From the Archives-The Evolution of Rumpelstiltskin

Although the significance of names is a topic of interest in the tale Rumplestiltskin, Jack Zipes sees the main connecting point in versions of the story to be their connection to spinning. Not all versions even have the famous name guessing scene, but all reveal common attitudes towards spinning. A good spinner could gain a reputation that would result in a better marriage, so spinning was very important to many women; however, the tales also reveal that the spinners may long to end their monotonous task if possible. Many of the stories "were probably originally told by women in spinning rooms [and] reveal how the spinners would actually like not to spin anymore, but use their spinning to entangle a man and to weave the threads and narrative strands of their own lives."

Basile's story "The Seven Pieces of Bacon Rind" from 1634 feature a girl who is lazy and a glutton. Her mother gave her seven pieces of bacon to make into soup, but the hungry girl ate all the bacon, and put old shoe leather in the soup to cover up what she had done. Her mother was furious when she found out and was beating her when a merchant walked by and demanded to know what would cause a mother to beat her daughter. The mother claimed that her daughter was so industrious, she had filled seven spindles, despite the fact that it was harmful to her health. The merchant offered to take the daughter home as his wife, where he would be happy to allow her to spin so enthusiastically.

The merchant bought twenty rolls of flax for his wife, expecting twenty rolls of spun flax from his wife when he returned from the fair in twenty days. His wife did no work whatsoever, but ate the merchant's food. Finally she realized she had nothing to show for the time her husband had been gone, so she squirted water onto passersby until a group of fairies were so amused they did her work for her. When her husband returned, she feigned illness because of her hard work, and her husband declared he would rather have a healthy wife than a sick and industrious one and told her not to do anything to exhaust herself. 

In this version, though the main character is lazy, she can be at least credited with being clever. This may not have resonated with the Victorian values of hard work and industry, but modern audiences are probably more sympathetic towards someone who can figure out a more efficient way to get the job done by thinking outside of the box. Also, the husband is very kind compared to the future cruel King who threatens his new bride with death.

L'Heritier's "Ricdin-Ricdon" of 1705 is bogged down by descriptions of how beautiful and perfect the heroine, Rosanie, is, and how everyone else at the palace is jealous of her. Rosanie is not lazy and a glutton like her Italian predecessor, but simply a slow spinner with an abusive mother. Later it turns out there was a whole switched-at-birth thing and Rosanie is actually royalty although she was raised by simple folk, (actually kind of like Villeneuve's backstory for Beauty in her 1740 version of Beauty and the Beast). But here Rosanie is granted a magic wand that will spin for her, and if after three months she can remember the name which Ricdin-Ricdon told her, she would be free and out of his power. She forgets, and is all distressed until the prince reveals that he overheard a demon disguised as an old man telling him how he traps women who don't know that he is Ricdin-Ricdon. She safely returns the wand and has a "perfect union" with the prince and "extreme happiness." 

The Grimms have multiple versions of spinning tales in their collection. Most people are familiar with "Rumplestiltskin," which lays the blame on the father who claims his daughter can spin gold, and the King who demands gold or death from the maiden. 

"The Three Spinners" is closer to the earlier French and Italian stories-a mother tells the queen her lazy daughter can't stop spinning, and she is expected to turn out more spun yarn than she can possibly manage. Three odd women offer to do her work for her, as long as they are invited to her wedding (she will win the Prince for her work). As they arrive, the groom is horrified by the girl's "ghastly looking friends," and asks how they came to have such a flat foot, drooping lip, and immense thumb; the three women reply it was from treading, licking, and twisting thread. The Prince declares his bride shall never spin again. 

"The Lazy Spinner"  shows a wife trying to trick her husband into getting out of spinning, first by scaring him (becoming a voice in the woods who calls, "He who chops wood for reels shall die in strife. She who winds yarn shall be ruined all her life") and then by substituting the skein of wool with a clump of tow, and allowing her husband to think it was his fault because he had done something wrong, so he doesn't mention it again. 

I think "The Three Spinners" is my favorite, which is yours?

Illustrations by Charles Folkard, Warwick Goble, and John B. Gruelle. Information from Jack Zipes' The Great Fairy Tale Tradition

Basile's The Seven Doves

The "Wild Swans" tale type, mostly known now through the stories of Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimms, has an older literary precedent in Basile's "The Seven Doves" (1634-6).

Adam of Fairy Tale Fandom had done a post not too long ago on Basile's Tale of Tales and how they are much cruder than fairy tale versions we're usually familiar with, which is certainly true (for example, at one point in this tale a cat doesn't just put out a fire, it pisses on the fire to put it out). But I never really realized how Basile is often very funny, in his specific yet delightful imagery. Some of my favorite examples:

   -The tale opens: "Once upon a time...there was a good woman who gave birth to a son every year so that, when the number reached seven, the boys resembled the flute of Pan with seven holes each a little bigger than the next. As soon as the sons had grown and lost their first set of ears..." (Zipes notes that this implies that children lose sets of ears like they do teeth)

   -"Finally, one morning, when the sun was using his penknife to scratch out the mistakes that the night had made on heaven's papers..."

   -[the heroine] "felt like a plucked quail for the mistake she had made"

   -"...the sea was beating the rocks with the stick of the waves because they did not want to do the Latin homework that had been assigned them"

   -"she arrived at the foot of a killjoy mountain that poked its head through the clouds just to annoy them"

Basile seemed to have an imaginative, almost childlike way in which he viewed the world with humor and personification.

The tale itself begins with the seven brothers demanding that their mother, who is again pregnant (Heaven help her), give birth to a girl this time, or else they will leave. This element of the tale always perplexes me-in the Grimms' "Twelve Brothers," they changed their original plot in which the King threatens to kill his wife is she gives birth to a girl, to the King desiring a daughter and threatening to kill his sons if he doesn't get one. And here we see the brothers themselves determined not to have an eighth boy. I'm not sure what the intention of each author was in each of those strange and sad scenarios, but I'm beginning to wonder, given the extremity of each threat and how different each one is, if maybe this scene could represent the foolishness of putting pressure on a woman to give birth to any gender?

Anyway, the mother does give birth to a girl, but it's the midwife who was distracted and gave the boys the wrong signal, so they left. As the girl grew up, she demanded to go find news of her brother, and went on a journey. She finally found her brothers, who had taken up residence with an ogre who was friendly towards them, but hated women, since a woman had blinded him. So they put her in a room and instructed her to never show herself to the ogre.

Yet, one day, her fire was put out by her cat companion since she didn't share half of a nut that she ate with it (she usually gave it exactly half of all of her food), and she went to ask the ogre for fire. When she realized the ogre was going to harm her, she barricaded herself in her room, and when the brothers returned, they shoved the ogre into a pit, where he died. They scolded their sister for neglecting her instructions, and told her never to gather grass near the spot where the ogre was buried, or else they would be turned into doves.

