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| By Adrienne Ségur |
Once upon a time . . . these
words are an incantation, signaling the beginning of a spell of enchantment
-- a magical spell, or a spell in the sense of a timeless period, or often
some combination of the two. They describe a then that could have
occurred at any time, in any place, a then which hovers in a delicious
void of possibility. However, the thing that we -- the modern readers,
lovers, enchanted connoisseurs of Fairy tales -- can sometimes forget
is that the prospects of the then can be equally relevant in the
now. Fairy tales, folk tales, legends, and myths -- fantastic stories
of all kinds -- are as relevant to the modern world as they ever were.
The inspiration for the magical aspects of these stories are as present
in our surroundings as they were in any others, requiring only the impetuous
of the human imagination to be brought to life, and applied to the lives
of the denizens of our modern cities. Perhaps more importantly, the underlying
reasons that had prompted people to create these tales -- explorations
of human motivation -- are still present within us. However, as the world
has changed and grown, so too have the needs of its people. Now, rather
than simply telling the tales, it makes sense to study them as we do any
other field, to understand the motivations which prompt the creation of
these stories, and in doing so, to better understand ourselves.
It is important to remember that those stories
describing the magical aspects of reality were current when they were
written. Homer’s Odyssey, with its sorceresses and Cyclops, its
Gods and Goddesses, was set in the writer’s own reality. The chivalric
principles espoused within the precincts of Camelot weren’t fiction for
the people who lived their lives fulfilling those selfsame occupations
of knights and ladies, squires and pages. The castles and courtyards and
steep tower stairs of stories like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella
owe more to the chronologically correct architecture of the periods in
which they were told than they do to the fanciful embellishments of their
tellers -- although whether the same can be said of the experiences which
their heroines undergo is up for discussion. The incongruous quality of
many modern fantasy stories -- the elves living in modern environments
who insist on peppering their speech with thees and thous
and forsooths -- these are the anachronisms, and they are due to
modern misconceptions, rather than to any inherent flaw in the fairy tale
form.
By denying -- or even by simply neglecting
to remember -- that the magic of these tales is as applicable to us as
it was to the dwellers of the ancient groves and the medieval hamlets
and the Renaissance estates who peopled these tales, we deny the continuing
relevance of that magic. It’s a shame, because the need for that magic
-- the beauty, the lushness, the improbability, the wonder -- is a part
of the human character, is alive and well, and living among us. Likewise,
the magic itself is there, waiting to be accessed, not necessarily through
some charm or conjuration, but simply through the knowledge of its presence.
I tell this tale with as much authority
as any of those older storytellers told theirs, for as their tales were
woven with threads from their own lives, so my life winds and twines throughout
the warp and weft of this one. Fairy tales, fantasy, legend and myth . . . these
stories, and their topics, and the symbolism and interpretation of those
topics . . . these things have always held an inexplicable
fascination for me. That fascination is at least in part an integral part
of my character -- I was always the kind of child who was convinced that
elves lived in the parks, that trees were animate, and that holes in floorboards
housed fairies rather than rodents.
You need to know that my parents, unlike
those typically found in fairy tales -- the wicked stepmothers, the fathers
who sold off their own flesh and blood if the need arose -- had only the
best intentions for their only child. They wanted me to be well educated,
well cared for, safe -- so rather than entrusting me to the public school
system, which has engendered so many ugly urban legends, they sent
me to a private school, where, automatically, I was outcast for being
a latecomer, for being poor, for being unusual. However, as every cloud
does have a silver lining -- and every miserable private institution
an excellent library -- there was some solace to be found, between the
carved oak cases, surrounded by the well-lined shelves, among the pages
of the heavy antique tomes, within the realms of fantasy.
Libraries and bookshops, and indulgent parents,
and myriad books housed in a plethora of nooks to hide in when I should
have been attending math classes . . . or cleaning
my room . . . or doing homework . . . provided
me with an alternative to a reality I didn’t much like. Ten years ago,
you could have seen a number of things in the literary field that just
don’t seem to exist anymore: valuable antique volumes routinely available
on library shelves; privately run bookshops, rather than faceless chains;
and one particular little girl who haunted both the latter two institutions.
In either, you could have seen some variation upon a scene played out
so often that it almost became an archetype.
