EN2006: Once Upon A Time - Nineteenth Century Childrens Literature. Set Essay 1 Q.

The tale is there, not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. George MacDonald. Why should we, as 21st century readers open our doors to fairytales? Open Your Door: the Significance and Substance of Fairytales Tutor: Ms. Shirley ORegan Student: Susannah Norris Student No: 106018513 Submission Date: November 5th 2007 (Also NarrativEncounters Conference Paper Saturday 16th February 2008)

Once upon a time, in a land quite nearby, a girl sat reading a fairy-story, and began to wonder. Throughout life, we each play the lead in our own fairytale; striving to gain a kingdom, to reign supreme in our own realm, to marry the prince or win the beautiful princess, and in the end, to attain our own happily ever after. Experience teaches us the cold reality, yet we (sometimes perhaps subconsciously) persist in the hope that we may someday achieve that elusive, perfectly contented happiness which seems almost our right. While recognising that fairytales may be read purely for themselves and the enjoyment that people both old and young may gain from their own interpretation, it is also worthwhile to consider the position which they maintain in many cultures as a functional narrative, repositories of wisdom and insight. Drawing heavily on the work of Jack Zipes, and using wide-ranging examples, from Puss in Boots, to George MacDonalds Light Princess, and Louis Sachars young adult novel Holes, it is hoped to demonstrate fairytales worth and the interest they hold as reflections of the societies that produced them. They provide valuable insight into how our ideas about society and culture are formed, and how we are conditioned and moulded by stories so familiar from earliest childhood. Contamination of the fairytale continues to develop and subvert its role as an agent of socialisation, but also, arguably, to help some anachronistic notions persist into modern times. In identifying their continued influence on modern creativity, one may situate the fairytale in literary tradition; a knowledge of the fairytale is indispensable if one is to fully appreciate many other works which have taken inspiration from them. To begin, I would like to explore some of the ideas expressed by the renowned writer and weaver of fairytales George MacDonald in his Fantastic Imagination. In that essay, he expresses the hope that fairytale of [his] [would] go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again, for if Caught in a hand which does

not love its kind, [a fairytale] will turn into an insignificant, ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly. Basically, the fairytale requires an engaged, appreciative mind if it is to illuminate, and the ideas MacDonald puts forward in relation to the interpretation of fairytales sheds light on some possible reasons for their continued general popularity. His compelling argument as to why one should not fear ones own interpretation of fairytales encourages us to appreciate this capacity not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. This notion of fluidity of meaning is attractive, drawing on the conception of reading as a collaborative act between storycreator and audience. Put simply, meaning is often reader dependent rather than writer imposed: personal experience may lend any literature a deeper resonance, or as MacDonald contends, That may be a higher operation of your intellect than the mere reading of mine out of it: your meaning may be superior to mine. This is also perhaps reflective of the collaborative composition genesis of many fairytales, as stories moulded by the storyteller in collaboration with a demanding and and expectant audience. This reader-dependent weighting of the worth of a fairytale is developed further by Max Lthi, who has remarked that the failure of fairytale narrative to individualise elements such as beauty is an indication of its aims for universal validity and and the essence, not the particulars, of phenomenawhen it wants to go further, it reaches for timeless values that are recognised worldwide. 1 Hence well-known descriptions of fair, golden-haired beauties, and similes constructed around the sun, moon and precious metal, the presence of symbolic dark and dangerous enchanted forests, and so on. One might argue that fairytales are a relief in their simplicity, so that one may appreciate a story purely for the beauty of its retelling or craftsmanship of the stroyteller rather than feeling any obligation to
1

Max Luthi. The Fairytale As Art Form and Portrait Of Man, translated by Jon Erickson, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1987, ps. 3-4

critique and analyse. They aim to relate to the reader rather than to express radical insight into the nature of existence, the world, or literature - indeed, happy endings would suggest that they rather seek to maintain the status quo. Fairytales may be created by the writer, but they are brought to life by the readers interpretation, freeing the imagination within certain constructive boundaries so that we take our first steps towards becoming storytellers ourselves. The laws of magic must be maintained, the illusion sustained in order to maintain a comfort zone in the story - this consistency is necessary if the story wishes to attain credibility. The famed critic and fantasy author J.R.R.Tolkien, in his influential essay On Faerie Stories, has termed this Secondary Belief:
[the story-maker creates] a secondary world which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is true: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed.2

