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Beautiful Maidens, Hideous Suitors: Victorian Fairy Tales and the Process of Civilization

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Beautiful Maidens, Hideous Suitors: Victorian Fairy Tales and the Process of Civilization Beautiful Maidens, Hideous Suitors: Victorian Fairy Tales and the Process of Civilization Laurence Talairach-Vielmas Marvels & Tales, Volume 24, Number 2, 2010, pp. 272-296 (Article) Published by Wayne State University Press For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mat/summary/v024/24.2.talairach-vielmas.html Access provided by Wayne State University (5 Jan 2014 16:31 GMT) 24496_05_272-296_r3ss.qxp 9/17/10 1:35 PM Page 272 1 L AURENCE TALAIRACH-VIELMAS 2 3 4 5 6 Beautiful Maidens, Hideous Suitors: 7 Victorian Fairy Tales and the Process 8 of Civilization 9 10 11 [Y]ou were destined to marry a savage wild beast. 12 —Apuleius 13 14 15 In many a folktale and fairy tale, women encounter monstrous creatures. Hairy 16 wolves and bears, slimy snakes and frogs, or even ogres partake of the hero- 17 ines’ confrontations with the—male—Other. Following Bruno Bettelheim, psy- 18 choanalytical analyses generally posit that beasts function as veiled symbols 19 representing sexuality that children must initially experience as disgusting be- 20 fore they reach maturity and discover its beauty. In contrast to such views, 21 Jack Zipes argues that children’s instinctual drives are “conditioned and largely 22 determined through interaction and interplay with the social environment” 23 (Fairy Tales 32–33). As a consequence, fairy tales are inevitably shaped by the 24 historical period in which they are published and must be viewed through a 25 sociopolitical lens. Indeed, many historians and literary critics envisage fairy 26 tales as documents marked by social and economic conditions. As Marina 27 Warner argues, fairy tales are permeated with “evidence of conditions from 28 past social and economic arrangements” (xix). For Betsy Hearne, each new 1 29 version reflects, in addition, “new variations of culture and creativity” (1). 30 Zipes’s exploration of the changes made to the tales convincingly brings to 31 light how social pressures and norms, which may vary with time, weigh on 32 fairy tales. His analysis of Perrault’s, the Brothers Grimm’s, or Hans Christian 33 Andersen’s literary fairy tales underlines how the revisions of oral folktales 34 through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries are fueled by 35 social and cultural references. Thus, hints at bourgeois mores and manners 36 transfigure the discourse of the folktales in order to suit and to strengthen the 37 rising power of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, such revised tales impose standards 38 for sexual and social conduct that hinge on “inhibiting forms of socialization” 39 S 40 Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2010), pp. 272–296. Copyright © 2010 by R 41 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201. 272 2nd Pass Pages 24496_05_272-296_r3ss.qxp 9/17/10 1:35 PM Page 273 BEAUTIFUL MAIDENS, HIDEOUS SUITORS (Zipes, Fairy Tales 33). In Zipes’s view, throughout the centuries, competition 1 and wealth become keywords, and patriarchal interests increasingly orchestrate 2 the tales, stressing male domination and feminine subjection. 3 Zipes’s interpretation of fairy tales is invaluable to any reader or scholar ex- 4 amining Victorian fairy tales. Unlike in France or Germany—and with the possi- 5 ble exceptions of tales by Charles Perrault and Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy—fairy 6 tales were not generally approved and accepted in England before the begin- 7 ning of the nineteenth century, especially for children.2 Despite the fact that 8 the classical fairy tales by Perrault had been translated into English in 1729, it 9 was not before the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the 10 nineteenth century that chapbook versions of Perrault’s tales appeared in a for- 11 mat designed to appeal to children. In 1823 and 1826, selections from the 12 Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales were translated into English by Edgar Taylor and 13 illustrated by George Cruikshank. Andersen’s Wonderful Stories for Children, 14 published in England in 1846 and translated by Mary Howitt, because of their 15 overt Christian principles and their suffering (and often mutilated) characters, 16 paved the way for a wider acceptance of fairy tales as suitable literature for 17 children (see Zipes, Victorian xvii–xviii). Interestingly, just as fairy tales were 18 making their way into the nursery, they very quickly became a means to ques- 19 tion social, political, and cultural issues. Indeed, though mid-Victorian fairy 20 tales undoubtedly represented middle-class settings, protagonists, and codes 21 of conduct, some of them also debunked the bourgeois ideology. Not all liter- 22 ary fairy tales were subversive, however, and many of them seemed to both af- 23 firm and denounce the fairy tale’s patriarchal discourse, especially when writ- 24 ten—or rewritten—by women. In fact, in order to challenge traditional roles, 25 women had to work within cultural paradigms. As shall be seen, the signifi- 26 cant aspect of most of them is the transformation and adaptation of the classi- 27 cal fairy tales to the social and cultural environment of mid-Victorian England. 