Fairy Tale Review: D is for 'Donkeyskin' (atozchallenge)

A Charles Perrault fairy tale has never failed to disappoint, and Donkeyskin is no exception. This particular tale, however, is also surprisingly provocative... Well, I shouldn't say 'surprisingly' - most fairy tales were provocative to begin with, and were merely sanitised over time. But anyway, a story that features incestuous desire, where a father's unnatural passion for his own daughter pushes her to disguise herself under a donkeyskin to escape him, is surely one of the more dark tales out there.

In Donkeyskin, the heroine's mother dies with explicit instructions to the father-King that he is not to remarry unless it is to a woman more beautiful, wise and accomplished than the dying Queen herself. Now, I don't see why it had to follow that the King would then set his sights on his own daughter, but hey, fairy tales have never shied away from controversial subjects, have they?

The princess - smart girl - does not take her father's sudden strange fancies lying down... :) I'm sorry, I couldn't resist that:) She's advised by her fairy godmother - apparently there are quite a few of them traipsing about in fairytale-land - to request an expensive trousseau as a gift from her father before she can agree to his request to marry him. Both princess and fairy godmother soon realise however that the wealth brought by an enchanted donkey the King owns will enable him to supply her with any remarkable dress she asks for (and she asks for some beauties, including a dress the colour of the moon and one more splendid than stars).

In desperation, the princess finally requests for the hide of that poor animal, thinking that her father would not be able to part with such a wondrous possession.

The donkeyskin is however delivered to the horrified princess.

The bright side is - it turns out to make wonderful camouflage.

Wearing it - hence the princess's new title 'Donkeyskin' - our heroine quickly escapes the castle, her jewels and lavish trousseau towed along in her trunk. She works at a farm on which there lies an aviary frequented by a prince (come on, you knew a prince would appear sooner of later:D). The Prince, by a bizarre turn of events that truly paints him as the worst sort of Peeping Tom, discovers the beautiful woman lying beneath that horrendous donkeyskin and tricks her into marrying him. Well, the fairy tale actually suggests that Donkeyskin tricks the Prince into tricking her into marrying him, but  I suppose there's no need to keep score here:) They marry, her father "purges himself of all lawless desires", and everyone lives happily ever after...

Except of course for one thing: I can't quite get over the senseless murder of that poor donkey!

Donkeyskin seems to be becoming forgotten despite its beautiful language, no doubt because of its controversial subject matter. It's a shame really, especially when the heroine in this piece is a breath of fresh air, taking her destiny courageously into her own hands for much of the tale. The piece has also been written in a beautifully lyrical style, so much so that I found it to be one of the more well-crafted (stylistically) fairytales that I've devoured so far:)

All right, I would normally write more on any fairy tale I'm featuring, but I've come to realise I'll never get through this challenge if I keep doing that, so I'll revisit this - and the rest of the tales - once the challenge is over:) May this review have persuaded you to pick up the much ignored Donkeyskin for a fascinating read. Till alphabet 'E' then:) Ciao:)

Fairy Tale Review: D is for 'Donkeyskin' (atozchallenge)

Fairy Tale Review: C is for 'Cinderella' (atozchallenge)

A young girl whose mother dies and whose father marries another; a stepmother who mistreats the girl and makes her work as a servant in the family's wealthy household while her two stepsisters are lavished with gifts and other luxuries; and a fairy godmother who steps in to save the day when all seems lost: welcome to Cinderella, otherwise known as The Little Glass Slipper:)

What to say about Charles Perrault's famous tale? It reads as wonderfully as it always did, for one. The language is lovely, descriptive and clever (I'm reading Andrew Lang's version in his Blue Fairy Book btw), and the characterisation of Cinderella's plight is drawn as wretchedly as one could hope:) Who couldn't feel moved by her story? Or cheer when her fairy godmother uses her powers to ensure Cinderella attends the ball, charms her Prince and - despite having to endure that awful nightmare that teenagers everywhere must curse: a curfew of, in her case, midnight - wins the Prince's hand in marriage. Hey, it's not my fault these fairy tales are so obsessed with marriage...:)

It is definitely a romantic tale though, this one:) Sighhh...:) And that scene right at the end - you know, the one where Cinderella slides her foot into the glass slipper left behind at the ball - has surely become iconic.

It's not as easy as I'd thought it would be to review a story I enjoy reading so much. I just love, love, love this tale. The imagery in Cinderella is one of the best things about it. Perrault has written his story in such a way that every magical moment becomes one which aids a reader's imagination to grow: a scooped-out pumpkin becomes a carriage, grey mice become six dappled horses and a rat with a large beard becomes a whiskered, jolly coachman. Lizards are surely liveried coachmen the moment one's back is turned (or once wand is waved), and what befits a jewelled gown more than a certain pair of little glass slippers!

I would have liked to be a bystander in this fictional story, watching Cinderella's godmother work her magic with such (it seemed to me anyway) tasteful elegance. Sure'd beat making imaginary shapes out of fat clouds during free minutes in the day anyway:)

Things that surprised me about Cinderella.... Not the magic obviously. I was surprised to be reminded that Cinderella's real father was alive and well while her stepmother was mistreating her, just strangely ignorant of what was happening right under his very nose (how he could not notice a cinder-covered daughter hanging around by the fireplace every odd moment is what I want to know!). Oh, and I'd forgotten that her illustrious nickname was given to her by her younger, kinder stepsister: she was originally called 'Cinderwench' by the elder.

That the King's son was more enamoured by Cinderella's beauty than anything else was a foregone conclusion, but it did make me feel a little disappointed; I blame my disappointment on Drew Barrymore's wonderful big screen adaptation Ever After, a movie which turns the traditional tale on its head in just the right way, and which I recommend without reservation to anyone who's yet to watch it.

Last but not least, that glass slipper... The benefits of being able to fit into dainty glass slippers were never made more obvious to me than they were today. It was quite lowering. Yes, in case you're wondering, my feet are not exactly 'dainty' lol...:)

Okay, I'm waffling on now, aren't I? This is the result of me staying up well past my usual bedtime:) I guess I'd better turn in now. Writing about Cinderella's been a pleasure and I've no doubt I'll be sleeping very well tonight - pumpkins and glass slippers continue to play about in my mind's eye as I type this:) Can't wait to write the post for alphabet 'D'. Can you guess what fairy tale I intend to feature tomorrow? I'm already excited thinking about it, and I'm sure you'll enjoy the coming post!:)

Cheers, folks, and goodnight:)

Fairy Tale Review: C is for 'Cinderella' (atozchallenge)

Fairy Tale Review: B is for 'Beauty and the Beast' (atozchallenge)

Yikes, I'm already falling behind in the challenge, so this is gonna have to be a quick one! The alphabet B immediately brought to mind (of course) the classic tale, Beauty and the Beast.

It's one of the fairy tales that most of us would recognise at once, a staple of popular culture worldwide - no doubt due in part to the many adaptations on screen. Who can forget Belle or Gaston in the Disney version? But I'm trying to go old-school for these posts, so over I pop to my cherished copy of Maria Tartar's The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales.

Beauty and the Beast was written by Madame de Beaumont in 1756. It tells the story of a girl who must ransom her father from a powerful beast by agreeing to stay with the beast in his castle (well, actually, to die in place of her father, if one is being particular about it). But the Beast is not all that he seems, as Beauty soon discovers. She gradually falls in love with the creature, who - if ugly and a little dull -is nevertheless quite kind-hearted and clearly quite smitten with her.

Beauty's good qualities are of course her compassion, virtue and wisdom, not her beauty, something which Beaumont takes pains to point out throughout the story. But I can't quite ignore the fact that the Beast was ugly and dumb, not blind. Hmmm.

