Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale

Abstract

When we think of the fairy tale today, we primarily think of the classical fairy tale. We think of those fairy tales that are the most popular in the Western world: “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Rapunzel,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “Puss in Boots,” “The Frog King,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Tom Thumb,” “The Little Mermaid,” and so on. It is natural to think mainly of these fairy tales, as if they had always been with us, as if they were part of our nature. Newly written fairy tales, especially those that are innovative and radical, are unusual, exceptional, strange, and artificial because they do not conform to the patterns set by the classical fairy tale. And, if they do conform and become familiar, we tend to forget them after a while, because the classical fairy tale suffices. We are safe with the familiar. We shun the new, the real innovations. The classical fairy tale makes it appear that we are all part of a universal community with shared values and norms; that we are all striving for the same happiness; that there are certain dreams and wishes which are irrefutable; that a particular type of behavior will produce guaranteed results, like living happily ever after with lots of gold in a marvelous castle, our castle and fortress, which will forever protect us from inimical and unpredictable forces of the outside world.

1

(She speaks …)

I wish the Prince had left me where he found me,

Wrapped in a rosy trance so charmed and deep

I might have lain a hundred years asleep.

I hate this new and noisy world around me!

The palace hums with sightseers from town,

There’s not a quiet spot that I can find.

And worst of all, he’s chopped the brambles down —

The lovely briars I’ve felt so safe behind.

But if he thinks that with a kiss or two

He’ll buy my dearest privacy, or shake me

Out of the cloistered world I’ve loved so long,

Or tear the pattern of my dream, he’s wrong.

Nothing this clumsy trespasser can do

Will ever touch my heart, or really wake.

2

(He speaks …)

I used to think that slumbrous look she wore,

The dreaming air, the drowsy-lidded eyes,

Were artless affectation, nothing more.

But now, and far too late, I realize

How sound she sleeps, behind a thorny wall

Of rooted selfishness, whose stubborn strands

I broke through once, to kiss her lips and hands,

And wake her heart, that never woke at all.

I wish I’d gone away that self-same hour,

Before I learned how, like her twining roses,

She bends to her own soft, implacable uses

The pretty tactics that such vines employ,

To hide the poisoned barb beneath the flower,

To cling about, to strangle, to destroy.

—Sandra Henderson Hay, “The Sleeper” ¹