique is always in danger of being
defused and transformed into mere entertainment.” (Brothers Grimm, 142)

The writers considered in this chapter till now have adults as their target audience.
Donoghue’s book though addressed apparently at young readers, with its urge at the
end to make every reader participate in telling her own experiences, explicitly expects
responses and reactions from adults. Fairy tale experimentations that were specifically
intended at children came up in the resurgence of the fairy tale during the late 1980s.
Some prominent examples of experimental writers writing for children include
Maurice Sendak, William Goldman, Wendy Walker, Jane Yolen (Tales of Wonder),
Robert Coover (The Gingerbread House), Terri Windling and so on. Despite their re-
visionary inputs, however, these authors in their revised tales for children equally
stress the closure, unity, happy ending and a neatly ordered world. As a result these
tales do not reflect to children the contemporary ossified reality but present both
progressive as well as regressive tendencies. As Zipes claims, “In the case of fairy
tales for children, the harmonious ends may be justified as long as they motivate
children to believe that sex roles can be altered. But, given the vast problems
confronting women in ... society – teenage pregnancy, pauperisation of single women
with children, inequitable wages – these fairy tales also conceal reality and give
children a false impression of what awaits them as they mature.” (Brothers Grimm,
147) However re-visions like Martin Waddell’s ‘The Touch Princess’ (1986), and
Babette Cole’s ‘Princess Smarty Pants’ (1986) do respect children’s autonomy and

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encourage them through the open ends to think and reconsider as their own their
gender identities and choose for themselves their own roles.

Transgressing the traditional boundaries of the fairy tale and creating new worlds and
progressive ideologies, manipulating the critical and utopian functions of the fairy
tale, that of bringing its reader face to face with the ossified reality and suggesting
alternative imaginary ways of life have been the common threads in all retelling
experiments. Except for Jane Yolen’s novel Briar Rose from the Terri Windling series
and a few retold tales not considered in this thesis, the retold tales seem to address the
adult facilitators of fairy tales for children. Even Yolen’s novel retelling for that
matter would appeal more to young adults who have knowledge about the Nazi
period, Auschwitz and its aftermath. Jane Yolen too writes for both children and
adults. She revises the traditional tales to expose their ideological undercurrents and at
the same time creates her own narrative using fairy tale motifs and themes. Her
experimentation with the fairy tale genre as shown in the previous chapter aims at
transforming the tales into irresolute problems: her “stories make no promises,
guarantee no happy endings. They present worlds which alter under our eyes like the
shapes of clouds. Image flows into image: the tree becomes a lover, the ribbon of gray
hair becomes a sliver road out of torment, the tears become like flowers, the old drunk
on the beach becomes the god of the sea. Each image is a gift without explanation.”36
With a definite non-dogmatic, non-instructive feminist bias Yolen, in her
experimental re-visions, undermines the authoritative voice of the Grimm brothers in
the classical tales. Her concerns reflect the influence of contemporary socio-political
and aesthetic issues and developments.

Like Yolen, Robert Coover too exposes, breaks down and recreates the fairy tale
conventions and rules of narrative productions. His re-visions of ‘Briar Rose’ and
‘Hansel and Gretel’ break the conventional narrative down into 42 sequels each and
the stories begin in media res. The utopian function of providing hope at the end of
the tale is totally disrupted and debunked in these tales leaving the re-told tales at the
same point where they begin holding “a cracked mirror up to the old fairy tales and
reality at the same time.” (Z, 159)

Overall in the attempts at retelling and revising the tales there is a general tendency to
coldly attack and critique the canon and the patriarchal ideology and behavioural

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patterns depicted in the tales that are considered exemplary for children to follow and
for adults to imbibe on young minds. Re-writing and retelling usually rests on the
dialogue between the writer and his/her inherited traditions. Readers are familiar with
the old tales and because of this foreknowledge “the narrative could be stripped right
down” making retelling easier: “There needed to be so little machinery it was easier to
dive deep in them and find rhythms.”37

19th and 20th century feminist and women writers of fairy tales subverted and opposed
the canon in varied ways. Some re-writings are simple revisions and inversions or
reversals: “There’s this thing going on at the moment where women tell all the old
stories again and turn them inside-out and back-to front – so the characters you
always thought were the goodies turn out to be the baddies, and vice versa, and a
whole lot of guilt is laid to rest: or that at least is the theory. I’m not sure myself that
the guilt isn’t just passed on to the next person, intact so to speak.”38 Polarised
categories of good and wicked characters in the traditional tales render ease in their
reversal in the retellings. Early feminist writers of fairy tales resorted to simple
inversion of passive princesses into active, inquisitive heroines exposing or justifying
the wicked and ugly women characters. These reversals expose sexist patriarchal
biases and values but do not attempt to move beyond leaving the criticised value
system more or less unchanged. Some women writers like Maxine Kumin in her
retelling attempts effectively to bring to the surface the inadequacies and silences of
the old tales. Her revision comments on how the old notions generated by and about
fairy tales continue to persist and question the “happily ever after” closures:

Why, for that matter, should any

twentieth century woman

have to lie down at the prick of

a spindle etcetera etcetra.39

Harries calls such retelling attempts “sequels” or prequels that focus on imaginary
happenings before or after the events in the traditional narratives.