Anyway,when Beauty finally declares her feelings for him, an old curse is broken, one which had imprisoned a handsome Prince within the body of the Beast. They live - did you have any doubt? - happily ever after:)

This particular fairy tale was always a problematic one for me. There is a clear romantic subtext to the entire tale; Beauty and the Beast fall in love despite appearances, and triumph over all challenges because of that love. But is that really what the story is saying? I'm never been sure.

It has occured to me (and Tartar points this out as well) that Beauty does not fall in love with the Beast at all, so much as accept his hand in marriage because she respects him and is grateful for his help. Her gratitude binds her to him, as does her very open preference for kindness in her partner as opposed to physical beauty or intelligence or even falling in love.

Don't believe me? Well, Beauty actually spells it out very clearly: "I may not be in love with him, but I feel respect, friendship and gratitude towards him".

Ha that startled you, didn't it?:) I'll admit it startled me too; what can I say, Disney's version has been more on the brain lately than Beaumont's:) Don't fret though, the ending to the tale does imply Beauty feels something warmer than friendship for the Beast, albeit with ambiguous wording.

There was something else that made me go 'hmmmmm' when re-reading the tale. Beauty's sisters ask their father to get them expensive gifts on his way home from port. Beauty asks him only for a rose. It was of course Beauty's humble but unusual request that causes her father to end up in the Beast's castle. I couldn't help thinking at this point: was Beaumont purposefully contrasting the modern, material world of Beauty's sisters with Beast's magical world by use of that innocent rose? A rose to lead to forgotten, natural truths where furs and jewellery would only take one further away from them? Very possible, I think, especially when the Beast declares that his roses are what he loves most in the world ... while he stands very comfortably on the grounds of his lavish castle:)

The other thing that struck me was how issues of privilege and position are littered throughout the tale. As Tartar points out in her commentary, Beauty and the Beast is unusual in that it is a fairy tale that directly features the rise of the bourgeoisie in pre-revolutionary France. We are allowed a glimpse of the choices faced by families where new money creates merely a new brand of snobbery (her sisters) instead of intellectual power and virtue (Beauty), where fortunes of the newly rich could fall or rise with heady unpredictability (as happens when Beauty's merchant father loses his wealth), and where the children of the rich but not noble are becoming increasingly literate despite their lack of high rank.

Beauty is merely the daughter of a merchant, but she reads books. Good books, according to Beaumont:) Not to forget, her father spares no expense in employing tutors for his six children because he is a man of "intelligence and good sense".

Hmmm, doth there be a preachy quality in this piece, Madame Beaumont?

I must confess, Beauty's virtuous nature became a tad annoying after a while, though her practical qualities did make up for it by providing moments of perhaps unintended humour, such as when she wisely quips to the Beast, "You can't be a beast if you know that you lack intelligence. A fool never believes himself to be stupid."  Ha truer words were never spoken:)

All right, my intended-to-be-quick post is becoming very long. I apologise for that and will stop right here. I have my teeth sunk firmly into this tale, but there is simply no way that I can do justice to it in a single blog post:) But Beauty and the Beast has fascinated millions for decades, and I am not immune to its charms, so I've no doubt I'll be revisiting aspects of this tale with more detail some time in the future.

In the meanwhile, I hope you've enjoyed reading this post. May it have inspired those who haven't read the original tale to give Beauty and the Beast a try:) It's definitely a beautifully written, romantic fairy tale -with a difference:)

Fairy Tale Review: B is for 'Beauty and the Beast' (atozchallenge)

Fairy Tale Review: A is for 'Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp'

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp was one of the first fairy tales that filled my mind with the power of jewels and genies, magic and beauty, as well as that singular brand of imagining contained in the tales of the Arabian Nights. Under the auspices of the A to Z Blogging Challenge, I had decided to feature a fairy tale for each day of the month, and Aladdin's story seemed the perfect fit for letter A. So, today, I picked up my edition of Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book with great excitement.