This might be said to fit with MacDonalds very precise ideas as to what he considers to be a good fairytale / in his argument that moral laws should be kept consistent, though other features of a workable fantasy realm may be ambiguous or extraordinary, i.e. that which is immoral in the normal world must also be judged evil in fairytales. This further develops the idea of fairytales as a form of guidance for childen, a basic moral education then to be tempered by adult influence. The basic storylines of many fairytales are so well-known that they have passed into a universal possession which recognises them as malleable; there is no truly definitive version of stories such as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, or Rapunzel. Every night, somewhere, a parent re-makes a story in their childs image, using real parallels and placing emphasis on the most personally significant elements; this is the
2

Tolkien, Faerie-Stories, p. 12.

oral tradition and wisdom is best imparted throught the familiar. As MacDonald has noted, one may only think of that for which there is a basis in the story. It is perhaps worthwhile here to consider the importance of the idea of subconscious creative inspiration. Martin Esslin has written of how, in possessing
the assumption that the writers creative process is a wholly conscious and purportive type of activitythe effect [of the attempt to analyze] on the reader will tend to be an impression that the given author deliberately chose the metaphors or images concerned rather than following a semi-conscious urge to express his intuition in these, and no other, terms.3

i.e., the process is ...to some extent outside their conscious control.4 Writers such as Ionesco and Lewis Carroll have spoken of this peculiar inspiration - perhaps arising from some circumstance of the age which they subconsciously channelled into their work. Nonsense, for instance, like fairytale, depends largely on individual appreciation and interpretation for its resonance. To quote Lewis Carroll
Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them: so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the author meant. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, Im very glad to accept as the meaning of the book.5

This ties in well with MacDonalds theory. The fantastic imagination to which he referred was perhaps not that of the story-maker6, but rather that of the eager adult or child who creates their own reason to read a fairytale. The placelessness or vagueness of fairytales which leaves them open to reinterpretation might lead one to argue that they are a type of storytelling which transcends many of the bounds of traditional literature. Cultures may apply their own customs or history to tales - for instance, the earliest recorded version of the Cinderella story is found in the southern region of China, and dates to 850-860 AD,
3

Martin Esslin, Ionesco and the Creative Dilemma, The Tulane Drama Review, MIT Press, Vol. 7, No. 3, (Spring, 1963), pp.169-179. 4 Esslin, Creative Dilemma, p.170. 5 Lewis Carroll in a letter quoted in Gardners Annotated Snark, p. 22. 6 Tolkien, Faerie Stories, p. 12.

during the Tang Dynasty. Arthur Waley, in his essay The Chinese Cinderella Story7 has discussed this version, pointing to cultural equivalents and discrepancies. One upon a time, for instance, is replaced by the phrase Before the Han and Chin dynasties.. Rather than a step-mother, the father has two wives, the surviving one bearing great jealousy towards the dead wifes daughter, whom the father loves. A great golden fish which the Cinderella-figure finds and cares for takes the place of the fairygodmother. Killed by the vindictive step-mother, the fishs magical bones provide the Cinderella figure with all she needs to go to the cave-festival which takes the place of the ball, while she loses a golden shoe rather than Perraults glass slipper. The step-mother and her daughter are killed by flying stones which refer back to Chinese poltergeist stories, while the Chinese Cinderella is taken as chief wife rather than beloved queen. Interestingly, a version of this tale has been adopted by the writer Adeline Yen-Mah in her autobiography, Chinese Cinderella, drawing on the frame of the story of the little cinder-girl in her narration of her difficult childhood, throughout which she was regarded as bad luck because her mother died after giving birth to her. Among other things, we see her beautiful stepmothers cruel treatment of her stepchildren, but her especially nasty treatment of the affectionate, intelligent Adeline, who is also variously mistreated and shunned by her brothers and sisters. Adelines aunt Baba figures as a kind of loving fairygodmother figure. She also basically brings about her own rescue, winning a writing competition which leads her previously neglectful father to send her to college. Most
7

Arthur Waley, The Chinese Cinderella Story, Folklore, Vol. 58, No. 1. (Mar., 1947), pp. 226-238.