One of the characteristic features of the contemporary retellings of the old tales is that
they completely do away with the objective third person narrative. They transform

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the impersonal narration and narrator into an individual, most often a woman’s voice.
Individualising narration necessarily implies mutability. While changing the old
narratives the re-told tales through their subjective narration expect and desire further
revisions. They do not try to establish themselves as a canon – the only and the final
way of understanding and appreciating a tale. It is the subjective element that keeps
open the possibility of re-vision and many such re-visioned versions of both the old
and the re-told tales. These re-tellers of tales resurrect the old narrative forms full of
worn out ideologies and ways of living and invent new forms to introduce a change of
minds, hearts and social order. They manipulate the potential of the fairy tale to bring
about such change and therefore turn to this genre for the transformation they desire.
They keep engaging in what Christine Bacchilega calls “conflicting dialogue with a
pervasive tradition.”40 The techniques of calling fixed gender positions and
authentic/canonical subjects into question, of carefully constructing first person
narrative voices and exploiting the fairy tale magic to “unmake some of its workings”
(Bacchilega, 23) are categorised by Bacchilega as “postmodern.” As post-modern
fictions the retellings play with the tale’s “framed images out of a desire to multiply
its refractions and to expose its artifices.” (Bacchilega, 23) They are not merely
stylistic and/or ideological reinterpretations appealing to the 20th century adult
audiences. Rather they involve narrative and ideological critique which is exhaustive
and positive. They question both the basic rules of fairy tale narrative construction
and gender assumptions reflected in the classical fairy tale. Zipes calls these tales anti-
mythic and points out, as Bacchilega and many others like Harries do, that there is a
constant, continued interaction between the mythic and anti-mythic tales. It is the
conflict between the normative function of the tale and its innovative and subversive
power that erupts such interaction. As Walter Benjamin would have it, the well-made
tale constitutes within itself the anti-tale and hence the inevitable conflict of varying
ideologies within individual tales.41

The classical fairy tale naturalises and evokes consent to social rules in a subtle
natural manner. Its artifice and social project remain hidden. Such tales emphasising
women’s experiences become dangerous since naturalising women’s roles contributes
to the long tradition of associating women with nature, which is seen as secondary or
inferior, intermediary to men in the patriarchal order. Fairy tale narratives are proved
to be inherently sexist. Feminists for years have continually questioned the sexism

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involved in fairy tale narratives. They recognise the power of the fairy tale magic and
critically analyse it. Besides they differently deconstruct and reconstruct the sexist
narratives which determine the production of gender. In the midst of its “multiple
retellings, the fairy tale is that variable and ‘in-between’ image where folklore and
literature, community and individual, consensus and enterprise, children and adults,
woman and women, face and reflect (on) each other.” (Bacchilega, 10) It is relevant
here to paraphrase Bacchilega’s viewpoint on and understanding of postmodern fairy
tales or more precisely postmodern transformations of the fairy tale. Acknowledging
Linda Hutcheon’s appealing approach to postmodern narratives as “cultural
enterprise” and “borderline enquiries” which contain self-reflexive contradictions and
conflicting dialogue with history, Bacchilega exploits the metaphor of magic mirror
that controls the fairy tale narrative and sees how postmodern fairy tales reproduce the
mirror images and at the same time “make the mirroring visible to the point of
transforming its effects.” (Bacchilega, 10) As such postmodern re-told tales are
“doubling the double: both affirmative and questioning, without necessarily being
recuperative or politically subversive.”(Bacchilega, 22)

Postmodern re-readings of the tales generate multiple possibilities that have remained
unexploited and unexplored. They do not just change our reading of the tales but
demonstrate how the anti-tale is hidden within the tale. Bacchilega says, “Post-
modern revision is often two-fold, seeking to explore, make visible the fairy tale’s
complicity with ‘exhausted’ narrative and gender ideologies, and, by working from
the fairy tales’ multiple versions, seeking to expose, to bring out, what the
institutionalisation of such tales for children has forgotten or left unexploited. This
kind of rereading does more than interpret anew or shake the genre’s ground rules. It
listens for many ‘voices’ of fairy tales as well, as part of a historicising and
performance oriented project.” (Bacchilega, 50) The self-reflexive retellings thus
exposing and at the same time reflecting on themselves with their multiple versions
and permutations become in Nancy Walker’s words “disobedient.” For these tales are
revisions which appropriate the classical tales with a view to “expose or upset the
paradigms of authority inherent” in those tales.(Walker, 6-7) They exploit and revise
the fairy tale magic to retell history, values and gendered figurations.”(Bacchilega,24)
Critical self-reflection of the post-modern retellings takes multiple manifestations. In
that, some retellings contest gender representation in classical tales just to re-inscribe

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them in a different unchallenged model of subjectivity or narrativity; some re-visions

undertake to expose traditional forms of ideologies of the western tales and question
and create new rules of narrative production while some other retellings “re-place or
re-locate the fairy tale to multiply its performance potential and denaturalise its
institutionalised power.” (Bacchilega, 23)

In all the tellings and retellings, mirrors and their reflections, frames and images,
gender plays a vital and indispensable role in the process of denaturalisation.
Reflection, refraction, framing and re-framing of the tales destroy, construct, subvert,
deconstruct and reconstruct ideologies and as “self-reflexive mirrors themselves are
themselves questioned and transformed.” (Bacchilega, 24) The double vision of
postmodern re-told fairy tales are “wonders in performance, and as such perform
varying wonders.” (Bacchilega, 24)