But of course...one day the sister, Cianna, came across an injured man, and used rosemary from that spot to make him a healing salve. The brothers-turned-doves came and berated her, going on and on about how foolish she had been and how there was no hope for them unless she found the Mother of Time.

So Cianna went on another journey, this time to find the Mother of Time. She came across many creatures who all pointed her in the right direction, if in turn she would ask a favor of the Mother of Time for them-a whale, a mouse, an army of ants, and an oak tree. Eventually she came across the same man she had helped with the rosemary from the ogre's resting place, who gave her final instructions and then decayed away as soon as he told her everything she needed to know.

This time Cianna followed the instructions perfectly, although the Mother of Time tried to deceive her. She received an answer for all of the friends who helped her along her journey as well as the solution for her brothers to regain their human form-they must "make their nest on the column of wealth," which they unintentionally did anyway when they landed on the horn of an ox, since the horn, Basile tells us, is a symbol of plenty.

From there they journeyed backwards. The oak told them to take the gold treasure that was buried underneath him in thanks, but theives took their gold and tied them all up. The other animals all helped rescue the siblings and get them their treasure and to safety.

Although on the surface, the tale seems to have a strong message about Cianna learning to follow instructions, the plot seems to contradict this a bit. And frankly, just reading the tale, there are so many sets of specific instructions she gets, it's almost tiring to read them. If she hadn't showed herself to the ogre the brothers wouldn't have become the lords of his castle (and she would never have been free). And the old man she helped heal with the rosemary was instrumental in freeing her brothers later, although that was helping to solve the problem she created by helping him-but clearly compassion was credited to her as a virtue and not a weakness, both in her desire to help him and then all of the other creatures who repaid them with help. In fact, the story ends: "Thanks to Cianna's goodness, they enjoyed a happy life proving the truth of the old proverb: Good things happen to those who forget the good they've done."

The text of this tale can be found in Jack Zipes' The Great Fairy Tale Tradition. There is an online text at Surlalune although some of the translation is different

Illustrations-Giambattista Basile (from wikipedia); "The Seven Doves," Warwick Goble

Awakening the Beauty

Everyone's familiar with the episode where the Prince comes and awakens Sleeping Beauty with a kiss; some people might be aware of older versions of the fairy tale that involve rape and childbirth; sensationalized articles and lists love to use those versions to shock people with the "real" and disturbing versions of classic tales.

While many of the older versions are indeed quite dark and disturbing, they don't all involve rape of an unconscious victim, and True Love's Kiss isn't always the solution in later tales. I used Surlalune's Sleeping Beauties Tales From Around the World book to gain a few different examples of how the Princess is actually awakened.

Going back to Norse mythology, the story of Brunhild (from the late late 13th century) is similar to a Sleeping Beauty tale. In it, the bravery of the hero Siegfried allows him to pass through the dangers and get close to Brunhild (although he doesn't actually do anything, the "vile flames fled in shame and dismay before the pure sunbeam flashes from Greyfell's mane"-so the real secret to heroism is apparently having a magical horse). Once there, he gives Brunhild a gentle kiss on the forehead (not even the lips) and softly calls her name, giving us the picture of an absolute gentleman. I find it ironic that this possibly oldest version of the tale is the closest to the Disney in terms of the stereotypical hero riding in on his horse, braving dangers, and saving the day with a kiss. From there we depart from that ideal-

It's the French story of Troylus and Zelladine from Perceforest, from some time in the 13th or 14th century, that we get to some of the horrific parts of the story. We read a description of how Troylus tries to resist temptation around the beautiful sleeping girl, but just can't help following "the tenets of Venus"-at least this version describes his actions as cowardly, and perhaps tries to justify it a little because Troylus "speaks a long discourse begging forgiveness for his grand liberties." Yet nine months later Zelladine gives birth to a son, who grabs her finger in an attempt to suckle, and suckles so hard that he sucks out the sleep thorn that kept her enchanted.

There are other, less well known Medieval stories which involve a maiden under an enchanted sleep. In almost all of them she is taken advantage of. In Pandragus et Libanor, the maiden is in an unnatural sleep, does not wake up during the night in question, but simply wakes up normally the next day. In Brother of Joy and Sister of Pleasure, the "hero" manages to wake the woman he impregnated with the help of a bird who gives a magic herb to the maiden. This is one of the rare stories in which the woman actually gets upset to find she has been taken advantage of (Zelladine also felt devastated upon waking)-most sleeping beauties seem strangely silent, even happy, to find themselves awakened with a strange lover and/or child-although in this story she does eventually grow to love her rapist (There are good reasons these stories aren't so well known today). Lastly, in the adventures of Blandin de Cornoalha the Knight, we find a chivalrous hero who is more like Siegfried-he falls in love but does not appear to succumb to temptation; rather breaks the enchantment through bravery; he learns he must defeat a serpent, obtain a white hawk, and bring the hawk to the side of the maiden.

Basile's Sun, Moon, and Talia (early 1600s) is very similar to "Troylus and Zelladine"-the only difference being that it is twins who suck the flax from her fingernail and not a single baby. It is this version which also introduces the next violent episode, with the attempted cannibalism of the children. In this version it's a little more understandable, though, because it's the Prince's wife that grows furious when she discovers the truth.

From there we move away from raping/nursing babies as the primary cause of awakening. In Perrault's 1697 classic version, the prince finds the princess and kneels at her side (no kiss) just as the 100 years of her curse happen to be ending, so his part in everything is pretty simple. Once the Princess awakes, they simply talk together for four hours, so it's perhaps the best example of love in a Sleeping Beauty tale. The brambles parted to let him through, so while he wasn't quite the brave knight in shining armor, it would have been pretty creepy to continue as the thorns closed again behind him and then again as he walked through the castle where everyone was eerily unconscious, so we'll give him credit for that. The cannibalism episode follows, only now it's the Prince's mother that is an ogress and wants to eat her grandchildren

In the Italian Sun, Pearl, and Anna, the hero simply removes a spindle from the grasp of the sleeping Anna. They have children together (followed by the cannibalistic mother in law again) but at least it's consensual; I find this transition (or lack thereof) to be downright humorous: "'How are you today, Anna?' 'Very well, thank you. And how are you, your majesty?' 'I'm well.' By the end of nine months, the girl was great with child."

There's another very brief, tragic Italian tale called The Son of a King in which the queen mother actually succeeds in cooking and eating her grandchildren and daughter in law (there is no mention of awakening or the princess actually being found asleep in this one, just that she was found in a deserted castle).

In the Grimm's Briar Rose, once again the hedge parts  for our hero (but this time the hedge is filled with corpses from others who attempted to pass before the time was up), and we have a Princess awakened with a kiss for the first time since Siegfried and Brunhild.

