Who's Wicked Now?: the Stepmother As Fairy-Tale Heroine

Who's Wicked Now?: The Stepmother as Fairy-Tale Heroine

Christy Williams

Marvels & Tales, Volume 24, Number 2, 2010, pp. 255-271 (Article)

Published by Wayne State University Press

For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mat/summary/v024/24.2.williams.html

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C HRISTY W ILLIAMS 1 2 3 4 5 Who’s Wicked Now? The Stepmother 6 as Fairy-Tale Heroine 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 The wicked stepmother is a staple of the popular fairy-tale tradition and ar- 17 guably its most famous villain. While she wasn’t always wicked or always a 18 stepmother in folklore tradition, the wicked stepmother can be found in a vari- 19 ety of well-known Western fairy tales. The Brothers Grimm feature some of the 20 best-known stepmothers, such as those in “Cinderella” (ATU 510A), “Snow 21 White” (ATU 709), and “Hansel and Gretel” (ATU 327A) as well as lesser- 22 known stepmothers, such as those in “The Six Swans” (ATU 450) and “The Ju- 23 niper Tree” (ATU 720), all of whom are wicked. Walt Disney took the Grimms’ 24 wicked stepmother and gave her an unforgettable face in his 1937 film, Snow 25 White and the Seven Dwarfs. Snow White’s stepmother stands out for her terrify- 26 ing image as the wicked queen. Since then, the wicked stepmother has become 27 a stock figure, a fairy-tale type that invokes a vivid image at the mention of her 28 role—so much so that stepmothers in general have had to fight against their 29 fairy-tale reflections. A quick Internet search for the term “wicked stepmother” 30 will produce hundreds of websites dedicated to the plight of stepmothers 31 fighting against the “wicked” moniker they have inherited from fairy tales. 32 Robert Coover’s 2004 novel, Stepmother, takes on the wicked stepmother 33 figure of fairy-tale tradition and offers a more complex depiction of the charac- 34 ter. The plot of Coover’s novel is quite simple; the novel, however, is far from 35 simple. Stepmother, the title character and the novel’s protagonist, is trying 36 to save her daughter’s life. Her unnamed daughter has been found guilty of an 37 unnamed crime against the court of Reaper’s Woods and is to be executed. 38 39

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1 Stepmother breaks her daughter out of prison, and the two of them ﬂee to the 2 woods. Stepmother hides her daughter and, once the daughter is recaptured, 3 tries various schemes to prevent, or at least to delay, the planned execution. She 4 tries appealing to the Reaper, her arch enemy and the authority in the woods, 5 with magic, sex, and reason, but she fails. Her daughter is executed, and Step- 6 mother seeks vengeance. The execution of her daughter and Stepmother’s sub- 7 sequent revenge is not a new plot to Stepmother, as she repeats it over and 8 again with each of her daughters, the many heroines of fairy-tale tradition: 9 How many I’ve seen go this way, daughters, stepdaughters, what- 10 ever—some just turn up at my door, I’m never quite sure whose they 11 are or where they come from—but I know where they go: to be 12 drowned, hung, stoned, beheaded, burned at the stake, impaled, torn 13 apart, shot, put to the sword, boiled in oil, dragged down the street in 14 barrels studded on the inside with nails or nailed into barrels with 15 holes drilled in them and rolled into the river. Their going always 16 sickens me and the deep self-righteous laughter of their executioners 17 causes the bile to rise, and for a time thereafter I unleash a storm of 18 hell, or at least what’s in my meager power to raise, and so do my 19 beautiful wild daughters, it’s a kind of violent mourning, and so they 20 come down on us again and more daughters are caught up in what 21 the Reaper calls the noble toils of justice and thus we keep the cycle 22 going, rolling along through this timeless time like those tumbling 23 nail-studded barrels. (1–2) 24 25 Stepmother explains that there is nothing new in what we are about to read; 26 she has experienced it all before and will experience it all again. But she still 27 has to try to save her daughter, and as readers we are left with the impression 28 that she will keep trying with each new daughter’s appearance. 29 The impetus of the novel is summed up in its second sentence, narrated by 30 Stepmother: “my poor desperate daughter, her head is locked on one thing and 31 one thing only: how to escape her inescapable fate” (1). Throughout the novel, 32 Stepmother and other characters struggle against their predetermined fairy-tale 33 functions. Despite recognizing the “inescapability” of their fates, they still try to 34 change the cycle of events they know will unfold by manipulating fairy-tale pat- 35 terns to their advantage. Stepmother, too, is engaged “in what the Reaper calls 36 the noble toils of justice”; as an adversary, she challenges the Reaper and his val- 37 ues. Unlike the Reaper, Stepmother is not motivated by a larger cause but works 38 to save lives, one daughter at a time. And yet her focused actions have a wider 39 impact in that by trying to save the lives of her daughters, she begins to undo S 40 the master narratives that make her daughters victims. In attempting to change R 41 the rules, she shows that they are not “natural.” There is no evidence in the text

