On the subject of fairy tales

Now this has been occupying my mind a lot as several of my friends have been sharing link about how fairy tales stigmatize women and how they are all about the boys being heroes.

Well now that is actually utter rubbish!

Admittedly when fairy tales where recorded on paper, like the Grimm brothers did, they had already been partially adjusted as they had been passed on from generation to generation to fit the Christianised patriarchal world and the collectors of stories certainly tweaked them some more to fit their current society. However many parts of the old magic and wisdom of those tales could not be entirely erased (or were left in on purpose just harder to find) and are still there in fragments if you know how to look for them. As for the illusion that it's the boys/men that are the heroes? Well that's the even more modernised 20's century story telling.

The real sleeping beauty had no prince fighting a dragon to claim her. Luckily Disney has been a bit more feminist in recent years but they certainly did their share of obscuring stories and twisting them into a more male dominated setting and they have to work hard to redeem themselves for it.

Now I do have the advantage to have grown up in the country where most of those (in)famous fairy tales where originally collected or at least published for the first time and hence grew up with less diluted versions of the stories so let me share my few of some.

Let us look at some of the most popular tales of the damsel in distress and what it is really about (in my humble opinion).

Sleeping Beauty:

Sleeping beauty's story was never about her or the prince that claimed her but about the king and his arrogance of attempting to set aside the old ways without any heed for the consequences. Instead of using the 13 silver plates, associated with the moon, the lunar year and the old wisdom and female power, the king decided to use 12 golden plate, associated with the sun, the solar calender, the 12 Apostles and the christianised new world.

The king went on to not just randomly exclude one of the 13 fairies but choose to exclude the one he deemed of least interest to him and his new world that represented the darker aspects of life, reflection and death and her gift would have been the spinning wheel, the tool of old that almost all goddesses of life and death posses, The weaving of life’s tapestry starts with the thread. But the king decided his girl would not need to learn to spin, such a common and degrading task does not befit the daughter of a king.

So at the birthday feast of the little princess when the 13^th Fairy storms in and curses the child she is righteously angry. It is not an attack on the small infant but on the king and his arrogant ways. The princess is also not alone affected in this curse but only the catalyst. 100 years of sleep shall befall her and all the castle inhabitants on her 16^th birthday as she pricks her finger on the needle of a spinning wheel. A great thorny hedge shall spring up around the castle to protect it while it sleeps (all of them, the girl, the king, the queen, the cook, the stable boy etc). No person shall be able to cross it.

So of cause the king sets out to bring about his own doom. Destroying all the spinning wheels destroyed also a great deal of industry in his country. So his country grows poorer and poorer over the years as no fabrics are made or sold and all those important goods have to be imported from other places. In other words the kind destroyed his whole power base by crippling his economy.

Of cause the curse can not be evaded and the princess does become the catalyst by pricking her finger on the day of her birthday.

So the whole castle is put to sleep for 100 years. There is no once the right guy comes along he gets the princess, no dragon to fight no it's purely time based. In those 100 years time goes on outside the castle walls, where will the king be king after he wakes up? His lands will have long gone to his neighbouring kingdoms and so the king will have lost his throne in all but name by the time the curse looses it's potency.

The whole story is about teaching us that you can't disregard old wisdom on a whim without having to face the consequences. So our damsel in distress is really of little importance by herself and only significant in her role as catalyst for the events around her just as her prince is no hero but only a lucky sod that happened to be in the right place at the right time. The only thing that could be said about the prince is that he might have been a decent guy as he went with no expectations into the castle. After all man tried for a 100 years not believing that the hedge could not be crossed and then eventually giving it up as lunacy to try. All the rapist, bounty hunters, grave robbers, power seekers had tried themselves in the previous 100 years and the hedge defied them and killed them so no one would try any more regardless of the imagined riches.

So yes the princess and the prince get their wedding but the king has lost his power and all he has to give now is his daughter and that is taken as well by a foreign prince. The kingdom is dissolved even though it's never quite put that way in the story.

Snow White:

Now what about Snow White? Another damsel in distress. No here we have the fore rider for the all demure female, the acceptance of the role the patriachat lays on us.

Here we do have again the struggle between old female power and the male run world. This is to me is the more distressing story as it shows the new worlds victory. It shows the battle between old magic and new piety. Snow whites step mother is a matriarchal female that takes her female power as a given and is hence villainized.

Snow white itself is what the new world wants a female to be like, beautiful, helpless, gentle, soft only known for her beauty and piety. So not only does she inflame dislike in the new queen for not being her own flesh and blood but also because she has been brought up in the new world to be this sorry little excuse for a female.

Now we see the queens attempts on killing snow white as evil and gruesome but we might also argue that it is her attempt to groom Snow White into her own power. It is the shamanistic journey of trials that most heroes have to pass through. Alas snow white fails badly or is hindered by the well wishing men, which ever take you wish to take on this.

