What are the five points from Tatar’s Introduction (The Classic Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar) that we should notice. Five poin

The

CLASSIC FAIRY TALES

A NOHIUN CIHHCII. EDIIION

THE CLASSIC FAIRY TALES

The cultural resilience of fatty tales IS xncontestablc. Survwmg over the cen- turies and thriving in a variety of media, (any (ales contmuc m ennch our xmag— matiuns and shape our lives. T1115 Norton Crmcal Edition of The Clam: Fan): Talij cxammea tht- genre, as cultural implications, and Its cntncal history. The editor has gathered fairy tales from around the world to reveal the range and play of (hcse stories over ume.

177: Clam Fany 171115 focusea on six different tale types: “Lnttle Red Fading Hood," ”Beauty and the Beast," “Snow Whuc," "C)nderella," ”Bluebeard," and “Hansel and Gretel.” It includes mulucultural vanants of these tales, along with sophisticated literary Iescripnngsv Each tale typc 1.» preceded by an Introduc- tmn, 2nd annotations are provnded throughout. Also Included in this collection of ova: (my stories 31's [3125 by Hm Christisn Andersen and Oscar Wilde. “Cntmsm” collects twelve essays that mterrogate different aspects of fairy

tales by explormg their sonal ongms, hmoncal t-voluuon, psychological dynamics, and engagemcnt wnth issues of gender and nanonal Idcnnty. Bruno Bettelheim, Robert Darnton, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Karen E. Rowe, Marina Warner, Zohar Shavit. Jack lees. Donald Haase. Maria Tatar,

Antti Aame, and Vladimir Propp provide Critical overvmws. A Selected Bibliography is Included.

ABOUT THE SERIES: Each Norton Cnncal Edmcn Includes an authoritative lcxt. contextual and source materials, and a wnde range of Interpretanons— from contemporary p(‘rspcctives to the most current critical theory—as well as a bibliography and, .n most cases, a chronology of the author's life and work. covax mama: m Embamd ani, by Maxfield Parnsh. Reproduced by perr “1.55m of © Maxfield Parrish Family Tmsr/mecd by ASAP and VAGA, NYC/Courtesy American Illustrated Gallery, NYC

155m 0-393-‘17277-1 900 >

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The Editor

MARIA TATAR is the author of The Hard Facts of the Crimms’ Fairy Tales, Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, and Lustmord: Sexual Vi-

olence in Weimar Germany. She holds the Iohn L. Loeb chair for Germanic Languages and Literatures at Har- vard University, where she teaches courses on German

cultural studies, folklore, and Children’s literature.

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CRITICISM

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MARIA TATAR

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Contents

Introduction

The Texts of The Classic Fairy Tales

INTRODUCTION: Little Red Riding Hood The Story of Grandmother Char1es Penault . Little Red Riding Hood Biothers Grimm ' Litfle Red Cap James Thurber – The Little Girl and the Wolf halo Calvino ' The False Grandmother Chiang Mi ' Coldflower and the Bear Roald Dahl – Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf Roald Dahl . The Three Little Pigs

XNTRODUCTION: Beauty and the Beast Jeanne-Marie Leptince de Beaumont ' Beauty and the

Beast Giovanni Francesco Shaparola ' The Pig King Brothers Grimm ' The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich Angela Carter ' The Tiger's Bride Urashima the Fisherman Alexander Afanasev ' The Frog Princess The Swan Maiden

INTRODUCTION: Snow White Ciambattista Basile – The Young Slave Brothers Grimm – Snow White Lasair Cheug, the King of Ireland's Daughter Anne Sexton ' Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

xmovucnoN: Cinderella Yeh-hsien Charles Perrault – Donkeyskin Brothers Grimm – Cinderella Joseph Iaeohs ' Calskin The Story of the Black Cow

ix

10 11 13 16 17 19 21 22

25

32 42 47 50 66 68 72

74 80 83 90 96

101 107 109 117 122 125

vi CONTENTS

Lin Lan – Cinderella The Princess in the Sui! of Leather

INTRODUCTION: Bluebeard Charles Perrault ' Bluebeard Brothers Grimm ' Fitcher’s Bitd Brothers Grimm ' The Robber Bridegroom )oseph Iacobs . Mr. Fox Margaret Atwood ‘ Bluebeard‘s Egg

