174
Notes to Chapter 1
process by using one of its examples and conducts an analysis based solely
on Andrew Lang’s
Blue Fairy
book (published in the late nineteenth century),
negating to look at alternative heroines in more recent collections or offer-
ing any evidence of wider research to support her argument.
3. Lurie’s claims not only heralded a key debate in feminist criticism, they also
instigated a re-evaluation of fairy tales, resulting in new collections featuring
assertive heroines, and a wider cache of characters to inspire audiences and
later writers.
4. Marina Warner’s book
From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their
Tellers
(1995) similarly argues the case for regarding fairy tales as a woman’s
genre, used to covertly discuss mutual experiences and concerns. In her 1986
essay ‘To Spin a Yarn’, Rowe makes a similar contention.
5. Ironically, Lieberman did single out a particular strand of fairy tales she
approved of – Animal Groom tales involving ‘female questers’ who jour-
ney to the ends of the earth for a man, such as ‘East of the Sun and West
of the Moon’ (ATU 425A), claiming the heroine plays an ‘agentive’ role in
re-humanising a character. While this plot is seemingly just as regressive as
waiting for a prince, romanticising self-sacrifice in the name of love, the
heroine is admired for being ‘active’, irrespective of motivation. Lieberman’s
article is reprinted in Zipes (1984: 185–200).
6. ‘Kate Crackernuts’ is especially notable because it confronts so many ten-
dencies often targeted by critics – while retaining marriage as the ultimate
reward. The less attractive girl is the heroine, who disenchants the prettier
half-sister her mother has disfigured, using her wits to ultimately marry
them both off to princes.
7. Stone has since made the most of this ability to imaginatively transform
tales. (See her essays ‘Burning Brightly’ (1993) and ‘Fire and Water’ (2004),
in which she explains how two Grimm tales are retold to create heroines
with greater agency and significance, allowing a punished girl to live in her
version of ‘Frau Trude’ and changing the gender of the male hero in ‘The
Water of Life’). These strategies were anticipated by Heather Lyons and
Carolyn Heilbrun in the late seventies, while the seventeenth-century
con-
teuses
disguised and cross-dressed their heroines for similar ends: to counter
the constraints of their gender and time.
8. Lucy Armitt cites Waelti-Walters in this observation (1982: 80), quoted
by Armitt (1996: 28).
9. In early versions Snow White originated as the object of a king’s desire
(a variation collected by the Grimms and later elaborated by Carter), Sleeping
Beauty is a victim of sexual abuse (a motif discussed later in this chapter), and
Cinderella’s abasement among the ashes is explicable as a means of deterring an
incestuous father (an idea that related tale type ‘Donkeyskin/Catskin/All-kinds-
of-fur’ (ATU 510B) expounds, presenting a darker explanation for the heroine’s
disguise and flight from home, as noted by Tatar (1992) and Warner (1995)).
10. Zipes (2002a) elaborates his evaluation of the transition fairy tales have
undergone.
11. See Maria Tatar’s
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: