Confronting Adolescents' Realities in Francesca Lia Block's Fairy-Tale
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humanities Article But There Is Magic, Too: Confronting Adolescents’ Realities in Francesca Lia Block’s Fairy-Tale Rewritings Marie Emilie Walz English Department, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland; [email protected] Abstract: Many rewritings of fairy tales use this genre to address the darkest, most violent, most unjust, and most painful aspects of human experiences, as well as to provide hope that it is possible to overcome or at least come to terms with such experiences. Francesca Lia Block’s The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold (pub. 2000) is an example of such a use of fairy-tale material. Block’s stories transform traditional fairy tales to narrate the painful realities adolescents can be faced with in modern-day American society. In doing so, Block’s stories draw attention to the violence, both literal and ideological, inherent in well-known versions of fairy tales, as well as to the difficulty of confronting painful realities. Yet, as they depict young heroines (not) facing all kinds of ordeals, the stories also use the figure of the helper to restore hope to the protagonists and lead them to a new, often re-enchanted, life. Employing fairy-tale elements to both address suffering and provide hope, The Rose and the Beast thus offers complex and liminal narratives, or ‘anti-tales’, which deeply resonate with their intended adolescent audience’s in-between stage of life. Keywords: fairy tales; fairy-tale rewritings; anti-tales; violence; trauma; healing; young adult fiction; Francesca Lia Block; The Rose and the Beast 1. Introduction Citation: Walz, Marie Emilie. 2021. But There Is Magic, Too: Confronting ‘Fairy tales’, Marina Warner states in Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale, Adolescents’ Realities in Francesca ‘evoke every kind of violence, injustice, and mischance, but in order to declare it need Lia Block’s Fairy-Tale Rewritings. not continue’ (Warner 2014, p. xxiii). Warner’s argument applies to so-called classic fairy Humanities 10: 93. https://doi.org/ tales as well as to rewritings of these fairy tales in different social, historical, and political 10.3390/h10030093 contexts. Indeed, many retellings use the fairy-tale genre to address the darkest, most violent, most unjust, and most painful aspects of human experiences, and to provide hope Received: 7 June 2021 that it is possible to overcome or at least come to terms with such experiences. Francesca Accepted: 26 July 2021 Lia Block’s collection of short stories The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold (Block 2000) Published: 29 July 2021 is an example of how recent fairy-tale rewritings ‘evoke every kind of violence, injustice, and mischance’ and ‘declare it need not continue’. The stories in The Rose and the Beast Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral transform fairy tales to narrate the painful realities adolescents can be faced with in modern- with regard to jurisdictional claims in day American society, such as drug addiction, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and even published maps and institutional affil- murder. In doing so, Block’s stories draw attention to the violence inherent in the fairy-tale iations. genre, which is both literal and ideological, and highlight the difficulties for teenagers to face their violent and painful realities, as well as to find alternatives to the crippling scenarios offered by well-known fairy tales. At the same time as they depict young heroines (not) facing all kinds of ordeals, Block’s stories also use the figure of the magic helper to Copyright: © 2021 by the author. save or at least aid the main protagonist to confront her problems and reach a better, often Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. re-enchanted, life. Employing fairy-tale elements to both address suffering and provide This article is an open access article hope, Block’s The Rose and the Beast thus offers complex and liminal narratives, or ‘anti- distributed under the terms and tales’, which deeply resonate with their intended adolescent audience’s in-between stage conditions of the Creative Commons of life. Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). Humanities 2021, 10, 93. https://doi.org/10.3390/h10030093 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities Humanities 2021, 10, 93 2 of 17 2. Violence and Trauma in Fairy Tales and Fairy-Tale Rewritings Whereas in popular imagination, fairy tales are more often than not associated with innocence and happiness, scholars have shown that they also display violent, painful, and disturbing scenes and scenarios. The tale of Bluebeard, who murders his seven wives one after the other and keeps their bodies in his bloody chamber, is one remarkable example of a violent fairy tale (Warner 1995, pp. 241–71). Violence is also very much present in the punishments dealt to antagonists at the end of many fairy tales. In the Grimms’ tales for example, Snow White’s stepmother is forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she dies and Ashputtle’s stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves. Elizabeth Wanning Harries calls such violence ‘[p]unitive or disciplinary’ and argues that it is ‘designed to caution children or to give the world a moral spin’ (Harries 2005, p. 55). Harries also identifies in some fairy tales ‘a kind of insidious, coercive violence often designed to force young girls into submission’ (p. 55) and gives as examples tales of fathers attempting to have incestuous relationships with their daughters, but one can also think of mothers who inflict physical pain on their daughters so they can fulfil the roles they have devised for them (as in the Grimms’ version of ‘Ashputtle’ or ‘Cinderella’, in which the stepmother cuts off parts of her daughters’ feet to make them fit into the glass slipper and become princesses). Finally, many fairy tales feature scenes which have gruesome or disturbing implications. As Angela Carter points out in her short story ‘Ashputtle or The Mother’s Ghost’ (pub. 1993) for instance, ‘nothing in any of the many texts of this tale suggests the prince washed the shoe out between the fittings’, so Ashputtle has to put her foot in the shoe ‘still slick and warm’ (Carter 1994, p. 116) with her stepsisters’ blood. No less disturbing is the prince’s request to the dwarfs in the Grimms’ tale to have Snow White’s glass coffin so he can always admire her; a request which has troubling necrophiliac undertones1. Far from being about innocence and happiness only, fairy tales thus feature explicit and implicit violence and pain, as well as gruesome and disturbing scenes. In turn, many retellings and adaptations of fairy tales draw on their inherent violence and troubling elements for various purposes. Many fairy-tale rewritings bring out the gruesome, disturbing, and violent contents of fairy tales to highlight not only their latent darkest aspects but also the ideological violence they convey. Carter’s rewriting of the ‘Bluebeard’ tale in her short story ‘The Bloody Chamber’ (pub. 1979) from the eponymous collection is one famous example. While the tale of Bluebeard has a long tradition of being read as cautioning against female curiosity, instead of focusing on Bluebeard’s murders (Warner 1995, p. 243), Carter’s rewriting ‘self-consciously revisits a long history of physical, psychological, and symbolic violence against women’ (de la Rochère 2013, p. 109). Carter’s Bluebeard figure, the Marquis, does not only take after the fairy-tale character, but also after the Marquis de Sade and is hence not only a murderer but also a pornographer. Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère convincingly shows how his fascination for decadent art, which he compulsively collects (Carter 2006, pp. 16–17), leads him to murder his wives and expose them in his bloody chamber in settings which reproduce his favorite art pieces (de la Rochère 2013, pp. 139–52). The association of pornographic art and murder in Carter’s story not only refocuses the tale of ‘Bluebeard’ on the husband’s killing of his wives and keeping their bodies in his bloody chamber, but also underlines the ideological subtext which reduces women to stereotypes of ‘innocent virgins or dangerous whores, passive victims or wicked Eves’ (pp. 136–37) and trivializes violence against them. Likewise, Neil Gaiman’s short story ‘Snow, Glass, Apples’ (pub. 1994), which retells the Grimms’ version of ‘Snow White’ from the point of view of the stepmother, develops the necrophiliac undertones of the prince’s request to highlight the ideological violence of reducing women to passive and inert objects of male desire. Drawing on the fact that Snow White, after being poisoned, seems dead and yet is not in the Grimms’ tale, Gaiman’s story transforms the innocent and passive Snow White into a vampire. The prince’s encounter with this undead figure, imagined by the stepmother who narrates the story, then emphasizes how he is roused by the young girl’s cold and motionless body (Gaiman 2005, pp. 382–83). As Jessica Tiffin argues, the introduction of the vampire Humanities 2021, 10, 93 3 of 17 from Gothic fiction into the fairy tale ‘consequently serves to perform and articulate the gendered horror at the heart of the tale, externalizing into visible form the ideological violence already committed on Snow White’s inactive female body’ (Tiffin 2011, p. 225). The ideological violence of the tale is indeed the reduction of the female protagonist to a naïve and helpless young girl, as well as to being the passive and, in Cristina Bacchilega’s words, ‘frozen object of male desire’ (Bacchilega 1997, p. 76). Rewritings like those by Carter and Gaiman thus draw on the disturbing and gruesome elements featured in fairy tales to address various forms of literal, physical and psychological, as well as ideological, violence perpetrated against women.