Fairy Tale Heroines

 Last time I went through the folklore section at the bookstore—my favorite place to be—I noticed that there were, like, eight different books of fairy tales about 'brave girls.'

Which. Like. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad these books exist. 'Brave girls' are, conceptually, great. Fairy tale collections based on a theme (rather than the more common collections based on a region or collector) tend to include at least a couple more obscure stories, and are a great resource especially for non-European stories, which are a little harder to find. I have nothing against these specific stories or authors.

But based on the back cover blurbs, some of these authors/editors/whoever seem to think that they're bringing something new and exciting to the table. And this doesn't apply just to these books I just saw, several of which at least appear to be a series, which justifies the quantity of books on the topic. But books and internet posts periodically pop up announcing the brand new concept of "feminist fairy tales," all of which have been around for a hundred plus years.

"Look, we've got fairy tales with strong female characters—no one's ever done that before!"

Dude, six of you are doing it this year, and other people have been doing it for centuries.

Like, you went through a whole bunch of stories from a whole bunch of cultures, picked out your favorite heroines, and compiled them for us. That's great! But don't pretend you had to slog through a bunch of misogynistic crap to find these rare outliers. Some fairy tales are about boys, and some are about girls, which is only right and fair, but if any given story is about a girl, she'll usually be doing something worth telling a story about.

We've got girls who sacrifice themselves to save their families. Girls who go on epic quests to save the men they love. Girls who recognize that their parents are evil, and give up everything to help their victims escape. Girls who flee their dangerous homes and learn to support themselves. Girls who outsmart their serial killer husbands. Girls who risk being burned at the stake, being boiled alive, being eaten by monsters.

Sure, there's a handful of wimpy girls, among the better-known fairy tales. But less than people like to claim.

Cinderella didn't take a lot of initiative until someone else came to help. But she survived in an abusive environment for years, which is plenty hard, and who did help her? Other women, whether it's a godmother or the ghost of her mom.

Sleeping Beauty mostly sleeps. But it's not like anyone else is doing anything, either; the prince just wanders through a thorn bush and plants one on her. And that's in the later versions. Earlier on, she keeps two newborns alive alone in the woods for an unspecified period of time, and survives the machinations of a woman who wants her and the babies eaten. (Granted, she also marries and allegedly lives happily ever after with that woman's husband, who also raped her, but you can't win them all. I think it's pretty brave of her to keep going through all of that, to focus on protecting her children when she doesn't have the resources to escape their father.)

Rapunzel just hangs out in a tower all day. Except, when she gets thrown out of the tower, pregnant, she learns all on her own how to navigate an unfamiliar world, finds a way to support herself and the babies (why do all these princesses keep having twins?), and eventually saves the prince, who's just been wandering around, blind and lost, for months or years.

Snow White mostly sleeps, too. But I would like to remind you that in the most popular version of the story (Grimms), she is literally seven years old, so I feel like we can cut her some slack.

The little mermaid pines over a guy and then dies. Okay. The little mermaid also gives up everything she's ever known for a chance at a new life and an immortal soul, and when she fails, she's given an out, which she doesn't take because it involves killing the man she loves. Did the man deserve that? No. Was it brave of the mermaid to stick to her morals in the face of certain death? Yes.

The princess and the pea I'll give you. The princess from The Frog Prince, too. They didn't do anything particularly brave.

But there are so many stories about brave girls. There are probably at least as many stories about girls as there are about boys, if not more. And very few fairy tale girls, whether they're protagonists or love interests or background characters, can really be described as weak.

It depends, I suppose, on what you think makes someone strong or brave. Do a lot of girls in fairy tales fight dragons? No. Though to be fair, there aren't actually a lot of fairy tales with dragons in them. Gretel pushes the witch into the oven. The white bear's lassie crosses the world for him, then defeats the trolls with laundry, which may not be as exciting as a sword fight, but fight smarter, not harder, right? Gerda crosses the world and faces witches and robbers for a guy she doesn't even get along with, who everyone else has given up for dead. The girl in Fitcher's Bird outsmarts her serial killer husband, resurrects her dead sisters, and burns down his house, with him and all his evil friends inside. (Fitcher's Bird does appear in one of the collections I just saw.)

