A handful of parsley.

I conducted a Google search today looking for information on "induced miscarriage." Now, before going any further, I should mention that I have no need to induce a miscarriage (honest, I don't), but for whatever reason, I am simply curious about the subject (I admit to having strange curiosities). So, if I may proceed...

The Tale of Donkey Skin: Not A Disney Fairy Tale

"See this leaf, little girl, blackened under the snow? It has died so it will be born again on the branch in springtime. Once I was a stupid girl; now I am an angry woman. Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it." From Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue, 'The Tale of the Skin'

This passage is the opening words to a modern fairy tale which belongs to the group of tales called "The Father Who Wanted to Marry His Daughter." One of the most well known of these tale types is called "Donkey Skin" by Charles Perrault. "Donkey Skin" is about the daughter of a king who finds ways to avoid the sexual advances of her father and his desire to marry her (no Disney version for this one!). At first the princess simply keeps the wedding from taking place by asking for impossible gifts before she will agree to marry him: a dress the color of the sky, one the color of the moon, and the last dress the color of the sun. The king is able to have all of these dresses made by his best tailors, and her final request, which she is sure the king will not take seriously, is the skin of a donkey from the royal stable. After this fails to sway her father's feelings, she packs up her only belongings (the dresses) and runs away, disguising herself under the donkey skin and eventually crossing paths with a prince. Of course, we all know the usual outcome of this scenario! In Perrault's version, the girl takes up a servant position on a farm where she cleans dishcloths and pig troughs (funnily enough), and on Sundays, when she has time off, she secretly finds happiness in her little room by trying on the dresses and making herself look beautiful. On one of these Sunday's, the son of a powerful king finds rest and water at the farm on his way home from a hunting trip, and he decides to peek through the keyhole of the girl's room while she just so happens to be wearing her 'sun' dress. He goes home thinking of nothing else but the girl and soon falls into a deep, almost crazed love-sickness, sighing and weeping and refusing to eat or sleep. All he would say to his mother was that he wanted the servant girl Donkey Skin to make him a cake with her own hands, and the mother finally gives into her son's wish. Donkey Skin sets to work and manages to slip a ring from her finger (a royal ring, no doubt) into the cake batter and bakes it along with the cake. The prince almost chokes on the ring when he ravenously devours the cake, but once he lays eyes on the emerald, he is filled with joy and afterward even greater sickness, almost to the point of death. The doctors finally conclude that the only remedy for the prince's sickness is marriage, for "Marriage, whatever may be said against it, is an excellent remedy for love sickness." The prince agrees but with one condition. He will only marry the girl whose finger fits the ring, and in Cinderella-like fashion, all of the girls of the kingdom, from the aristocratic ladies to the working girls, would try on the ring, but, alas, all fingers were too big.

"It was rumored throughout the land that in order to win the prince one must have a very slender finger. Every charlatan had his secret method of making the finger slim. One suggested scraping it as though it was a turnip. Another recommended cutting away a small piece. Still another, with a certain liquid, planned to decrease the size by removing the skin."

Even the servants and slaves get to try on the ring and lastly, the lowliest of all, Donkey Skin. "And why not?" says the good prince. "At that, some started to laugh; others cried out against bringing that frightful creature into the room. But when she drew out from under the donkey skin a little hand as white as ivory and the ring was placed on her finger and fitted perfectly, everyone was astounded." Of course--what did you expect her dainty princess hand to look like? ; )

I'm sure I don't need to give away the whole ending (do you think it was a happy one?), but the happy princess was even happier when her father finally recovered from his 'madness' and came to share in his daughter's joy.

So, that's the story of Donkey Skin as told by Charles Perrault, and it provides the foundation for Emma Donoghue's tale. But you would be surprised by the transformation that this 17th century tale undergoes, and I certainly will not give away the ending to this one. I found 'The Tale of the Skin,' along with most of the other tales in Kissing the Witch, to be quite miraculous in that I had no idea the power of a simple fairy tale until I read this one. Emma puts Charles in his place by giving us a powerful example of storytelling and the female quest of the present day.

Short Review of Briar Rose by Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen's novel Briar Rose is based upon the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, specifically the one by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm called "Little Briar Rose." Yolen uses the fairy tale as a symbolic reference to the holocaust of WWII--the tale serves as a woman's only source for coping with the horrors that she experienced at an extermination camp in Poland, and she tells the story to her grandchildren year after year until her death. Even when the grandchildren are all adults, Gemma (the grandmother) continues to tell the story obsessively and fervently as if it really happened. On her deathbed, she pleads with her youngest granddaughter Becca to find the castle of the story, to which Becca promises to do. Gemma leaves a box of mysterious photographs and items which no one in the family had ever before seen and which helps Becca on her quest to discover her Grandmother's horrific past and, consequently, her own Jewish roots.

As historical fiction, this novel references real-life places and events that took place during WWII. The fictional characters give the reader a sense of what the holocaust was like for real people by humanizing the victims and survivors of the concentration camps. The story also highlights the other victims and prisoners of the holocaust including homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and gypsies. One of the central characters, in fact, is a gay man called Josef who tells his side of the story of Sleeping Beauty.

Amidst the hard-to-swallow moments of truth, a story of love unravels and leaves the reader with a sense of understanding and closure--but far from the gift-wrapped ending of the conventional fairy tale. The protagonist reconciles herself to her past and a disconnected generation, and with this reconciliation comes peace. Yolen does a beautiful job of connecting fairy tale to real-life horror by depicting the almost miraculous will to survive. Briar Rose is a tale of self-discovery, love, and beauty hidden beneath the images of hatred and brutality. An exceptional tale of complex themes and relevant topics, and I highly recommend it for mature teenagers and adults.

Women storytellers, a.k.a. conteuses, of France in the late 17th century

“Many, indeed most, of the early writers of fairy tales in the 1690s in France were women. (They produced more than two-thirds of the roughly seventy tales written and published during the 1690s.) Yet the only name from this group most readers still know is Charles Perrault, and the only tales that are still endlessly reproduced are Perrault’s.”

From Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale by Elizabeth Wanning Harries, p. 21-22.

Why don’t we ever hear about the women storytellers, the conteuses as they are called in French: Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier, Henriette-Julie de Murat, Charlotte-Rose de Caumont La Force? The answer to this question is a complex one and involves gender politics and a strong grasp of the facts and historical context surrounding the conteuses and the famous storyteller Charles Perrault. One important detail about Perrault’s tales is that they began to establish a pattern for fairy tales—his tales began to fix a standard that would influence the Grimms and other writers to follow. According to the fairy tale pattern fixed by Perrault and praised by later generations, fairy tales should be simple and naïve, they should be children’s tales (or written for the child audience), and they should reflect the ideal of the folk narrative (primitive, age-old, “once upon a time”). Since the conteuses literally did the opposite—their tales were complex and far from naïve, written specifically for an adult audience, and did not pretend to be folk narrative—these women would consequently become excluded from the fairy tale canon. Later authors, Grimm being a major one, would contribute significantly to solidifying the fairy tale standards by praising Perrault’s tales for following the accepted conventions and criticizing the conteuses for deviating from them. The introduction to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Children and Household Tales says this:

France must surely have more [fairy tales] than those given us by Charles Perrault, who alone still treated them as children’s tales (not so his inferior imitators, Aulnoy, Murat); he gives us only nine, certainly the best known and also among the most beautiful. Quoted and translated in Twice Upon a Time, p. 22.

The Grimms tell us three things about the growing conventions surrounding the fairy tale: (1) fairy tales treated as children’s tales are superior to those not told for children; (2) Perrault’s tales are considered superior in quality to his “imitators” Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy and Henriette-Julie de Murat; and (3) Perrault’s tales were already the best known and perhaps the most accepted form of the fairy tale. The most ironic part of this quote by the Grimms is the claim that Aulnoy and Murat are “inferior imitators” of Perrault. In actuality, they did not imitate Perrault at all, but they did write in a very different style; if they had any influence from previous storytellers, it would have been the Italians Giambatista Basile and Giovanni Straparola, and contrary to imitating them, they playfully mocked the conventions of their tales. What is more ironic about this use of “imitators” is that Perrault did not even write the first fairy tales in France—it was Aulnoy who wrote what is now considered the first fairy tale but who is supposedly one of Perrault’s inferior imitators.