With each trial it is a men that help her, “rescue” her out of the precarious situation. It is the hunter who will not take her heart because he pities the girl and he can not find it in him to destroy such beauty, it is one of the dwarfs each time the queen assails her first by cutting her corset and then removing the poisoned comb. The piece of apple is not magically dislodged by the princes kiss but is dislodged as the dwarfs stumble on the uneven ground and drop the casket.

To me this story shows clearly how the initiation rituals into female power fail and how the protagonist accepts her new role as the helpless women. Although it could be argued that the rituals are forcefully taken from her. As she submits to each trial willingly but before transformation can take effect, which often accures through precieved death and it's journey through it into life once more, she never gets that chance as there are always men to “rescue” her from becoming more.

In some stories it ends with her marring the prince but in some we find one further humiliation of the feminine by inviting the queen to the wedding feast and giving her magic dance slippers so she has to dance until exhausting claims her and she dies.

If we assume that snow white wished to follow the path of initiation into power it is a gruesome story as we see how the now all powerful male strips each rite away from her. If we see her as the pies girl she outwardly betrays then the story is the more gruesome as we have women set against women. The old power of feminine wisdom and magic against the helpless sweetness the male dominated age presses us into.

The more ironic as snow white is a child of the old magic, called with blood in prayer to the old gods.

Cinderella:

Another story of the damsel in distress is of cause Cinderella

I never understood how the modern betrayal of this story with a fairy god mother creating a carriage out of a pumpkin ever enticed girls to love it.

But this Disney version has been accepted as so common that the old one is hardly known. Here is the shocker there was no fairy!

When Cinderella's mother died she and her father planted a tree over her grave so part of her soul may always stay with them.

When the father remarried also in hope to provide his child with another female role model he may not have chosen wisely. Then again it has to be understood that Cinderella as the first born and with no male siblings would have been the one to inherit the estate and nothing would come to her step mother or her step mothers two daughters of a previous marriage.

Of cause the step mother looks out for her own children and being aware that both her daughters are neither bright nor particularly beautiful she must hope to somehow marry them off well if she does not want them to live on the street one day.

Now this is a story deeply entrenched in old magic. Once Cinderella is put to work in the kitchens for the first time in her life learning hardship and understanding the workings of the different social shifts. (yes yes we see her as a nice and good girl however she has been brought up as the lone heir of a large estate that she knew anything of kitchen work or washing laundry is to be doubted, even more so as the father undoubtedly doted on her after the mothers death).

Seeing and understanding the needs, wishes and hopes of the common people is an initiation putting good principles into practice. It's an initiation journey grooming her to be a good ruler over her estate or in the stories case the country.

Now as the princes ball nears (by the by note that it's actually the prince being sold off as a price, yes he may choose from many but he is still made to marry and put up as a price piece of meat) of cause her step mother does not wish her to go, that would completely eradicate her daughters chances. So she sets the impossible task to sort a bowl of lentils that she throws on the floor.

Here Cinderella gets her first help from the birds that she feeds, that see her go about her daily tasks with good cheer despite her actual station, helping to sort them out into good ones and bad ones.

She then visits the grave of her mother to lament that she may not go to the ball. So a bird in the tree speaks to her that if it is really her wish to go she may shake the tree and says the magic words so her wish will be granted. So on each of the three nights (3 being an important number, maiden, mother crone) she goes to the tree and says the magic words and each time she is given a dress more magnificent then before ranging from the gentle greens and whites of spring, to the red and gold of summer to silver and blue of the years end. So she bedazzles the prince with the magic colours of the earth to the point that the prince only sees the power of the magic but not the women behind it. He sees the unearthly beauty of female divine, of all the phases of life.

Hence he is left with the task to find her with only her slipper as a guide. Now both sisters are told to cut of her big toe and her heel respectively to fit into the shoe just for the price to find on his way home to the castle that the birds tell him that the bleeding girl on his horse can't be the right one. Some have argued that the blood in the shoe is indicative of menstrual blood and that the two virgin sisters can't be his bride therefore. (3 balls over three weeks on the 4^th week the prince comes looking I can see the point).

In any case it is the princes magic initiation into the story as spirit guides help him find the women he is supposed to marry. They help him recognise that the demure female he carries each time is not the wild women he danced with.

Cinderella in her turn waits to see if he will still come for her when she is not dressed in the glamour of the old magic, in unearthly beauty, if he can see past it and will still take her as she is then he might deserve to have her.

There are lessons for both to learn. As counties were not ruled by the supreme power of men alone but with the council and advise of a women of the old ways and here we are with both parties being tested. But all that gets swept under the carpet as Disney glorifies the ball gown, the non existent pumpkin and the shoes.

Rapunzel:

This leads to another damsel in distress Rapunzel

The most misunderstood story of all.

