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Charles Perrault's “Grisélidis” Ruth Bottigheimer BEFORE CONTES DU TEMPS PASSÉ (1697): CHARLES PERRAULT’S “GRISÉLIDIS” (1691), “SOUHAITS RIDICULES” (1693), AND “PEAU D’ASNE” (1694) espite a widespread assumption that Charles Perrault (1628–1703) found Dpopular material among France’s folk, that was certainly not the case with his three verse tales. For “Grisélidis,” “Les souhaits ridicules,” and “Peau d’Asne,” Perrault turned to published texts as his model, although each was written under and was conditioned by differing sets of circumstances and infuences. Perrault’s frst piece in a popular vein drew upon the ubiquitous chapbook Griselidis, published for mass consumption throughout France. In composing his own version, Perrault had no greater ambition than to produce a modern novella (Perrault 1695; rpt. 1980 aiiv, 5), that is, a narrative of unusual events that could conceivably have taken place in the real world. The “Griselda” plot ft that requirement: it described a union between a wealthy noble, named only “le Prince,” and Grisélidis, a pretty and penniless peasant girl. The mar- riage turned savage when the husband began testing his wife’s obedience with increasingly pitiless trials. In Perrault’s version the prince tore their daughter from his wife’s breast and removed her to a convent, rudely asserting that a peasant-born mother couldn’t adequately rear a noble daughter. Fifteen years later he cast Grisélidis off, and she—asking pardon for having displeased him and expressing her “regret sincère” and “humble respect” (49)—returned home to her father without a murmur. In a fnal trial, her husband, pretend- ing to remarry, required her to prepare both his intended “bride” and the bridal bedchamber for his nuptials. In a single departure from her unabating patient acceptance of unremitting affiction, Grisélidis requested him to treat his new wife with gentleness, because—she said—a tenderly-reared young princess couldn’t survive torments that her own obscure birth had enabled her to accept (55). When the “bride” was revealed to be their daughter and the wedding the daughter’s to a nobleman, the prince reinstated Grisélidis. The novella ended with praise for wifely patience, for which Grisélidis provided “un si parfait modelle” (62). The Romanic Review Volume 99 Numbers 3–4 © The Trustees of Columbia University 176 Ruth Bottigheimer Perrault did his homework before he began his version of this painful story. He ascertained that Giovanni Boccaccio (1313?–1375) had composed it as the hundredth, and fnal, story of his Decameron (1353), and he learned that Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) had subsequently translated it into Latin, although Perrault evidently did not realize that Petrarch had increased the tale’s misogyny and that Petrarch’s, and not Boccaccio’s, version underlay the “Grisélidis” story of the French bibliothèque bleue (Leclerc 1991 2). Perrault knew the bibliothèque bleue version in “son papier bleu où il est depuis tant d’années” (its blue paper where it has been for so many years, Perrault 1695; rpt. 1980 63), and he had seen such little books in the printshop at the sign of the Golden Capon in Troyes (Bonnefon 39).1 It fell to later researchers to establish a textual genealogy and to identify the most likely edition that Per- rault had himself used. The language of the Troyes source was simple, rough, and charmless, edited for a dual audience of literate readers and unlettered listeners. In writing Grisélidis Perrault shifted to complex rhyming patterns and a rich vocabu- lary within a simple sentence structure. Also unlike adventure stories that were meant to amuse, rather than to instruct, his chief characters—the prince and Grisélidis—represented an ideal: the prince was a generous father to his people, accomplished in war and in the arts (Perrault 1695; rpt. 1980 5); Gri- sélidis was a modest, sage, and industrious young shepherdess (15–18). Later in the narrative Perrault individualised Grisélidis in telling detail: not wishing to be but half a mother, not wishing to be exempt from the service that her baby’s cries demanded, she wanted to nurse the child in whom she reposed all her tenderness (33, 38). Christianity and Christian sentiments were elemental components of Per- rault’s “Grisélidis.”2 This perception accords well with Yvan Loskoutoff’s understanding of the relationship between devotion to the Infant Jesus and the emergence of a fashion for tales of the marvellous during the reign of Louis XIV (145 ff.).3 In his 1695 letter to “Monsieur” following the Grisélidis narrative, 1. “imprimés à Troyes au Chapon d’Or” from Apologie des Femmes (1694) n.p. Per- rault mentioned this Troyes bookseller again in his response to Boileau’s attack on his Saint-Paulin. 2. The Pensées chretiennes de Charles Perrault demonstrate the centrality of Christian thought in the years 1694–1703, the years of its composition. See especially Velay-Vallantin’s introductory discussion about “Perrault et le merveilleux ‘surnaturel’” 19–25. 3. Louskotoff also wrote, however: “Probablement ni Mme d’Aulnoy, ni Mlle. de La Force, ni même Perrault n’avaient conscience de faire œuvre pieuse en rédigeant leurs enfantillages. Quoi qu’ils en aient pu penser, néanmoins, leur œuvre en tant qu’œuvre Perrault’s Sources 177 Perrault affrmed that his heroine’s Christian refections were both inten- tional and absolutely necessary: only understanding Grisélidis’s unendingly patient acceptance of her husband’s ill treatment as coming from the hand of God renders her behavior credible (67). If Grisélidis hadn’t believed that God himself had directed her torments in order to achieve some divinely inscrutable purpose, then her willing acceptance of her husband’s injustices would, Perrault noted, have marked her as “la plus stupide de toutes les femmes . .” (the stupidest of all women, 67). There is in Perrault’s for- mulation a strong suggestion that he believed the social validity of a tale’s moralité must rest squarely on a religious foundation. Perrault had long admired the fables of his slightly older fellow Academi- cian Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), some of which Perrault had adapted in 1675.4 His choice of La Fontaine’s “Les Souhaits Ridicules” (The Ridiculous Wishes) as his second popular piece let him shift from the refnement and idealization of the unhappily joined couple of Grisélidis to the broad comedy allowed by a pair of coarse peasants. La Fontaine’s fable told of a laborer to whom Jupiter had granted the wish of being able to choose between having beautiful or bad weather. Preferring exclusively calm sunny weather, La Fon- taine’s peasant saw his crops languish in the absence of life-giving wind, frosts, and snow, all necessary to the annual agricultural cycle. Perrault asserted that his fable was “the same genre as the story of the ridiculous wishes, with the sole difference that one is serious and the other comic. But both make the point that people don’t know what’s best for them and are much happier for being guided by Providence than if all things happened as they wished.”5 Perrault wanted his fable to be funny, not at all “galante”; he wanted it to be littéraire devait se situer par rapport au domaine religieux et, plus particulièrement, par rapport à la dévotion enfantine” (197–198). 4. After publishing the Histoires, ou contes du temps passé in 1697, he returned to fables by translating Faerne’s in 1699. 5. “La Fable du Laboureur qui obtint de Jupiter le pouvoir de faire comme il luy plairoit la pluye & le beau temps, & qui en usa de telle sorte, qu’il ne recueillit que de la paille sans aucuns grains, parce qu’il n’avoit jamais demandé ny vent, ny froid, ny neige, ny aucun temps semblable; chose necessaire cependant pour faire fructifer les plantes: cette Fable, dis-je, est de même genre que le Conte des Souhaits Ridicules, si ce n’est que l’un est serieux & l’autre comique; mais tous les deux vont à dire que les hommes ne connoissent pas ce qu’il leur convient, & sont plus heureux d’estre conduits, par la Providence, que si toutes choses leur succedoient selon qu’ils le desirent.” Griselidis Nouvelle avec Le Conte de Peau d’Asne et celuy Des Souhaits ridicules. Quatrieme edition (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1695) “Preface” n.p. 178 Ruth Bottigheimer something that a “Precieuse” would fnd a perfect “horreur,” because it dealt with mishaps in the life of of a miserable woodcutter and not with affairs of the heart, as Catherine Bernard required in Inès de Cordoue.6 In Perrault’s telling, Jupiter sympathized with the peasant’s plight and granted him three wishes. The woodcutter’s wife, learning of their impend- ing good fortune, hatched “mille vaste projets” (6). Meanwhile, her husband idly wished for a great sausage. She berated him roundly for having foolishly squandered an opportunity to wish for gold, pearls, rubies, diamonds, and rich vestments. Her charge annoyed him so much that he wished the sausage onto the end of her nose. Then the poor man had to use his third wish to remove the fateful sausage. Perrault’s morale opined that few people are capable of making good use of the gifts that Heaven bestows on them (12). Sausages lent themselves to bawdy treatment, and they were indeed a staple of coarse literature (Leclerc 1998 73n7). Perhaps for that reason Perrault did not carry this little tale into the Académie française for a public reading, as he had “Grisélidis.” Instead it frst saw the light of day in November 1693 in the Mercure galant, a journal of the beau monde. In terms of style, Perrault used popular language as it might have been heard in conversations between a country husband and wife He also treated the sausage as a matter of course, not as an off-color joke; neither did he seem to expect it to be understood as a double entendre, as Giovanni Francesco Straparola routinely had done in the enigmas that concluded each of the stories of Les facétieuses nuits.
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