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that she hopes she will succeed, but she still fights the master narrative because 1 it “sickens” her and someone has to. 2 In this postmodern retelling of fairy-tale conventions, Coover challenges 3 the static, predetermined roles of fairy-tale characters. His characters express 4 dissatisfaction with their positions in the narrative and a frustration with the 5 predetermined roles they enact. This creates a tension between the prescribed 6 roles of popularized, conventional fairy-tale characters like the wicked step- 7 mother and a postmodern rescripting of those roles. Coover’s retelling— 8 wherein traditional fairy-tale figures are conflated into a few characters, fairy 9 tales collide in Reaper’s Woods, and characters are aware of their own irreme- 10 diable place in a fairy-tale cycle—works to unmake recognizable plots and 11 motifs of well-known fairy tales. This collision among Coover’s retelling of the 12 fairy-tale genre and the figure of the stepmother and what readers know and 13 expect about fairy-tale stepmothers creates an intertextual space that allows 14 for the exploration of further possibilities for fairy tales in contemporary West- 15 ern societies and, as Cristina Bacchilega puts it in her review of Stepmother, 16 “denaturalize[s] their hold on our imaginations” (198). 17 Coover’s conflation of fairy-tale conventions in the novel Stepmother 18 rewrites female roles in popularized fairy tales by complicating the situations 19 and motivations of the female characters and creating alternate paths to the 20 end of the story. While his characters do not escape their predetermined fates 21 and continue to enact the roles for which they are named, Coover’s Stepmother 22 explodes the standard notions of what a fairy-tale heroine is by revealing an 23 (embedded) under-story that complicates and contrasts the popular fairy tales 24 we have come to identify with the genre. Stepmother encourages identification 25 with a traditional villain through shifting focalization and unmasks the limita- 26 tions of one-dimensional gendered character types by collapsing the mainstays 27 of the fairy-tale genre on a diegetic level. In doing so, Stepmother challenges the 28 authority of popular fairy-tale narrative patterns. These fairy-tale patterns— 29 perpetuated by the reproduction of a fairy-tale “canon” contrived from a 30 few select stories from Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian 31 Andersen, and solidified by Walt Disney—are so pervasive that they dominate 32 the possibilities for fairy tales in Western popular culture and do not allow 33 other stories to take root. Additionally, Stepmother performs the struggle un- 34 dertaken by feminist writers who try to reshape the gendered narrative pat- 35 terns entrenched within the genre without losing the wonder that makes these 36 stories the fairy tales to which we keep returning. 37 38 39 40 S 41 R

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1 The Making of a Wicked Stepmother 2 3 By using well-known figures and motifs, and not inventing wholly new ones, 4 Coover forces a comparison between his Stepmother and her cruel foremoth- 5 ers. Coover collapses and dismantles a variety of tales, tale types, motifs, and 6 functions in Stepmother, challenging not only the popular conception of fairy 7 tales in Western culture but also the structuralist base of fairy-tale and folklore 8 studies. He does not change the actions of stepmothers who have been previ- 9 ously identified as villains (by Vladimir Propp) or as cruel (by Stith Thompson). 10 Instead, he shifts the focalization and the motivations for these actions, thus 11 recontextualizing specific acts by cruel stepmothers to allow for meaning that 12 is not possible in Propp’s rigid and gendered functions or Thompson’s limiting 13 motifs. For example, when Stepmother sends the “kind” stepdaughter on an 14 impossible task in an embedded recounting of tale type ATU 480, The Kind 15 and the Unkind Girls (a tale indentified under the cruel stepmother motif, 16 S31), she does so as an act of protection. The “kind” stepdaughter is annoying 17 and sanctimonious, and Stepmother is afraid she is going to hurt the step- 18 daughter. To avoid this, Stepmother devises ways “to get her out from under- 19 foot” (23). The girl returns home “coughing up gold pieces,” a curse courtesy 20 of Stepmother’s rivals (23). When the “unkind” daughter duplicates the task, 21 she does so without Stepmother’s blessing and in order to stand up for her 22 mother. From Stepmother’s point of view, she is protecting her “kind” step- 23 daughter by removing her from the house, not seeking to harm her. And 24 though the “unkind” daughter is cursed to spit toads, it is not a punishment 25 for her and Stepmother’s greed (as it is often explained), but it is in reaction to 26 her actively defending her mother. The actions of Stepmother remain consis- 27 tent with those identified in the tale type, but in changing the context of those 28 actions Coover challenges the traditional classifications and understandings of 29 the fairy tale. 30 This generic self-consciousness relies on the reader’s familiarity with the 31 genre for any critique to work. Merja Makinen, in “Theorizing Fairy-Tale Fic- 32 tion, Reading Jeanette Winterson,” asserts that “[t]he fairy tale, as a well-known, 33 culturally familiar body of texts with an almost canonical status . . . is a ripe site 34 for both reduplication and rewriting, for pastiche and for parody, within a 35 broadening of the concept of literary historical metafiction” (148). And in 36 Cathy Lynn Preston’s article “Disrupting the Boundaries of Genre and Gender: 37 Postmodernism and the Fairy Tale,” Preston argues that “[i]n postmodernity the 38 ‘stuff’ of fairy tales exists as fragments (princess, frog, slipper, commodity rela- 39 tions in a marriage market) in the nebulous realm that we might most simply S 40 identify as cultural knowledge” (210). I would also add “wicked stepmother” to R 41 Preston’s list of examples. Coover’s rewriting of the stepmother figure depends