All we ever hear of it is bad witch kidnaps young girl and prince comes in to rescue her. Again this is not a story about him at all. As so often as you must have seen the prince is really just the dude that happens to traps along more by chance then anything else.

Rapunzel was not kidnapped but bargained. When Rapunzels natural mother was pregnant she had such a longing for the Rapunzels (commonly known now as field salad) in the garden of her neighbour that her husband would steal them for her, even though the next door women was known to be a wise women, a witch a magi.

So once the wise women came across the thief she chided him but let him proceed in exchange for the daughter that would be born to them (this is not a stealing of the child but a fostering arrangement). As the child was fed by her magic salad so the child would be hers to be brought up in her ways.

Becoming a wise women was an honour not a curse back in the old days so the couple agreed to it and the child was left with the parents for a year and a day or sometimes longer before coming into the custody of the wise women.

The removal to the tower is symbol for the removal from society. As with all sages, saints and wise people, magicians in stories true study will only ever be from one teacher/guide to one student and so for the cycle of three times 7 years (often years are not specified but it is only said that Rapunzel grew to full womanhood as she stayed in the tower) Rapunzel was taught in the ways of the wise women.

I mean really what did you think a witch would do with a small girl for 21 years? Why go through this fuss just to lock her up? That does seem silly, does it not?

So Rapunzel was taught in the magic of the earth, the healing and the songs of the birds, she would have been initiated into the female mysteries of life and death, of birth and motherhood, she would learn to read the stars, interpret the skies, read the fire, she would learn about the moon and the sun, the properties of water. Now a teacher can only teach you so much before one has to go out into the world and learn for themselves. So the prince that falls for Rapunzel, this women that is so different from all others he has ever encountered, one that brims with power and knowledge has to be made his. You could say that Rapunzel has been cunningly set up or the prince for that matter so he may have a bride that knows the old ways.

After all the wise women was never intend on keeping the girl forever, as we all have to let go eventually. So she cuts Rapunzel's hair and put her out of the tower and as the prince climbs up to “free” his bride the wise women unties the hair and drops the prince in the bushes where he losses his eye sight.

Here his initiation starts. He stumbles for a long time coming to terms with his loss of power till Rapunzel eventually finds him and with her tears heals his sightless eyes. Another magic not of virginal purity but of old magic as the prince learns to see the world through her eyes making him a better person to rule his kingdom. So Rapunzel continues to learn her magic of air and speech of perception and illusion as she advises her husband at court.

What about others? 

Now what about all those beautiful stories that we do not hear about all the time. What about the many girls and boys that go out on their shamanic journey without wearing ball gowns and crowns?

No fairy tale was ever about the happy ever after it was always about the learning process, the journey, the knowledge attained, the bettering of ones person, the harmony with nature, the heeding the advise of the old wisdom and sometimes about sacrifice.

In so many fairy tales it is the girl that goes out and undergoes initiation in the old ways (The Holler women being a great example or Vasili and Baba Jaga) or she goes out to redeem her wayward brothers/lovers through trial and sacrifice (brother and sister, the 6 swans or the 7 ravens). It is about the youngest son who does not impress by wining the day through heroic deeds of fighting ability or some other “manly” nonsense that the modern world praises but wins his battles against all odd by listening to the old women, the fairies the spirit guides on his way (the 3 feathers, queen bee, puss in boots).

It is about the ones that listen, that endure, that change, that embrace the wisdom and the unusual, that think outside the box who make their luck.

And then we have the fairy tales that are about folly and greed like the ever full pot of porridge, Tischlein deck dich, The man and the fish and many more. Few tales are actually about women or men per say but about the journey a person must undergo.

Alas in the last century only the tales with the apparent happily ever after with princes and princesses get prestige. And most of those fairy tales have been brushed up to be more Christian more patriachal in appearance, some have been downright made into battle fields for the new ways of male dominance but if you look closely at the stories (not the Disney versions with all the life sucked out of them or modern rewrites that just miss the point completely) you will find a whole new world of symbolism and wisdom.

The original stories themselves should not be condemned as sexist as they still brim with magic and wisdom of old but the retelling them in these horrendous misogynistic ways that is what needs to be fought. We should not disregard to old tales but reclaim them. rewrite them ourselves as they ought to be.

When we are enraged about the modern way the above stories in particular are betrayed as damsel in distress tales it is also interesting to note when these initiates into female power were being transformed to purely demure figures (most potently by the mega company Disney 1937 Snow White, 1950 Cinderella, 1959 Sleeping beauty).When women in America won the vote for the female sex in the 20's many men believed that's it, what more could they want. But the vote was the first mile stone so as women became more vocal about equality and gaining momentum. So it could be argued that retelling stories in a more acceptable way for the male run world was a cunning attack right at the core of the new generation. Give young girls demure, pretty, homely figures as heroines that end up with a rich husband and a castle. Just a thought.