Perrault and His Stupid Morals

 So I was thinking this morning about Perrault, and his annoying tendency to ruin perfectly good stories with self-righteous moralizing.

If you haven’t read a lot of Perrault before, what he does is tell his story, and then at the end he tells you the moral of the story. Sometimes two morals. And, okay, these are good stories, fully capable of standing on their own. So I’m already annoyed that Perrault has so little faith in our reading comprehension that he has to tell us what each story is about. But the other thing is, that’s not even what the stories are about. His morals are garbage!

I have two specific examples, which fill me with rage every time I think of them:

Bluebeard:

Summary: Girl married to skeevy older dude, already widowed several times. He leaves her home alone and tells her not to go in a specific room. She goes in anyway, and finds the corpses of all his previous wives. He finds out and tries to kill her too, but her brothers save her.

Moral 1: Don’t snoop

Moral 2: At least your arranged marriage probably isn’t to a serial killer, so suck it up.

Donkeyskin:

Summary: Beautiful queen on her deathbed makes husband promise not to remarry unless new girl is as hot as her. Tragically, she was the hottest. Until their daughter grows up to look exactly like dead mom. King has the brilliant idea to marry his own daughter! Daughter, grossed out and freaked out, flees, undergoing much trauma before eventually marrying a foreign prince. Her dad is invited to the wedding, and they reconcile, all the unfortunate incest business magically forgotten.

Moral: Do the right thing (i.e. don’t marry your dad) even when it’s hard.

Now, is it just me, or do these moral seem a little victim-blamey? How about “don’t murder”? “Don’t store rotting corpses in a closet”? “Incest is bad”?

Bluebeard dies at the end, sure, but Donkeyskin’s dad is facing zero consequences for his actions. And yeah, Donkeyskin did the right thing by not marrying her dad, and Perrault acknowledges that, but honestly? She’s a young woman being groomed/manipulated/threatened by the one person in her life that she should absolutely be able to rely on and trust unconditionally. If she did marry him, I would not blame her. Because she’s young and she’s scared and she’s tried, she’s tried to reason with him, but it’s not working, and what is she supposed to do? This particular girl didn’t panic, and was smart enough to find an escape route. But a different girl in the same situation might not have seen a way out, might have wound up marrying him, and that wouldn’t be her fault. It would be her dad’s.

Yeah, Donkeyskin did the right thing, even though it was hard. So what? That’s not the moral of the story! There are a lot of potential morals here, but Perrault can shut up unless he wants to call out the evil dad, and preferably kill him off in the most painful and gruesome way possible.

And Bluebeard? Let’s go back to Bluebeard. “Don’t snoop”? Don’t snoop? Seriously? If I’m ever forced to marry a skeevy older dude with several dead wives, I’m absolutely going to snoop. That’s, like, preemptive self-defense. And I will complain about being forced to marry a skeevy older man as much as I want, whether or not he’s a serial killer, and I have every right to; screw you, Perrault, you insufferable jerk.

Why do you have two morals calling out of heroine for perceived bad behavior and nothing to say about the actual literal serial killer? Stop scolding girls for being in a terrifying situation you’ll never experience and can’t possibly understand. Start scolding Bluebeard for being a serial killer who keeps rotting corpses inside his house. Like, let’s be real here; how much snooping was even involved? Girl probably followed the smell. And smelling dead bodies absolutely trumps all “do not open this door” instructions.

I love Perrault’s actual stories, but his stupid morals just kind of make me wish he was still alive so I could strangle him.

The Shoemaker Prince

So I wrote another book. The Shoemaker Prince is a collection of thirteen short stories based on or inspired by folklore, and it’s coming out on November 2. Digital preorders are open now through most major retailers, and print preorders open through the Wax Heart website on October 12. And I’m super excited!

Some of these stories I wrote as recently as August—I think one I actually finished in early September. It happened to me, very suddenly, as stories sometimes do, and I knew it belonged in this collection.

Other stories I’ve been working on for a very long time. I wrote the first draft of “Violet and Zorzal” when I was sixteen, and I consider it my first real story—the first one I wrote down in its entirety that was for myself and not a school assignment. Before that, my stories existed only in my head.

