Feminist Fairy Tales

by Barbara G. Walker

  The broken body was found the next morning. People wondered how a fall from the parapet above could have inflicted so much damage to the neck, which was squeezed as if by a garrotte. Some officials came up to the parapet and poked around for clues. The gargoyle calmly watched them, his tongue sticking out between his fangs. They didn’t notice his slightly bloodstained claws.

  The priests of the cathedral soon solved the mystery by declaring that the man had been attacked by devils and fought valiantly against them while he was striving to reach the safety of the cathedral; but unfortunately one of them managed to choke him to death before he got to the door.

  A day or two later, Marie herself came up to the parapet. She went from one gargoyle to another, gazing earnestly into each stone face. She carried a wreath of flowers and a small candle in a cup. When she came to the corner gargoyle, she draped the wreath over his head, laid the cup at his feet, lighted the candle, and sat beside him. She looked down on the roof of her house. The window was being repaired.

  Marie fell into the habit of visiting the parapet every few weeks. She would bring small offerings for the gargoyle and sit and talk to him. The gargoyle was delighted.

  One day Pierre followed her, unseen. From behind a pillar he watched her place a bouquet of daisies in the gargoyle’s lap, pat his spiky shoulder, and settle herself beside him. Then Pierre jumped out of hiding and seized Marie’s arm.

  “Marie, what are you doing?” he cried. “Have you become a worshiper of devils?”

  Startled, Marie turned to face her lover. She drew herself up, shook off Pierre’s hand, and said, “I don’t think that’s any of your business, Pierre.”

  “My business? Of course it’s my business! You are to be my wife. I must be concerned if my wife has taken to devil worship.”

  “This is not a devil. He’s just a gargoyle. But most important, he saved my life. I owe him some recognition as my savior.”

  “Marie, what are you saying? This is blasphemy, madness, delusion. The image of your savior is downstairs behind the altar.”

  “Sorry, Pierre. That’s not so. He never did anything for me. Here is the one who saved me.” She put her hand on the gargoyle’s folded wing. “I know, Pierre, because I was there and you were not. I misjudged him when I first saw him, and thought him a bad dream. Now I know better.”

  Pierre embraced her with tears in his eyes. “My poor sweetheart, your dreadful experience has unhinged your mind. I fear the church fathers will hear of it and accuse you of witchcraft and devil worship. You know what would happen then, Marie. It’s so terrible, I don’t even want to think about it. I couldn’t bear to lose you, especially not that way.”

  “What do you think, then? Have they put images of devils all over their holy building to entice people to worship devils?”

  “I don’t know why the church fathers do any of the things they do. Ours is not to reason why, Marie. The point is, they have the power to break your body and burn your soul if you question them. Please stop bringing offerings to this little devil here, before they catch you. I’m so afraid for you.”

  Marie snorted. “I think there’s something very wrong with a world where rapists and murderers are not caught but harmless women are. I know you have physical courage, my dear, but I fear you haven’t much courage of the mind. I like my gargoyle. I feel comfortable here, looking at the view with him. That’s all anyone has to know. Let it be my private place, Pierre. I won’t give it up for anyone, not even for you.”

  Pierre hesitated. “You know the church burns women to death for less than this,” he said. “You know you must never seem to say anything irrational or…or different.”

  “I know,” said Marie. “Let it be our secret.”

  Pierre kissed her and agreed, though he still looked worried. Marie gave the gargoyle a final pat and a wink behind Pierre’s back. Then the two lovers walked away, arm in arm.

  The gargoyles envied their corner colleague, who was actually liked and defended by a real human. They assured him that he was now superior to the indoor statues who had done nothing to deserve the honor.

  Marie did take up a few simple procedures of white witchery that somehow came into her head while she sat beside her gargoyle. A few neighbors very quietly came to know her as a healer and wise woman, but the church fathers never heard anything about her. Presently, Marie and Pierre were married in the cathedral. A few days later, Marie brought the gargoyle a tiny piece of her wedding cake.