The Grimms also have another Sleeping Beauty tale, The Glass Coffin. I thought I had never read it before but it turns out not only had I read it, I wrote a whole post on it 5 years ago. This is why I have a blog...my memory is terrible! Anyway, it's a fascinating tale in which a Princess was cursed to sleep in a glass coffin because she spurned the advances of an evil magician-she had even attempted to shoot him but the bullet bounced off of him! A traveling tailor discovers her, and all he had to do was look at her, and she woke up and instructed him on how to open the coffin and free her. Afterwards, she gave him a "friendly kiss on his lips." This one wins the award for the most active female heroine!

In the Austrian The Enchanted Sleep, although the count's son does kiss the sleeping maiden, it doesn't appear to awaken her right away. He had also the foresight to write her a letter, which she later used to summon him to her, and also prove his innocence and his brothers' treachery (they had actually killed him, but animals he had helped along his journey came and healed him).

The Story of The Prince in Love is from Egypt, but bears similarities to older tales, particularly the cursed flax under the fingernail being what causes the sleep. Here, fortunately, the prince simply finds and removes the flax, and it's only after she wakes up that he spends forty days and nights with her in bed-although no children result from it. The prince is eventually a jerk to her though, so she decides to teach him a lesson-disguises herself with more beauty and causes him to fall in love with her again, but spurns his gifts, and will only marry him if he pretends to be dead and is himself carried around in a coffin. I'm not sure shy she wants to marry a man who thinks he's cheating on her, but it is interesting that he must have his own sort of "enchanted sleep" before they unite.

There's also The Petrified Mansion from India, in which the prince finds a stick of gold and just happens to touch the Princess' head with it, which revives her and the rest of the mansion's inhabitants. The curse was brought on by a stick of silver, so gold was the antidote-and the same gold stick later healed the Prince's parents, who were mourning their missing son.

So rather than bravery, many medieval Princes took advantage of sleeping princesses. Later, most Princes became more respectful of the enchanted women, who seemed more likely to be revived by chance than from getting a magical kiss. Some of the tales make us feel uncomfortable to read today, yet some were pretty feminist, featuring strong and brave women, and men who had self control. What other versions of Sleeping Beauty and methods of awakening are there? (I didn't even touch on Snow White tales here...)

Illustrations-A. H. Watson (first two), Millicent Sowerby (last two)

The Literary Fairy Tale in Italy

While names like the Grimms, Hans Christian Andersen, and Charles Perrault may be household names associated with the fairy tale genre, many people are unaware that the literary fairy tale tradition started much earlier in Italy with two main men; Giovan Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile. They wrote tales in fairy tale tradition, including predecessors to some of our most famous fairy tales, "Puss in Boots," "Beauty and the Beast," (Straparola's "The Pig King") "Sleeping Beauty" (Basile's "Sun, Moon, and Talia") "Snow White," (Basile's "The Young Slave"), "Rapunzel" (Basile's "Petrisonella") and "Cinderella" (Basile's "Cat Cinderella").

Warwick Goble, Basile's "Petrisonella" ("Parsley")

Yet despite their immense influence on the fairy tales we know and love today, the stories these men wrote were not widely accepted when they were published. At the time (16th century for Straparola, 17th for Basile,) the literary world was much concerned with the debate about what kind of fantastic fiction was acceptable to read. Fairy tales were widely looked down on as being fit only for crazy old women or simple young women.

Jules Garnier-frontspiece to Straparola's The Facetious Nights

Both collections of stories were organized in frame narratives, with each of the tales being told by narrators. In Straparola's collection, there were male and female narrators, but the fairy tales were only told by the women; the men told more realistic stories. Basile's stories were narrated by ten old women, each with some kind of deformity-limping, hunchbacked, large-nosed, drooling, etc.-which Bottigheimer says is a "grotesque parody" of Straparola's elegent women. Interestingly, when a later Italian reviewer defends the genre of fairy tales, he does is by comparing them to the epics and classics written by men that were held to be "good" literature, therefore masulinizing them.

Warwick Goble, Basile's "Sun, Moon, and Talia"

These Italian stories are shocking to most modern audiences; they are lewd, violent, and sexual and were not necessarily meant for children. It was common not only for the peasants to tell each other tales while they did their chores, but it was a custom for Neopolitan nobles to call on courtiers to entertain them by reading or reciting some sort of amusement. The type of story the courtier chose would then reveal his character, or how refined his tastes were. The ultimate story was thought to have some sort of allegory or meaning to it; fairy tales were seen as frivolous because there was no deeper meaning. Those who defended fairy tales claimed that they had deeper allegorical moral lessons as well, but no one seemed to be arguing for a fantasy story to have value for the sake of entertainment and imagination itself (many other epics and legends of the day had morals inserted into them, which made them more acceptable, rather like the fairy tales themselves as they entered the Victorian era...)

Fairy tale writer Carlo Gozzi (1720-1808) actually wrote his fairy tales precisely because he did NOT approve of them-he chose what he viewed a "lowly" form of story as the basis for a play simply to prove that audiences would watch anything and were not discerning. Yet in doing so, he ironically produced popular versions of fairy tales that did, indeed, have political and aesthetic points of view. The fairy tale as a genre would not be acceptable in high society until the French started writing and telling them.

*Information taken from Ruth Bottigheimer's Fairy Tales Framed: Early Forewords, Afterwords, and Critical Words (I got this book for Christmas, as well as the Baba Yaga book by Andreas Johns, so there will be more posts from each of these!)

Red as Blood, White as Snow, Black as Crow

After posting the article a few days ago about the possible significance of Santa in white and red, I did a little more digging into color symbolism in fairy tales. I found this article, Red as Blood, White as Snow, Black as Chrow: Chromatic Symbolism of Womanhood by Francisco Vaz Da Silva. It's a really great in depth look into the subject of colors in fairy tales if you're interested-it is several pages long.

Caligari-87 deviantart

It looks specifically at the triad of colors that is most often found in fairy tales, white, red, and black. And while that usually brings Snow White to mind, there are other fairy tales Da Silva mentions that have that same combination; more specifically, in which the sight of red blood upon a white background reminds someone of ideal female beauty. Three drops of blood on the snow remind 12th century Perceval of his sweetheart, and the colors of a slain crow's blood and feathers on a stone remind the Prince in Basile's "The Crow" of what he would like his wife to look like. In another Basile tale, "The Three Citrons," a prince does not want a wife until he cuts himself while slicing cheese and decides he wants a wife who is "like ricotta stained with blood." A tale from Brittany, collected by Francois Luzel, features a man who, when seeing a crow and its blood on the snow, decides to marry the princess whose face is just as red, white, and black. Even in the Grimms' "Goose Girl," the princess' mother gives her a white handkerchief with three drops of her own blood on it, which will protect her as long as she has it with her.

The article delves more into the symbolism of the three colors and what they mean, but essentially, it boils down to the female cycle. Fair warning: the article discusses much about women and blood and I'll be talking about it too, so if that makes you uncomfortable you can skip the rest of this post. It's a common way of interpreting fairy tales so although it may be a little awkward I think it warrants discussion.

The three drops of blood are supposed to represent the three significant times a woman bleeds in her life, which all represent her transition into womanhood: her menarche (first period), deflowering (first time she has sex), and childbirth. This is a popular way that people understand this color trio; several other authors make connections like Sleeping Beauty pricking her finger to either of the first two.

This never really made sense to me. If you claim that this is "the meaning" of the colors, that would indicate that the authors intended the reader to make that connection, and that most readers at the time would also do the same. Yet, I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, but I would never, ever have connected the pricking of a finger, or red blood on snow, to women's periods. Sure, menstrual blood happens every month, but it's always hidden. Especially since, in several of the stories above, the sight of blood involved a man thinking of a woman, how would he make the connection? Men would rarely, if ever, see a woman's menstrual blood. (Basile, author of two of those stories, was a man himself.) I would think a more obvious connection to red blood would be war, in which blood was visibly shed, or red flowers.

winterious-deviantart

I think it might be safer to assume that red on white just means the blush of a cheek against white skin. In days when people farmed the land, white skin would indicate the ability to be indoors; it was desirable because it was unusual, and would also probably mean you were rich (for the same reason that people at the time would have desired curvy women rather than rail-thin models at the time-not everyone could afford to eat their fill, so that body type was more rare). It's clearly a sight we desire today, as evidenced by the fact that blush is still considered an essential part of any woman's makeup kit.

Yet, the meaning could have been vastly different hundreds of years ago. Today, a woman's cycle doesn't really interfere with her regular life. Just put on some protection, pop a couple of painkillers, and you can forget about it. But before drugstores made painkillers available and had aisles dedicated to "feminine products," it's possible that a woman's period may have intruded on her life much more. In Bible times, a woman was considered unclean when she was on her period. Anyone who touched anything she touched also became unclean, not to mention the hassle I assume there would be from laundry and just experiencing severe cramps without ibuprofen. Today we can afford to be discreet about menstruation, but in the days when families shared one room houses, bodily functions were less private, and it might have been obvious when a woman was having her period. (Although still, I don't know that men would associate it with the color red).

Bess Livings

And we can't argue the fact that red has been considered a significant color by virtually every culture. Da Silva cites a study in which they found that if a language has only two words for color, it's black and white. If they have three, it's always red, black, and white. Subsequent colors are always added in a similar order. (Frankly, it's hard to imagine a language that only has two or three words for colors; it's one of the first things we teach our babies, but here's the information from the study: "Berlin, Brent, and Paul Kay. Basic Color Terms: Their Universatily and Evolution. 1969. Berkely: 
U of California P, 1991"


Clearly, these colors are significant to humans. Maybe it is because of female cycles and their unique ability to bear children. What do you think?

Basile's The Young Slave

"The Young Slave" is a Snow White variant found in Giambattista Basile's collection, The Pentamerone.

In this tale, a young woman is impregnated by swallowing a rose leaf. She sent the child, named Lisa, to the fairies to give her charms, but the last fairy slipped and twisted her foot as she was running to see the child, and uttered a curse against her-that when the child was seven, her mother would leave a comb in her hair, stuck into the hair, from which the child would perish.

This happened just as the fairy had said, and the mother lamented bitterly, and encased the body in seven caskets of crystal, each one within the other, which she put in a distant room and locked, keeping the key in her pocket, telling no one. After some time, as the mother was dying, she entrusted the key to her brother, begging him to never open the last room in the house.

The brother was faithful, but when he left on a hunting party, he gave the keys to his wife, telling her not to open the last room. The wife grew suspicious, and "impelled by jealousy and consumed by curiosity, which is a woman's first attribute," she opened the forbidden chamber. Lisa had grown into a woman in her sleep, the caskets lengthening with her, and the wife found a beautiful woman hidden in the caskets. Convinced she was her husband's mistress, she opened the caskets and dragged Lisa out by the hair, causing the comb to drop and Lisa to awake. The jealous wife began to beat Lisa, tearing her hair and clothes, giving her bruises all over, and kept her as a slave.

One day the husband was going out of town again, and asked everyone in the household what presents they would like him to bring them, "even the cats." The wife became furious when the husband asked Lisa as well, but the husband insisted it was only courteous to offer Lisa a gift. Lisa demanded a doll, a knife, and a pumice-stone, and added that if the husband forgot them, he would be unable to cross the first river he came to on his return.

The husband did initially forget the gifts, but upon being unable to cross water on his way home, he remembered, and bought the gifts for Lisa. When Lisa had her doll, she began to tell the doll her story, which the husband overheard. Lisa was weeping and sharpening her knife, telling the doll, "Answer me, dolly, or I will kill myself with this knife." The husband, her uncle, kicked down the door and snatched the knife away.

Once her uncle had learned the truth, he drove his wife away and gave Lisa a husband of her own choice. "Thus Lisa testified that
              heaven rains favors on us when we least expect it"
*******
I don't know that I quite agree with the "moral" of this story being the main point that comes across. This tale has some interesting parallels with other fairy tales (Sleeping Beauty and the fairy's curse, Bluebeard and the forbidden room/blame placed on female curiosity, Cinderella and abuse, Beauty and the Beast and the request for gifts on a return from a journey, even Goose Girl in that the rescue came from the heroine telling her story to an inanimate object), as well as differences from the Grimm version we're more familiar with (seven caskets rather than dwarves, the comb is present not as a temptation from the evil mother figure but still as an instrument of death, absence of the apple). And though Lisa is rewarded with a husband, he is not at all related to her rescuer-in fact, wouldn't it have been completely counter-cultural in 17th century Italy to give a girl her choice of husband, not the other way around? Was this a little taste of female empowerment?

The Evolution of Rumplestiltskin

In a recent post I discussed the significance of names as a topic of interest in the tale Rumplestiltskin, but Jack Zipes sees the main connecting point in Rumplestiltskin tales to be its connection to spinning. Not all versions even have the famous name guessing scene, but all reveal common attitudes towards spinning. A good spinner could gain a reputation that would result in a better marriage, so spinning was very important to many women; however, the tales also reveal that the spinners may long to end their monotonous task if possible. Many of the stories "were probably originally told by women in spinning rooms [and] reveal how the spinners would actually like not to spin anymore, but use their spinning to entangle a man and to weave the threads and narrative strands of their own lives."

Basile's story "The Seven Pieces of Bacon Rind" from 1634 feature a girl who is lazy and a glutton. Her mother gave her seven pieces of bacon to make into soup, but the hungry girl ate all the bacon, and put old shoe leather in the soup to cover up what she had done. Her mother was furious when she found out and was beating her when a merchant walked by and demanded to know what would cause a mother to beat her daughter. The mother claimed that her daughter was so industrious, she had filled seven spindles, despite the fact that it was harmful to her health. The merchant offered to take the daughter home as his wife, where he would be happy to allow her to spin so enthusiastically.