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on the reader’s familiarity with the popularized stepmother character and the 1 associated narrative conventions.1 Preston’s concept of “fragment” is particu- 2 larly useful for analyzing Stepmother because Coover does not work solely from 3 the “cruel stepmother” motif (S31), but instead combines a variety of other 4 stepmother motifs, stereotypes, and assumptions.2 Motifs are the smallest rec- 5 ognizable units of meaning in the tales cataloged by folklorists, but fragments 6 take their meaning from a wider cultural context. The term “fragment” is more 7 flexible than “motif” because it is not tied to specific academic designations. 8 Using “fragment,” then, redirects the unit’s meaning by breaking up the motifs 9 into smaller parts or placing them in different contexts, thereby destabilizing 10 motifs and opening the unit (stepmother) to multiple possible meanings. As a 11 fairy-tale fragment, whose reach is wider than the folklore designation of “cruel 12 stepmother,” the wicked stepmother exists outside of any specific tale. She is a 13 stock character who is evil and always has been. This cultural knowledge of the 14 character creates the ground on which Coover’s rewriting stands. 15 Of course, the villains we know and love as wicked stepmothers were not 16 always stepmothers. As both Maria Tatar and Marina Warner, among others, 17 have pointed out, the Brothers Grimm made editorial changes to various sto- 18 ries from one edition of their collection to the next. These editorial changes led 19 to the absent mother and the wicked stepmother becoming staples of the fairy- 20 tale genre (Tatar 36–37; Warner 210–13). The mothers of Snow White and 21 Hansel and Gretel had been the first villains in their stories, siding with the fa- 22 ther over the children and attempting to kill the children they viewed as 23 threats. As the Grimms increased the violence in their tales in order to make 24 them more didactic, they changed these wicked mothers into stepmothers, ef- 25 fectively killing off the good mothers to make room for the villains. In The 26 Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Tatar states, “Wilhelm Grimm recog- 27 nized that most children (along with those who read to them) find the idea of 28 wicked stepmothers easier to tolerate than that of cruel mothers” (37). While 29 Tatar’s explanation of the appearance of the stepmother focuses on the text and 30 editorial choices, where one wicked person is substituted for another, Bruno 31 Bettelheim’s Freudian interpretation in Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and 32 Importance of Fairy Tales provides a psychological reason for Wilhelm Grimm’s 33 editorial choices. Bettelheim is fixated on the psychic and emotional develop- 34 ment of a child who splits the mother into two people. Bettelheim suggests 35 that “[t]he fantasy of the wicked stepmother not only preserves the good 36 mother intact, it also prevents having to feel guilty about one’s angry thoughts 37 and wishes about her—a guilt which would seriously interfere with the good 38 relation to Mother” (69). The figure of the mother is split into two roles in fairy 39 tales, says Bettelheim, as a way to provide children with a means of handling 40 S the troubling emotion of anger toward a beloved parent. 41 R

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1 Bettelheim’s application of Freudian theory, however, does not take into 2 account the editorial history of the tale, nor does he recognize the literary fea- 3 tures of the fairy-tale genre. Warner, in From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy 4 Tales and Their Tellers, argues that the popularity of Bettelheim’s application of 5 Freudian theory to fairy tales has done irreparable damage to the genre and to 6 motherhood: 7 The bad mother has become an inevitable, even required ingredient 8 in fantasy, and hatred of her a legitimate, applauded stratagem of psy- 9 chic survival. Bettelheim’s theory has contributed to the continuing 10 absence of good mothers from fairy tales in all kinds of media, and to 11 a dangerous degree which itself mirrors current prejudices and rein- 12 forces them. His argument, and its tremendous diffusion and wide- 13 spread acceptance, have effaced from memory the historical reasons 14 for woman’s cruelty within the home and have made such behaviour 15 seem natural, even intrinsic to the mother-child relationship. It has 16 even helped to ratify the expectation of strife as healthy and the 17 resulting hatred as therapeutic. (212–13) 18 19 Warner’s problem with Bettelheim’s reading of the stepmother figure is relevant 20 because of its two-pronged attack. She not only recognizes what the reading 21 has done to the genre by reinforcing negative female stereotypes, but she also 22 sees the damage possible by taking a fictional genre and using it as a treatment 23 for psychological and social discord. Had Bettelheim’s theory not been so pop- 24 ular, perhaps the wicked stepmother would not be embraced as the fairy-tale 25 villain. 26 In this case the psychoanalytic approach neglects both the editorial and the 27 historical origins of the stepmother. Both Tatar and Warner point out that a 28 straightforward psychoanalytic reading of the wicked stepmother figure is in- 29 complete, as, in addition to the Grimms’ editorial practices, it neglects sociohis- 30 torical cultural context (Tatar 49–50; Warner 212–14). Both scholars refer to 31 the high rates of mortality for mothers during childbirth before medical inter- 32 vention was commonly practiced: the stepmother was a common figure in his- 33 tory. Arguing that Bettelheim’s approach “leeches history out of the fairy tale” 34 (213), Warner suggests that the cruelty of stepmothers found in fairy tales has a 35 historical origin in addition to the editorial one. With remarriage the second 36 wife could easily find herself competing with her stepchildren for the very re- 37 sources for which she married (Warner 213). Thus, cruelty to her new hus- 38 band’s biological children would be a way to ensure survival for her own bio- 39 logical children. Warner also suggests that the villainy of the stepmother figure S 40 is partially possible due to “psychoanalytical and historical interpreters of fairy R 41

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tales usually enter[ing] stories like ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Snow White,’ or ‘Beauty and the 1 Beast’ from the point of the view of the protagonist” (214). As Warner points 2 out, popular fairy tales rarely involve first-person narration (215). 3 4 5 Unmaking the “Wicked” Stepmother 6 Coover’s use of first-person narration, with the stepmother telling her own ex- 7 perience of events, encourages reader identification with Stepmother. In refer- 8 ring to Coover’s rewriting of fairy tales in his collection Pricksongs & Descants, 9 Jackson I. Cope states, “Coover in these stories accepts and preserves the in- 10 tegrity of the narrative history presented him in his folk sources. The signifi- 11 cant difference is in the place of the narrator” (19). Coover employs the same 12 technique in Stepmother; he shifts the narrator out of extradiegetic narration 13 and into multiple narrative positions for the stories being told. Stepmother 14 narrates four out of fourteen sections (including the first and last sections), 15 and the extradiegetic narration is focalized through other characters and an ex- 16 ternal narrator. In Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies, 17 Cristina Bacchilega explains that “an external or impersonal narrator whose 18 straightforward statements carry no explicit mark of human perspective— 19 gender, class, or individuality . . . present[s] the narrator’s vision as the only 20 possible one” (34). Statements such as “‘there was,’ ‘there are,’ [and] ‘she 21 was,’” when made by an extradiegetic narrator, present information as objec- 22 tive knowledge or “fact” (Bacchilega 34). In this way, extradiegetic narration 23 discourages questioning of the narrative voice, and “naturalizes” the “social 24 conventions” presented by that voice (Bacchilega 34, 35). First-person narra- 25 tion, on the other hand, acknowledges the subjectivity of the narrative posi- 26 tion. Rather than presenting a single external narrator that functions as the 27 moral authority for the tale, moral judgment shifts between Stepmother and 28 the external narrator. 29 Stephen Benson, in “The Late Fairy Tales of Robert Coover,” describes the 30 voices of Stepmother—Stepmother herself and the extradiegetic narrator—as 31 “dense, elaborately loaded and knowing,” voices that are “freighted with 32 knowledge and tradition” (123). The narrating voices are fully entrenched in 33 fairy-tale tradition and so carry with them the authority of that tradition. 34 Coover provides Stepmother with not only a voice, but with a voice recogniz- 35 able as authoritative in fairy-tale tradition. Thus the reader is able to both iden- 36 tify with Stepmother because of her first-person account, which diminishes 37 the distance between character and reader in the popular tales, and recognize 38 that voice as imbued with the authority expected of a traditional extradiegetic 39 narrator. 40 S 41 R

