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.