Writing in 1997, Bacchilega considered the vitality, she felt, postmodernism, despite
its conflicting interpretations, had in those days and explored the “post-modern”
narrative techniques in re-told fairy tales. However one could find Bacchilega’s “post-
modern” narrative techniques continually present in the fairy tale tradition from the
very early tales of conteuses till the contemporary revisions. As Harries maintains, it
is because of “our pervasive and one-sided understanding of the fairy tale tradition”
(Harries, 16) as following set patterns and shapes that makes us call re-visioned
narratives new and “post-modern” and the earlier ones “traditional.” Questioning,
challenging and critiquing the forms of the fairy tale genre have been a consistent
trend in the history of literary fairy tale since its very beginning. In fact, as shown
earlier, the form originated in the hands of the conteuses as an intentionally expressive
and questioning critical tool. “Throughout the history of written, literary fairy tale,
from its very beginnings in Italy and France, insistent internal voices and narrative
strategies have called the shapes and patterns we now see as ‘traditional’ into
question. ... the history of the written fairy tale is a history of pouring old wine into
new bottles, forcing new wine into old bottles, and often ‘distressing’ new bottles to
make them look old.” (Harries, 18)

Constant conflicting dialogue with the earlier conventions and consequential creation
of new ones to be challenged again by the subsequent recreations has marked the long
tradition of the literary fairy tale. It originated, continued and continues to exist in two

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modes – “compact,” and “complex,” in Harries’s terms. The two modes have “co-
existed” and “competed” for more than three centuries. The conteuses, for instance,
used and challenged the earlier romance while being aware of creating a new genre
themselves. Their stories were “long, intricate, digressive, playful, self-referential,
and self-conscious” (Harries, 17) – the features one can see in the above mentioned
“postmodern” tales. Charles Perrault whose fairy tale model became established later
as ‘classical’ was writing at the same time as the conteuses whose tales challenging
the patterns established by Italian Straparola and Basile were sidelined later to the
extent of being almost extinct, exemplify the co-existence of the ‘compact’ and the
‘complex.’ As discussed earlier, Harries who refuses the use of the term ‘postmodern’
describes compact fairy tales as “foundational or original,” tales that “come to us as
unmediated expressions of the folk and its desires.” (Harries, 17) Their traditional
status is marked by their simple structure. Complex stories “work to reveal the stories
behind other stories, the unvoiced possibilities that tell a different tale.” (Harries, 17)
Complex tale writers use the fairy tale genre as an agent of change – social as well as
individual.

Contemporary complex tales as the ones discussed in Chapter IV tend to resurrect old
forms and invent new ones. Writers repeatedly turn to the transformation and
experimentation of the fairy tale genre. They manipulate the fairy tale potential to
bring about a change in the attitude towards and understanding of the fairy tale and
the society and human nature reflected in it. While retelling the old tales, the writers
revise the old versions and at the same time initiate a new beginning. This amounts to
what Zipes calls “anti-mythical” nature of the transformed retellings. In that the re-
told tales themselves leave open the scope for further re-vision. As such they refuse to
get canonised and mythicised. This again accounts for and amounts to the continuity
of the tradition of framing and re-framing. In their intention to reinterpret the world
and reorder it by refracting and criticising it the re-told stories become “now
stories.”42

Like the conteuses of the 17th century who initiated through fairy tales the mockery
and subversion of gender roles and social practices of their times, the re-tellers of
the 20th and the present centuries manipulate the genre to challenge and attack social
patterns and hetero-normative patriarchal order. Contemplating the cultural forms
reflected in the well known fairy tales, they “reveal the cracks and fissures in the old

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bottles, and sometimes ... make them explode ... they see what needs to be seen again
and seen afresh – and show it to us.” (Harries, 163) This is true even of those
retellings which are undertaken with a social awareness and orientation. They do not
necessarily focus on gender roles and relations though that could be one of the aspects
of their re-told tales. They are more inclined towards making a socio-political
statement and even an economic statement in so far as they depict class
consciousness. Revised ‘Snow White’ by the Merseyside Fairy Story Collective
analysed in the earlier chapter is thus politically charged exploring mainly the existing
social conditions. It shows a revolutionary Snow White who professes equality and
earnestly urges the tyrant queen to be just toward her subject. She leads the mine
workers’ and later in the tale, the soldiers’ revolt against the queen who exploits them.
Snow White’s revolution puts an end to the tyrannical reign of the queen and
establishes a new egalitarian and democratic order. The four women of the
Merseyside Women’s Liberation Movement in Liverpool, who composed this story in
1972 along with their re-visions of ‘Rapunzel,’ ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ and ‘The
Prince and the Swineherd’ wrote with a strong belief that “Fairy tales are political.
They help to form children’s values and teach them to accept our society and their
roles in it. Central to this society is the assumption that domination and submission
are the natural basis of all our relationships.”43 In their revisions the weak and the
oppressed female/male protagonists are shown to have the potential to liberate
themselves. In general life is shown as a continual struggle suggesting a possibility to
bring about a happy end that triggers the beginning of a development towards
emancipation. The protagonists free themselves to come into their own. For instance,
in their ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ the old grandmother teaches the girl to overcome
her fear of the ‘forest’ and asks her to help other children like her: “whenever you
meet another child who is shy and timid, lend that child [this] cloak to wear as you
play together in the forest, and then, like you, they will grow brave.” (Merseyside, 5)