INTRODUCTION: Hansel and Gretel Brothers Grimm ' Hansel and Gretel Brolhers Grimm – The )unipet Tree Joseph Iacobs ' The Rose-Tree Charles Penault . Little Thumhling Pippety Pew 1oseph Jacobs – Molly Whuppie

INTRODUCTION: Hans Christian Andersen The Little Metmaid The Little Match Girl The Gir1 Who Trad on the Loaf The Red Shoes

INTRODUCTION: Oscar Wilde The Selfish Gian! The Happy Prince The Nightingale and the Rose

Criticism

ano Bettelheim ' [The Struggle for Meaning] Bruno Bette1heim ‘ “Hanse1 and Gretel" Robert Damion ' Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of

Mother Goose Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Cuhar – [Snow White and

Her Wicked Stepmother] Karen E. Rowe ° To Spin 2 Yam: The Female Voice in

Folklore and Fairy Tale Marina Warnet – The Old Wives' Tale Zohar Shavit – The Concept of Childhood and

Chi1dren's Folktales: Test Case— “Litde Red Riding Hood"

Jack Zipes ' Bleaking the Disney Spell

127 131

138 144 148 151 154 156

1 79 1 84 190 197 199 206 209

212 216 233 235 241

246 250 253 261

267

269 273

280

291

297 309

317 332

Comm

Donald Haase ° Yours, Mine, or Ours? Penault,

the Bmthets Grimm, and the Ownership of Fairy Tales

Maria Tatar – Sex and Violence: The Hard Core of Fairy Tales

Antti Aame and Stith Thompson ° From The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography

Vladimir Propp ' Folklore and Literature 0 From Morphology of the Folktale

The Method and Material – Thirty—One Functions ° Pmpp's Dramatis Personae

Selected Bibliography

vii

353

364

373 378 382 382 386 387

389

Introduction

Fairy tales, Angela Carter tells us, are not “unique one-offs," and their narrators are neither “original" nor “godlike” nor ”inspired." To the con- trary, these stories circulate in multiple versions, reconfigured by each tell- ing to form kaleidoscopic variations with distinctly different effects. When we say the word “Cinderella," we are referring not to a single text but to an entire array of stories with a persecuted heroine who may respond to her situation with defiance, cunning, ingenuity, selfipity, anguish, or gtief. She will be called Yeh—hsien in China, Cendrillon in Italy, Aschenputtel in Cennany, and Catskin in England Her sisters may be named One-Eye and Three—Eyes, Anastasia and Drizella, or she may have just one sister named Haloek. Her tasks range from tending cows to sorting peas to fetch— ing embers for a fire.

Although many variant forms of a tale can now be found between the covers of books and ate attributed to individual authors, editms, or com- pilers, they derive largely from collective efforts. In reflecting on the origins of fairy tales, Carter asks us to consider: “Who first invented meatballs? In what Country? Is there a definitive recipe for potato soup? Think in terms of the domestic arts. ‘This is how I make potato soup.‘ "' The story of Little Red Riding Hood, for example, can be discovered the world over, yet it varies radically in texture and flavor from one culture to the next. Even in a single culture, that texture or flavor may be different enough that a lis- tenet will impatiently interrupt the telling of a tale to insist “That's not the way I heard it." In France, Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother are devoured by the wolf. The Crimms' Version, by contrast, stages a rescue scene in which a hunter intervenes to liberate Red Riding Hood and her grandmother from the belly of the wolf. Caterinella, an Italian Red Riding Hood, is invited to dine on the teeth and ears of her grandmother by a masquerading wolf. A Chinese “C01dflowex” manages to slay the beast who wants to devour her by throwing a spear into his mouth. Local color often affects the premises of a tale. In Italy, the challenge facing one heroine is not spinning straw into gold but downing seven plates of lasagna.