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1 This inclusion of Stepmother as narrator makes it difficult to simply char- 2 acterize her as wicked. In telling her own story, she provides motivation and 3 context for her actions, thus questioning traditional interpretations of the same 4 actions rendered in popular tales as “wicked,” or “cruel” as Stith Thompson’s 5 Motif-Index would have it. This challenge provokes the question, Who decides 6 that the stepmother is wicked? The context in which a story is told is just as 7 important as plot and can allow for a more complex reading than critics like 8 Bettelheim provide. Coover avoids a single interpretation of Stepmother’s char- 9 acter and actions by shifting narration and focalization, but Stepmother never 10 has total control over the story, as her inability to change it demonstrates. 11 However, aligning the reader with Stepmother through narration and focaliza- 12 tion encourages the reader’s identification with a traditional villain. In doing so 13 Coover breaks down one of the barriers that constructs and reconstructs the 14 stepmother figure as wicked. 15 Postmodern fairy tales that are self-conscious of genre, using and abusing 16 the fairy-tale form to comment on how the genre creates gender narratives 17 without simply reproducing or reversing them, offer rich possibilities for both 18 postmodernists and feminists wishing to reclaim a much-loved tradition for vi- 19 able use in a culture at odds with the master narratives that popular fairy tales 20 can reinforce. Specifically in Stepmother, characters express awareness of the 21 narrative patterns and motifs they inhabit and a dissatisfaction with their fates. 22 In the second section the external narrator explains that in Reaper’s Woods, 23 “nature . . . is all” and “character is character and subject to its proper punish- 24 ment; tampering with endings can disturb the forest’s delicate balance” (11). 25 This proclamation sets up a problem: within the fairy-tale realm, the narrator 26 states, characters are defined by their unchangeable or stereotypical character- 27 izations and roles—as many of their names demonstrate—and the endings of 28 their stories cannot be altered. This proclamation is contested by Stepmother, 29 her relationship to the Reaper, and the antics of the other characters identified 30 by their appellation. 31 Coover challenges the hold of popular fairy-tale conventions (demon- 32 strated in the aforementioned proclamation by the narrator) by reducing many 33 popular fairy-tale characters to their roles and then exposing the limitations of 34 those roles. Coover conflates well-known fairy-tale stepmothers into one char- 35 acter, though Stepmother is complex enough not to be an archetype or stereo- 36 type. Likewise, he blends all fairy-tale maidens—“daughters, stepdaughters, 37 whatever”—into a single role where biological relationship between Step- 38 mother and child is less important than Stepmother’s caregiving attitude 39 toward the enumerable girls who need her help (1). Coover’s conflation of S 40 fairy-tale characters is not unique to his novel but is a part of long-standing R 41 fairy-tale tradition. As noted earlier, the Brothers Grimm changed mothers into

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stepmothers to make the violence perpetuated by the maternal villains in their 1 tales more palatable, and Warner has noted that in French the word for “step- 2 mother is the same as the word for mother-in-law—belle-mère” (218). Warner 3 describes how mothers, stepmothers, and mothers-in-law present the same 4 threat and occupy the same role in the fairy tales they inhabit, an observation 5 also made by Tatar. For Warner and Tatar, female villains are anti-mothers, 6 functioning as consumers rather than nurturers. While in Coover the charac- 7 ters’ roles define who they are and what they can do, his Stepmother is no anti- 8 mother. Neither is she merely “good.” Coover avoids reducing her to a flat 9 fairy-tale character by writing her as one who tries to work against the prede- 10 termined pattern of events, and by allowing her to narrate. Stepmother is not a 11 wicked cannibal bent on her daughter’s destruction, and although she is 12 doomed to fail, she does try to save all of her daughters. 13 Many of the characters in Stepmother are, like the title character, named for 14 the roles they play. I’ve mentioned how Coover’s characters are conflations of 15 multiple fairy-tale figures reduced to their role in the plot. Naming the characters 16 for their roles restricts their available actions and allows for no possibility for de- 17 velopment. Even Stepmother, the character who comes closest to breaking the 18 fairy tale’s hold on her life by working to thwart established plot lines, is only ca- 19 pable of being a stepmother figure; she did not become the stepmother figure 20 after being something else. Stepmother explains, “I was born a long-nosed tooth- 21 less crone with warts and buboes and hair on my chin and dugs that hang to my 22 knees, or it seems that I was, for I have no memories of happier, more delicate 23 times” (25). Unlike other postmodern retellings that conflate characters so that 24 Beauty (of “Beauty and the Beast,” ATU 425C) ages into Granny (of “Little Red 25 Riding Hood,” ATU 333), as in Coover’s “The Door,” characters in Stepmother do 26 not have the possibility of transcending their appellations. 27 Initially Stepmother identifies herself as a witch: “I’m a witch, I should be 28 able to do something. And it’s true, I do have a few tricks, though in general it’s 29 more useful to be thought a witch than to be one” (2). She suggests here that 30 characterization is more powerful than the acts committed by the character. 31 After being rescued from prison, Stepmother’s daughter says, “I feel trapped by 32 life itself, mama. I want more than this” (20). She articulates the problem of 33 the novel: “she is who she is” (84). The fairy-tale characterizations are a trap 34 and do not allow for the possibility of a richer existence. Women are able to be 35 princesses or witches but not much else. Stepmother is a conflation of the 36 powerful female characters with agency, and they are mostly, if not always, 37 dangerous in the fairy-tale realm. Coover shows that the one-dimensional roles 38 relegated to fairy-tale characters are frustrating by utilizing the metafictional 39 technique of creating characters who are aware of their existence in a fictional 40 S story. 41 R