Girls fight witch mothers and ogre fathers. Girls keep their vows of silence in the face of certain death, because the alternative is to doom their brothers to lifetimes as birds. Girls marry serial killers on purpose, and spend years telling them bedtime stories, knowing their creativity is the only thing keeping not only them alive, but also the next girl, and the next, and the next. Girls stand up for the things they believe in and the people they love. Girls fight back. Girls outsmart the enemy. Girls survive.

 So many of the French salon stories were inspired by the real-life struggles their author faced; do you want to look a lady who spent years locked in a tower in the eyes and say, "hey, I think Rapunzel was a coward, actually"? In real life, bravery doesn't look like fighting dragons nearly as often as it looks like getting up and going on, day after day after day, no matter how hard it gets. And fairy tales have more to do with real life than people like to think, sometimes.

These stories were circulated orally for hundreds of years, and while there are definitely fantastic elements (they are fairy tales), they also reflect the real lives of their tellers—you can see this with the regional differences in common tale types. And while it's impossible to tell who made up a story in the first place, or what kind of people most often did the retelling, it is worth noting that when fairy tale collectors bother to mention where they heard something, they very often heard it from a woman.

You don't need to be the woman who brings fairy tales to the girls. We already have them. They've been for us all along.

Brave girls are great. Stories about brave girls are great. But don't throw away hundreds of years of history to pretend that brave girls are your exciting new idea, and don't tell all the little girls reading your books that the princess who stabbed a dragon one time is braver than the one who suffered every day, in all the mundane ways, to do the right thing.

(Also. Side note. The contents pages contained a lot of stories I've never heard of, so I may be getting them from the library soon. The contents also included lots of stories I have heard of, but am willing to believe many others haven't, especially with a target audience consisting mostly of children. But I specifically read the words, on one back cover, "Discover the story of Dorothy." Like, everyone has already discovered that story, right? Kids still know about The Wizard of Oz, right? Please tell me kids still know about The Wizard of Oz.)

(Also also. One blurb said the reason we don't know very many of the fairy tales with strong heroines is because the fairy tales were recorded by the misogynistic Victorians. Like, first of all, the Victorian era was a fairly late stage of fairy tale recording. We have the Italians in the 1600s, the French in the 1700s, and then the various Northern Europeans in the 1800s. Then Lang in the 1900s and Disney in the 1900s-2000s. And also, don't be acting like the 1800s dudes were doing some disservice to female characters. The Grimms eliminated so much rape from the folktales they worked on. While they're nowhere near as feminist as the earlier stories by female salon writers, the Victorian writers (Grimm, Andersen, Asbjornsen and Moe) definitely give their female characters more agency and less trauma than people like Perrault and Basile. I mean, look at Bluebeard (Perrault) versus Fitcher's Bird (Grimm). Don't be blaming the Victorian folklorists for this.)

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The Golden Crab

 The Golden Crab is, as I’m sure will surprise no one who’s spent any time here, another enchanted bridegroom story. It’s Greek, though I read it in The Yellow Fairy Book. (I’m currently reading it cover to cover, so expect a lot of Yellow Fairy stories for a while. The plan is to move on to the Arabian Nights next.)

Once there was a fisherman who caught a golden crab. He brought the rest of the day’s catch to the king, as was his habit, but kept the crab at home on a shelf in his cupboard. Eventually the crab revealed that he could speak. The fisherman and his wife began feeding him, and in return he began filling his empty plates with gold.

In time, the crab informed the fisherman that he would like to marry the local princess. The fisherman passed  this information to the king, who concluded, reasonably, that the talking, golden crab was likely an enchanted prince.

I love it when they’re genre-savvy. Unfortunately, it’s not gonna last.

The king assigns the crab a few impossible tasks, the crab pulls them off, and a wedding is held. After the wedding, the crab reveals privately to the princess that he is indeed an enchanted prince, crab by day, human by night.

Has he been turning into a human every night for however long he’s been living with the fisherman? How did he not notice that?

Also, he can turn into an eagle whenever he wants.