The merchant bought twenty rolls of flax for his wife, expecting twenty rolls of spun flax from his wife when he returned from the fair in twenty days. His wife did no work whatsoever, but ate the merchant's food. Finally she realized she had nothing to show for the time her husband had been gone, so she squirted water onto passersby until a group of fairies were so amused they did her work for her. When her husband returned, she feigned illness because of her hard work, and her husband declared he would rather have a healthy wife than a sick and industrious one and told her not to do anything to exhaust herself.

In this version, though the main character is lazy, she can be at least credited with being clever. This may not have resonated with the Victorian values of hard work and industry, but modern audiences are probably more sympathetic towards someone who can figure out a more efficient way to get the job done by thinking outside of the box. Also, the husband is very kind compared to the future cruel King who threatens his new bride with death.

L'Heritier's "Ricdin-Ricdon" of 1705 is bogged down by descriptions of how beautiful and perfect the heroine, Rosanie, is, and how everyone else at the palace is jealous of her. Rosanie is not lazy and a glutton like her Italian predecessor, but simply a slow spinner with an abusive mother. Later it turns out there was a whole switched-at-birth thing and Rosanie is actually royalty although she was raised by simple folk, much like Villeneuve's backstory for Beauty in her 1740 version of Beauty and the Beast. But here Rosanie is granted a magic wand that will spin for her, and if after three months she can remember the name which Ricdin-Ricdon told her, she would be free and out of his power. She forgets, and is all distressed until the prince reveals that he overheard a demon disguised as an old man telling him how he traps women who don't know that he is Ricdin-Ricdon. She safely returns the wand and has a "perfect union" with the prince and "extreme happiness."

The Grimms have multiple versions of the spinning tale in their collection. Most people are familiar with "Rumplestiltskin," which lays the blame on the father who claims his daughter can spin gold, and the King who demands gold or death from the maiden.
"The Three Spinners" is closer to the earlier French and Italian stories-a mother tells the queen her lazy daughter can't stop spinning, and she is expected to turn out more spun yarn than she can possibly manage. Three odd women offer to do her work for her, as long as they are invited to her wedding (she will win the Prince for her work). As they arrive, the groom is horrified by the girl's "ghastly looking friends," and asks how they came to have such a flat foot, drooping lip, and immense thumb; the three women reply it was from treading, licking, and twisting thread. The Prince declares his bride shall never spin again.


"The Lazy Spinner" departs a little more from the Rumplestiltskin story, as it shows a wife trying to trick her husband into getting out of spinning, first by scaring him (becoming a voice in the woods who calls, "He who chops wood for reels shall die in strife. She who winds yarn shall be ruined all her life") and then by substituting the skein of wool with a clump of tow, and allowing her husband to think it was his fault because he had done something wrong, so he doesn't mention it again.

I think "The Three Spinners" is my favorite, which is yours?

Illustrations by Charles Folkard, Warwick Goble, and John B. Gruelle. Information from Jack Zipes' The Great Fairy Tale Tradition

Ruth Bottigheimer on Donkeyskin

Perrault's famous version of Donkeyskin was dedicated to a friend of his, the Marquise de
Lambert, who was in the process of gaining back rights and property that were hers by birth. It's fitting that the heroine of the tale should be first deprived of her royal status, but at the end rewarded with the royal rights and privileges she started with, in the classic restoration fairy tale plot.

At the time, the term "donkeyskin story" was used to refer to any amusing tale with magic in it, not necessarily because it contained a donkeyskin (maybe like how most fairy tales don't actually have fairies). In using a donkeyskin in his donkeyskin story, he was making a pun. Other stories did exist with actual donkeyskins in the plot, however-including the frame story to "Cupid and Psyche" in Lucius Apuleius' Golden Asse (the story that is thought to be the earliest literary precedent to Beauty and the Beast). It's probable that Perrault was familiar with this, but the combination of a donkeyskin and incest driving a royal girl to servanthood was taken from two earlier tale versions by Straparola and Basile. Though Perrault added his own take to the tale, the influence of the earlier writers' tales is fairly obvious. As is characteristic of the authors' tale collections as a whole, Straparola's and Basile's tales were full of bawdy and cruder humor, while Perrault made the story more acceptable to a dignified, refined French audience in the 1690s.

Donkeyskin is most noteable among current audiences for its shocking attempt at incest. Incest was not entirely uncommon in midieval literature, but in Donkeyskin it is noteable because it was not only ultimately unsuccessful, but in the end deeply repented (repentance itself is very rare in fairy tales-the villains usually meet grisly punishments with no thought given to a possible change of heart).

Illustration by Kay Neilsen. Information from Ruth Bottigheimer's "Fairy Tales: A New History"

Ruth Bottigheimer's New History of Fairy Tales

If you want a book that's not too long or academic but still gives you plenty of food for thought, read Fairy Tales: A New History by Ruth B. Bottigheimer. This book challenges the commonly accepted notion that fairy tales have an oral history, but instead have a history that can be traced back through published books.

Bottigheimer goes in reverse chronological order, exploring the roots behind the major fairy tale publishers, proving that the roots of their fairy tales were really a previous collection of published tales, not actual peasants. First she started with the Grimms. I actually found this section to be a little frustrating. If you've read anything about the Grimms published recently, it's common knowledge that their informants were their middle class family friends and not actual German peasants. I've posted on John Ellis' One Fairy Story Too Many, which is the book that really first revealed to the English speaking world the truth about the Grimms' collection, but other books published since then seem to give the impression that they're the first to deliver the shocking news and it gets a little tiring when each author claims to be the one exposing the shocking truth. Bottigheimer spends too much time giving you the false scenario which is "commonly believed" about the Grimms traipsing through the German countryside and searching for tales, which gets old and comes across as a little condescending to the reader. It almost weakens her arguments, because few people, especially today, believe this given scenario exactly, so it sets you up on the defensive rather than being receptive to hearing what she has to say. Even before Ellis, not everyone was completely ignorant-in my last post, I shared what Sokolov published in 1950-that it would be foolish to assume that the tales originated from the people as a whole and obviously had an author at some point.