  Marie and Pierre lived happily ever after and had children who grew up in the same street under the gargoyle’s eye. He enjoyed watching their games and pastimes. Sometimes he seemed to wear a smile around the tongue that stuck out between his fangs.

  NINETEEN

  The three generations of women in this story wear the traditional colors of the trinity of Virgin, Mother, and Crone—the gunas, white, red, and black. Since little Riding Hood is the maiden, her color is white and she is called the daughter of our familiar fairy tale heroine Red.

  Today’s new earth-consciousness necessitates a new view of the hunter. He, representing man’s destructive exploitation of the wilderness, is not the hero but the villain of the piece, replacing the wolf, who represents the spirit of the wilderness itself. Wolves are not known to eat living people. Thus, the old tale’s version of wolfish appetite for human flesh is another canard, probably created to make children fear and loathe the dogs of the forest because of their possible impact on pastoral economics.

  She stood up and grabbed a stout stick.

  Once upon a time there was a little girl called White Riding Hood because she always wore a snow white hood when she went out riding or walking. She lived with her mother, Red Riding Hood, in a cottage on the edge of the great forest. White Riding Hood’s grandmother (who always wore black) lived in another cottage deep within the forest, a long way from inhabited and cultivated lands. Nevertheless, people often traveled the winding forest road to visit White Riding Hood’s grandmother, because she was known far and wide as a powerful witch who could cure diseases, set broken bones, deliver babies, give sound advice, and create charms for love, good luck, abundant crops, and clement weather. She could communicate with spirits of trees and wild animals. Her cottage was surrounded by pens where she kept an ever-changing assortment of convalescent forest creatures whose injuries she healed.

  One day White Riding Hood’s mother made up a basket of staples—salt, flour, honey, cheese, dried lentils, and other foodstuffs—for White Riding Hood to carry to her grandmother. She would stay for several days, bringing the basket back later with various herbs and roots that the grandmother gathered. White Riding Hood was happy to obey, because she loved to visit her grandmother. The forest cottage offered birds and animals to observe and play with, and it smelled richly of the herbal concoctions that her grandmother brewed. There was always something interesting going on there.

  White Riding Hood’s grandmother had taught her many things about plants, stones, stars, winds, and waters. She also taught her granddaughter to respect the wild creatures. She was especially fond of the shy forest wolves, whose habits she had studied by long and patient observation.

  She insisted that the wolves were not the ferocious vermin that some people claimed they were, but highly intelligent, loyal, noble-hearted dogs, gentle with their own kind and even with humans who didn’t threaten them. The grandmother had cured several wolves of sickness and healed injuries inflicted on them by hunters or by trappers who set the vicious leg-hold traps. She had earned the trust of these wolves, and they came back occasionally to visit her. She had learned how to behave nonthreateningly in the presence of a wolf pack, so she would not be attacked. She taught White Riding Hood the proper attitudes that the wolves could recognize, and made her realize that if she behaved appropriately, she had nothing to fear from these forest dogs. Therefore, White Riding Hood never felt nervous in the forest, even when she heard the wolves’ eerie howling as they organized their hunts.

>   Fresh morning light sparkled brightly on the dewdrops as White Riding Hood set off on her errand, carrying her basket and whistling cheerily in response to the birds. She walked several miles into the woods and then sat down beside a stream to drink and rest. As she sat there, a pair of hunters came along, carrying a large dead wolf slung from a pole between them.

  White Riding Hood was horrified to see that the wolf was a mother whose distended teats suggested an orphaned litter of pups somewhere, and that her left hind leg had been trapped and chewed away up to the hock.

  “Hey there, little girl,” the elder hunter said. “See what we caught for you? One less wolf to worry about.”

  “I don’t worry about wolves,” White Riding Hood responded. “And that’s a terrible thing you did, making a mother die in agony, chewing her leg because she was trying to get back to her children.”

  Suddenly angry, the hunter said, “You’ve a nasty mouth on you, little girl. Maybe we ought to take some time to teach you proper respect for your elders.”

  The other hunter giggled and shuffled his feet, a vacant expression on his face. “Look, Will, she’s old enough, isn’t she?” he coaxed. “She’s old enough to do it to, isn’t she? Hey, Will, let’s do it to her. Can we, Will? Can we?”

  White Riding Hood’s mother had warned her about the hurtful intentions of certain men toward little girls. She stood up and grabbed a stout stick.

  “Hey now,” growled Will, “you wouldn’t want to try fighting a couple of big strong men, and get yourself all beat up and dirty, and that nice white hood spoiled, just because you don’t show enough respect. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to you like what happened to this here wolf, would you?”

  “You mean you’d put me in a trap and hack my leg off?” White Riding Hood said. She planted her feet apart and held her stick ready to strike. She was too angry to feel afraid, even though she knew her position was dangerous and if the men chose to fight her, she would inevitably lose.

  The weak-minded one giggled again at her words. “Go on, grab her, Will,” he snuffled.

  “Don’t you touch me, or I’ll tell my grandmother on you,” White Riding Hood threatened. “She’s the witch of the Great Forest, and she’ll put a spell on you to make your feet turn backwards and your ears fall off. You’ll be sorry.”

  “I’ve heard about her,” Will sneered. “She’s a devil who can turn herself into a wolf. If that’s your grandmother, you’ve got evil blood in you, girl.”

  “Go on, Will, grab her, grab her,” the younger one said again.

  Will hesitated, then turned away with a contemptuous gesture. “She’s not worth a scuffle,” he blustered. “And we’ve got to get to the rest of the trapline. Forget it, Rollo.”

  “Aw, come on, come on, Will,” Rollo whined. “She’s old enough, isn’t she? Come on, let’s do it to her.”

  “I said no, Rollo,” the older hunter snapped, and his companion cowered. They turned and marched away, leaving White Riding Hood to her own devices. She dropped her stick, picked up her basket, and ran to get away from the hunters as fast as possible.

  When she arrived at her grandmother’s cottage, she told her grandmother about the two hunters. “I know that pair,” the grandmother said. “They’re as mean as can be. I know how we can foil them, but it will have to wait for tomorrow. Right now, we should go out and see if we can find those orphan cubs before it’s too late.”

  So White Riding Hood and her grandmother went out to check the various wolf dens that the grandmother knew. Sure enough, in the third one they found four very hungry infant pups crying for their mother. White Riding Hood wrapped two in her cloak, and her grandmother took the other two. They carried the pups back to the cottage. The grandmother showed White Riding Hood how to feed them with warm goat’s milk from small bottles with leather nipples. They seemed to digest it well enough, and soon they were sleeping contentedly in a straw-lined box near the hearth.

  White Riding Hood was so enchanted with the baby wolves that she didn’t get around to looking at the other animals until the next morning. This time her grandmother had a fawn with a fractured leg, a hawk with a broken wing, and a raccoon who’d had three toes pulled off by a trap and was recovering from an acute infection.

  After tending to these creatures, the grandmother took tools and set off with White Riding Hood to visit the hunters’ traplines. She carefully sprang each trap and then broke it, throwing away the springs and leaving behind only scattered pieces of metal. One trap she left intact and carried home. She concealed it and set it at her front doorstep, saying to White Riding Hood, “Now we’ll see what we catch. I know those fellows will be coming by here when they find out what happened to their traps.”

  Her prediction came true early the next morning, when Will and Rollo showed up, enraged, at her gate.

  “Come on out of there, old witch,” Will roared. “I know it was you who broke our traps. Come on out and take what’s coming to you.”

  “Come and get me if you dare,” the grandmother called. She wrapped herself in a bedsheet and put over her head a grotesque mask carved and painted to look like a huge wolf with bared teeth. It had a long, purplish-red tongue that she could push in and out between the big teeth by using her own tongue.