It is to be noted here that the re-workings of fairy tales from women’s perspective
criticising the discriminatory gender issues actually seem to have paved the way for
retellings focusing on the larger issues of socio-economic equality.
44
Ruth B Bottigheimer in her Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys illustrates, besides
gendered representations, the class distinctions and socio-economic hierarchies
depicted in the Grimm tales. She shows how “protagonists are introduced more often

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by their occupation than by any other characteristic.”(Bottigheimer, 124)

She shows that honest manual labour is unproductive in attaining economic
power/strength. It is only through luck, lottery or magic that the hero/heroine yields a
better, comfortable existence. Though the protagonists escape the socio-economic
circumstances they are born in, this escape is not “solely emancipatory, but actually
depict(s) the limits of social mobility.”45 Tales retold with Marxist agenda seek
alteration of social relations. Shannon Hale is one such re-teller who focuses
specifically on class consciousness and social reformation in her works based on and
retelling fairy tales. Her novels mostly touch upon the themes of political commentary
and social reform. Her Princess Academy46 has an overtly Marxist orientation. In it
some peasant girls are selected and trained to become potential princesses to marry
the prince. Miri, the heroine, denies the prospect of being accepted in and by the
aristocracy and in her search for her self and her place in the world, she recognises
that her born lower status and her relationship with the working class villagers are
more meaningful and gifting, that they offer her experiences and companionship with
nature unknown to the upper class world view. As a member of the class of the
masses and close to nature she develops a language that she uses to save her and
others’ lives. Given the opportunity to move up the social ladder she selflessly
chooses to remain in her own social class and instead of making her own socio-
economic progress decides to bring about changes that would benefit all her fellow
villagers and workers. She attempts to reform society as a result of which the
relationship of the villagers and the ruling classes improve initiating in turn social
equality. She manipulates her training in the Princess Academy to benefit the villagers
and her knowledge of “quarry-speech” – the language of the mountain folk – to
initiate a revolution against the highbrow and condescending headmistress of the
Academy, Olana Mansdaughter. She declines the prospect of being a princess and
also the offer to become a delegate at the court and expresses a desire to found an
academy to literate the mountain folk because she has realised that books are the most
precious things in the world and knowledge can wipe out class distinctions. Hale,
thus, in her re-workings of the Grimm fairy tales depicts her heroines moving towards
attainment of social justice and equality among classes.

The contemporary writers of re-told fairy tales have moved the genre beyond the
central consideration, in the classic tales, of marrying the prince. As Miri says,

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“It seems that the world has changed and we shouldn’t still be talking about things
like marrying a prince.” (Princess Academy, 286) The retelling of tales thus presumes
changes in our world and worldview.

The contemporary writers tend to make the tales more liberating and progressive. Jack
Zipes calls these writers “counter-cultural” who “transfigure” classical tales and
encourage readers to critically reflect on the “conditions and limits of socialisation.”47
These writers tend to “break, shift, debunk, or rearrange the traditional motifs to
liberate the reader from the contrived and programmed mode of literary reception.”
(178) Liberating tales of the contemporary counter-cultural fairy tale writers employ
two major modes of experimentation as Zipes stresses, viz., i. transfiguration of the
classical tale and ii. fusion of allusions to disturbing happenings in contemporary
society. Both aim at disturbing readers so that they shed their complacency “toward
the status-quo of society and envision ways to realise their individuality within
collective and democratic contexts.” (178)These attempts question authoritarianism,
male domination, gender stereotypes and social oppression and uphold anti-sexist and
anti-authoritarian perspective. The quest for liberation and liberating fairy tales has
been international since domination, exploitation and oppression have been
worldwide experiences the human community confronts. Various struggles in the
history of human civilisation viz., anti-war protests, civil rights movement, feminism,
the struggle for autonomy by the minorities and small nations throughout the world in
and since the late 20th century have shaped many writers’ vision of the fairy tale as a
tool to bring about social change. Against the background of these struggles,
liberating fairy tales for children did play a pivotal role since 1945. Writers
manipulated the fairy tale motifs, ideas and styles for liberating purposes.

As Zipes notes, “There was a strong radical tradition of rewriting folk tales and fairy
tales for children that began in the late 19th century and blossomed during the Weimar
period, until the Nazis put an end to such experimentation.” (72) Writers like Walter
Benjamin, Edwin Hoernle and others revived this tradition in the 1960s. It was a
period when children and their socialisation became focal concerns of the anti-
authoritarian and the leftist movements. The wave of progressive thinking, critique of
capitalism and of exploitative bourgeoisie created different kinds of emancipatory
messages for children in order to “offset the racism, sexism, and authoritarian
messages in children’s books, games, theatres, TV, and schools.” (73) As a result

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the alert left-oriented publishing houses focused on the publication of “counter-

cultural,” “re-utilised” fairy tales and literature for children. The wave of politicising
fairy tales for children in West Germany includes writers like Fredrich Karl Waechter
who wrote and drew with an intention to invert the capitalist socialisation. Andreas
and Angela Hopf wrote during the same period targeting mainly racism and
militarism with a feminist and democratic bent. The Hopfs’ politicised tales, as Zipes
analyses them, present symbolic goal-oriented behaviour “aimed at co-operation and
collectivism, not domination and private control.” (75) Other 1970s writers writing/re-
writing with socialist orientation in Germany include Janosch, Hans-Joachim,
Gelberg, Rosemarie Kunzler and Irmela Brender.48 Janosch in his Janosch Tells
Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1972) inverts plots and characters, adds new incidents, pokes at
the ethical/moral misery of the different societies, using modern slang expressions. He
intends to defy and negate the socialising norms implied and represented in the
Grimm tales. In doing so he exposes the hypocrisy, emptiness and meaninglessness of
the rising upper class of the post-war period in Germany. Non-conformity to the
Grimms’ socialisation is the strength of these retellings. It is by way of this refusal
that “Janosch seeks to defend a ‘questioning spirit,’ totally lacking in the Grimms’
tales and very much alive in his provocative revisions, where everything depends on a
critical new viewpoint.” (77) Gelberg, a staunch supporter of Janosch’s “re-visions,”
himself reutilised the Grimm tales to create politicised stories for children and adults.
His book of 58 different fairy tales and poems with a motto “No, I would rather have
something living than all the treasures of the world,” is directed at “re-thinking and
re-conceptualisation of traditional fairy tale motifs to question standard reading and
rearing processes.” (77)

Kunzler through her tales attempts a harsh critique of exploitation and domination of
women in patriarchy. She in line with Janosch refuses to conform in order to liberate.
Brender focuses more on humane relations and co-operation. Both, however, direct
their transformations at criticising male domination and seeking “a humanisation of
socialisation process.” (78)

In Italy Adela Turin, Francesca Cantarellis, Nella Bosnia, Margherita Soccaro and
Sylvie Selig have, as Zipes records, consistently protested for freedom in their work.
Turin and Selig’s Of Canons and Caterpillars (1975), for instance, is an anti-war,
anti-authoritarian fairy tale that proposes the possibility of realising democratic and

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peaceful co-existence. Zipes cites Jean Pierre Andrevon’s fairy tale novel The Fairy
and the Land Surveyor (1981) and Michael de Larrabeiti’s The Borribles (1978) as
noteworthy experiments in France and U.K. respectively. Both the novels employ the
fairy tale discourse – the first one, to depict optimistic struggle for qualitatively new
social and ecological arrangements and the second, to deal with racism, sexism and
contemporary political struggles.

The effect and effectiveness of the liberating, emancipatory fairy tale re-utilisations –
whether they are called postmodern, complex or counter-cultural – depend not just on
the manner of their production/ composition but also on their reception and
consumption by the young and adult readers. In West Germany, for instance, their
circulation in the 1970s was restricted to progressive educated classes. They were
even attacked and banned by the conservatives on account of their alleged harmful
social import considered harmful for children. However, despite such attacks on the
experimental tales they have continued to be published suggesting the necessity, need
for creation and availability of audience for the reading of these tales that propose to
satisfy the young as well as adult readers’ desire to connect the fantastic to their actual
real life conditions.

Zipes addresses the issue of the success of the emancipatory and innovative tales in
attaining their desired effect on children. As per his observations, it is found that
children like classic fairy tales as they are. They do not want them to be transformed.
They find the transformed tales humorous but are safe with the old ones. Even though
the experimental tales open up and generate free, liberating messages for them, the
young readers resist any alteration of the classic tale. They, however feel disturbed
and upset by the emancipatory thought and questioning of social relations in the
counter-cultural tales. This upsetting effect is the provocation of these tales. It is this
discomfort which is expected to make readers reflect and question. And in this is their
purpose attained.

However, in the absence of wholehearted acceptance by children and approval by

adult facilitators of tales as well as inadequate system of their distribution and
circulation, the progressive, emancipatory projections of the liberating tales have little
room for expression. Yet within this limited sphere throughout the western world,
progressive voices experimenting with the genre have continued their efforts

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to develop new methods and techniques of questioning the fairy tale discourse. For
instance, the Italian Giani Rodary created games and published books that deconstruct
the classical fairy tale encouraging children to shed the desired uniform reception of
the classical tale, re-examine its elements, themselves consider the possibility of
altering and re-creating the tale and actually re-create their own versions. George Jean
in France developed card games in which children are encouraged to re-invent and re-
imagine the tales by changing characters and situations relating to their actual real life
experiences. The experience alerts children about the need to newly contextualise the
traditional tales to suit their own conditions of life.

Fairy tale motifs and plots have been employed by creative experimenters to give vent
to issues of child abuse, sexism, violence and so on in their transformations. Jane
Yolen, Gregory Maguire, Francesca Lia Block in the U. S. and Philip Pullman,
Michael Foreman, Emma Donoghue in the U.K. among many others not mentioned
here, try to address children’s issues comically, seriously, politically correctly through
their transformation of the traditional fairy tales.

Efforts of the counter-cultural writers, their intention to expose the hidden, non-
democratic, regressive messages in the classic tales, reception of the liberating tales
and their impact, effect and effectiveness can be confirmed only if and when social
conditions and on each individual’s level, psychological/mental set up are made
conducive to accept and benefit from the subversive power of and progressive ideas
generated in the liberating tales. Otherwise these experiments in re-utilisation of fairy
tales remain confined only to those readers and sections of society who seek such
progressive changes. It therefore, perhaps necessitates some writers to address the
adult readers and facilitators of the tales and seek changes in their attitudes to the
subversive potential of the fairy tale genre. For, for a fuller realisation of the
progressive social ideas amongst children there needs to be “a more progressive shift
within the civilising process” (191) in which adults play an important role. “After all
teachers, librarians, parents, and powers in the cultural industry exert a certain control
over the popular reception of fairy tales by determining to a great extent not only the
nature of the tales that are made accessible to children, but also the context of their
reception.” (Haase, 362)

