Background image

terug

Wives’ tales

Wives’ tales

 Rebecca Abrams    tales in 1697, attributed his    and her mother-in-law.
  sources as “old women, grand-6    Warner takes an unashamedly
  mothers and governesses”, feminist perspective on the genre
 From the Beast to the while the German brothers of fairy tale without resorting to
 Blonde: On Fairy Tales Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, col- didacticism or polemic. Instead,
 and Their Tellers lected many of their stories from she makes her point through
 by MARINA WARNER female friends and relations. sheer weight of evidence. She
 458pp £20 Women, whose speech has so shows, for example, how
 Chatto & Windus often in the past been reviled, aristocratic Frenchwomen in the
  have found in the fairy story a 17th century used fairy tales as
  voice with which to explore a political vehicle to protest
  female experience, sometimes against arranged marriages and
1    “THINK what you would using that voice to challenge financial dependency; and how
 have been now,” Charles social convention, sometimes to vulnerable older women used
 Lamb remarked to Cole- uphold it. tales to assert the value of their
 ridge in 1802,“if instead of being4    Warner is at her strongest experience and knowledge of
 fed with tales and old wives’ when she argues for a historical, life.
 fables in childhood, you had rather than a psychoanalytical,7    But for a book that includes
 been crammed with geography reading of the tales. “The thrust so much, there are some striking
 and natural history!” In fact, as towards universal significance omissions. She entirely neglects
 Marina Warner makes abundant- has obscured the genre’s equal the contribution of the 19th
 ly clear in her new book, From powers to illuminate experiences century Scottish writer, George
 The Beast To The Blonde, many embedded in social and MacDonald, creator of powerful
 of the tales which had fattened material conditions,” she writes. fairy tales often with powerful
 the young Coleridge are as5    With an unfailing eye for heroines. OscarWilde is barely
 rooted in social and historical small, quirky details, magpie- mentioned. Even Hans Chris-
 reality as any geography lesson like, she tracks down these glit- tian Andersen is passed over
 would have been. tering trinkets and assembles with frustrating rapidity. An-
2    Following on from earlier them into a convincing argu- other striking absence from this
 books, such as Alone of All Her ment for the historical relevance otherwise comprehensive study
 Sex and Monuments and Mai- of these tales. Stories such as is the cycle of stories which
 dens, in which she explored Bluebeard and Beauty and the have boys as their key protago-
 myths and symbolism from a Beast reflect very real, and rea- nists: Puss in Boots,Tom
 feminist perspective,Warner has listic, fears of the consequences Thumb,DickWhittington, Jack
 now turned her attention to that of marriage: before the age of And The Beanstalk.
 enduringly intriguing corner of reliable contraception or mod-8    In her otherwise compelling
 the fictional world: the fairy ern obstetrics, love led invar- analysis of the family relations
 tale.The book is divided into iably to the perils of pregnancy. portrayed in fairy stories,
 two sections; the first half looks The murdered wives of Blue- Warner makes scant mention of
 at the women and men who beard may have been the the brother/sister relationship,
 have been responsible over the victims of childbirth; likewise, yet this is a central theme in
 centuries for the transmission, the dead mothers of Snow many classic fairy stories
 collection and publication of White, Cinderella and countless (Hansel and Gretel, Babes in
 fairy tales, while the second half other fairytale heroines.The theWood), and highly relevant
 examines the tales themselves, prevalence of unsympathetic to the rest of Warner’s
 their overt and covert meanings, step-mothers would also have investigation of the genre.
 their relation to social customs reflected the social reality of a9    Paradoxically, the book suf-
 and contexts, and their evolution society in which women died fers most from an occasional
 from the sometimes macabre to young and widowers quickly surfeit of information. Unlike
 the often saccharine. It is remarried.Warner is the fairy tale itself, that exquisite
 lusciously illustrated throughout particularly revealing in her distillation of history, myth and
 with pictures of etchings, wood- analysis of the term “step- experience, it seems
 cuts, frescos, comic books and mother”, which she argues occasionally at risk of buckling
 film stills. could denote a husband’s under the weight of its own
3    According to Warner, women mother, as well as a father’s facts. Nevertheless, From The
 have traditionally been the keep- wife. Seen in this light, fairy Beast To The Blonde is unques-
 ers of these tales, passing them tales articulate and explore not tionably a work of immense
 on in the enclosed worlds of the only a young woman’s anxieties erudition and impressive scope.
 bedroom, the kitchen and the about her new husband, but also 
 nursery. Charles Perrault, the the fraught and often hostile 
 Frenchman who published one relationship between a new wife Rebecca Abrams is one of the
 of the first collections of fairy  Guardian’s regular reviewers

‘The Guardian’, November 8, 1994