I began “The Girl With No Heart in Her Body” when I was somewhere in the eight to ten range. It’s a story about a girl born literally heartless, and I think it was my small child attempt to make sense of my undiagnosed mental illness—most of the stories I remember telling myself at this age were about girls with something missing, and no one around them understanding what was wrong with them or why they couldn’t just be like everyone else. The story has obviously been updated significantly since my mental first draft twenty years ago, but it’s still very important to me.

Other stories include:

The title story, about a boy with amnesia, red shoes, and a pet cardinal.

“The Princess Who Refused to Marry a Merman,” a story about a sailor princess with a missing, enchanted fiancé.

A retelling of “The Frog Prince.”

A retelling of “The Frog Princess.”

A retelling of “Puss in Boots” from the perspective of the princess that the cat and his owner are attempting to hoodwink.

At this exact moment, my personal favorite stories are “The Princess Who Refused to Marry a Merman” and “The Ogre Bride,” both largely original stories, though obviously heavily inspired by folk traditions. So keep an eye out for those, and the other eleven!

(Because people often ask: This book can be purchased in print or digitally, from Wax Heart Press or from most major booksellers. All purchases support me both financially and in terms of sort of passive promotion. I get the same amount of money for print purchases no matter where you buy them, but while I get a fraction of the profits from ebook sales elsewhere, I do get 100% of the profit from ebook sales through waxheartpress.com. You’re also charged a dollar less for buying it from there. I make about the same amount of money from print sales and from ebook sales through Wax Heart Press, and a bit less from ebook sales through other channels. But I am super grateful for any purchase you make, and you should absolutely do what works best for you!)

 

 

The Impossible Enchantment

Last time we finally finished our long search for “The Impossible Enchantment.” So today  I thought it would be fun to go through the whole story, as the version I told from memory a couple weeks ago, before finally tracking down the source, was lacking in several details, and outright wrong in others. Which, well, in my defense I hadn’t read it in about fifteen years.

Once a king fell in love with a beautiful but unkind woman. When they had been married for some time, the woman offended a fairy, and as punishment was taken into her service. When a few months had passed, the woman gave birth to a daughter; the fairy sent her home to her husband, and kept the child to raise as her own. 

When the queen of the fairies discovered how kindly her subject treated the daughter of the woman who had offended her, and by extension the entire fairy race, she became very angry. She sent the girl to live trapped in a palace by the sea, with only one servant for company. There, she said, the girl would stay until she held in her arms a man she loved, who loved her as well.

When the girl had been at the palace for some time, a merman took a liking to her, and began to bring her gifts. He was very ugly, and the girl wanted nothing to do with him, though she did accept his gifts. One day the merman brought with him his sister, who, unlike her brother, spoke the girl’s language. The two quickly became friends, though the girl still wanted nothing to do with her aquatic suitor.

She told the mermaid of her plight, and one day the mermaid brought to see her a fairy of her own race. The girl asked the sea fairy to break her enchantment and free her from the palace, but alas, the fairy had no power on land. She encouraged the girl to accept the merman’s suit, for she would then turn the girl into a mermaid as well, and she could live quite happily with them in the sea.

The girl began to consider this seriously. Her servant was alarmed by this turn of events. It occurred to her that the girl had lived in this place for many years now, and may not remember what a proper, human suitor ought to look like. Surely, if she were reminded, she would not consent to marry someone so ugly as the merman.

The servant, who was a painter, created for the girl a portrait of a very handsome man, and the girl agreed that, if human men looked like this, surely she could not settle for an ugly merman instead.

There was, meanwhile, a prince on a ship sailing not far from the island, who happened to catch a glimpse of the girl in his telescope. He fell instantly in love, and with the help of a fairy he knew, sent a message by pigeon, asking for her hand in marriage.

The girl replied that she could not possibly agree to marriage without first seeing what he looked like, and so he sent a portrait by pigeon as well. The girl was delighted to see that the prince strongly resembled the painting made by her servant, and agreed promptly to the marriage.

The difficulty, then, was how to reach the girl, for the enchantment around the palace was too strong for the ship to pass through.

While the prince pondered this difficulty, the girl explained to the mermaids, both her friend and the fairy, that she could not possibly marry someone so ugly as the merman. They were greatly upset by this, and planned to tear down the foundation of the palace and drown her.