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1 As a part of his larger critique of traditional authorities, Coover, however, 2 does not only show the unsatisfying nature of female roles in fairy tales, but 3 also demonstrates that the misogyny of popular fairy tales restricts representa- 4 tions of masculinity. Princes are less charming than they are criminal in Reaper’s 5 Woods. Coover collapses many of the misogynistic motifs of fairy tales into the 6 characters of the princes. The wickedest characters are, arguably, the two oldest 7 prince brothers who rape and murder maidens, mutilate their “simple” brother, 8 and plot his demise. But even they are acting their parts, repeating the same 9 fairy-tale plots of princes and brothers in the popular tales. Coover’s version is 10 more explicit about the rapes and murders, but the scenes recalled by the 11 brothers invoke “The Six Swans” (ATU 451), “Brother and Sister” (ATU 450), 12 and “Rapunzel” (ATU 310), all Brothers Grimm stories of maidens bedded, 13 and sometimes wedded, after being found by prince or king. The prince broth- 14 ers hope to encounter “naked or near-naked maidens” they can rescue (41). 15 They are aware of the damsel-in-distress plot and plan their time accordingly. 16 Likewise, they recognize that though “their royal line is favored, . . . clever el- 17 der brothers are not, being often ill-treated by fortune and the way things are” 18 (42). The brothers’ malicious behavior is all part of the misogynistic patterns 19 established by popular fairy tales. They cannot act differently, because they are 20 written in this way. They may seek to use the patterns to their advantage as 21 they plot to use Stepmother’s daughter to rid themselves of their youngest 22 brother, who is competition for the crown, but they are just fulﬁlling their 23 princely roles; like Stepmother, they know they will not succeed. 24 Coover underscores some of the gender inequality in popular fairy tales 25 by describing the hypocrisy of how different-gendered characters’ actions are 26 valued: “Rudeness here will get a girl in trouble quicker than anything. Boys 27 can get away with rape, incest, theft, torture, murder, for them it’s just part of 28 growing up, but a girl need only be discourteous to have the world fall upon 29 her like a dropped millstone,” says Stepmother (4). As the daughter’s crime for 30 which she has been imprisoned is unnamed, the reader does not know why 31 she has been incarcerated, although ultimately it does not matter, because she, 32 like her predecessors, is doomed to be the victim, just as the princes are fated 33 to never ascend the crown. But in contrast to the princes’ plot, it is precisely 34 her agency that dooms her. 35 Makinen explains that part of the task of feminists working with the fairy- 36 tale genre is to establish a tradition where women are not relegated to the vic- 37 tim/villain dichotomy where passivity is virtuous and activity villainous: “fem- 38 inist theorists point to the patriarchal inscriptions of the best known tales such 39 as ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ with their vaunting of feminine passivity S 40 and rejection of feminine activity as wicked or monstrous. Feminist fairy-tale R 41 historians argue for women’s active roles as tellers of stories and for tales that

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celebrate active female protagonists and feminine wisdom while acknowledg- 1 ing that these tales have been largely suppressed by the predominantly male 2 compilers” (148–49). Feminist retellings of fairy tales in literature and popular 3 culture often try to subvert what have been perceived as narrowly defined roles 4 for women in the popular tales. Rather than creating “new” feminist fairy tales, 5 these retellings seek to reclaim the figures of women in the better-known tales 6 in which women are constructed in less than flattering ways: from passive ob- 7 jects of male desire to powerfully evil figures working from selfish motivations. 8 While Coover takes on the task of disassociating “wicked” from “step- 9 mother,” he does not try to make a wholly virtuous character. Instead, Coover 10 leaves his stepmother a witch who tries to destroy her fellow characters, shift- 11 ing not her action, but its context: “[Stepmother’s] wickedness is beyond dis- 12 pute, nor does she dispute it herself” (15). Stepmother has done all the things 13 we expect of witches—spells, murder, cruelty, selfishness—but “she has also 14 been wrongly blamed” for all evil in the wood, whether it be imaginary or not 15 (15). She is kind to her daughter, but that kindness is also a part of her larger 16 struggle against naturalized, traditional authority. Coover’s vision of the wicked 17 stepmother is not a role reversal into a good stepmother in order to make her 18 into a heroine. He develops Stepmother as a character, exploring her motiva- 19 tion and ambition rather than changing her into an opposite type. Thus Coover 20 creates a new story on old patterns by dismantling the caricature of the wicked 21 stepmother. 22 23 24 Who’s Wicked Now? 25 If the stepmother is no longer simply “wicked” and no longer the villain of the 26 story, who is the villain? In the case of the novel Stepmother, none of the char- 27 acters snuggly fits into the role of “villain.” What is left, then, is the plot and its 28 relationship to pattern. The wicked elements of the story are the popularized, 29 conventional fairy-tale patterns that have been reproduced and naturalized as 30 authoritative in Western popular culture and fix the characters of Stepmother 31 into well-defined roles and plots. Coover unmakes these patterns in three pri- 32 mary ways: (1) he reveals that the patterns have a stranglehold on which con- 33 ventions are recognized as making up the genre in popular culture; (2) he 34 challenges the authority of those patterns to have that hold by showing that 35 they can be contested and are not inevitable; and (3) he offers a way to contest 36 those patterns by staging these conflicts from within the stories. 37 Coover’s deconstruction of fairy-tale narratives relies on his impeding of 38 those narratives. His use of nontraditional fairy-tale qualities, such as first-person 39 narration, complex and self-aware characters, and metanarrative critiques, breaks 40 S genre boundaries and expands the possibilities for fairy tales as a genre in 41 R

