Complete Fairy Tales
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19 This applies even though the language of the Pentamerone is a difficult Neapolitan dialect, which Perrault is unlikely to have read with any facility; it was not translated into French until after his death. He could have had the help of an intermediary.
20 Collinet edition, p. 28. The argument was attributed to unspecified ‘connoisseurs’: very probably a disguise for Perrault, who was on good terms with the editor; the article would have been publicity for the Contes.
21 ‘Si Peau d’Ane m’était conté | J’y prendrais un plaisir extrême’; Fables, VIII. iv.
22 She figured in a well-known hagiographic work by the Portuguese writer Ribadaneira, Flos sanctorum (‘The Flower of the Saints’) often published in French translation during the seventeenth century. See Warner, Beast to Blonde, ch. 20.
23 Antti Aarne, The Types of the Folk Tale, A Classification and Bibliography, revised and enlarged by Stith Thompson, 1961 (first edition 1928), but superseded since 2004 by Hans-Jörg Uther’s further revision (see Select Bibliography).
24 For further details see Appendix A, on Donkey-Skin.
25 ‘The tale of Donkey-Skin is told to children, day in day out, by their governesses and grandmothers’; see below, p. 4.
26 For a valuable discussion of this stylization and related topics, see Max Lüthi, Once Upon a Time, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press (1970), ch. 3.
27 Two possible counter-examples: in Sleeping Beauty there is no real need for the dwarf with seven-league boots and the fairy’s flying chariot; nor for the apparition of the cooks from underground in Ricky the Tuft. This resembles the dance interludes common in theatrical entertainments in Perrault’s time, but contributes little to the story apart from recalling the underground kingdom of the goblins, the origin of Ricky no doubt being the figure of the Goblin King (see Collinet’s edition, p. 290).
28 As she does throughout the tale: in the scene with her sisters after she returns from the ball she has already become aware of her own privileged position.
29 Though even here there is sufficient reason in the narrative for her to hide it; the sexual innuendo is additional, not essential.
30 Subtitled The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, New York: Knopf (1976); see for example p. 5. Devotees of Perrault have to allow for a degree of prejudice against him in what Bettelheim says.
31 Both are type 510 in Aarne-Thompson-Uther (following Marian Roalfe Cox’s work of 1893). ATU simply calls type 510A Cinderella and type 510B by Perrault’s title Peau d’ne.
32 It is interesting that in a much older version, the Ninth Captain’s Tale in The 1001 Nights, things are more relaxed: the affair between prince and beautiful girl is only slightly worrying for his mother, who collaborates with her to make the union permanent. See Appendix A.
33 Aarne-Thompson Type 440, the animal bridegroom. In this, Perrault’s version is distinct from the two contemporary literary tales to which it must be related, by Mlle Lhéritier and Mlle Bernard (see Appendix A), since in them the idea that the woman is reconciled to the man’s ugliness is not found.
34 A further example of the tendency to eliminate the ‘nastiness’ of fairy-tale is to be found in a recent version of Red Riding-Hood published in the Ladybird series: the wolf survives to become vegetarian.
35 See an article by Yvonne Verdier, often reproduced or summarized: ‘Grandsmères, si vous saviez: Le Petit Chaperon rouge dans la tradition orale’, Cahiers de la littérature orale, 4 (1978); and Appendix A on Red Riding-Hood below.
36 Beast to Blonde, 244–6. Some of the comments she records make a connection with the sin of Eve, desire for sexual knowledge; but Eve was a virgin, unlike— presumably—Bluebeard’s wife.
37 Warner, Beast to Blonde, 261. She comments that the pictures ‘anticipate very satisfyingly the fairytale ogre, as chronicled by Perrault’.
38 This is Bettelheim’s view (The Uses of Enchantment), it seems; curiously, he says very little about the fear of cannibalism. See his discussion of Hansel and Gretel, especially p. 166 on the witch being a ‘fantastically exaggerated’ personification of the child’s ‘immature dread’.
39 Note to the dedicatory lines in Donkey-Skin; below, p. 52. The reason for the past tense ‘ate’ is probably that ogres are supposed to belong to times past.
40 Bettelheim, Uses of Enchantment, 27. He mentions that the mother knew that her son had fantasies about cannibalism, and like many parents was doubtful of the wisdom of telling her child a tale containing horrific elements.
41 Although we are told by Freudian analysis that water is one of the commonest symbols of sexual activity.
42 Perhaps the most familiar, though very late, example is Figaro in his first incarnation, in Beaumarchais’s Barber of Seville.
43 The chapter ‘A la Conquête du pouvoir’ in Le Récit est un piège, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit (1978), included as ‘Recipes for Power’ in Food for Thought, translation by Mette Hjort of his La Parole mangée, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press (1997).
44 The Folktale, New York: Dryden (1946) (quoted from the 1977 edition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), 461).