I enjoyed the other sections more. As I've lamented about before, if my library is any indication, books about the Grimms are plentiful, but reading about Perrault is limited to chapters in other books, and it's virtually impossible to read about Straparola and Basile without spending a fortune on more obscure books, so I was very interested to read about them. (But for the dedicated, the wonderful Heidi Anne Heiner of Surlalune has a Basile's Pentamerone page and a Straparola's Facetious Nights, where the tales are available to read in full text! I have determined to read more of them...) Basically, in the timeline of published fairy tale collections-Straparola in the 1550s, Basile in the 1620s, then Perrault (and Lheritier and others) in France in the late 1600s/early 1700s, and finally Grimms in 19th century Germany-for each major collection, the previous collections were in print, widely circulated, and translated into multiple languages, so that each author was aware of the tales of the other authors and intentionally (Basile, the French authors) or unintentionally (Grimms, who may have been somewhat deceptive but really did think they were preserving the German tradition in their tale collection) created their own versions of the previously existing stories in their own collections. Bottigheimer provides examples of the tales that evolved under each author's pen, from the well known (Sleeping Beauty) to the obscure. Even Straparola's were based off of previous story collections, but Bottigheimer also makes a very bold claim: "It was Giovan Francesco Straparola who created rise fairy tales."

Giovan Francesco Straparola

             Giambattista Basile

Bottigheimer defines rise and restoration fairy tales, which are very helpful terms when categorizing: a rise tale is one in which the protagonists begins in poverty and acquires a royal spouse and wealth through magical means. A restoration tale features a character that begins in an elevated state, is brought low through some humbling circumstance, and rises back to power and wealth at the end-for example, Donkeyskin, who begins as a Princess, is forced to make herself ugly and work as a servant because of her father's incestual passions, and ends up as a rightful princess. Some longer fairy tales may be a rise and a restoration within the same tale. These terms can help us understand the history of a tale and how it is created to meet the demands of the audience-Straparola's tales were written in Venice at a time when there was lots of poverty, and naturally the poor would be enticed by a rise tale, and his collection featured many rise tales. Yet Basile wrote his tales for the upper class, who dispised the poor, and in his collection, "the vulgar masses are rejected and depicted as repellent." There are a few rise tales in his collection, but Bottigheimer tells us they are rare exceptions. Yet restoration tales abound, which is something his audience can relate to.


According to Bottigheimer, "dig where we may, no rise fairy tales can be found in layers of literary remains before Straparola." Yet what about the ancient Chinese tale of Sheh Hsien, from the 8th century, which features a poor mistreated girl, forced to do all the work, who with the help of a magic fish acquires beautiful clothes and gold shoes, with which she was discovered by the King, who married her? How is this not a rise tale? Bottigheimer doesn't mention this version of Cinderella.

Here's where things get sticky-Bottigheimer states that, though many motifs common in fairy tales may have been around since antiquity, Straparola was the one who really created the genre. Yet you really have to look at the history of each tale itself. Beauty and the Beast is usually traced back to the myth Cupid and Psyche. Yes, Cupid and Psyche is a myth and not a fairy tale, but it is still part of the history of the story-drawing lines to define genres can be helpful but doesn't give us the full picture.

Bottigheimer's implication is that, in creating the rise fairy tale, Straparola created the genre we know of as fairy tales, but what about fairy tales that aren't rise tales or can't be necessarily traced back to Straparola? Surlalune traces the Frog King back to the 13th century, as well as a Scottish version from 1549, both before Straparola. What about those tales that don't even necessarily end happily, such as Swan Maiden tales? While we now create categories and criteria, the tellers of the tales most likely didn't distinguish between rise and restoration tales, fairy tales or tales about fairies, but simply told stories. While I think most people, even those writing on fairy tales, underestimate the significance of Straparola and Basile and published books in the history of the tales, you can't say everything started with Straparola. But certainly fairy tales as we know them would be significantly different without him.

Illustrations of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast by Warwick Goble

Basile's Petrosinella: A True Spunky Heroine

Sometimes I read about the evolution of fairy tales and how the Cinderella characters have become more and more passive (like this article), and from the examples cited I don't see a huge difference. People will contrast older versions of Cinderella like to the Perrault/Disney and say that historical Cinderellas were so proactive and resourceful and got herself out of her mess. But really all she did was ask the spirit of her dead mother-whether a spirit or animal helper or fairy godmother or crew of singing mice, Cinderella doesn't ever actually make her own dress, she always has help. Can we really fault the Perrault/Disney Cinderella for not being aware that she had a magical helper?

Not that I support passive heroines or disagree with the above article I cited (although I always feel the need to point out that, historically, there was really no option for lower class females to ever end their servitude) or that Disney couldn't have made better choices in his version, but I think Cinderella isn't the best example of female characters who got dumbed down.

However, as I read through the earliest version of Rapunzel, Petrosinella, from Basile's Pentamerone (1634), I was really struck by what a clever and resourceful heroine Petrosinella is, in stark contrast to later versions of the tale. In this case, she really does use her instincts and wits to get her own happy ending.

Petrosinella's captivity is a little more traumatic than Rapunzel's-she isn't given over at birth. Her mother has the same cravings, steals the petrosinella, and makes the promise to an ogress that she can have her unborn child, as she is threatened with death if she doesn't. The child Petrosinella lives with her parents, but every day as she passes by on her way to school, an ogress whispers at her, "tell your mother to remember her promise." The unknowing daughter repeats this to her mother day after day, until finally her mother, with no other attempts to keep her daughter, tells her child to reply, "Take it!" When she does so, the poor girl is taken by the hair and locked in a tower in the woods. I tend to think of Rapunzel as someone who has always been sheltered from the world and doesn't know what's out there, but Petrosinella knows what it's like to have a family and friends and now has to lose everything for no apparant reason. (Really, I can't imagine the ogress's motivation here. Props to Disney for giving Mother Gothel a good reason to want a girl in a tower.)

Prince sees Petrosinella and instantly falls in love. Petrosinella, however, isn't stupid. She knows to give the ogress poppy juice that she and her lover may have trysts in the tower. The lovers are so clever the ogress doesn't discover their love until a gossipy friend of hers warns her that the couple are getting pretty serious.

Now, other versions have the witch temporarily victorious as the lovers are separated and have hardships and whatnot, and it's usually because Rapunzel is ignorant (she's pregnant and doesn't know why her belly is growing) or thoughtless (mentions one day that the witch is much harder to pull up than the Prince), but Petrosinella doesn't even let the ogress get the upper hand. Petrosinella "had her ears wide open" and was suspicious that the ogress would find out (very impressive coming from a girl who can't leave her tower) and arranges an escape before the ogress has a chance to punish them. Petrosinella is under a spell and cannot leave the tower-implying that she would have already left otherwise-unless she is holding three gallnuts in her hand which were hidden in a rafter in the kitchen.

But clever Petrosinella already knows about the spell and counterspell, so she has her Prince climb up and get the nuts, and they're off. The ogress starts to chase them, and every time she gets close Petrosinella throws a gallnut in her path and it turns into something. I imagine this part to be the 17th century version of an action sequence in a movie, as the witch has to cleverly distract all the fierce animals sent her way. In the end the last animal eats her and the free lovers are married in the Prince's Kingdom.