Re-reading Aladdin turned out to be a greater pleasure than I'd expected. Hard to believe, I know, but I'd forgotten how the magician Mustapha came to meet young and lazy Aladdin for the first time, how he got the boy to enter bejewelled caves to steal a glowing lamp, and how he left the boy to die there when he refused to hand the lamp to Mustapha at the cave-mouth. Aladdin, of course, did not die. Instead, he uses a ring Mustapha lent him to summon a genie to get him out of the mess he got himself into and later discovers another - more powerful - genie when his mother rubs that wonderful lamp so desired by Mustapha to get it to shine. Through the powers of the genie of the lamp and the genie of the ring, Aladdin acquires wealth and the love of a beautiful princess, defeating evil Mustapha along the way.

What really surprised me on reading the unabridged version of Aladdin in The Blue Fairy Book was how - for lack of a better word - global it was. The tale is of a Persian Aladdin, an African Mustapha, and though the Princess appears Persian as well, she and Aladdin apparently settle down in a palace in China. How had such details escaped me in the past? Possibly, issues of ethnicity/nationality were not at the forefront of my mind. Nor gender apparently; I was struck this time by how little choice the princess had in her choice of groom, though of course she and Aladdin are deemed to be in love by the end of the tale.

But the most interesting underlying theme that I discovered was one which allowed the tale to end with Aladdin succeeding to the Sultan's reign, leaving behind a line of kings of his own when he dies. I was forcibly reminded at this point that fairy tales often provided relief (metaphorically of course) from those stuck in cycles of poverty by allowing magic to equalise power between the poor and the rich. Aladdin's lamp (or it's genie, to be precise) made up quite cleverly for his lack of a royal lineage by substituting it with great wealth, allowing him to buy his way into the position of Sultan.

I don't think the issues I've noted above would have come across to me quite so clearly when I was a child. I think I was (understandably enough) fascinated more with puffs of smoke and magic, huge hideous genies and shining golden lamps than I was with issues of gender or power; well, to be honest, I think those earlier facets of the story still fascinate me rather more than they perhaps should:)

But I suppose that's not entirely unexpected. I reckon there is no facet of Aladdin that is more important than the other, more worthy of being in the tale than any other, more capable of drawing an emotional response from a reader than any other; all bits and pieces of the tale work in perfect harmony to paint us a richly coloured picture, one that I feel would touch a chord even today with modern audiences.

I guess, the power of fairy tales like Aladdin never really die because they are textured so clearly with the truth of what it can mean to be human in our very complicated human societies that they enchant and educate all at the same time, whatever age a person might be, whatever background they hail from. I doubt I will ever not learn something new when re-reading a fairy tale such as Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.

And that, my friends, really is magic:)

Fairy Tale Review: A is for 'Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp'

Joining the A to Z Blogging Challenge, April 2012

As you may have guessed, I've been on an unexpected hiatus from this blog:) But what better way to get back in the groove than by joining a fascinating blog hop?:) The Blogging From A to Z Challenge is back!

It sounds pretty cool: write 26 posts in April that start with each letter of the alphabet, themed if possible. I've enjoyed reading entries from the challenge in the past, including those in a book of flash fiction by fellow blogger, D. Biswas (do check out Damyanti's delightful A to Z Stories of Life and Death if you can btw), and participating in a challenge like this is something that's been on my mind lately. So, in my usual last-minute fashion, I finally decided to sign up:)

My theme's gonna be straightforward enough. Fairy tales have given me so much joy and pleasure throughout my life, it was a no-brainer to think of featuring one fairy tale a day for this month, all alphabetically arranged, of course! I hope that those hopping over to my blog enjoy the posts, and read the fairy tales if you haven't already:) Otherwise, happy blogging to all:)

Joining the A to Z Blogging Challenge, April 2012