Virtually every element of a tale, from the name of the hero or heroine through the nature of the beloved t0 the depiction of the villain, seems subject to change. In the British Isles, Cinderella goes by the name of Catskin, Mossycoat, or Rashin-Coatie. The mother of one Italian “Beauty" pleads with her daughter to marry a pig, while another mother runs inter— ference for a snake. In Russia, the cannibalistic witch in the fotest has a hut set on chicken legs surrounded by a fence with posts made of stacked

1 Angela Cartel, ed», The szgo Back of Fairy Talex (London: Vuago Press, 1990) x,

ix

x INTRODUCTION

human skulls. Rumpelstiltskin is also known as Titeliture, Ricdin-Ricdon, Tom Tit Tot, Batzibitzili, Panzimanzi, and Whuppity Stoorie. While there is no “original" version of “Cinderella" or “Sleeping

Beauty,” there is a basic plot structure (what folklorists refer to as a “tale type”) that appears despite rich cultural variation, “Beauty and the Beast," for example, according to the tale-type index compiled by the Finnish folklorist Antti Aame and refined by the American folklorist Stith Thomp- son, has the following episodic structure:

I. The monster as husband II. Disenchantment of the monster

III. Loss of the husband N, Search for the husband V, Recovery of the husband

While the monster as husband is a structural constant, the monster itself may (and does) take the form of virtually any beast—a goat, a mouse, a hedgehog, a crocodile, or a lion. The search for the husband may require the heroine to cover vast tracts of land in iron shoes, to sort out peas from lentils in an impossibly short time, or simply to wish herself back to the monster's castler Despite certain limitations, the tale»ty'pe index is a con» venient tool for defining the stable core of a story and for identifying those features subject to local variation.

Telling fairy tales has been considered a “domestic art" at least since Plato in the Corgias referred to the “old wives' tales" told by nurses to amuse and to frighten children. Although virtually all of the national col- lections of fairy tales compiled in the nineteenth century were the work of men, the tales themselves were ascribed to women narrators. As early as the second century A.D., Apuleius, the North African author of The Golden Ass, had designated his story of “Cupid and Psyche" (told by a drunken and half-dernented old woman) as belonging to the genre of “old wives‘ Lalesi" The Venetian Giovanni Francesco Straparola claimed to have heard the stories that constituted his Facetious Nights of 1550 “from the lips of . . . lady storytellers" and he embedded those stories in a narrative frame featuring a circle of ganulous female narrators} Ciambattista Basile‘s sev» enteenthcentury collection of Neapolitan tales, Th2 Pentameronz, also has women storytellersAquick-witted, gossipy old cranes who recount “these tales that old women tell to amuse children," The renowned Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Penault were designated by their author as old wives' tales, “told by governesses and grandmothers to little children.N And many of the most expansive storytellers consulted by the Grimms were women—family friends or servants who had at their disposal a rich reper- toire of folklore The association of fairy tales with the domestic arts and with old wives’

tales has not done much to enhance the status of these cultural stories.

2, Marina Warner, mm the Beast to 11-2 Blamie: 0.. Fairy Tales and Their Mm (New York: Famr, Stuns and Girnux, 1994) 36.

31 The Pentamemne, um. Benedetto Cmce, ed. N, M. Penzer (John Lane: The Bodley Head. 1932) 9.

4 Chane; Penault, “Preface," Cnntes en ms (1694; reprint, Paris: (2311mm, 1981) so,

INTRODUCTION xi

”On a par with trifles," Marina Warner stresses, “ ‘mete old wives' tales‘ carry connotations of error, of false counsel, ignorance, prejudice and fa]- laciuus nostrums~against heartbreak as well as headache; similarly ‘fairy tale,’ as a derogatory term, implies fantasy, escapism, invention, the unre- liable consolations of romance" Although fairy tales are still arguably the most powerfully formative tales

of childhood and permeate mass media for children and adults, it is not unusual to find them deemed of marginal cultural importance and dis- missed as unworthy of critical attention, Yet the staying power of these stories, their widespread and enduring popularity, suggests that they must be addressing issues that have a significant social function—whether criti- cal, conservative, compensatory, or thetapeutic. In a study ofrnass‘pmduced fantasies for women, Tania Modleski points out that genres such as the soap opera, the Gothic novel, and the Harlequin romance “speak to very teal problems and tensions in women’s lives. The nanative strategies which have evolved for smoothing over these tensions can tell us much about how women have managed not only to live in opptessive circumstances but to invest their situations with some degree of dignity."" Fairy tales reg— ister an effort on the part of both women and men to develop maps for coping with personal anxieties, family conflicts, social frictions, and the myriad frustrations of everyday life.

Trivializing fairy tales leads to the mistaken conclusion that we should suspend our critical faculties while reading these "harmless" narratives. While it may be disturbing to hear voices disavowing the hansformative influence of fairy tales and proclaiming them to be culturally insignificant, it is just as troubling to find fairy tales turned into inviolable cultural iconsi The Grimms steadfastly insisted on the sacred quality of the fairy tales they collected Their Nursery and Huusehold Tales, they asserted, made an effcn to capture the pure, artless simplicity of a people not yet tainted by the corrupting influences of civilization "These stories are suffused with the same purity that makes children appear so marvelous and blessed,” Wii- heim Crimm declared in his preface to the collection. Yet both brothers must also have recognized that fairy tales were far from culturally innocent, for they extolled the ”civilizing" power of the tales and conceived of their collection as a “manual of manners” for children.7 The myth of fairy tales as a kind of holy scripture was enetgetically

propagated by Charles Dickens, who brought to the literature of childhood the same devout reverence he accorded children Like the Grimms, Dick- ens hailed the “simplicity," “purity," and “innocent extravagance” of fairy tales, yet also praised the tales as powerful instruments of constructive so« cialization: “It would be hard to estimate the amount of gentleness and mercy that has made its way among us through these slight channels. Fore- bearance, Courtesy, consideration for the poor and aged, kind treatment of

s. Wamev, Bean 1?. (Excerpted below, 1). 109.) 6, Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance: MassVProduced Fanlmie: for Women (Hamden,

Conn: Archon Books, 1932) 15. 7, From Jacob and Wilhelm Glimms’ “Preface," Nursery and Hamehotd Tales, In «L, 2d ed.,

trans. Mm: Tam, in Mm: TM, The Hand Fact: oflhe Gn'mnu‘ Fm Tale: (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1973) 206, 207.

xii INTRODUCTION

animals, the love of nature, abhorrence of tyranny and brute force—many such good things have been first nourished in the child’s heart by this powerful aid."B Even in 1944, when Allied troops were locked in combat with German

soldiers, W, H. Auden decreed the Cximms' fairy tales to be “among the few indispensable, commonproperty books upon which Western culture can he founded." “It is hardly too much to say," he added, “that these tales rank next to the Bible in importance."" Like the devaluation of fairy tales, the overvaluation of fairy tales promotes a suspension of critical faculties and prevents us from taking a good, hard look at stories that are so obviously instrumental in shaping our values, moral codes, and aspirations. The rev- erence brought by some readers to fairy tales mystifies these stories, making them appear to be a source of transcendent spiritual truth and authotity. Such a mystification promotes a hands—off attitude and conceals the fact that fairy tales, like “high art," are squarely implicated in the complex, yet not impenetrable, symbolic codes that permeate our cultural stories.

Despite efforts to deflect critical attention from fairy tales, the stories themselves have attmcted the attention of scholars in disciplinary comers ranging from psychology and anthmpology through religion and history to cultural studies and literary theory. Every culture has 15 myths, fairy tales, and fables, but few cultures have mobilized as much critical energy as has outs of late to debate the merits of these stoties. Margaret Atwood, whose personal and literary engagement with fairy tales is no secret, has written vividly about her childhood encounter with an unexpurgated version of Grimms' Fairy Tales: “Where else could I have gotten the idea,” she asserts, “so early in life, that words can change you?" Atwood's phrasing is mag- nificently ambiguous, referring on one level to the transformative spells cast on {airy—tale characters, but also implying that fairy tales can both shape our way of experiencing the world and endow us with the power to restruc~ ture our lives. As Stephen Greenblatt has observed, ”the work of art is not the passive surface on which . . . historical experience leaves its stamp but one of the creative agents in the fashioning and Iefashioning of this expe- rience.”1 As we lead fairy tales, we simultaneously evoke the cultural ex- perience of the past and allow it to work on our consciousness even as we reinterpret and reshape that experience.

Carolyn Heilbrun has also addressed the question of how the stories circulating in our culture regulate our lives and fashion our identities:

Let us agtee on this: that we live our lives through texts. These may be Iead, or chanted, or experienced electronically, or come ta us, like the murmurings of our mothers, telling us of what conventions de-

8. Charles Dickens, “Funds on me Fairies," in Hausehold Wurds: A Weekly Journal (New York: McElyzth and 331k", 1354) 97.

9. w H. Auden. “ln Piaise ofthe Brothers Grimm." New YorkTin-es BookRmew. 12 November 1944, 1.

1. Maigaret Atwood. “Crimms' Remembered,” m Donald Haase, ed, The 11mm" ofCrimmx' nay Taler Rzipanm, Reactions, Rmim (Detroil: Wayne sum UP, 199;) 292.

2. Stephen C(eenblatt, “lntmduclion,” Repmennng the English Renaissance, ed, Stephen Greenblmuaakcky: u ofCaIifolma F. 19311) viii.

INTRODUCHON xiii

mandi Whatever their form 01’ medium, these stories are what have formed us all, they are what we must use to make our new fictionsl . . . Out of old tales, we must make new lives.’

Heilbrun endorses the notion of appropriating, revising, and revitalizing “old tales" in order to produce new social discourses that can, in turn, refashion our lives. How we go about mobilizing fairy tales to help us form new social mics

and identities is a hotly contested question. Some advocate the recupera- tion and critique of the classic canon; othets have called for the revival of “heretical" texts (stories repressed and suppressed from cultural memory) and the formation of a new canon; still others champion rewriting the old tales or inventing new ones. This volume fumishes examples of each of these strategies, providing “classic" versions of specific tale types side by side with less well known versions from other cultures and inspired iiterary efforts to recast the tales. These projects for reclaiming folkloric legacies are not unproblematic, and they have each come under fire for failing to provide the answer to that pexennial question of what makes an idea] cul- tural story.

For some observers, the classic canon of fairy tales is so hopelessly ret- rograde that it is futile to try to rehabilitate it. Andrea Dworkin refuses to countenance the possibility of preserving tales that were more or less forced upon us and that have been so effective in promoting stereotypical gender rules:

We have not formed that ancient world [of fairy taie5]7it has formed us We ingested it as children whole, had its values and consciousness imprinted on our minds as cultural absolute: long before we were in fact men and women. We have taken the fairy tales of childhood with us into maturity, chewed but still lying in the stomach, as real identity. Between Snow—white and her heroic prince, our two great fictions, we never did have much of a chance, At some point the Great Divide took place: they (the boys) dreamed of mounting the Great Steed and buying Snow-white from the dwarfs; we (the girls) aspired to become that obiect of every necrophiliac's lust—the innocent, victimized Sleep ing Beauty, beauteous lump of ultimate, sleeping good4

Yet for every critic who is convinced that we need to sound the tocsin and make fairy tales oFf-limits to children, there is one who celebrates the liberating energy and revolutionary edge of fairy tales. Alison Lutie, for example, sees the tales as reflecting a commendable level of gender equal- ity, along with a powet asymmetry tilted in favor of older women:

These stories suggest a society in which women are as competent and active as men, at every age and in every class. Gretel, not Hansel, defeats the Witch; and for every clever youngest son there is a youngest daughter equally resourceful. The contrast is g(eatest in maturity,

