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Stranger at the Wedding Cabinet des Fées Cabinet des Fées a fairy tale journal Cabinet des Fées a fairy tale journal Volume One, No. 2/3 Copyright © 2007 by Cabinet des Fées Cover by Charles Vess Interior illustrations by Daniel Trout, copyright © 2007. The individual stories, articles and illustrations are copyrighted by their respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. Published by Prime Books http://www.prime-books.com For more stories, poetry, art, and information on forthcoming volumes, visit http://www.cabinet-des-fees.com CONTENTS The Significant Other ....... Helen Pilinovsky 7 Katabasis ....................Sonya Taaffe 14 Stranger at the Wedding .........R.W. Day 16 The Devil Factory ............. Bret Fetzer 24 The Hiker’s Tale ............... Mike Allen 35 Giantkiller ....................A.C. Wise 59 The Tower ............ JoSelle Vanderhooft 75 Lost or Forgotten ......... Janni Lee Simner 87 Night of the Girl Goblin ....Amal El-Mohtar 95 The Cat-Skin Coat ....... Jessica Paige Wick 98 Vox ....................Kimberly DeCina 108 Reformulating Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales and Sexuality in YA Literature ....... Christine Butterworth-McDermott 132 “The Lady of the House of Love”: Angela Carter’s Vampiric Sleeping Beauty ........................ Jamil Mustafa 145 From Anxious Canons to Hysterical Texts: A Theory of Literary Revision ...................... Jennifer Banash 158 About the Editrices ........................ 181 The Significant Other Helen Pilinovsky LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS. Oh, my! How much more so the case if the refrain concerns manticores, phoenix and chimerae? A major preoccupation of the fairy tale lies in its concern with the Other. In the first issue of this journal, we had a brief chance to discuss the fact that fairy tales have had a long and honorable history of representing the Other, with the forms taken by that Other serving as apt representation of the particular fears of society; in this issue, let us look more specifically at the nature of the Other, both conceptually, and specifically. Arthur Rimbaud is thought by some to have been the first to have proposed the central notion of the Other with the statement, “Je est un autre”, translated literally as “I am another”, and alternately (more correctly, if not, in English, grammatically so) as “I is another”; directly, “I” is the Other. Small wonder, then that the phrase and concept were handily adopted by psychoanalytic critics such as Jacques Lacan, who felt that “The I is always in the field of the Other”. Similarly, the idea of the Other was adopted by Simone de Beauvoir, who in The Second Sex posited the idea that the Other represented the minority position, the alternative rather than the default, the construct composed as much by what it isn’t as by what it is. In the modern vernacular, these views have come together in a manner still based in general theory and criticism, but not tied to a specific vocabulary of jargon 7 CABINET DES FÉES belonging particularly to psychology, literary criticism, or gender studies; the Other is present in every aspect of human endeavor, either in the construction of the ever-popular Us vs. Them dichotomy, or in the personal psyche. The fairy tale represents a rich proving ground for theories of the Other, with its multitudinous doubles and triads, its fantastic hordes. From the traditional talking beasts of the fairy tales, the helpful wolves and bears and birds of the forest who assist the men who enter it, to the unicorns and dragons and sphinx who may be benevolent helpers or hideous opponents, from the speechless dumb Beast of Mme. Villaneuve’s original fairy tale to the monstrous Bluebeard who acts as his darker, more human, and more complex double . the magical Others of fairy tales are legion. Their Othering is marked by their magical nature, but truly, these characters act only as stand-ins for the true Others of society who can only be addressed obliquely. In the case(s) of the fantastic beasts (of all stripes), the most common definition is the one which has them acting in synechdoche with an anthropomorphized natural world. Rarely are “natural” talking beasts treacherous or false; those roles are reserved for the supra- or unnatural creatures (demonstrating the role that magic serves in intensifying the process of Othering which occurs within the fairy tale) or, more aptly yet, for human creatures who display elements of the monstrous. Boria Sax has noted that “Just as marriage between two people unites their families, so marriage between a person and an animal in myth and fairy tale joins humanity with nature”. This is certainly one possible explanation, and an explanation that is in keeping with the one applied to the fantastic beasts of folklore in general. However, when the beast