I noticed after drafting this post that I never mentioned the hair for which Rapunzel is so famous. It's there in Basile's story, but really this version could stand on its own without it. In other versions, the Prince meets the maiden by calling out the famous "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair" as the witch does, and she is startled when a young man appears instead of the witch. Again goes to show how later Rapunzel isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer since she can't even tell the difference between their voices, as opposed to Petrosinella who is fully aware when she allows the Prince to enter her tower.
By the way, Petrosinella is the Italian word for parsley, which I find funny because my mom is allergic to parsley.

Illlustrations: A. H. Watson, Anne Anderson, Arthur Rackham, Isobel Lilian Gloag

Sleeping Beauty through the eyes of Bruno Bettelheim

One more to round out my little mini-series...

In "The Uses of Enchantment: the Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales," Bruno Bettelheim explains his psychoanalytical understanding of fairy tales. I remember disagreeing with a lot that he said the first time I read through this book, but looking back at the Sleeping Beauty chapter, I was surprised by how encouraging I found some parts to be.

Bettelheim sees the sleep of both Sleeping Beauty and Snow White as the physical lethargy that literally occurs at puberty, and also the "long, quiet concentration on oneself that is also needed" which symbolically happens at puberty. Both activity and inactivity are necessary at times of major life change, and the tales assure listeners that their listless stages will not last forever. Modern interpretations of fairy tales treat the idea of passivity with contempt (especially female passivity), but I totally agree that there are times for either extreme in everyone's life, as well as taking into account different personalities prone to either one; all action or all passivity is bad, but it's not bad to lean naturally towards one or the other.

Bettelheim also claims that the passivity is not limited to girls, though the obvious examples of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty would appear to indicate so; "even when a girl is depicted as turning inward in her struggle to become herself, and a boy as aggressively dealing with the external world, these two together symbolize the two ways in which one has to gain selfhood...the male and female heroes are again projections onto two different figures of two separated aspects of one and the same process which everybody has to undergo in growing up...children know that, whatever the sex of the hero, the story pertains to their own problems." I really like the idea of this, but don't know how true this actually is...(he does reference Cupid and Psyche, though, and how in that the female falls in love when viewing the male in repose, switching the stereotype). Is it possible that our very gender-focused interpretations of fairy tales hinder readers from applying both genders to themselves?

Then Bettelheim discusses the major versions of Sleeping Beauty-Basile, Perrault, and the Brothers Grimm, with very interesting discussion and commentary on each (you can see basic facts about each one at my most popular post to date, Sleeping Beauty-A Very Brief History). In Basile's tale, the father king is replaced with a lover king, which Bettelheim sees as being the natural way that a girl replaces attraction to her father with attraction to a lover. Other people might see that as being the historical fact that females were subservient to their fathers, then handed off to husbands, to which they were subservient as well. Bettelheim goes into more detail about the oedipal influences he sees in the tale, which I won't list here.

He goes on to Perrault. The Prince in Perrault's tale is more separated from the father King, but is not faultless. He knowingly leaves his wife and children in the protection of his ogress mother. Bettelheim explains this: "he [Perrault] did not take his fairy stories seriously and was most intent on the cute of moralistic verse ending he appended to each."

Also in Perrault, the mother figure becomes the fairies, who are separated into good and evil aspects. Bettelheim sees the fact that the evil fairy is not punished as a weakness in the plot.

"The central theme of all versions of 'The Sleeping Beauty' is that, despite all attempts on the part of parents to prevent their child's sexual awakening, it will take place nonetheless." Again, it's a nice thing to take away from the tale, but who actually comes up with this on their own? I wouldn't call it "the central theme of all versions" of the tale. Bettelheim lists several reasons that the pricking of the finger (shedding of blood, the age of 15) is really menstruation. He also lists several things about the scene that symbolize sex (circular staircase, small door, lock and key, door springs open, small room, "what kind of thing is this that jumps about so funnily?") but still claims that the main associations aroused are menstration itself. In fact, he indicates the real theme is waiting-the fact that the parents have to wait so long for a child, and the wall of thorns that arises as protection until the time is right-suitors who come to early perish in the thorns. "This is a warning to child and parents that sexual arousal before midn and body are ready for it is very destructive." ...so what about all those symbols of sex that happened before the enchanted sleep?

Bettelheim makes another interesting point about the menstration theory-it's only the king who tries to prevent this curse from happening, while the queen seems untroubled in each version about the fairy's curse. I had never noticed this before-I guess I assumed the king's actions represented the concern of both parents. Bettelheim sees the queen as "knowing better than trying to prevent it." Interesting thought...

But no worries about younger children-though they won't understand the full meaning of the tale as in the onset of puberty, they will still understand it as "awakening to his selfhood."

Bettelheim also sees the sleep of the adolescent as narcissim-shutting oneself off from the world, teenagers dream of everlasting youth and perfection. The kiss that awakens the princess is connecting to other people-"only relating positively to the other 'awakens' us from the danger of sleeping away our life." Again...I agree with the general concept, but don't necessarily see it as the obvious meaning of the tale.

The tramatic events of the heroine's life have happy consequences-therefore "the story implants the idea that such events must be taken very seriously, but that one need not be afraid of them. The 'curse' is a blessing in disguise."

Bettelheim makes another interesting comment before he closes the chapter-in the earliest known versions of the tale, Perceforest and Basile, the awakening happens not from a kiss, but from a baby sucking the flax out of her finger. Females, he claims, don't acheive complete self-sulfillment until they have given birth and nurture their baby. A lot of women would be offended by this. Personally, I have no desire for my own children at this point in my life and I feel incredibly self-fulfilled, but I'm not offended; undeniably many women do feel the desire to have children, and that would be an experience unlike any other. It's just interesting that Bettelheim draws such grand conclusions from such drastically different variations of the tale. I don't think he would claim that this is representative of a cultural shift from valuing childbearing to valuing interconnectedness...

Images: 1. Honor C. Appleton 2. William A. Breakspeare 3. and 4. Harry Clarke

Literary Animal Bridegroom Tales

The text below, from answers.com, includes some very interesting information not included in most histories of Beauty and the Beast. Straparola, Basile, and Perrault are known for having versions of other tales, but are rarely credited for being part of the Beauty and the Beast/Animal Bridegroom cycle.

"Numerous versions of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ predated Mme Leprince de Beaumont's tale. Straparola's mid‐16th‐century ‘Re Porco’ (‘King Pig’) exhibits a swinish husband who delights in rooting in rotting filth and rolling in mud before climbing into bed with each of three successive wives. He murders the first two when they express their revulsion at his stinking habits, but makes the third his queen when she smilingly acquiesces in his muck.