The prince arranged for his own fairy to turn him into a hummingbird, and flew to the enchanted palace. The mermaids had by this time made good progress at destroying it, and the girl and her servant were very afraid. But as soon as the prince turned from a hummingbird back into a man, and he and the girl embraced, the terms of the fairy queen’s curse were met, and the girl was free. She, her servant, and the prince were all transported instantly back to the fairy who had raised her.

This fairy took the girl back to her father; her wicked mother had by this time died, and the old king was overjoyed to have family again. And so the girl and the prince were married, and all lived happily ever after.

 

The Ugly Merman

 *Update: After writing this and just before posting it, I found the story! It’s “The Impossible Enchantment” by Comte de Caylus, recorded by Andrew Lang in The Grey Fairy Book. I do think I got it a bit confused with “The Blue Bird” by d’Aulnoy, as well. More info in an upcoming post!*

So I’ve talked about this before, but I’ve read a lot of stories over the years—far more than I’ve been able to keep track of. And sometimes, I desperately want to read a story again, but I can’t remember enough key details to find it. This particular story is one I’ve been searching for for well over five years—this isn’t even the first blog post I’ve made about it.

And I’m not in the mood to read a fairy tale and provide snarky commentary, so I thought I’d use this post to tell the story as I remember it. And if it seems familiar to you, please, please let me know. I’m desperate, guys.

Once there was a lovely princess who had been imprisoned in an island palace. The prince she loved would visit her when he could, but he could not visit often, nor could he save her. For he had been turned into a bluebird, and it was a long flight for little wings.

The princess had one steady companion over the long months of her confinement; this was a mermaid who dwelt in the sea below the palace. They had become very dear friends, but the mermaid wished to be dearer still—she wanted the princess to be not just a friend, but a sister.

It happened that the mermaid had a brother, and she wished him to marry the princess. She did not care that the princess had already given her heart to another, for mermaids are selfish, soulless things.

Now, while all mermaids are beautiful creatures, all mermen are hideously ugly, and her brother was no exception. The princess consented to meet the merman, only to be polite, but he was so ugly that she could scarcely bear to look at him.

She explained to the mermaid, as politely as she could, that she could not possibly marry her brother.

The mermaid was enraged. She summoned all of her friends from the depths of the sea, and they set about flooding the palace, for she was determined to drown the princess.

And that is where my memory fails me. I’ve been through pages and pages of search results, using every search term I could possibly think of. So let me know if you’ve got any ideas.

Prince, Bear, Brother?

 So there’s a particular detail of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” that’s always stood out to me, but I’ve never seen anyone address it before. This is the line in question, from right after our girl first sees the prince:

So the evil troll who enchanted him. Is also his evil stepmother? Which. Just. It raises so many questions. Especially as the next few lines go on to clarify that the princess in question is his stepmother’s daughter. Meaning she’s his stepsister.

(Also. Gotta love the fact that he takes the time in the middle of this little panic attack to mention just how long his bride-to-be's nose is. BTW, an ell seems to vary in length from 18 inches to 50+ inches depending on time and location. Anyway, three of them is longer than any nose should be.)

Why did this prince’s father marry a troll? And, if he married the troll, why would she need his son to marry her daughter? She’s already the queen, right?

I guess we can probably assume the prince’s father/the troll queen’s husband is dead by now. I mean, if he’s not, I have some serious doubts about his parenting. Good dads do not let their new wives turn their children into bears—that’s just irresponsible.

So we’ve got a dead king and an enchanted prince. Which would presumably leave the troll queen and her daughter in control of the kingdom. Except they don’t seem to be in that kingdom? They’re hanging out in the land east of the sun west of the moon, which seems to be a troll land, and therefore not the kingdom that the dead king and the enchanted prince are from.

Unless maybe they’re only the king (prince consort?) and prince by virtue of having married into a troll royal family?

But none of this really explains why the troll stepmother wants her stepson to marry her daughter.  It could be to maintain her hold on the kingdom he’d inherit, assuming he has a kingdom of his own. Except she’s not currently even living in that kingdom. And she already turned the dude into a bear, which you’d think would leave her in charge by default, as the regent or something? Unless he has a brother or uncle or someone who would be next in line.

I’m rambling. The point is, I don’t really understand why this troll lady turned her stepson into a bear, or why she wants him to marry his stepsister.

Which. That’s another thing. How old were these two when their parents got married? What kind of relationship do they have? Does this troll girl even want to marry her brother-ish person? Did these kids grow up together? Exactly how weird is this situation?