3. Carolyn Heilhmn, “What Was Penelope Unweaving?” in Hamlet‘s Mothev and Other Womzn (New York: Columbia UP, 1990) 109

4. Andrea Dworkm, WomunrHating (New York: Button, 1974) 32733.

xiv INTRODUCTION

where women are often more powerful than men. Real help for the hero or heroine comes most frequently from a fairy godmother or wise woman, and real flouble from a witch or wicked stepmother. i . i To ptepare Children for women's liberation, therefore, and to protect them against Future Shock, you had better buy at least one collecfion of fairy tales.‘

Whom are we to believe? Andrea Dworkin, who contends that fairy tales perpetuate gendet stereotypes, or Alison Lurie, who asserts that they un- settle gendet roles? Do we side with those who denounce fairy Lales for their melodrama and violence OI with the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who finds them crucial to a child’s healthy mental development? Margatet Atwood would answer by saying “It dependst” Astonished by reports that Cfimms’ Fairy Tales was being denounced as sexist, she observed that one finds in the volume “wicked wizards as well as wicked witches, stupid women as well as stupid men." “When people say ‘sexist fairy tales,’ " she added, “they probably mean the anthologies that concentrate on ‘The Sleeping Beauty,’ ‘Cinderella,’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood' and leave out everything else. But in ‘my' version, there are a good many forgetful or imprisoned princes who have to be rescued by the clever, brave, and re- sourceful princess, who is just as willing to undergo hardship and risk her neck as are the princes engaged in dragon slaying and tower climbing."6 Few fairy tales dictate a single, univocal, uncontested meaning; most are so elastic as to accommodate a wide variety of interpretations, and they derive their meaning through a process of engaged negotiation on the part of the reader, Just as there is no definitive version of “Little Red Riding Hood," there is also no definitive interpretation of heI storyt Some versions of Little Red Riding Hood’s story or Snow White’s story

may appear to teenfmce stereotypes; others may have an emancipatory po- tential; still others may seem radically feminist. All are of historical interest, revealing the ways in which a story has adapted to a culture and been shaped by its social practices. The new story may be ideologically conect ox ideologically suspect, but it can always serve as the point of departure for debate, critique, and dialogue In this volume, I have tried to convey a sense of the rich cultural archive behind stones that we tend to flatten out with the monolithic labels “Little Red Riding Hood," “Snow White," or “Cinderella.”

Recovering fairy tales that have undergone a process of cultural sup- pression or that have succumbed to cultural amnesia has been the mission of a number of folklorists in the past decades. Instead of reshaping canon‘ icai fairy tales o! trying to reinvent them, these collectors seek to fill in the many empty spaces on the shelves of our collective folkiotic atchive. Rose- mary Minard's Womenfolk and Fairy Tales explicitly seeks to identify tales in which women are “active, intelligent, capable, and courageous human beings."’ While Minard succeeds in reviving some resourceful folklore her- oines, many of the faces in her anthology ate familiar ones. A Chinese Red Riding Hood, a Scandinavian Beauty, and a British wife of Bluebeard

5. Nimn Lurie, ”Faily Tale Liberation," New York Review ofBookt. 17 December 1970. 42. 6. Atwood, ”Grimms' Remembered," 291—92. 7. Rosemary Mimyd, ed., Wommfolk and Fairy Tale: (Boston: Houghton Miflfin, 1975) vmv

INTRODUCTION xv

mingle in her anthology with the more obscure Unanana, Kate Cracker- nuts, and Clever Marika.

Like Minard, Ethel Johnston Phelps aims to collect tales that feature “active and courageous girls and women in the leading roles" for her volv ume Tatterhood and Other Tales.a By contrast, Angela Carter's Virago Book ofFairy Tales chooses texts for their historical interest, for the way in which they provide models of how women struggled, succeeded, and also some- times failed in the challenges of everyday life. “I wanted to demonstrate the extraordinary richness and diversity of responses to the same common predicament—being alive—and the richness and diversity with which fem: ininity, in practice, is represented in ‘unofficial‘ culture: its strategies, its plots, its hard work."" Our own fairy—tale repertoire can now be said to consist of two competing

traditions. On the …