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@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies @elisabethjlane, I wasn't at #pcarom (which is where I assume the conversation happened last week), so I'm probably lacking some important context for this discussion. Please feel free to fill in any obvious gaps or redirect me if I go off track!
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies For context, I'm a folklorist who studies fairy tales and romance - and I'm always happy to wade into definitional discussions about genres.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies I want to make sure that I'm hitting the central part of the question, though. It sounds like it's - at least in part - about the happily ever after and it's place in fairy tales.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies Yes, most European fairy tales do end happily ever after - and most European languages have closing formulae that make this point. In English, it's "happily ever after," but other languages change this up a bit.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies For instance, in various Italian dialects, the formulaic ending is something more like "they lived happily and here we sit without a cent." (If you are interested, I'll get some actual specific examples when I get home!)
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies My favorite example of this is a fairy tale included in the first edition of the Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmarchen but omitted by the 7th edition in 1857 called "The Children Who Played at Slaughtering." Yeah, it ends pretty much the way you expect based on the title.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies And many don't end in marriage. Take, for instance, Little Red Riding Hood (ATU 333). In Charles Perreault's 1697 tale, the wolf eats the grandmother and the little girl, and the audience gets a warning about the dangers of sweet-talking wolves who follow you into your bedroom.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies And the Grimms' version of Little Red Riding Hood from 1812 has a male rescuer figure that releases the grandmother and the girl from the belly of the wolf. (My students often read this restoration as a metaphor for marriage, but there's definitely not one on the page.)
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies An oral version like "The Story of Grandmother" comes closest to a happily ever after because the tricky heroine rescues herself. Plenty of eroticism, but still no marriage. Here's the text: boj.pntic.mec.es/~jmarto1/01tra…
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies Even when traditional oral European fairy tales end in marriage, it's usually not terribly romantic. The prince tries to buy comatose Snow White, for instance.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies Many female protagonists are really just making the best of a terrible situation. Some end up in marriages while running away from incestuous fathers (like Donkeyskin, a story that bears lots of similarities to Cinderella). Some certainly do have some romantic moments, though.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies But in so many others the female protagonists marry their rapists. Yeah, early versions of Sleeping Beauty didn't awaken with a kiss.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies In Basile's "The Sun, the Moon, and Talia," she wakes up when one of the twins she gives birth to sucks the piece of flax from her finger while trying to nurse. Yep. No kiss. But she eventually marries her adulterous rapist. So it's all good, right?
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies There's a Sicilian fairy tale called "The Snake Who Bore Witness for a Maiden" in which a prince rapes the heroine and then plans to marry someone else, except for a marvelous snake who wrecks that plan.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies (Ooops! Just missed my bus stop. Give me a few minutes. I'll eventually get to happily ever afters in fairy tales, I promise!)
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies There is a relatively recent concept of "anti-tale" that denotes fairy tales with a parodic or inverted structure. But Don Haase rightly criticizes this concept, because fairy tales have always had a variety of structures and endings.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies The HEA of fairy tales is, in some ways, a modern invention. Arguably an inevitably of film adaptations that have longer stories with more developed characters.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies And again - if the choice of marrying your rapist or never marrying at a point in history when women had few choices.... Happily ever after means something quite different.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies However, if we look at the literary fairy tales from the French salon writers (mostly women, writing for other women), there are stories with narratives and happily ever afters that much more resembles romances.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies Probably the best known of these is "Beauty and the Beast," originally published in French in a novella length by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot du Villeneuve, then retold by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont as a shorter story in 1756.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies (I'm currently revising an essay on consent in monster bridegroom stories, including Beauty and the Beast, so this tale type is top of mind at the moment.)
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies If you've seen or read, oh, just about any version of Beauty and the Beast - be it Cocteau's film or Disney's or whatever - it almost certainly draws on Beaumont's tale (and, by extension, Villeneuve's).
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies But as will come as no surprise to the romance novelists and scholars out there, the female French salon writers have largely been overlooked by folklorists in favor of the male collectors and editors. Go figure.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies Elizabeth Wanning Harris has an excellent book about this - Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale. press.princeton.edu/titles/7198.ht…
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies So the French women fairy tale writers were writing longer, more complex stories, rather than the shorter stories that are today's canonical fairy tales. (Harries calls these "complex" and "compact" tales.)
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies And we find stories that start to resemble romances among these stories. Again, Beauty and the Beast is probably the best example of this.
@DrLauraVivanco @elisabethjlane @JPRStudies Huh. I think there might be a paper buried in here somewhere. Or at the very least, a lecture for my fairy tale class in the fall.