I have no conclusions today. I only have questions. I’m just kind of surprised that in all of the retellings, essays, blog posts, etc. I’ve read about this story over the past 20-ish years, no one has addressed this potential relationship. I guess I will someday—an “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” retelling is way, way down somewhere on my project list. (If you’re wondering how long it’s been on my to-do list for, it seemed reasonable to name my main character “Siri” when I started.) In the meantime, if you can think of anything that touches on this element, let me know.

Story and Memory

Let’s talk today about fairy tales and their softening over time. 

Now, I mean this, not in the sense that in the Grimm brothers and Perrault people are getting raped and having their limbs chopped off, and in Disney they’re not, but on a more personal level. Maybe a better way to put it is, let’s talk about story and memory.

Human memory is flawed. We frequently remember things as better, or worse, or simply different from how they really were. For fairy tales, I default to remembering them as better. I think it’s because, despite all the research I’ve done and everything I’ve learned about fairy tales over the last 15 years or so, some subconscious part of me still thinks fairy tale=good, sweet, happy.

So the other day I was reading King Thrushbeard. And, like, I’ve always known that King Thrushbeard was, let’s say...questionable. But I’ve also always been a sucker for anything involving secret identities - superheroes, Beasts, The Princess Bride, the Scarlet Pimpernel.

I’m not going to get into the details of King Thrushbeard here, because I just did that over here, which was my whole reason for reading it in the first place. Anyway, I knew it had some not great aspects, but on my reread, this little section here absolutely blew me away with how bad it was.

Kindly. He said it *kindly*. Like, F you, dude.

I’ve experienced this kind of in-memory softening of a fairy tale before, the first time I reread Perrault’s version of Riquet of the Tuft after many years. And again, you can read what I’ve said about this story here. But basically, I remembered it as this beautiful story about beauty being in the eye of the beholder, because I had very clearly remembered this line:

But what I hadn’t remembered was this line:

Where, for some context, the princess is saying “I agreed to marry you, an ugly man, when I was a total idiot. Surely, now that I am no longer a total idiot, you cannot expect me to keep such a promise.” ie, marrying an ugly man is something only a total idiot would do. She only agrees to marry him when he tells her that she has the power to make him hot. Which I feel just really undercuts the meaning of the line I remembered above; in context it seems as worthless as the morals Perrault likes to include at the ends of his stories, which often have nothing to do with the stories themselves. (Either that or they’re outright stupid - often both).

So. All this to say, I don’t think I’ll be reading my kids (if I ever have kids) a lot of fairy tales. I think I’ll be telling them, as I remember them, because I trust my own memory to produce a nicer story that Perrault or the Grimms can. Which, I suppose, is why oral tradition is so important. A fundamental part of folk tales is making them your own.

White Bears

So the other day I was flipping through my Kay Nielsen-illustrated “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” collection with my mom, because she’d never seen the illustrations before, and they’re some of my favorites. And we weren’t actually reading the stories this time; we were just there to look at pretty pictures. 

The book starts with the titular “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” and therefore some illustrations of white bears. And then we keep going through a few more pages, and suddenly there’s another illustration of a white bear, and at this point I’m thinking “oh, right, ‘White Bear King Valemon.’ Huh. It’s kinda strange that there would be two Norwegian enchanted bridegroom stories where the bridegroom is specifically a white bear.”

And then I flip to the next page, and, granted, at this time I haven’t read “White Bear King Valemon” in a few years, but the next illustration was not at all consistent with what I remembered. So I went back a few pages to discover that this set of white bear illustrations was actually for “The Blue Belt,” and this collection didn’t even include “White Bear King Valemon.”

So let’s talk today about the enchanted bridegroom subset “white bears in Norway.”

Now, the reason I'd forgotten about the white bear bit of "The Blue Belt" is that it's largely inconsequential, just another crazy element in a story packed with crazy. The main character is never actually turned into a bear, but does convincingly disguise himself as one to meet the princess he loves in secret, allowing him to collect insider information to win her hand. The main thing about this story is that, as irrelevant as his white bear disguise is to the plot as a whole, it has resulted in a couple of fantastic illustrations that can easily be used for bear-based enchanted bridegroom stories. But primarily we're here to talk about "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" and "White Bear King Valemon," which are very similar but also completely distinct stories. You can read all about "East-West" here, and this post will be mainly running through how "King Valemon" is different and why we care.

So first off, this is another of those stories where youngest kid is best kid and therefore wins, and specifically the kind of story where it's not something you really want to win - in this case, the right to be kidnapped by a polar bear. All three sisters are princesses, and the bear deemed the older two unworthy to be kidnapped, possibly because they had brains in their heads, which our girl does not seem to.

Bear whisks girl away to palace, joins her in bed at night in human form. And, okay. Remember how in "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," the girl and the enchanted bear have to share a bed for a year, and we really don't know exactly what all they're doing in that bed?

In "White Bear King Valemon," we know exactly what they're doing, and it's exactly what you think. She lives with the bear for three years, and in that time she has three babies. All of whom the bear whisks away immediately. Which, dude, yikes.

I mean, ambiguous bed-sharing with a stranger for one year is already a little, um...well. But getting knocked up by a stranger? Three times? And having all the babies kidnapped by the same white bear who kidnapped you? Who you may or may not have gathered by now is also the stranger who knocked you up? (My money's on not gathering that, because our girl doesn't strike me as the brightest, so far.) Again, yikes. I'm just, like, I'm at a loss for words. "Yikes" is all I've got, guys.

Why does she keep having sex with this man? Does she have a choice? Is this consensual? Why isn't she questioning this man about what on earth is going on here? Why is she not having an enormous fight with the bear and demanding her children back? Why is she allowing herself to become pregnant again when she knows that the baby is going to be taken away by the bear? What does she even think the bear is doing with the babies? 

There comes a time when you just have to say, okay, either the sex stops or we explore period-appropriate alternatives to birth control, because I refuse to bring another child into this world to be eaten by a bear.

After three years and three stolen babies, the girl convinces the bear to let her visit home. Where her mom does the whole "You're doing what? With who? You haven't even seen his face?" bit, only she's even more justified in her concern than the East-West mom, because her daughter is reproducing​ with this man and then allowing her grandbabies to be taken away and possibly eaten by a talking bear​. Like, yes, mom, you tell her; she should absolutely be gathering more information about this situation. There is a time and a place to go with the flow, and that is not​ here and now, sweetheart.

So she goes back with the white bear and lights her little candle, and he wakes up when the tallow drips on him and acts like this is some great betrayal, and not the sensible thing she should have done two and a half years ago when she realized she was pregnant the first time.

He is, like in East-West, just one month from the curse being broken, and I would like to just take a moment to say that is not fair, the troll who cursed him is not playing by the rules, everyone knows the time frame in situations like this is a year and a day, what is this slightly over three years crap?

Bear switches from hot guy back to bear and runs off to where he's supposed to meet the troll or whatever, idk - the girl grabs his fur and tries to go with him, but falls off in the forest somewhere.

She does her best to catch up with him on foot, and on the way she meets three little girls, living with three old women, and each of these girls gives her a gift; these gifts are what she will trade to the troll for three nights with the white bear - well, with King Valemon, now that his bear-curse is over. He's drugged on the first two nights, and they can finally talk on the third, just like in East-West. But instead of Fun With Laundry, in this story they make a trap door for the troll to fall through when she's walking down the aisle. Which. Lame.

With the troll handled, King Valemon takes our girl home, but on the way we stop to collect the three little girls who helped her. Because those are their kids, who he, get this, "had taken so they could aid in her quest." The quest that didn't exist yet at the time, because he hadn't been taken by the troll yet, and had no reason yet to suspect that she would look at his face - I mean, the girl was having babies with him and not bothering about the face, so I would have considered it a safe bet that she would continue not bothering, and taking the babies was definitely overkill.

Also, like. She lived with him for three years and had three babies. After three years, she visits her parents, and then she looks at him with the candle; this all seems to happen pretty quickly. Which means the oldest girl might, maybe, possibly be as old as three, but probably she's younger. We should have an age range of infant to toddler here. And yet all three are described as little girls, not babies, and all three seem able to effectively communicate. So that's a bit of a plot hole. Gotta love timeline inconsistency. 

In conclusion: "East of the Sun, West of the Moon"? Beautiful, meaningful story, perfect, magnificent, 25 out of ten. "White Bear King Valemon?" Garbage story full of garbage characters who make garbage decisions, not worth the paper it's printed on, only redeeming feature is mom not putting up with her daughter's absolute idiocy.