interestingly, the author makes use of the ancient Cinderella tale within this more modern narrative, contrasting ancient Chinese culture with that of Japanese-occupied modern China. The two worlds, and hence the narratives, are united through common threads, e.g., her memories of her grandmothers bound feet connect with the emphasis placed on the beauty associated with the tiny feet of the Cinderella character in the ancient tale. To conclude this point, Zipes has put forward the view that As long as the fairytale continues to awaken our wonderment and enable us to project counterworlds to our present society, it will serve a meaningful social and aesthetic function not just for compensation but for revelation: for the worlds portrayed by the best of our fairytales are like magical spells of enchantment that actually free us.8

This also perhaps speaks of the sense of hope which fairytales produce in their reader through miraculous resolution and the interplay of fate and fortune. In allusion to accusations of the fostering of sadism and aggression by fairytales, it should be noted that, as Tolkien has related in his On Faerie-Stories9 it is often these rather gruesome or horrible elements of fairytale which make the greatest impression on the childs mind, not for their cruelty, violence, or harsh black-and-white morality, but rather for the sense of wonder and removal from that time which such episodes evoke - witness the burning of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, or the untimely demise of Perraults Little Red Riding Hood, consumed by a wolf. By promoting a sense of detachment, the reader may see their own reality with greater clarity, or renewed insight. It has further been proposed by the psychiatrist Graf Wittengenstein that fairytales equip children to cope with real life, preparing them for encounters with cruelty in real life.10 This echoes Bruno Bettelheims argument in his Uses of
8

Jack Zipes. When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition, Routledge, New York, 1999, p. 29. 9 J.R.R Tolkien,. On Faerie-Stories, p. 10. http://www45.homepage.villanova.edu/thomas.w.smith/on%20fairy%20stories.htm 10 Referenced in Luthi, The Fairytale as Art form, p. 154.

Enchantment, though his is is even more specific, suggesting that fairytales neat resolution of conflicts may be helpful in overcoming oedipal complexes and sibling rivalry.11 Zipes has also contributed to this debate Fairytales...have always expressed an adult viewpoint on family relations and power. Though they may ultimately defend the right of children and underdogs to survive, they do so only by rationalising the actions of the adults, who want to make certain that their children are socialised to forget the abuse they have suffered.12

He has basically contended that the emphasis placed on the resolution and happiness aspect of fairytales indicates rather the intense human urge to avoid confronting more uncomfortable, repressed elements of fairytales which express socially unacceptable universal anxieties. This includes child abuse, neglect, and abandonment - ones mind might turn to Hansel and Gretel, twice abandoned in the woods. Psychiatrists (Alice Miller and James Hoyme) have identified such tales as demonstrative of the ambivalent emotions which parents may have toward their children: the desire to abandon, isolate or abuse their children conflicts with their love and the inevitable shame which will follow. As Zipes has observed, the Grimms brothers, perhaps uneasy with parents seemingly unnatural treatment of their children in the original versions of their tales, made a conscious decision to change the mothers in the stories to stepmothers. He continues in this vein:
Since all parents have difficulty admitting to such desires, we seek manifold ways to cover up these uncomfortable feelings. In part fairytales help parents do this: they conceal and rationalise our drives to punish our children for intruding into our lives and for creating predicaments that we really create. The happy end is but our way of acknowledging that we really love our children, those underdogs, in spite of ourselves.13

This is convincing: fairytales are undoubtedly often full of episodes where irrational, but very human jealousies or unintentional provocation are the primary motivation for
11 12

Zipes, Creative Storytelling, p.219 Zipes, Creative Storytelling: Building Community, Changing Lives, p.220 13 Ibid, p.221.

malice - take for example the poisonous apple of jealousy provided by Snow Whites step-mother. Fairytales reflecting some of the less desirable aspects of human nature provide a valuable lesson in the complexities of human, and especially family relations. I would next like to consider the worth of fairytales in relation to the notion of revisitation of texts, as suggested by MacDonalds reference to his writing for the childlike whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five14 rather than children. In this way we may perhaps see with greater clarity the progress of our own development, how different stages, and different levels of intensity (of reading, emotion or empathy) may cause us to find different or deeper insights each time we re-read a tale. We are are presented with a mirror of ourselves in the altered interaction between fairytale and the individual imagination. It is the idea that we may preserve a part of ourselves as children inside ourselves as adults through the revisitation of those wondrous tales we read so eagerly as children. Charles Dickens, for one, is said to have been heavily influenced by fairytales - entranced and using them as an escape from his troubled childhood, he later often used their plots and motifs in his novels to comment on modern life, but mainly in his celebrated Christmas stories, such as his essay The Christmas Tree (1850), a reworking of Little Red Riding-Hood. To return to the point of recovery15 of the sense of wonder and perhaps also the world-view we had when reading them as children, it has been noted that Dickens wrote almost as though he did not want to tarnish the child-like innocence of the tales that he read as a young boyby replacing them with new ones.16As M. Daphne Kutzer has commented, in reference to her childhood favourite, The Wind In The Willows:
For me that book is a magical one, and I cannot divorce my
14 15

MacDonald, The Fantastic Imagination, p. 7. Tolkien, Faerie-Stories, ps. 18-19. 16 Zipes, Dreams, p. 122.

childhood experience with it from my adult experience. However, this sort of nostalgia need not be detrimental to the teacher of childrens literature, and it may provide a way around the problems of literary merit in this genre. If a book can cast a spell over a child, one that lasts a lifetime, then perhaps there is something in it that speaks to a child audience, something more important than literary style and technique, and if we can isolate that we might have a critical yardstick truly appropriate to childrens literature.17

In many cases, the acid test for a story is whether it stands up to rereading as an adult - that which entranced us as innocent children may lose its glow when read with pragmatic experience. MacDonalds attempt to validate fairytales by constructing a brave comparison to music, an unquestioned, respected artform, attempts to allow them to break free of their categorisation as childrens literature. His opinion that trying to verbally interpret fairytales is as difficult and pointless as trying to do the same with music interesting and enticing: in trying to impose definiteness on a fairytale, one denies their very nature, and attempts to pin down that which is most captivating because of its elusiveness, for its impact on the individual. MacDonald said that The tale is there, not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold.18 But it might yet be argued that they may have more universally perceptible worth: as Zipes has observed, fairytales were originally oral folktales which were appropriated by educated writers and then transformed into a discussion of mores, values and manners which would contribute to a kind of socialisation of children, so that they may now help us in understanding the societies which produced them. The wolf of the Little Red-Riding Hood tale, for instance, may be interpreted as the predatory male to be resisted in order that the young innocent may preserve her virtue; the witch in her
17

M. Daphne Kutzer, Childrens Literature in the College Classroom, College English, Vol. 43, No. 7, (Nov., 1981), p.722. 18 George MacDonald. The Fantastic Imagination, The Complete Fairytales, Penguin, London, 1999, p. 6.

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cottage built of sweets, an illustration of stranger danger. A further instance of this, as Zipes19 has pointed out, may be seen in Perraults Puss in Boots, who exhibits all the traits necessary to a middle-class administrator in contemporary France - loyalty and obedience to his master, to ensure self-preservation, adequate equipment, courteous but deceitful or misleading speech, cunning in order to outwit the powerful, the ability to acquire land and wealth by force, a preparedness to kill judiciously, and business acumen, including the arrangement of advantageous marriages. Children, through reading fairytales ..learn behavioral and associational patterns, value systems, and how to predict the consequences of specific acts or circumstances20 which are crucial to their development into mature adults. This renders the idea of the revisitation of fairytale in adulthood particularly interesting. George MacDonalds The Light Princess, a reworked satire of the Sleeping Beauty story, is an example of how fairytales may provoke interesting questions about social bahaviour and power through comical and unexpected changes in the traditional fairytale form and content21 - in this case, his depiction of a princess who has no gravity in any of its senses, a basic human attribute which she regains only when she is forced to see a prince voluntarily drown to ensure the preservation of a lake which is her only source of true pleasure. This serves to highlight societys hollow and faulted basic value system.22 Fairytale becomes a valuable form of satire. The fairytale furthermore plays a major role as form of literature which has, according to Marcia R. Lieberman in her essay Some Day My Prince Will Come: Female Acculturation Through the Fairytale, undoubtedly played a major
19

Jack Zipes, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry, Routledge, New York, 1997, p. 31. 20 Marcia R. Lieberman. Some Day My Prince Will Come: Female Acculturation Through the Fairytale, College English, Vol. 34, No. 3. (Dec. 1972), p. 384. 21 Zipes, Dreams, p. 125. 22 Ibid.

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contribution in forming the sexual role concept of children, and in suggesting to them the limitations that are imposed by sex upon a persons chances of success in various endeavors.23 Though now rather anachronistic, and problematic, this depiction of women as (quote) that object of every necrophiliacs lust, the innocent victimized Sleeping Beauty, beauteous lumps of ultimate sleeping good24 in fairytale may yet be of value to the modern reader through the interesting debate it provokes as to whether gender mght not be cultural in character and origin25, the result of indoctrination or inherent female characteristics?
They present a world where a womans prime meaning and justification for existence lies in her relationship with a man. Womens relationships with each other, where they are depicted, are full of jealousy and greed, since they are competitors for male attention and evaluation. Power in women is equated, by and large, with ugliness and evil; to be good is to be passive and beautiful.26

It being the case that fairytale figures are fundamentally representative (of gender or aspects of personality)27, portrayals such as that of The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and their ilk as docile, pretty objects, or damsels in distress to be won by charming princes become difficult for the modern reader. Such stories, as reflections of their time, or mirrors of social change, praise domestic virtues and marriage; suggest that men are shining princes underneath, and condemn those who do not conform.28 In this case, this difficult feature of many of the classical fairytales has been quite successfully subverted by authors such as George MacDonald who began to remodel the fairytale, as in his Light Princess, in which the prince is deprived of his status as

23 24

Lieberman, Female Acculturation, p. 384. A. Dworkin, Woman Hating, Dutton Paperback, London, 1974, p.33. 25 Lieberman, Female Acculturation, p.385. 26 Pat OConnor, Images and Motifs in Childrens Fairy Tales, Educational Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, 1989, p. 129. 27 Luthi, The Fairytale as Art form, p. 157. 28 R. Allen, The Changing Experience of Women, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1983, p. 12.

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the longed-for, conquering hero, while the princess takes on a more dominant role as and individual, having great agency in her own cure. Such writers basically moved to modernise the fairytale, in both style and content29. More recently, one might refer to the Jack Zipes edited Dont Bet On The Prince. In this volume, female characters are allowed to possess characteristics such as strength, courage, a sense of adventure and humour, morality and loyalty, among other things. They have personality and strength of character.30 This is especially apparent in Deasys The Princess Who Stood On Her Own Two Feet in which the tall and clever heroine - as opposed to the usual passive, beautiful but often apparently brainless traditional princess - is gradually reduced to the position of the traditional fairytale princess through the conditional love of a prince, who effectively emotionally blackmails her into the immobile and passive position of traditional princesses. She accepts this erosion of her independence, until she is brought to realise through the sacrifice of her beloved dog that such a situation is unacceptable and finally rejects the prince, instead finding happiness with a short prince for whom her stature is irrelevant and her personality an attraction. The roles of these princesses and those of the prince are to an extent reversed31, and marriage is no longer the ultimate goal. This theme is to be seen widely in many modern texts, less literary, perhaps, but nontheless showing a development in attitudes towards and perceptions of women, for instance Shreks formidable, karate-fighting Princess Fiona, who has a definite personality and defies the typical image of beauty in fairytale; inner beauty triumphs over external glamour. We are lead to see, through our readings of fairytales of different eras, how - among other things - perceptions of women have changed over time, how
in each new stage of civilisation, in each new historical epoch,
29 30

Zipes, The Art of Subversion, p. 101 &112. OConnor, Images and Motifs, p.139. 31 Ibid, ps. 141-142.

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the symbols and configurations of the tales [are] endowed with new meaning, transformed, or eliminated in reaction to the needs and conflicts of the people within the social order.32

There is also much to be gained from an examination of the structure and style of fairytales, so that we may then perceive both their origin and also how they have influenced modern literature and art in many forms. Linear, sequential tellings, the use of conventions such as the magic number three, formulaic idioms such as the Once upon a time clearly link them to and foster an increased understanding of the oral tradition, such as that of Homers epics, in which epithets and recurrent phrases such as dawn arriving fresh and rosy-fingered serve the same function, providing time to formulate the next verse. Precision, clarity, contrast repetition, a tendency towards extremes and polarities, together with little description33 also point to this oral tradition, and refer back to the universal aspirations of the fairytale. Elements of traditional fairytale are often incorporated into modern literature. This, one might argue, is the modern incarnation of the fairytale, an example of its versatility as a genre, how its conventions, themes and motifs, but also its development as an artform, lend themselves powerfully to the exploration of contemporary concerns an example being Louis Sachars highly successful young adult/childrens novel Holes. In this we see how one may benefit from an awareness of the fairytale as a genre. It is used here to explore racism, poverty, and the american juvenile justice system. As both Pat Pisent34 and Elizabeth G. Mascia35 have observed, Sachar has adapted features such as magical objects, the redemptive power of work,