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1 a postmodern and feminist culture. Coover’s work in Stepmother is similar to 2 that in his earlier novel, Briar Rose, which suspends the “Sleeping Beauty” story 3 (ATU 410) before the princess is awakened. In both novels characters are re- 4 duced to functions, plots are unchangeable, and patterns are limiting. But un- 5 like the characters of Briar Rose, Stepmother actively tries to change the pat- 6 terns. The characters in Briar Rose do express frustration with the reiteration of 7 pattern and even a desire to change those patterns, but they are not able to do 8 anything to change their situations (only inhabit different variants of the same 9 tale type).3 Stepmother, too, is dissatisfied with her lot, but she does not accept 10 that it is unchangeable. Stepmother, in offering possibilities for the genre, 11 changes Coover’s own pattern of deconstructing fairy tales. He does not recon- 12 struct a new ideal for the genre, but lays it bare as a genre in flux, one that can 13 change. 14 Coover does not make the fairy tale into something else, but shows it for 15 what is: a complex genre that authoritatively disseminates narratives about 16 how we construct our lives. He does not show us how to use fairy tales, but 17 shows how the fairy-tale genre is being used. He reveals that the authority of 18 the narratives and the authors to whom we attribute those narratives are not as 19 stable and as natural as they purport to be. Coover deconstructs the popular- 20 ized, conventional patterns of the Western fairy-tale genre to reveal them as 21 patterns without the authority that we as authors, readers, and popularizers 22 give them. The authority of the convention comes not from the tales or even 23 their authors, but from the people who assume them to be authoritative. 24 As such, it is only fitting that the protagonist’s greatest enemy is the 25 Reaper, the character who thrives on patterns and is intent on reproducing 26 them: “[The Reaper] does not disturb the way things are and is angered by 27 those who do; thus his unending conflicts with Stepmother, who would hang 28 the lot and burn the forest down if she could, and all the world beyond it” 29 (13). By maintaining order the Reaper preserves his authority in Reaper’s 30 Woods, named after him for his constant presence. He is the authority because 31 the other characters recognize him as the authority. In the final pages of the 32 novel, the conflict between Stepmother and the Reaper comes to a head, and 33 they discuss the inescapability of plot and Stepmother’s desire to change it: 34 35 I [Stepmother] would like my daughter to be set free. I can arrange 36 for her immediate disappearance, never to return, so she will never 37 trouble you or the forest again. 38 Alas, madam, I [Reaper] cannot do that. She has been adjudged 39 wicked and must be rightfully punished. S 40 Others have gotten away with more. Send the barrel rolling with- R 41 out her. No one will ever know.

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You and I would know. Things will happen as they must. 1 (87–88) 2 3 Stepmother suggests removing her daughter from the situation altogether in 4 such a way as to maintain the appearance of fidelity to the established pattern. 5 The Reaper, however, argues that the appearance of fidelity is not fidelity. 6 This simple exchange contains the crux of the novel’s problem: the Reaper 7 argues that patterns do not change, because they cannot change. This rhe- 8 torical move employs discourse that naturalizes the status quo. Altering the 9 established patterns, even subtly, undoes their authority and jeopardizes the 10 Reaper’s position of power. Stepmother, too, recognizes the power in the min- 11 ute changes, but, unlike the Reaper, she welcomes the rupture small changes 12 can enable. Once one daughter escapes, after all, the pattern is broken and the 13 possibility for further escapes exists. The immediate change that she seeks re- 14 sults in the saving of a life. She argues that making this change will have no 15 real effect on the woods, as “no one will ever know” about it. But of course 16 the reader recognizes this for the rhetoric it is and sees the magnitude of punc- 17 turing the Reaper’s authority: the reader will know. While the Reaper upholds 18 the stability of patterns and the impossibility of altering the popularized, con- 19 ventional patterns, Stepmother and the novel argue that the possibility for 20 change is there and that, though dangerous, it is desirable. In Stepmother’s 21 fight for justice, as opposed to the Reaper’s adherence to punishment, she 22 argues for the moral right of that change. But, paradoxically, by trying to 23 work within the pattern and appealing to the Reaper, Stepmother reaffirms his 24 authority. 25 The struggle between Stepmother and the Reaper enacts that of postmod- 26 ern feminist re-tellers of fairy tales and the popularized fairy-tale tradition they 27 are writing against. The Reaper’s actions to impose order on the woods recall 28 the editorial decisions made by the Grimms to Christianize folktales and make 29 them more moral and proper behavioral models for children. Although the 30 Grimms began to edit the tales for a younger audience as the popularity of their 31 work grew, their original intention was not to produce didactic tales for chil- 32 dren. Instead their goal was a scholarly one: to preserve German folk traditions 33 for adult audiences (Tatar 11; Haase 10; Zipes, “Once There Were” xxiv). Like 34 the Grimms’ initial purpose of collecting folktales to preserve German folk cul- 35 ture, the Reaper seeks “[t]he revelation of some kind of primeval and holy truth, 36 he would say, the telltale echo of ancestral reminiscences” (Coover 14). 37 In seeking this revelation and to impose order, the Reaper introduced the 38 Holy Mother, Stepmother’s other enemy, to his woods. The Holy Mother is a 39 Virgin Mary figure representing Christianity and the figure of Mary in tales like 40 S the Grimms’ “The Virgin Mary’s Child” (ATU 710). In this tale Mary commands 41 R

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1 a girl not to enter a forbidden room, much like in “Bluebeard” (ATU 312), and 2 then punishes the girl when she does so by banishing her from heaven, removing 3 her ability to speak, and later stealing her children so that the girl is accused of 4 cannibalism and is to be burned at the stake until she confesses her sins. Like the 5 Reaper, Holy Mother’s emphasis is on obedience and punishment. Stepmother 6 refers to the Holy Mother as the Ogress, recalling another staple of female fairy- 7 tale villains. In tales like “Sleeping Beauty” (ATU 410), the mother-in-law, who 8 is sometimes identified as an Ogress, attempts to eat her grandchildren. In her 9 dual naming of Holy Mother/Ogress, Coover conflates two traits often associ- 10 ated with wicked or cruel stepmothers—punishment and cannibalism. She is 11 offered as a counter-character to Stepmother, embodying a recognizably cruel 12 mother for Stepmother to be contrasted against as a potentially good mother— 13 one who wants to nurture and help her children rather than consuming and 14 punishing them as popularized, conventional fairy tales would have her do. 15 The Holy Mother/Ogress is, like the Mary of fairy tales, a character who 16 guards souls, not lives; collects confessions of sins rather than offers aid; and 17 “mak[es] one feel guilty merely for having been alive” (84). While certainly not 18 a positive portrayal of Christianity, the Holy Mother is introduced as a charac- 19 ter the Reaper brings to the forest to possibly civilize the fairy-tale characters 20 (12). Thus aligned with official religion and folklore, the enemies of Step- 21 mother represent the authority of the popular tales against which Coover is 22 writing and the means by which the authoritative narratives are naturalized. 23 Coover’s most recent work, then, continues to provide a useful metaphor 24 for the retelling and study of retellings of fairy tales. As a stand-in for the 25 canonical male authority that is responsible for compiling and editing the most 26 popular Western tales, the Reaper is, as the silent pun in his name implies, 27 Grimm. Metaphorically, this establishes a struggle between the Reaper, a repre- 28 sentative of the popularized, conventional patterns associated with the fairy- 29 tale genre and the authoritative male traditions that employ and disseminate 30 those patterns, and Stepmother, a character aligned with feminist and post- 31 modern writers who revolt against the patterns, trying to unmake them and re- 32 sist the tendency to repeat what has come before. The novel Stepmother enacts 33 the challenges that arise in trying to rewrite the fairy-tale genre: reproducing- 34 patriarchal and heteronormative ideology, relying on male-authored and -edited 35 stories and ignoring the contributions of women to the genre, granting author- 36 ity to an already narrowly defined definition of fairy tales and the genre, and 37 perpetuating the misconceptions that fairy tales are simple stories for children. 38 The tension implicit in these challenges stems from the necessity of using the 39 popular, conventional tales as fodder in order for new tales to be recognized as S 40 retellings or fairy tales. R 41 Tales that adhere to the established patterns can only do so much. Step-

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mother is never able to truly break free from the plot set in motion in the first 1 lines of the novel. She makes a lot of noise and shatters a few of her enemies, 2 but the cycle in which she spins remains unbroken. She is doomed to repeat 3 the scenario again, watching her daughters be executed to the delight of the 4 folk and seek her revenge for their deaths in a “kind of violent mourning,” 5 again and again, “keep[ing] the cycle going” (Coover 2). Writers of fairy tales 6 today who are dissatisfied with the roles of women projected by the seemingly 7 endless reproduction of a small canon of popular tales are struggling, like 8 Stepmother, with the narrative patterns that came before them. How does one 9 rewrite a fairy tale to remove and critique the ideological values associated 10 with the genre and still be writing a fairy tale? 11 The future of postmodern feminist fairy tales lies in stories that can 12 rewrite the genre without totally unmaking it. Jack Zipes, in Relentless Progress: 13 The Reconfiguration of Children’s Literature, Fairy Tales, and Storytelling, explains 14 that contemporary writing of fairy tales by women does not seek to construct 15 a new, feminist fairy-tale canon: “Instead of focusing directly on gender issues 16 and radicalizing the canon, women writers nowadays tend to depict baffled 17 and distressed women and men caught in a maize [sic] of absurd situations. In 18 doing this, they are endeavoring to unravel the causes of their predicaments 19 and use narrative strategies that both reflect the degeneration of communica- 20 tion and are somewhat degenerative themselves” (130). This, I believe, is true 21 of Coover’s work as well. Coover’s novel does not reveal liberated women and 22 strong heroines in opposition to the popular tales that are the fodder for his 23 novel; however, by using narrative strategies that show how carefully scripted 24 gender roles are unsatisfying and detrimental in and beyond the world of nar- 25 ration, Coover’s novel does feminist work, even though his critique of misogyny 26 is part of his larger critique of the authority of authors and genre. 27 Coover’s construction of Stepmother exhibits how similar the most popular 28 fairy tales in Western culture are by how seemingly effortlessly they are collapsed 29 into their roles. In making the characters aware of their ultimate fates, Coover 30 gives his characters, well, character. The princes, for example, though repug- 31 nant, are more complex than their popular predecessors—they have motive for 32 the rapes and murder they commit and are nevertheless clever in their manipu- 33 lation. The stories never reach a level of realism, as Coover of course is not at- 34 tempting realism, but they are more interesting as characters because they are 35 provided with motivation and agency. The plots remain stable, but the details 36 and distortions that Coover supplies enrich the fairy-tale genre he is parodying. 37 The possibility of evolution here lies not with the characters in Coover’s novel, 38 but with the reader. The characters are bound by their roles, and as they struggle 39 to change their predicaments, they are only further embittered by the trappings 40 S of the fairy tale. The reader, however, is free to understand the characters in a 41 R