is also a bridegroom, further questions arise . Unlike the tales of beastly bride/grooms such as those to be found in the tales of enchanted bears or swan-maidens, 8 THE SIGNIFICANT OTHER whose most egregious sin is typically to flee the family in favor of a much-missed natural environment upon the breaking of a specific injunction (the legend of Melusine serving as an excellent case-in-point), certain beastly bridegrooms move beyond the tropes of the traditional tales. Critics have noted the 17th century pre-occupation with the monstrous bridegroom in the stories of the contes de fées, a fact likely linked to the centrality, and the terrifying possibilities, of marriage in a culture of unequal marital rights. As Terri Windling notes, in her essay “Married to Magic”, in their stories the authors of the contes de fées “embodied the real- life fears of women who could be promised to total strangers in marriage, and who did not know if they’d find a beast or a lover in their marriage bed.” In some tales, such as the original version of “Beauty and the Beast”, the message is one of patience: in its early form, the Beast is dumb and truly animalistic, but capable of restoring himself to civility through the kind offices of his lover. The moral of the tale is that the heroine can make herself quite happy by accepting him for who, and what he is, providing a good example through her love. Only in Mme. Leprince de Beaumont’s English translation and revision is it suggested that she redeem him through her own active sacrifice, changing to suit him much more than he changes to suit her. The tale of “Bluebeard”, on the other hand, continues to bear a mixed message: though his monstrosity is less overt than that of the Beast, manifesting only in the eponymous follicular discoloration, his behavior is considerably more disturbing, and considerably less clearly defined for the reader. Charles Perrault’s epigram famously criticizes the Eve- like curiosity which leads to the heroine’s misfortunes; it reads, Moral: Curiousity, in spite of its charm,/ Too often causes a great deal of harm./ A thousand new cases arise 9 CABINET DES FÉES every day./ With due respect, ladies, the thrill is slight,/ For as soon as you’re satisfied, it goes away,/ And the price one pays is never right. Charming. With such a victim-blaming moral applied to the actions resulting from one’s having been wed to a serial killer (and working off the implication that it’s quite all right to be married to a serial killer, so long as one doesn’t disobey him, rouse his anger, and thus justify his wrath), it’s hardly surprising that the terrors of the marriage-bed manifested in such colorful manners in the tales of the Othered bride- groom. Mating and marriage with the Other mark a union that carries magic in its tissues as a contagion; the brides and bridegrooms of the significant Other rarely remain unchanged. Sometimes, when pursuing an Other, or attempting to escape one, hero/ines can sometimes become magical themselves — Je est un autre. The transformation of the fairy tale is gradual, with the “I” becoming the Other and remaining, still, the “I”. This is clear, certainly, in the many variants of “Bluebeard” in which the heroine is not dependant upon the good offices of her brothers, but rather upon her own cunning: for example, in the Germanic variant of “Fitcher’s Bird” the young bride acquires the abilities of a witch or sorceress along the way, first in seeming, and then in fact. In other tales such as “The Frog Princess” or “The Blue Bird”, characters find that the trials that they undertake in order to reunite with their wronged fantastic spouse transform them from mundane to marvelous: they are changed from their former selves not only in the metaphorical transition from child to adult, as many critics of the fairy tales contend, but also from innocents to vanquishers of evil sorcer- ers and wicked fairy godmothers, the confidants of magicians, or akin to magicians themselves — in short, creatures fully as marvelous and fantastic as their enchanting and enchanted 10 THE SIGNIFICANT OTHER loves. Je est un autre, et vous aussi, peut-etre . or so the fairy tale implies. In this double-sized issue of Cabinet des Fées, we’re proud to present a selection of stories which do justice to the many faces of the Other, external, internal, and . well, other. In our first story, and returning to Cabinet des Fées in our second issue, Sonya Taaffe gives us a Prospero of the Earth in “Katabasis”, a figure who demonstrates the eventual Othering we’ve all yet to face. Rebecca W. Day follows with a tale which reverses the tropes of the animal bride stories and shows us what might have happened with a very different and not-so-little mermaid in “Stranger at the Wedding”, an appropriately Nordic saga of a man stolen away to bide beneath the sea.
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