32

Jack Zipes, Fairy Tales And The Art Of Subversion: The Classical Genre For Children And The Process Of Civilisation, Routledge, New York, 1991, p.7. 33 Luthi, The Fairytale as Art form, p. 58. 34 Pat Pisent, Fate And Fortune in a Modern Fairy Tale: Louis Sachars Holes, Childrens Literature in Education, Human Sciences Press, Vol. 33, No. 3, (Sept. 2002) pps. 203-212. 35 Elizabeth G. Mascia, Holes: Folklore Redux, The ALAN Review, DLA ejournals, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter 2001) http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v28n2/mascia.html

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formulae, stereotypical roles and repeated motifs, blurring the lines between fantasy and realism through the use of incredible coincidence, and heavy use of the interplay of fate and fortune while still managing to maintain secondary belief. The story is told through short, conversational sentences, and there is often repetition, such as Nogood-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather , and Sams repetition of the phrase I can fix that, reminiscent of the direct, concise style of many classic fairytales. The use of a curse as the centrepoint of the plot, the transformation from bad to fabulous luck, the Sisyphean task of endlessly digging pointless holes, and the use of the quest to the Big Thumb mountain come to mind. Fairytale motifs may be seen in the inclusion of the treasure reward, the magic liquid and objects of peach sploosh and the two halves of Kissin Kate Barlows lipstick tube. The two main characters are only sons, descendants of the protagonists of the folk tale at the core of the story. We see character equivalents in the baseball player as king, Madame Zeroni as some kind of fairy godmother, the villainous Trout Walker as ogre, the female warden as witch and Stanley as the hero prince who breaks the curse and reaps his reward. Yet, as Mascia has observed, Sachar also seems to be subtly parodying the very folklore he employs to communicate the story, creating a sense of comfort and gentle, clever humour in the story. 36 Furthermore, it is left to the reader to decide whether magic has been present in the story; it is implied, but no positive assertion is made, and although the coincidences are uncanny, they are not beyond the bounds of possibility. [Harry Potter, fairytale motifs - hero orphaned only child, life is threatened as a baby, resue of Ginny Weasley in The Chamber of Secrets, quest undertaken in the final book to retrieve and destroy the horcruxes]

36

Entire passage heavily influenced by Pisent and Mascia.

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Today, fairytale is more often enjoyed as a sub-genre, an element of satire, adventure, morality, or fantasy.37 The elements of fairytale in stories are often unperceived, or rather disregarded, despite the fact that fairytales are perhaps one of the most potent influences on us as children in forming our perceptions of ourselves and human nature. One is lead to question why these type of stories are so often regarded as being in some way an inferior form of literature: their influence lies at the heart of much creativity, and at the root of that fantasy genre experiencing such phenomenal popularity in recent years. From literature to pop-culture, we should perhaps have a greater awareness of that influence. Through a familiar knowledge of fairytale structure, stereotype, technique and motif, one may cultivate a fuller understanding of many modern works, whether literary, dramatic, musical or artistic. When hugely popular television shows such as Sex and the City explore the relevance of the fairytale to modern life, one may suggest that its socialising function is proved to be truly all-pervasive: they discuss the deep-seated female desire to be rescued by their own white knight, and how the idea has become unacceptable to many in modern times - and yet the fantasy persists in the female consciousness. Charlotte believes that ..women just want to be rescued, while Carrie and Miranda contend that women should be able to rescue themselves. This integration of fairytale themes and motifs into modern forms and situations suggest that the future of the fairytale (it might be argued) lies in the notion of contamination - that is, (quote) when Foreign elements that may have been added to or have seeped into what appears to be a pure, homogenous narrative tradition38 Basically, the term implies a negative taint, a corruption of the pure, authentic narrative by intrusive, alien component - motifs, words, expressions, characters, proverbs, metaphors. Though often regarded as a
37 38