A year passes. The princess has a son. So, like, clearly something is going on here—humans and crabs cannot typically reproduce together.

The queen remains weirded out by this whole situation. Which, honestly, that’s fair. What sensible person wouldn’t be weirded out by her human daughter marrying and having children with a crustacean? But she talks to the king about it, and says they should see if maybe their daughter is interested in having a different husband.

Instead of saying, “honey, it’s fine, I’m pretty sure our son-in-law is an enchanted prince,” the king agrees with her, and throws a tournament to find a new husband for his daughter. Who is already married, has a son, and has specifically said that she does not want any husband other than her crab.

For some reason—presumably plot convenience—this is a nighttime tournament. The crab prince in his human form participates, disguised, but warns his wife not to tell anyone that she knows who he is.

We have another situation here like in The White Goat, where the real problem is Mom getting violent. When the princess—the already-married princess who has a child with her husband—fails to express interest in any of the suitors, the mom hits her, at which point she admits that her husband is out there, winning the tournament.

Mom responds to this by finding the crab shell and throwing it in the fire—which isn't totally unreasonable, since that’s the key to breaking some enchantment spells. But it doesn’t work. The crab prince never comes home from the tournament.

Following this, the princess falls ill. The only thing that makes her feel better is having stories told to her.

One day, an old man comes to the palace with the following story:

Once, while chasing after his dog, the man stumbled upon a hidden palace. While he was there, twelve eagles flew in, and all transformed into men. He listened to them all talking, and one mentioned his wife, and her cruel mother who burned his golden shell.

There’s no indication that this man is aware the princess was married to a golden crab; he just thinks this is an interesting story.

The princess gets the man to take her to the palace, and reunites with her husband. He has three months left on his enchantment, so she stays there with him until it’s over. Then they go home and live happily ever after.

So. First of all. The king. He hears about a talking, golden crab, and immediately concludes that he must be an enchanted prince. The crab then performs three impossible tasks in a display of incredible magical power. The crab then gives him a grandson. And somehow, after all that, the king thinks it’s a good idea to just set the crab’s wife up with someone else? Like, dude. You have enough information to know this is a bad idea. The human grandson supports your enchanted prince theory, and even if that theory was wrong, it’s been thoroughly proven that whatever else he might be, the crab is a powerful sorcerer. Why are you rocking the boat here?

Next. The queen. Why are you angry—like, really, violently angry—that your daughter is not cooperating with your attempts to convince her to cheat on her husband, the father of her child, and a known powerful sorcerer? Ma’am. Your daughter is being smart in this situation, and you are being remarkably stupid. The time to intervene in this relationship was BEFORE THEY HAD BEEN MARRIED FOR A YEAR. There is no way this will end well. You are so lucky this story didn’t end with your violent death.

And then we have the baby. Dad abandons him for unspecified curse-reasons. Mom abandons him for three months, which I guess isn't super long and she knows it’s temporary, but, like, does he know it’s temporary? Last time was saw him he was an infant—how much time has passed? How old is this kid now? Is he still a baby? Does he understand what’s happening? The princess did send the man who brought her back with a note for her parents, but I don’t trust these people to adequately explain the situation to a small child.

Finally. The crab prince. Exactly what is the nature of the curse he’s waiting out? The crab shell’s already been burned, so presumably he’s not turning into a crab anymore. And he told us earlier that the eagle thing was totally voluntary. But then the book says that when the three months are over he ceases to be an eagle? Did the crab curse transfer into an eagle curse in the absence of a crab shell? Who are these other eleven men who can transform into eagles? Are they cursed, too? Who’s going to rescue them?

Overall, I did very much enjoy this story, even if some characters made some stupid decisions, and some questions were left unanswered.

But I really want to know more about those eleven other eagle men.

 

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The Emperor's New Clothes

 Okay. Okay. So. The Emperor's New Clothes. Here's the thing about the Emperor's New Clothes.

If the clothes were real. If they were real. They would still be invisible to the unworthy. That is literally the whole point of them. So if the tailor was telling the truth, and if the Emperor was worthy, if the clothes were real and he saw them, there would still be other people who didn't.