I would like to point out, however, that I do not despise Perrault or the Grimms for crafting the historical context of the fairy tale, and I do not condemn their fairy tales even though much of what they have said about the fairy tale and its oral history have been proven false or misleading. Some critics will say that the Grimms and Perrault deliberately and consciously fashioned the history according to what would best serve their agenda and would consequently exclude the women competitors. Elizabeth Harries says in her Twice Upon a Time, “I am not denying that many fairy tales have been (and continue to be) part of an ongoing oral, popular culture, but I do want to show that our sense of access to that culture through reading written fairy tales is an illusion—an illusion carefully and deliberately created by many fairy-tale collectors, editors, and writers” (p. 47).

But even if this is true—that people like Perrault and Grimm deliberately subverted the history and conventions of the fairy tale by carefully crafting and maintaining some sort of conspiracy—what can we do about it? We can become infuriated by the injustice (and it is often infuriating), but anger doesn’t change what they did and it doesn’t erase the tales or the influence they have on modern culture. Anger should not negate the tales either because whatever subversive techniques Perrault and Grimm might have used does not by default make the tales they created bad or invaluable. Perhaps more appropriate would be to consider the value of the tales outside their historical context and take the aspects that are still relevant while changing, updating, or disposing of those that perpetuate a lie about gender, storytelling, and the authors who created the tales. Likewise, perhaps by learning the true historical context, we will be inspired to read the conteuses and listen to what they have to say. Bring their voices to the forefront. Instead of a film based on a fairy tale by Grimm or Perrault, try one from D’Aulnoy or one of her even lesser known contemporaries. We can’t change what Perault and Grimm did or did not do, but we can work to change what they continue to do today by revealing the inconsistencies and misinformation and presenting tales that reflect modern needs, struggles, and aspirations.

Pan says to the Shepherd Girl...

You must not do anything because it is right, but because it is your wish. Right is a word and Wrong is a word, but the sun shines in the morning and the dew falls in the dusk without thinking of these words which have no meaning. The bee flies to the flower and the seed goes abroad and is happy. Is that right, Shepherd Girl? - it is wrong also. I come to you because the bee goes to the flower - it is wrong! If I did not come to you, to whom would I go? There is no right and no wrong but only the will of the gods.
(From The Crock of Gold by James Stephens)

The Quest Begins

I have this furious tendency to search for the perfect words to express myself, the perfect interpretation of a book / film / etc., or the perfect description of a political ideal. I like to critique others' ideas (at least in thought or in writing), but I often feel afraid of being critiqued myself, as if one person's disagreement will destroy my opinions or render them useless, or worse, pronounce them as Imperfect. Sometimes I will sit for hours rewording, rephrasing, deleting bits, typing parts over again--as I am now doing--in just one single paragraph (indeed even a single sentence) because I am afraid of what someone will say if it is not perfect. This ideal of perfection, this mad and mindless gremlin inside my brain that seeks total dominion, suggests that there is one perfection that we must all measure up to. But this is false; it must be, isn't it? Either we are all perfect or none of us are. Either perfection exists in all of us, or it simply does not exist at all.

Yet, I still quest for it: Perfection. I have recently started my thesis for an MA in English, and as I search for the Perfect words to express my Perfect understanding of a subject that can never be Perfectly understood, I ask for input and good reads and, of course, criticism, because criticism is what helps us to think critically about ideas and so called facts, and to never accept anything as Perfect. So, as I post material for my thesis on the female quest, I welcome your input, because at least a better understanding will come from the sharing of ideas and musings, even when (especially when) they disagree with my own.