28 As U. C. Knoepflmacher has underlined, Victorian women writers of fairy tales 29 particularly emphasized the links between fairy tales and reality, insisting on 30 “the reality of gender binaries” more than their contemporary male fantasists 31 (25). As a result, their fairy tales frequently have a whiff of morality about 32 them, following the tradition of Maria Edgeworth’s children’s stories and often 33 resisting fantasy in order to foreground the tales’ educational potential. 34 Through the study of three Victorian tales that depict heroines forced to 35 marry unattractive male lovers—Anne Thackeray Ritchie’s “Beauty and the 36 Beast” (1867), Juliana Horatia Ewing’s “The Ogre Courting” (1871), and Mary 37 Louisa Molesworth’s “The Brown Bull of Norrowa” (1877)—I want to explore 38 how these writers illuminated the fairy-tale discourse on civilization. As 39 Hearne contends, the tale of “Beauty and the Beast,” in all its variations, reveals 40 S perhaps “more clearly than any other the interweaving of social custom and 41 R 273 2nd Pass Pages 24496_05_272-296_r3ss.qxp 9/17/10 1:35 PM Page 274 LAURENCE TALAIRACH-VIELMAS 1 law with fantasy narratives” (xxi). The three fairy tales under study highlight 2 the bourgeois codes of feminine propriety while at the same time offering their 3 readers a significant perspective on how fairy tales suppress the heroines’ 4 agency. Written at about the same period, these three fairy tales are neverthe- 5 less very different. One suppresses magic from the narrative in order to adapt a 6 classical fairy-tale plot to everyday Victorian reality; another taps into folklore 7 and seemingly uses matriarchal mythology; the last one borrows both from the 8 matriarchal tradition and from more classical literary fairy tales, conflicting an- 9 tagonistic discourses to expose gender roles and denounce male oppression.3 10 All three narratives testify to the way Victorian women writers rebelled against 11 traditional gender roles even as their tales seem to confirm the conservative 12 civilizing process. 13 14 “Beauty and the Beast” Texts in Sociocultural Context 15 16 It is probably in the revisions of folktales and fairy tales featuring an animal 17 bridegroom that the models of behavior and incorporated norms and values 18 most reflect how the emerging bourgeoisie stamped their literary fairy tales 19 with the seal of patriarchy. Ironically enough, it is in two rewritings of fairy 20 tales by eighteenth-century women writers that the pressure exerted on little 21 girls to conform to the model of the sacrificial woman is blatant. When Jeanne- 22 Marie Leprince de Beaumont reworked Gabrielle Suzanne Barbot de Gallon de 23 Villeneuve’s “Beauty and the Beast” (1740) in 1756, she manifestly changed the 24 fairy tale into a moral lesson intended for a young, mainly female audience. 25 Mme de Villeneuve’s long romance, published in La jeune amériquaine, et les 26 contes marins, was dramatically shortened by Leprince de Beaumont, who, in 27 particular, cut the long descriptions of Beauty’s entertainments at the palace 28 and the dream sequences in which a prince and a fairy appeared to Beauty to 29 encourage her not to be deceived by appearances (Hearne 26). Leprince de 30 Beaumont’s stories were always written for children, and most of them appeared 31 in English collections such as The Young Ladies Magazine; or, Dialogues between a 32 Discreet Governess and Several Young Ladies of the First Rank under Her Education 33 published in four volumes in 1760. Her “Beauty and the Beast” was first pub- 34 lished in London, where she worked as a governess for fourteen years, and it 35 was included in an educational book, Magasin des Enfans; ou, dialogues entre 36 une sage gouvernante et plusieurs de ses élèves de la première distinction. Stress- 37 ing the significance of wealth throughout the tale (Beauty’s father is a wealthy 38 merchant), and thereby clearly pointing to a middle-class readership, Leprince 39 de Beaumont’s tale demonstrates how the evolution of fairy-tale discourse S 40 through the centuries follows the development of the bourgeoisie, gradually R 41 274 2nd Pass Pages 24496_05_272-296_r3ss.qxp 9/17/10 1:35 PM Page 275 BEAUTIFUL MAIDENS, HIDEOUS SUITORS setting itself apart from the aristocracy. Her Beast is no starving animal, and the 1 tale suppresses the sexual symbolism of the narrative in order to favor man- 2 ners, figuring a self-abnegating, submissive, and hard-working heroine, who 3 prefers virtue to looks and is soon rewarded by marriage and happiness—that 4 is, wealth.
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