To anyone of insufficient competence/wisdom/etc, the emperor is going to be perceived as naked.

And he knows this. This is the point.

What is this man thinking? Did he seriously look at this empty loom, and think, "Well, I'm not worthy, but no one can know that, and surely every single other person I might encounter will be worthy, and therefore no one will see me naked"?

Like, dude. Is your self esteem really so low that you think every single person in your empire is better than you?

Just, why. Why. Why would anyone ever deliberately choose to wear an outfit that is specifically designed to be invisible to a not-insignificant number of people?

Sir. Sir, please. Someone is going to see you naked. Someone is absolutely going to see you naked. The whole point of it is that someone is going to see you naked. And not, hopefully, someone like your wife. You want your wife to be worthy, right? The unworthy will see you naked. If they are not worthy to see your outfit, why should they be worthy to see your naked body? This does not make any sense. Think, sir. You must preserve your modesty from the unworthy!

Do not buy clothing that is invisible to anyone. Invisible clothing is never the right move. I do not care how big an ego boost it may be that you personally can see the clothing. Other people cannot. And if they can't see your clothes, they can see what you have underneath. Say no to invisible clothes!

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The Crow

 This story is—well. It’s really something. It’s Polish; I read it in Andrew Lang’s Yellow Fairy Book, but I did double check the origin through other sources, as Lang is not always accurate in his attributions.

It’s like if you started with a standard enchanted bridegroom story, and then just took out everything that made it make sense.

We start where we often do, with three beautiful princesses, the youngest of whom is the kindest. (Though we see no indication that the others aren’t also kind.) One day she comes across an injured crow, who tells her that he's an enchanted prince, and if she leaves everyone and everything she knows and loves to live in an abandoned castle with him, she can save him. There’s only one livable room in the castle, and it’s haunted, or demon-possessed, or something, and if she makes any noise when the monsters try to torture her all night, the crow’s suffering will double.

So naturally she goes with him.

Honey, why?

You have no evidence that he’s telling the truth. You have a loving, wealthy family; you’re not trying to get away from or provide for them. No one has threatened your father’s life. This is a Bad Move.

(In the enchanted palace, strange beings try to boil her alive in a giant cauldron.)

So, like, you know the thing you get in stories like Cupid and Psyche, where the heroine’s evil older sisters visit and try to screw everything up for her?

One of our girl’s sisters visits. She does not try to screw things up. Despite the fact that in this case I am begging someone to screw things up and get this poor girl out of this deeply concerning situation. She sleeps over for one night, and she screams, understandably, when the boiling starts. This of course causes the crow to suffer, so the princess sends her home.

She stays in this torture chamber for two years. Two. Years. Then the crow tells her he’s got one year left on his enchantment (it’s a seven year curse, the breaking of which doesn’t actually seem to be contingent on her presence in the castle), which means that she must go out into the world and become a maidservant. Apparently this (UNLIKE HER TIME IN THE TORTURE CASTLE) is necessary for him to become human again. Why? He doesn’t tell us.

I just. Like. This is—this is a standard step in the enchanted bridegroom plot. Girl goes into the world, works, and suffers. But usually there’s a reason for it. Just like there’s usually a reason for her going with the beast in the first place. Usually her sister visiting the palace would have led to her going out and suffering, but this story frames these two events as completely unrelated. The sister’s visit seems to have been toward the beginning of the two years.

Why is this happening? I want to know why this is happening.

So she spends a year working, and gets treated pretty badly throughout, until suddenly a handsome dude appears and claims to be the crow. They go back to the castle, which is no longer abandoned or haunted, and live happily together for a hundred years.

It doesn’t make sense. It’s like someone just looked at the outline of an enchanted bridegroom story, identified the key events, and somehow failed to realize that they’re supposed to be connected somehow.

Things don’t just happen. That’s not a story. There’s no reason for anything that happens. No stakes. No motivations. No explanations.

Why did the crow need someone to live in his palace and be tortured? Why did she agree? Why did the crow need her to be a maid for a year? Why did she agree? Why did her father the king not at any point interfere in this mess?

This is just…I don’t know what this. Girls, if a talking crow invites you back to his haunted castle, just say no.

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