Tolkien, Faerie-Stories, p.3. Zipes. Sticks & Stones

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defect, it may be rewarding to consider the view of Jack Zipes that contamination may be positive, that it may enhance a tale through integration and subsequent contribution to the formation of a new and valuable literary product, a fairytale transformed and with a new essence.39 John Stephens and Robyn McCallum, in their Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Childrens Literature, demonstrate that all retellings of stories must be based on a pre-text, that is, on a pre-existing text, but these retellings are rarely simple replications or reproductions of their sources (i.e. in style of discourse, significances, cultural presuppositions; altered, deriving significance from divergence), resulting in not so much a retelling as a re-version, a narrative which has taken apart its pre-texts and reassembled them as version which is a new textual and ideological configuration.40 Perhaps it is the failure to fully develop this contamination which has denied fairytales a more widely respected status. The great success of contaminated and more classical fairytale works ranging from Shrek, to Ever After: A Cinderella Story, to Pans Labyrinth demonstrate the enduring popularity of fairytale. Indeed, as Zipes has observed, Hollywood so relies on the fairytale structure to bring about the crowdpleasing happy ending that we could possibly argue that Hollywood itself as an industry and a trademark is inseparable from the fairytale.41 Essentially, a knowledge of fairytale is central to our understanding of ourselves and what has been termed the civilising process. Lthi, in his The Fairytale as Artforn and Portrait of Man has spoken of how
Content...the inner form, the character and life of the fairytale, corresponds to that of man: limitation and freedom, integration into the whole but preservation of the identity of the individual element, stability and dynamism, clarity and mystery, recollection
39 40

Sticks and stones John Stephens and Robyn McCallum Retelling Stories, Framing Culture: Traditional Story and Metanarratives in Childrens Literature, p.107. 41 Zipes, Happily Ever After, p. 1.

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and anticipation, and reality and Utopia are bound up into its narrative form and the history of transmission, just as they are into the nature of man himself..42

Great art and literature is most often judged to be that which depicts harsh reality and bleak truth. The happily ever after of fairytales, however, expresses another, perhaps more abstract truth; the beauty of the eternal human hope and wish for happiness which is the universal incentive to live. One may close ones book of fairytales, but they will remain in consciousness, for although there may be no happily ever after, there is the series of stories which form life.

On the other hand, it may be that they are, after all, only fairytales.

42

Luthi, Fairytale as Art form, p.166.

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Works Consulted
Allen, R. The Changing Experience of Women, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 1983. Dworkin, A. Woman Hating, Dutton Paperback, London, 1974. Lieberman, Marcia R. Some Day My Prince Will Come: Female Acculturation Through the Fairytale, College English, Vol. 34, No. 3. (Dec., 1972), pps. 383-395. Luthi, Max. The Fairytale As Art Form and Portrait Of Man, translated by Jon Erickson, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1987. M. Daphne Kutzer, Childrens Literature in the College Classroom, College English, Vol. 43, No. 7, (Nov., 1981), pp. 716-723. MacDonald, George. The Fantastic Imagination, The Complete Fairytales, Penguin, London, 1999, pps. 4-10. Mascia, Elizabeth G. Holes: Folklore Redux, The ALAN Review, DLA Ejournals, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Winter 2001). http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v28n2/mascia.html OConnor, Pat. Images and Motifs in Childrens Fairy Tales, Educational Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, 1989. Pisent, Pat. Fate And Fortune in a Modern Fairy Tale: Louis Sachars Holes, Childrens Literature in Education, Human Sciences Press, Vol. 33, No. 3, (Sept. 2002) pps. 203-212. Thompson, Stith. Motif-Index of Folk Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Medieval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends. Revised and Enlarged Edition, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1955. Tolkien, J.R.R. On Faerie-Stories, http://www45.homepage.villanova.edu/thomas.w.smith/on%20fairy%20stories.htm Waley, Arthur. The Chinese Cinderella Story, Folklore, Vol. 58, No. 1. (Mar., 1947), pp. 226-238. Zipes, Jack. Dont Bet On The Prince, Aldershot, Gower, 1986. Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre For Children and the Process of Civilisation, Routledge, New York, 1991. Zipes, Jack. Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry, Routledge, New York, 1997.

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Zipes, Jack. When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition, Routledge, New York, 1999.

Cuts: Dinah Maria Craik/Mrs. Mulock in her Little Lame Prince used the figure of a crippled prince to symbolise the restricted position of women in society. He represents a projection of the female experience, restricted so that living for others. In Patricia Wredes The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, for instance, we find the quickwitted, independent, intelligent (dark, straight-haired) princess Cimorene, obliged to shoo away the many puffed-up, arrogant princes who come to rescue her. She has chosen to live with a dragon with rather than follow the traditional path of princesses. Agents of guidance that have been retained in fairytales.

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