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1 new light—traditional heroes are rendered less gallant, victims are availed of 2 agency, and villains are humanized. As Brian Evenson argues in Understanding 3 Robert Coover, “By clearing a space for his readers, [Coover] allows them to move 4 into the freedom that they always have but which they sometimes are unable to 5 perceive” (22). The characters are trapped by the plot, but the reader is shown 6 how complex fairy tales can be and is led to question the authority of the popu- 7 larized conventions. The reader is provided with a way to reimagine the genre. 8 Though Stepmother is clearly a postmodern novel, it also is a fairy tale. It 9 contains all the recognizable traits of the fairy-tale genre and then plays with 10 them. The novel does not abandon fairy-tale patterns in remaking the genre, 11 but instead shows possibilities for those patterns. Coover’s work reminds us 12 that fairy tales are not static monoliths. Though the patterns may appear to be 13 stable, there is room for play. Near the end of the novel, when confronted with 14 Stepmother’s plot to save her daughter from execution by preventing the 15 Reaper, a fixture at all executions, from attending the event, the Reaper says, 16 “Not all legends are true” (89). When the Reaper tells this to Stepmother, he is 17 explaining that though the pattern is for him to be at all executions, it is not a 18 causal relationship nor does it hold some essential truth about how executions 19 happen. Therein lies the future of the genre; fairy tales as they have been can- 20 onized are not “true.” Just because a narrative pattern is pervasive does not 21 mean it is essential to the genre of fairy tales. Patterns can be broken, and the 22 plot can continue. Writers can rewrite the popular fairy tale and still write fairy 23 tales, and their heroines need not walk the same paths as their foremothers in 24 order to reach the story’s happy ending. 25 26 Notes 27 An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2008 Popular Culture Asso- 28 ciation Conference. Many thanks to Cristina Bacchilega and Jennifer Orme for 29 their guidance in revising. 30 1. Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature identifies several motifs associated 31 with stepmothers, and although most of the motifs are worded to suggest the 32 stepmother acts in opposition to the desires of the hero(ine), clearly aligning her with Propp’s villain, only one is identified as “cruel” (S31). However, “Cruel step- 33 mother” is a large entry with sixteen tale types associated with it. 34 2. While Coover certainly tackles Propp’s functions and Thompson’s motifs in his 35 novel, he is also working with the popularized conception of the stepmother fig- 36 ure as wicked, and it is this popular understanding of the character that I exam- 37 ine in this article. I refer to the stepmother figure throughout as “wicked,” rather 38 than “cruel,” to avoid confusing the popularized wicked stepmother with the more diverse cruel stepmother that is specific to folklore studies. 39 3. For an analysis of Briar Rose, see Sünje Redies, “Return with New Complexities: S 40 Robert Coover’s Briar Rose,” and Jaroslav Kusnír, “Subversion of Myths: High and R 41 Low Cultures in Donald Barthelme’s Snow White and Robert Coover’s Briar Rose.”

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Works Cited 1 2 Bacchilega, Cristina. Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies. Philadel- phia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999. 3 ———. Rev. of Stepmother, by Robert Coover. Marvels & Tales 22.1 (2008): 196–98. 4 Benson, Stephen. “The Later Fairy Tales of Robert Coover.” Contemporary Fiction and the 5 Fairy Tale. Ed. Stephen Benson. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2008. 120–43. 6 Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. 7 1975. New York: Vintage, 1989. Coover, Robert. Briar Rose. New York: Grove, 1996. 8 ———. “The Door: A Prologue of Sorts.” Pricksongs & Descants: Fictions. New York: 9 Grove, 1969. 13–19. 10 ———. Stepmother. San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2004. 11 Cope, Jackson I. Robert Coover’s Fictions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. 12 Evenson, Brian. Understanding Robert Coover. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2003. 13 Haase, Donald. Introduction. The Reception of Grimms’ Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions, Revisions. Ed. Donald Haase. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1993. 9–23. 14 Kusnír, Jaroslav. “Subversion of Myths: High and Low Cultures in Donald Barthelme’s 15 Snow White and Robert Coover’s Briar Rose.” European Journal of American Cul- 16 ture 23.1 (2004): 31–49. 17 Makinen, Merja. “Theorizing Fairy-Tale Fiction, Reading Jeanette Winterson.” Contem- 18 porary Fiction and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Stephen Benson. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2008. 144–77. 19 Preston, Cathy Lynn. “Disrupting the Boundaries of Genre and Gender: Postmodernism 20 and the Fairy Tale.” Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches. Ed. Donald Haase. 21 Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2004. 197–212. 22 Propp, Vladímir. Morphology of the Folktale. Trans. Laurence Scott. Ed. Louis A. Wagner. 23 2nd ed. Austin: U of Texas P, 2001. 24 Redies, Sünje. “Return with New Complexities: Robert Coover’s Briar Rose.” Marvels & Tales 18.1 (2004): 9–27. 25 Tatar, Maria. The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1987. 26 Thompson, Stith. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in 27 Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, 28 and Local Legends. Rev. and enlarged ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1975. 29 Uther, Hans-Jörg. The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography. 3 vols. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. 30 Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. New York: 31 Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1994. 32 Zipes, Jack. “Once There Were Two Brothers Named Grimm.” The Complete Fairy Tales 33 of the Brothers Grimm. Trans. and ed. Jack Zipes. Expanded ed. New York: Bantam, 34 1992. xvii–xxxi. 35 ———. Relentless Progress: The Reconfiguration of Children’s Literature, Fairy Tales, and Storytelling. New York: Routledge, 2009. 36 37 38 39 40 S 41 R

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