Basile's Pentamerone (1634–6) included four ‘Beauty and the Beast’ tale types. The first three—‘The Serpent’ (Day 2, Tale 5), ‘The Padlock’ (Day 2, Tale 9), and ‘Pinto Smalto’ (Day 5, Tale 3) resemble Apuleius' tale in that the husbands in each story are reputed, but not actual, monsters. However, in the fourth story, ‘The Golden Root’ (Day 5, Tale 4), the handsome husband simply trades his black skin for white at night.

Charles Perrault includes a highly ethicized conclusion in his ‘Beauty and the Beast’ tale, ‘Riquet à la Houppe’ (1697), but leaves readers in doubt about whether the monstrously ugly hero Riquet actually becomes handsome, or whether he only appears so in the eyes of his besotted beloved.

In 1697 Mme d'Aulnoy also published ‘Le Mouton’ (‘The Ram’), but with a tragic ending: her heroine's dear Ram dies in her absence. Other ‘Beauty and the Beast’ tale types in Mme d'Aulnoy's œuvre include ‘La Grenouille bienfaisante’ (‘The Beneficent Frog’), ‘Serpentin vert’ (‘The Green Serpent’), and ‘Le Prince Marcassin’."

And on the absence of female beasts (from the same source): "Beauty and the Beast’ tales, which all require a woman's patient tolerance of an ugly mate, have no companion tales in the modern period in which the obverse obtains, that is, a man who must love an ugly wife. In the medieval period, however, numerous companion stories circulated, the most famous of which is the Wife of Bath's story in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Another of the many now‐forgotten and similar medieval tales, Le Bel inconnu, tells of a handsome knight who kisses a lady who has been turned into a serpent. Such stories survived into Basile's 17th‐century collection, but between 1634 and the emergence of French fairy tales in print form in the 1690s, this trope largely disappeared from European storytelling."

Image by Arthur Rackham

*I have a summary of "The Ram" here. I will do a post on Green Serpent in the future, as it is a fascinating tale where both the male and female have beastly characteristics at some point.

Basile's Cinderella

I'll be posting lots of Cinderella-themed posts in the near future, as I've started going through the book Cinderella: A Casebook. This is one of my all-time favorite books on fairy tales; it's full of essays on Cinderella which all take different approaches and is very helpful in getting an overall feel for the tale's history and meanings, without just reading into one person's personal interpretations. Someone needs to make a Beauty and the Beast: A Casebook.

Cinderella's history is very long and complicated, but as far as European history goes, Giambattista Basile's Cat Cinderella is one of the first recorded versions.

Sir John Everett Millais

The heroine's name is Zezolla. Her father, a Prince, doted on her completely, but remarried a harsh woman who hated Zezolla. But the girl had a governess who loved her, and Zezolla wished her governess could be her mother instead. So the governess instructed her to murder her stepmother (by asking for a dress kept in a large chest, and slamming the lid on her head while it was looking in the chest) and then persuade her father to marry her governess. Zezolla does this, and for a few days her new stepmother is kind towards her, but later forgot Zezolla's kindness towards her and became cruel again. She also brought out six daughters of her own she had kept hidden, and they all forced Zezolla to do the work, calling her "Cat Cinderella." This element of having two separate stepmothers seems odd, as they fulfill the same function in the story, and the reader is less inclined to sympathise with Zezolla, as she partially brings her struggles on herself, and is a murderer. Nevertheless, the story continues:

A dove flew to Zezolla after the marriage of her father to the governess and told her, "If you ever desire anything, send to ask for it from the dove of the fairies of the Island of Sardinia, and you will at once have it." The Prince shortly had to go to Sardinia on a trip, and offered to bring presents home for his daughters. The stepdaughters all asked for clothes, cosmetics, games, and the like, but Zezolla asked for the dove of the fairies to bring her something. Her father continued on the trip, remembering all the presents but his own daughter's. When it came time to leave, his vessel would not leave the harbor. The captain was told in a dream that because the Prince broke a promise to his daughter, that is why the ship would not leave. Once he told the Prince this, he hastened to fulfill his daughter's wish.

This strikes me because it is similar to a very common motif in most Animal Bridegroom/Beauty and the Beast tales: the father goes on a trip and asks his daughters which presents they would like. The elder/evil sisters ask for material goods, and Beauty asks for a rose-part of nature. Zezolla's gift, as we will see, ends up being from nature as well.

Felix Lorioux

By the way, once I uploaded this picture I realized it's not appropriate to this post because Basile's story doesn't have a fairy godmother. So, this is the part in the story that will later have a fairy godmother in it, when Perrault gets around to it. But in this version (and the Grimm's,) we have a magical tree instead. So, the fairies' gift to Zezolla was a date tree, and all the things necessary to cultivate it. Zezolla was overjoyed with her gift, and planted the tree, which grew to the size of a woman in four days. A fairy steps out and asks Zezolla what she wants. She says she wanted to get away from the house without her sisters knowing. The fairy told Zezolla a spell she could use to be robed in beautiful clothes, thus serving as her disguise.

On a feast day, Zezolla ran to the tree and got her magical outift and hurried after her sisters, who did not recognize her. The King happened to see her and was enchanted. He ordered a trusted servant to follow her, but Zezolla cleverly threw coins on the grounds, and the servant was too tempted by the money. The King was later angry at the servant and made him promise he would follow the girl next time.

However, the next time Zezolla cast down pearls and jewels. The King was now furious with his servant, and he was the one to be clever the third time-he fastened himself to the carriage with thread. When Zezolla saw he wasn't being distracted, in her agitation she lost her patten, or shoe covering. (Note the absence of the time restriction or the significance of midnight.) The servant brought this to the King, who spouts out a little ode that begins with this: "If the foundation is so fair, what must be the mansion? Oh, lovely candlestick which holds the candle that consumes me! Oh, tripod of the lovely cauldron in which my life is boiling!" and goes on with ever more ridiculous metaphors.

Warwick Goble

So the King threw a feast for all the women in the land. After eating, he went around and tried the shoe on every foot, but it fit no one. So the King had another feast for the next day, and ordered that no woman be left at home. The Prince admitted he had a daughter, but that she was a "sorry, worthless creature, not fir to take her place at the table where you eat." The King's response: "Let her be at the top of the list, for such is my wish."

When Zezolla entered the next day, the King thought he recognized her, but said nothing. Note that, because Cinderella critics often point out that the Prince (who's a King here) is a)shallow, and b)stupid because he can't recognize Cinderella's face, only counts on her being alone in her shoe size. Stupidity especially applies to the Grimms' Prince, who starts riding away with both stepsisters, thinking they are Cinderella, and has to be told by birds that their shoes are leaking blood. So at least in Basile's world, though the King might have fallen in love at first sight, he still recognizes Zezolla in her rags, and the shoe is more like a confirmation. In fact, the shoe "darted forward of itself to shoe that painted Lover's egg, as the iron flies to the magnet." Zezolla becomes Queen and the stepmother and sisters are duly humiliated.