The Writer and The Fairytales

Old French Fairytales

No, I’m not talking about their belief that they’re still the leading culture in the world (hint for y’all: when you’re the leading culture in the world you don’t need to set special taxes on the import of foreign cultural artifacts in order to preserve your heritage) or the idea that Napoleon was the world’s greatest General, or even… Never mind.

I’m actually talking about French Fairytales. At some point I mentioned in this blog that I’d spent a summer reading the Comtesse de Segur’s incredibly moralistic tales. My alert readership TM proceeded to inform me that several of her books were available for free at Gutenberg. The only one in English is Old French Fairytales. (Yes, a part of me desperately wants to get the others then retire to a corner with them and translate them, though I have no clue what I would do afterwards. You see, I’ve never done literary translation, so I have no idea if I could then publish them [since they are, afaik out of copyright] under my “translation copyright.” And I could do that. In fact, it strikes me as a really fun “vacation” project, the equivalent of painting a room or recovering the sofa. But like those projects, if I do them in a year when I’m booked solid, y’all are going to miss some books, because barring a transmorgifier [scientific progress goes boing] that can duplicate me, my spending time translating means I’m not writing.)

So, while traveling, I decided to read them over. And realized several things – first they are still immensely appealing.

You see, when I read them they were VERY MUCH a guilty pleasure. For some reason, just like here people expect you to start reading with picture books, in Portugal they expect you to start reading with fairy tales. I never did, or not really. As far as I know (I was young) I started with Disney Comics, which makes a certain sense, as when people read the story to me I had a visual to anchor the words to, and I could then in “repeating” it to myself work the sounds backwards. (This is much easier than in English, btw. Portuguese is almost completely phonetic.)

When I was growing up people had two preconceptions about me as a young-lady-who-enjoys-reading-and-wants-to-be-a-writer. When I was very young they assumed I read mostly fairytales. Well intentioned friends, relatives and elderly women invited to my birthday party (there was always a gaggle of them and I never was very sure on how or where they attached to us) gave me books of fairytales. I actually liked some of the bigger ones, but not for reading. They tended to have gorgeous illustrations, which I liked to copy and color. Then as I got older, people assumed I was reading/writing romance.

Because I am the way I am – I think I was born broken – this meant that both types of books HAD to be shunned. Oh, I read any number of traditional stories because they were sold in these TINY books (think of those little chapbooks with your sign and the year at the grocery store) for the price of a pack of gum, and my mom tended to get me one as a prize for behaving while out shopping. These sometimes involved fairies, but more commonly they were Aesop’s fables or the like, so I didn’t consider them “fairytales.”

So, when at sixteen I succumbed – at a time when my brother was on vacation and not bringing the usual SF/F books into the house – to the fairytales that had accumulated in the “for show” shelf in the living room, I felt incredibly guilty.

And then I felt double guilty when I found myself enjoying the Comtesse de Segur, because her tales were incredibly, cloyingly moralistic, and you know how I feel about prescriptive stories.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself enjoying the stories just as much, despite the fact that well… characters have names like “Charming” “Perfect” or “Violent” or “Terrible.” And that in addition to cloyingly moralistic, the tales have a system in which reward and punishment are administered by an extra-story entity, usually a “fairy.”

There are hints some of these are based on older folk tales (the story of Good Henry is ALMOST for sure the story of a god and his travails) and the “fairies” are in place of more powerful gods.

So why do they still attract? I don’t know. Part of it is her description of dresses. Yes, I know, but a part of your mind is going “How much more outrageous can she get?” And “Wouldn’t diamonds the size of chicken eggs break her neck, if made into a necklace?”

But the other part of it is, I think, that she sets up conflict very well. The character has to give up something vital which he/she is not inclined to give up, before he/she can attain the goal. The sacrifice and reward are nearly balanced and you can see it hurts to choose. This always makes for riveting fiction.

Also, the “from the top” thing becomes innocent when it’s clear that it’s a tale intended for children who must perforce rely on adults for reward and punishment.

Interestingly, too, it has a lot in common with twilight. Yes, twilight. Including very young girls being raised (as it were) by much older/more powerful entities that intend to marry them. Very rapid pregnancies. An idea of destiny.

I wonder if those ideas are inherently appealing to the young human mind.

Anyway… I’ll be thinking about this. There might be a bunch of alternate-universe and UF with this type of thing in the future. (Not the bit that’s like Twilight. Well, maybe not. I promise to dress it up acceptably if I decide to use it.)

And if you have a few minutes mosey on to Project Gutenberg, download Old French Fairytales and tell me what you think.