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FRENCH FAIRY TALES: ESSAYS ON A MAJOR LITERARY TRADITION EDITED BY DENYSE DELCOURT EDITION SECOND Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher Kassie Graves, Director of Acquisitions Jamie Giganti, Senior Managing Editor Jess Estrella, Senior Graphic Designer Carrie Montoya, Manager, Revisions and Author Care Kaela Martin, Associate Editor Natalie Lakosil, Licensing Manager Karen Wiley, Production Editor Stefanie Jones, Interior Designer Copyright © 2017 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, repro- duced, transmitted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Cover image copyright© 2012 iStockphoto LP/Tanor. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-5165-1175-4 (pbk) / 978-1-5165-1176-1 (br) CONTENTS Introduction 1 Selected Bibliography 6 Selected Filmography 14 About the Authors 16 section i: history of the french fairy tales 19 Robert Darnton, Peasants Tell Tales: The Meaning of the Mother Goose 20 Dorothy Thelander, Mother Goose and Her Goslings: The France of 38 Louis XIV as Seen Through the Fairy Tale section ii: little red riding hood 61 Charles Perrault, Little Red Riding Hood 62 Catherine Orenstein, The Grandmother’s Tale 65 Graham Anderson, Butchering Girls: Red Riding Hood and Bluebeard 74 section iii: bluebeard 87 Charles Perrault, Bluebeard 88 Maria Tatar, Monstrous Wives: Bluebeard as Criminal and Cultural Hero 92 Verena Kast, On the Problem of the Destructive Animus 109 iv | French Fairy Tales: Essays on a Major Literary Tradition section iv: the sleeping beauty in the woods 117 Charles Perrault, The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods 118 Carolyn Fay, Sleeping Beauty Must Die: The Plots of Perrault’s “La Belle 124 au bois dormant.” section v: donkey skin and cinderella 139 Charles Perrault, Donkey Skin 140 Charles Perrault, Cinderella, or the Glass Slipper 146 Bettina Knapp, Donkey-Skin: An Adolescent’s Struggle Against Incest and for 151 Independence Anne E. Duggan., Women Subdued: The Abjectification and Purification of 163 Female Characters in Perrault’s Tales Belinda Stott, Cinderella the Strong and Reader Empowerment 176 section vi: the master cat, or puss in boots 187 Charles Perrault, The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots 188 Louis Marin, Puss-In Boots: Powers of Signs – Signs of Power 192 section vii: riquet with the tuft 203 Charles Perrault, Riquet with the Tuft 204 Catherine Bernard, Riquet with the Tuft 209 section viii: women writers of fairy tales 215 Elizabeth Wanning Harries, Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the 216 History of the Fairy Tale Contents | v section ix: the blue bird and the white cat 223 Madame d’Aulnoy, The Blue Bird 224 Madame d’Aulnoy, The White Cat 233 Marcy Farrell, The Heroine’s Violent Compromise: Two Fairy Tales by 241 Madame d’Aulnoy Holly Tucker, Like Mother. Like Daughter: Maternal Cravings and 249 Birthmarks in the Fairy Tales of Madame d’Aulnoy section x: beauty and the beast 261 Madame Leprince de Beaumont, Beauty and the Beast 262 Jerry Griswold, Among the Critics: The Meaning of Beauty and the Beast 270 Mark Axelrod, Beauties and their Beasts & Other Motherless Tales from 279 the Wonderful World of Walt Disney for my daughter, Anna INTRODUCTION This collection of essays is an exploration of a major French literary tradition still greatly influential in modern life, literature, and films. The study of fairy tales has benefited from a wide variety of approaches. Sociologists, anthropologists, literary critics, psychologists, and historians have all shown in their own informed ways the importance of fairy tales as a genre, as well as their complexi- ties. Choosing which essays to include in this anthology was not an easy task, and omissions are to be expected. I have given preference to the most recent and, at times, most provocative scholarship on French fairy tales. One of my goals has been to introduce American readers to previously unknown or lesser-known French fairy tales. Fairy tales have a long history. In classical Antiquity, “old wives’ tales” already played an impor- tant role in children’s lives. Passed on from one generation to the next, they were meant to entertain and to educate. In Book II of the Republic, Plato conceded that stories told to children may contain some truth and, as such, be included in education. For Plato, fictions directed at children should be closely monitored; anything gloomy or blatantly untrue, such as ghosts, giants, and magicians, should be eliminated; and lies have no place in tales told to the “too easily molded” children.1 It is dubious that what Plato considered lies were perceived as such by the generation of women who recounted these tales. As many authors