  Holding his gun in readiness to shoot, Will charged up to the door with Rollo following. He raised his foot to kick the door open, but at the same time his supporting foot was seized by the trap that sprang up from under the carpet of leaves. He fell heavily on his side. The gun went off, blowing some twigs off a maple tree, and flew out of his hands.

  The grandmother threw the door open and appeared in her wolf mask, a hatchet in her hand. Yanking fruitlessly at the trap, Will began to scream. Rollo stuttered, “Wh-what b-big teeth you have, Grandma!”

  “The better to eat you with!” the grandmother shouted, and neatly split Will’s skull with her hatchet. Rollo turned and ran as if all the devils in hell were after him. He was never seen in the forest again.

  Later the grandmother chopped up the hunter’s body into manageable pieces and strewed them in the forest for the wolves to eat.

  Little White Riding Hood went home the next day. When her mother asked her what she had done at Grandmother’s house, she said, “Well, we helped feed some wolves.”

  TWENTY

  This story is a retelling of two myths. The first is the Greek myth of Zeus’s attack, out of his resentment of their godlike bliss, on the hermaphrodites of the Golden Age. The second is the Babylonian myth of the jealous god punished by the Great Mother’s rainbow, barring him from earthly altars for his crime of having instigated the Flood—a myth whose discovery threw a rather different light on the derivative biblical tale of Noah.

  The Old Testament god’s self-proclaimed jealousy might have been based on the same sexual envy made plain in the older myths, since he “separated” Eve from Adam. Rabbinical tradition held that these purported parents of humanity had formerly lived as an androgynous single-bodied couple, in which case the alleged purpose of providing Adam with a companion would have no weight. Earlier scriptures spoke of a primal couple, Adamu (male) and Adamah (female). The Hindu Yab-Yum or Ardhanarisvara are other versions of this primal hermaphrodite, whose English name is formed of the mythical union of the god Hermes and the goddess Aphrodite. Their combination into a single entity was a Greek symbol of love between the sexes, which patriarchal religions came to regard with uneasy suspicion.

  His angry voice would roar like thunder…

  In the beginning, the Great Mother commissioned the double-sexed Primal Androgyne to create human beings in its own image. The first people had two sexes in the same body and lived in a state of continual delight. Together with other red-blooded animals, humans were hermaphrodites who felt each of their halves constantly pleasuring and responding to the other half. As a result, their world was blissful, peaceful, and loving. They lived and died in perpetual ripples of joint ecstasy, unaware of loss, loneliness,
or evil. This was their Golden Age. A deity calling himself Sky Father, however, became very jealous of the happy, completed humans. Because of his own emptiness, he wanted to be loved and worshiped to the exclusion of everything else. Obsessed by his jealousy, he brooded to himself in a dark clouded corner of the heavens, becoming more and more surly, disgruntled, and resentful. Sometimes his anger would flash out of black clouds toward Earth as a streak of destructive lightning. His angry voice would roar like thunder, and the terrified humans would run and hide, not knowing why the god menaced them. He became even angrier when he saw how they tried to avoid him.

  On several occasions, Sky Father poured furious fire on the humans’ towns to teach them to stop ignoring him. He killed a great many of them. Once he even sent so much rain from his thunderclouds that Earth was flooded, and millions of innocent creatures drowned. The Great Mother and the Primal Androgyne punished him for that. They put a rainbow across the heavens to bar his way to Earth’s altars, so he could no longer eat the delicacies that humans offered their deities.

  This made Sky Father even more jealous. He began to hate the Primal Androgyne for having made humans in its image. He wanted to take credit for creating them in his image. He thought and thought about this until it occurred to him that there was something he could do, after all, to claim the title of creator. He could make some radical modifications in the original hermaphroditic plan of red-blooded creatures. He would make them more like himself.

  Accordingly, Sky Father waited until other deities weren’t looking, then slid down to Earth on one of his own lightning bolts and began to tear apart all the male and female halves of red-blooded creatures. The humans shrieked at this desecration and called upon the Great Mother to save them, but she was occupied on another planet at the time and didn’t hear their pleas.