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Progressive social ideas need to be set in practice among adults and hence most of the
tales considered and analysed in this thesis are intended at adult consumption. These
tales see and show adults what is hidden and needs to be seen. As such, however the
act of fairy tale telling has come a full circle. Beginning with the conteuses telling and
writing tales for adults with subversive intent fairy tale has continued to be told and
re-told till a variety of “conteuses” re-tell the postmodern, complex, counter-cultural,
liberating tales with a similar intention to subvert the fairy tale discourse and “reveal
the stories behind other stories” (Harries, 17) aiming mainly at adult reception. The
purpose is to allow the passage of the old tales which fascinate children so much that
they refuse to do away with them in an innovatively and creatively alert manner.
Children’s awakening to the new, liberating form of enchantment could be attained, as
Haase describes, in two ways: first, teachers and parents can expose children to a
wider variety of fairy tales – not just the classic versions but even less known variants
of the tales – arousing equally varied responses, questions and comparisons.
Secondly, adults can encourage children to receive fairy tales creatively. They could
prompt them to create and re-create their own versions of the tales. Evidently though
children seem to shun the re-told tales, given the opportunity they do create their own
tales reflecting and relating to their own world of experiences.49 Eventually “children
will take fairy tales into their own hands ... [and re-create them] in ways that express
children’s power over the genre.” (Haase, 363)

With time this purpose of retelling could be achieved. As of now despite their limited
and hesitant reception and acceptance, the discomfort that the liberating retellings
generate and their process of compelling their readers “to reconsider where
socialisation through the reading of the Grimms’ tales has led us” (Zipes, Art of
Subversion..., 79) suffice and are enough guarantee that continuity in these attempts
would one day attain the goal they seek and strive for.

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NOTES

1
Lewis C. Seifert & Donna C Stanton, eds. Enchanted Eloquence: Fairy Tales by 17th

Century Women Writers (Toronto: Iter, 2010) 9.

2
Elizabeth Wanning Harries, Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of

Fairy Tales (New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2003) 31.

3
Kate Dustin, Cultural Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011) 209.

4
Jack Zipes, Fairy Tale As Myth Myth As Fairy Tale (Kentucky: UP of Kentucky,

1994) 154.Subsequent references are given parenthetically as (Z, ).

5
Jack Zipes, “The Origins and Reception of the Tales,” Brothers Grimm: From

Enchanted Forests to the Modern World (2nd ed. New York: Palgrave

McMillan, 2002) 25-64.

6
Ibid, 57.

7
Roland Barthes, Mythologies 1972 Trans by Annette Lavers (New York: The

Noonday Press, 1991) 107-108.Subsequent references are given parenthetically.

8
Roland Barthes, “Change the Object Itself: Mythology Today,” Image – Music –

Text tans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977) 165.

9
Jack Zipes, Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World (2nd ed.

New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2002) 208-209.Subsequent references are given

parenthetically.

10
Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality Trans Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper and

Row, 1963, 195-202) 196-197.

11
Jack Zipes, Trans The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to

the Brothers Grimm (New York: Norton, 2001) 691.

263 
 
 

12
Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” College English

34.1 (Oct.1972): 18.

13
Nancy Walker, The Disobedient Writer: Women and Narrative Tradition (Austin:

U of Texas P, 1995).

14
Donald Haase, “Yours, Mine or Ours? Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and the

Ownership of Fairy Tales” Rpt. In The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism Ed.

Maria Tatar (New York: Norton, 1999) 353.

15
See “Once There Were Two Brothers Named Grimm,” Brothers Grimm: From

Enchanted Forests to the Modern World, 1-24.

16
The Grimms’ letter translated by Zipes in Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted

Forests to the Modern World 26-27.Subsequent references given parenthetically.

17
Jack Zipes, “The Contamination of the Fairy Tale,” (99-125) Sticks and Stones: The

Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter

(New York: Routledge, 2001) 103.

18
Walt Disney’s “Cinderella Notes,” January 15, 1948, quoted in Kay F Stone, Some

Day Your Witch Will Come (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State UP, 2008) 26-27.

19
Alan Dundes, “Nationalistic Inferiority Complexes and the Fabrication of Fakelore:

A Reconsideration of Ossian, The Kinder-und Hausmarchen, the Kalevala, and

Paul Bunyan,” The Journal of Folklore Research 22 (1985:5-18) 9.

20
Karl Kroeber, Retelling/Rereading: The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times (New

Brunswick, New York: Rutgers UP, 1992) 13.

21
Linda Gray Sexton and Lois Ames, eds., Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

(Boston: Houghton, 1977) 325.

264 
 
 

22
Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems (Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1981) 15.

23
Carol Leventen, “Transformations’s Silencings.” Critical Essays on Anne Sexton ed.

Linda Wagner-Martin, (Boston: G K Hall, 1989)139.

24
A. Ostriker, Writing Like a Woman (Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1983) 66.

25
William Pitt Root, “Transformations.” Critical Essays on Anne Sexton. ed.

Linda Wagner-Martin, (Boston: G K Hall, 1989) 49.

26
Caroline King Bernard Hall, Anne Sexton (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989) 102.

27
Elizabeth Wanning Harries, Twice Upon A Time: Women Writers and the History of

the Fairy Tale (USA: Princeton UP, 2003) 129.