included in this anthology will attest, “old wives’ tales”, folktales, and/or fairy tales reveal something profoundly true about human nature. If children are so fascinated by fairy tales, it is in part because they are able to recognize themselves in them. The unloved child, the princess, the clever cat, and even the terrible ogre, are all manifestations of who children at times may feel themselves to be. In that sense, fairy tales act as children’s mirrors, or to quote Horace’s famous definition of literature, de te fabula narratur [the story applies to you], fairy tales children hear or read are always about them. 1 Plato, Republic, Book II. 377b. 1 2 | French Fairy Tales: Essays on a Major Literary Tradition Because storytelling is so closely associated with women and domesticity, it is not surprising that tales meant for children came to be linked to the traditional feminine activities of weaving, knitting, and spinning. This is well exemplified in everyday language in expressions such as “spinning a tale,” “weaving a plot,” and “losing or finding one’s thread,” to name a few. Through the figures of the weaving Fates, the close connection between storytelling and human lives is made very clear. In Greek and Latin mythology, the three Fates weave the thread of life until the time comes for one of them to cut it. It is worth recalling here the etymological root of the word “fate” from the past participle of the Latin verb fari, which means to speak.2 The Fates are those who have the power to “speak” women’s and men’s lives. For a long time, female storytellers will also “speak” their stories, using their voice to transmit the tales that they themselves once heard. During the reign of Louis XIV, several of these orally transmitted “old wives’ tales” were put into writing. As Jack Zipes and others have shown, the bourgeois and highly educated Charles Perrault played a major role in “civilizing” the oral tales. One of the most prominent authors of fairy tales of that period, Charles Perrault respectfully acknowledged his debt to the nannies, mothers, and grandmothers who had kept these stories alive. This said, Perrault made sure readers understood that his tales were not exactly the same as those in Mother Goose. Both were meant to please, but his contain a more serious component.3 Following each of Perrault’s fairy tales, a Moralité written in verse expresses the lessons one should have learned from the reading. Not surprisingly, these lessons reflect the social values of the Christian upper class for which Perrault was writing. “Written in a period of absolutism when France was setting standards of civilité for the rest of Europe,” Zipes remarks, “fairy tales became vehicles for the dissemination of male-oriented Christian definition of civil order that permeated all aspects of social life at the time.”4 How the France of Louis XIV informed the representation of nobility, religion, marriage, and family in seventeenth-century fairy tales is the topic of Dorothy Thelander’s article reproduced in this anthology. Most of the essays therein argue for a contextual reading of French fairy tales. However, the particular aspect of seventeenth-century Old Regime deemed significant varies from one author to the next. For the historian Robert Darnton, for example, fairy tales reflect not so much the values of the French upper class as those of the peasants. Intended for peasants, Darnton writes, French oral tales, upon which many seventeenth-century literary fairy tales are based, are not simply works of imagination but are expressions of the peasants’ hopes and struggles. While supporting Darnton’s historical reading, Catherine Orenstein advocates for a broader approach. She revisits The Grandmother’s Tale, a folktale version of Little Red Riding Hood analyzed by Darnton in his essay. Whereas Darnton focuses on the unsavory details contained in this version (cannibalism; defecation; promiscuity) to support his theory, Orenstein stresses the importance of examining the tale’s folkloric 2 Marina Warner 1994. From the Beast to the Blonde. On Fairy Tales and their Tellers. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. 39. 3 On this issue, see Louis Marin’s seminal essay, “Les enjeux d’un frontispice.” L’Esprit Créateur, vol. 27, 3 (1987): 49–57. 4 Jack Zipes. 2006. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion. The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. New York: Routledge. 9. Introduction | 3 patterns, contending that only by looking at oral and literary tales’ global pattern can we account for their broader, older, and deeper meanings. The folklorist and literary critic Ruth Bottigheimer questions the belief that Charles Perrault and many of his contemporaries obtained their stories from peasant women.