28
Steven Colburn, ed., No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews and Prose (Ann

Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1985) 145.

29
Shiho Fukudo presents an interesting detailed account of Sexton’s real life

experiences within and against the patriarchal system and their reflection in the

Transformations. The writer focuses on how and why Sexton hesitates against

opposing masculine power in spite of voicing it. (“The Hesitancy of a ‘Middle-

Aged Witch’: Anne Sexton’s Transformations,” Revista de Estudios

Norteamericanos, no. 13 (2008) 31-47.

30
Christa Mastrangelo Joyce, “Contemporary Women Poets and the Fairy Tale,” Fairy

Tales Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings Susan Reddington Bobby, ed. (USA:

McFarland &Co.Inc, 2009) 41.

31
See Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets and Silence (New York, London: Norton,

1979).

32
Olga Broumas, “Artemis,”Beginning With O (New Haven: Yale UP, 1977) 24.

265 
 
 

33
Emma Donoghue, Kissing the Witch: Old tales in New Skins (USA: Joanna Cotler

Books, 1997) 8.

34
Alan Sinfield, Cultural politics and Queer Reading (Philadelphia: U of

Pennsylvania P, 1994) 38.

35
Ellen Cronan Rose, “Through the Looking Glass: When Women Tell Fairy Tales,”

The Voyage In: Fictions of Female Development ed., Elizabeth Abel et al,

(Hanover: New England UP, 1983) 221.

36
Patricia McKillip, Dragonfield and Other Stories (London: Futura, 1988) xi

37
Sara Maitland, “A Feminist Writer’s Progress,” On Gender and Writing ed.,

Micheline Wandor (London: Pandora, 1983) 17.

38
Sara Maitland, “The Wicked Stepmother’s Lament,” Angel Maker: The Short

Stories of Sara Maitland (New York: Henry Holt, 1996) 222.

39
Maxine Kumin, “The Archaeology of a Marriage,” The Retrieval System (New

York: Viking, 1978).

40
Cristina Bacchilega, Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies

(Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997) 146.Subsequent references

given parenthetically.

41
Walter Benjamin, “The Story Teller,” Illuminations Trans Harry Zohn, (New

York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968).

42
Salman Rushdie’s phrase in the Introduction to Burning Your Boats: The Collected

Short Stories. Angela Carter, (New York: Henry Holt, 1995, ix-xiv) talking of

Carter’s art of transliteration Rushdie says, “She opens an old story for us, like an

egg, and finds the new story, the now story we want to hear, within.” xiv.

266 
 
 

43
Merseyside Women’s Liberation Movement, Red Riding Hood (Liverpool: Fairy

Story Collective, 1972) 6.

44
Ruth B Bottigheimer, Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boy: The Moral and Social

Vision of the Tales (New Haven: Yale UP, 1987).

45
Jack Zipes, “Breaking the Magic Spell: Politics and the Fairy Tale,”126 New

German Critique 6(1975):116-135.

46
Shannon Hale, Princess Academy (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005).

47
Jack Zipes, Fairy Tale and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children

and the Process of Civilisation (New York: Methuen, 1983) 177.Subsequent

references given parenthetically.

48
This account of the tales in German, French, Italian or any other foreign language

draws on their analysis and criticism by Jack Zipes in his book mentioned above.

The intention behind including it is to present a general and brief historical

development of the retelling tradition in these languages. Jack Zipes’s works offer

valuable insights in this respect. Hence without much detailing and analysis major

writers and their works are cited.

49
See Zipes’s Don’t Bet on the Prince for fairy tale experiments with school children.

267 
 
 

CONCLUSION
The new, revised, modified fairy tales, whether serious or humorous, are deliberate
creations with a view to establish new morals in tune with the current times. All of
them to a more or less degree and extent follow somewhat similar strategies like
reversing gender roles, blurring the lines between villains and heroes, challenging the
traditional ideas of heroism and in fact, all outdated orthodox values peeping through
the classic tales, twisting the plot unexpectedly giving readers a shock, modifying the
age-old morals, deconstructing the old patterns and revolting against them, using
anachronisms, giving the characters an awareness that they are playing roles in a tale,
and activating the readers to think, challenge and question. The element of surprise
and a new way of looking at the same old tales that these new tales introduce make
them novel. Behind the superficial mask of surprise, amusement and twists is hidden
the main intent of these writers and that is to discard traditional morals to establish
new ones in tune with the current times while offering a critical statement on the
traditional tales as well as the fairy tale genre. These retellings invite readers to
participate in and interact with the tales and look at the old classic tales and their
established patterns – never challenged before – extremely critically and awaken to a
new reading of these canonical texts.

Angela Carter says that fairy tales “can be remade again and again by every person
who tells them”1 Fairy tales contain a rich treasure of motifs, narrative forms and
images. This genre is remarkably emancipating and inherently transformative in
nature. As Carter suggests every teller and every telling of a tale is a retelling. Michel
Butor too claims, “A world inverted, an exemplary world, fairyland is a criticism of
ossified reality. It does not remain side by side with the latter; it reacts upon it; it
suggests that we transform it, that we reinstate what is out of place.”2 Authors who
sense these potentials of the fairy tale genre attempt to employ fairy tale themes and
motifs for different purposes. Just as each retelling proves and strengthens
                                                            
1
 “Introduction,” to Book of Fairy Tales (London: Virago, 2005) xi

2
  “On fairy Tales,” European Literary and Theory and Practice ed., Vernon W. Gras
(New York: Delta, 1973) 352

268 
 
 

the everlasting quality of this genre it, at the same time, articulates the need to re-
fashion these cultural scripts so that new possibilities of the ways of life and social
order emerge. As said earlier in Rich’s words revision is an act of survival, an act to
know ourselves. The fairy tales through re-writings have continued to be
appropriated, subverted by means of parody, satire and other different intertextual
modes.

Continuity, change, repetitions, innovations, and revisions have marked the history of
the fairy tale. (Harries, 102-103) At different times in different contexts the same fairy
tale has adopted dominant existing ideologies and constituted and expressed a desire
for bringing about a change. Within specific historical and social contexts it has
generated different ideological effects. For instance, as an oral folk tale the narrative
of the fairy tale changed as per the beliefs and behaviour of the listeners and more
often articulated concerns and wishes of the underprivileged. With printing the tale
became a means to generate bourgeois conservative interests. This creative and
critical potential of the fairy tale genre thus renders itself a very efficient agent of
socio-political-cultural critique and a powerful tool of social change. It is this
flexibility of the genre which needs to be manipulated to effectively re-construct
egalitarian, human(e) social arrangements. Looking into the various elaborate
ideological functions of the fairy tale that Zipes demonstrates in his “The Changing
Function of the Fairy Tale” (The Lion and the Unicorn, 12, 2 (1988): 7-31), one
realises that the folk and fairy tales have served both regressive and progressive
purposes. It is the progressive aspects of the tales that can be utilised and manipulated
in their revisions and transformations in different socio-historical contexts in order to
“awaken our regard for the miraculous condition of life” (Zipes, 31) and to suggest
that establishing an egalitarian, if not utopian, social order can be sincerely attempted
and attained. The hope that it would work towards its goal rests on the fact that fairy
tales as literature for children have been always considered an effective means of
serving the civilising aspirations of adults. They do have a magical effect on all.
Hence instead of breaking the magic spell the re-visioning and re-doing of the tales
can manipulate the same magic with and for a continual progressive reconstruction of
ideal, democratic order and ideology one must strive to establish. We may say in
Bacchilega’s words, “To break the magic spell, we must learn to recognise it as a
spell that can be unmade,” (8) and once unmade the magic can be directed

269 
 
 

constructively towards building a democratic order. Rejuvenated fairy tales in the

hands of “counter-cultural” writers undertake to unmake this magic and reflect “the
courageous vision and energy” that Rowe expected. With this vision and energy they
completely do away with the idealised romantic fantasies of the old fairy tales
rendering the new retellings “bold acts of re-interpretation.” 3

The fairy tale’s imaginative power can cultivate equality among men and women.
That they are adopted, re-interpreted and rejuvenated by writers – both women and
men – in the light of their endeavour to usher in a more democratic, liberal, egalitarian
and above all humane social order despite and sans discrimination has been, is and
would be a challenge ever. Hence indefatigable attempts at re-interpretations and
retellings of the cultural constructs that the fairy tales are constantly and consistently
stressing the significance of human equality are an urging need of the time. It is only
through ceaseless self-conscious and critical engagement with the classical tales to
create and re-create fairy tales “for human beings” can we seek to liberate humans to
imagine and build new, self-respecting, self-sufficient identities and an ideal humane
social order. Escape from the canonical demands experimentation with the past
literature so that it is recycled in the present to create and say something new, relevant
and suitable to the changing present. In this respect the retellings provide a space for
and bring about a dialogue, a creative interaction between the traditional tales and
contemporary environment. Retellings with progressive content can transform the
classic tales criticised for being “parables of feminine socialisation”4 into tales that
ultimately call forth all human beings and not just women to an “awakening.” Hence
retelling is the need of the time and would continue to be so in all times. With their
strategies of commenting on, exaggerating and correcting the fairy tale problems and
at times reversing and undoing and even counteracting critical readings of these tales
by psychoanalysts, feminists etc. the retellings become multi-vocal and creatively
contribute to and enrich our experience of the fairy tale reading and enhance our
understanding of the genre.

Continuity, in the fairy tale tradition, of revisions and re-framings is remarkable. As

Haase says we need to save the fairy tale. And it could be saved only if we deny being

                                                            
3
 Carolyn G Heilbrun, Reinventing Womanhood 1979 (New York: Norton, 1993) 150 
4
 Madonna Kolbenschlag, Kiss Sleeping Beauty Goodbye: Breaking the Spell of Feminine Myths and 
Models  1979  (Toronto: Bantam, 1981) 3 

270 
 
 

owned by it but rather “take possession of it on our own terms” (364) because they are
not “sacred texts” and we need to suit it to our times and values that cherish human
equality and freedom. Considering the fascination of the genre and its powerful
impact on children and adults alike as well as its emancipating potential, re-viewing,
re-framing, retelling of these tales from democratic perspective could definitely work
towards building a utopia of “happy ever after” for all. To make the fairy tale an
effective tool and agent of positive social change, irrespective of how they are
distributed, circulated and received, genuine experiments in retelling the old tales
while allowing and encouraging young readers to create their own and re-create older
stories is the need of the time. Hence though retelling could imply pouring new wine
in old bottles, looking at the kind of efforts made at retelling by experimental writers,
the new wine has the force to explode the bottles and does necessitate the creation of
the new ones.

271 
 
 

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