A little girl, contorted, with her legs
twisted beneath her, shoulders hunched to bring her long nose closer to
the pages that she peruses. Her eyes are glued to the pages, rapt with
interest. Within them, she finds the kingdoms of Myth. Their borders stand
unguarded, and any who would venture past them are free to stay and occupy
themselves as they would. She can stay at the edges of the forest,
choosing to sport with the beasts of the wilderness, pursuing white harts
and unicorns, testing herself against lions and fierce dragons, or wander
the tangled, twisting, uninhabited trails of the wood, trusting to be
led to whatever the fates decreed, be it to the bacchanals of the Forest
Lord himself (for there was always at least one in progress), or to lone
and lonely clearings, the territories of proud sorcerers and wise witches,
to crouch before them in supplication, and learn their secrets. She
can choose to pursue a more inhabited path, asking the advice of tinkers,
and gypsies, and the trolls who lurked beneath every third bridge, till
finally reaching the outskirts of the inhabited lands, where she can warm
herself at the hearth of some kind host, listening to the stories told
by the flicker of firelight . . . sharing the tall
tales of kind woodsmen and brawny blacksmiths, village wise women and
the obligatory youngest sons, all competing to see whose adventures were
fine enough to be stood a head drink. She might choose to wander
still, even to the High Courts of the lords and ladies of Legend, where
the turrets of the castles were hung with gay banners, and the courtyards
fair jostled with crowds of old and young, who watch as scenes from their
favorite fairy tales are performed by balladeers and jongleurs. Or, she
might do that which is closest to her actual life, and seek a Librarian,
who cares for all stories, however obscure, to be hoarded away in a weighty,
bejeweled tome, and perhaps share her own. Regardless what her choice
of fantastical topic might be, it would be graceful, and lovely, and guaranteed
a happy ending.
The story ends, and she stands, stretching,
wincing a little as tired muscles complain. Finally, you can see that
she is gawky, and clad in an ill-fitting, unflattering tartan plaid, paired
with a dingy white blouse, and knee socks that puddle about her ankles
-- the outfit of an unenthusiastic schoolgirl. Everything about her seems
outsized -- her glasses, her eyebrows, her wistful eyes, which track her
surroundings for some trace of the magic which she had seen through the
eyes of another, to be re-created in the world around her. She hears the
voice of her mother, calling her further back into reality, and drags
her scuffed loafers across the stained and faded carpet. As she passes
the cheap gilded mirror that hangs beside the entrance, her eyes are rueful.
In the mirror, my eyes are disappointed.
Fairy tales exercise a draw, a drag, a gravitational
pull upon the minds of children and adults alike. Like old alchemical
treatises, they seem to offer a way to turn lead to gold, to make one’s
own life as magical as that to be found between the lines of their favorite
tales. However, much like those old alchemical treatises, these require
translation. Fairy tales and folklore, legends and myths, tales of wonder
of every sort and type, these are written not only in the languages of
the mundane world -- French, German, Italian, English -- but also in the
language of symbols.
It’s said that a rose by any other name
should be as sweet -- in a number of stories, such roses symbolize innocence
(i.e., the roses that wreath Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom, the rose brought
to Beauty by her father from the castle of the Beast). The themes of these
stories frequently demonstrate the values of the culture that tells the
tales. They are mirrors helping to emphasize the true ideals of their
societies -- tellingly, symbols of truth in tales such as Snow White.
For example, a society that emphasizes the worth of virginity produces
tales with a preponderance of such symbols of chastity, not only roses,
but also blood red cloaks, and fragile, transparent, membranous slippers.
Some symbols, however, seem to cross the
cultural divide, appearing and reappearing in folk stories across the
globe, as the issues which they represent are more or less of universal
relevance. Journeys across water and through the woods -- transitions,
examinations of the unknown -- these can be found in the folk stories
of various Native American tribes, in European Fairy tales, in Greek myths
and Chinese legends. The details may change.The gender of the traveling
protagonist, the terrain that they journey through, the perils which stay
their steps, and their reasons for doing it all -- riches, familial loyalty,
true love -- these things are subject to change, but the acknowledgment
that change itself is inevitable, in the recurring symbols of the journey.
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| "The Power of Three" by Charles Vess © 1998 |
Case in point: my adolescence. As you could probably tell from my current
persona, I was never very good at being a child. For one thing, I expected
more out of life than life is willing to grant most nine-year-olds --
dignity is a quality that is rarely accorded on the playground. That’s
from my perspective. When considering the positions that those around
me were put into, all I can feel is sympathy. I was more or less the same
person at nine that I am a twenty-two, and I can be fairly difficult to
brook, even today, even with the justification of a college education,
an English major, and a cynical pedigree that would be envied by Ambrose
Bierce -- a New Yawk upbringing. As a child, I must have seemed like some
overly verbose gnome sent to torment those around me.
Adolescence was both easier to stomach than
childhood, and more difficult. I’d already accepted that as a child, I
wouldn’t be able to achieve everything I wanted. If I couldn’t stay up
past the witching hour whenever I wanted, or have a kitten, or convince
my mother to give me access to whatever age-inappropriate literature interested
me (fer Crissakes), then, well, somehow, the fact that I couldn’t have
what the fairy tale folk had was par for the course. Disappointing, but
not truly and honestly surprising.
As my exterior caught up to my interior,
I began to acquire the privileges that had seemed so important to me --
but everything still seemed drab, unmagical. Teenagers have never been
noted for their subtlety; the symbolism was something that I was quite
capable of understanding, yet didn’t want to accept, living proof of that
old adage that a pleasant untruth is preferable to a harsh reality. If
you had been witness to the trek to maturity which I had to make through
the symbolic forest -- or Central Park, which is as close as we, as city-dwellers,
ever seem to get -- you would have seen something like this . . .
Seated on a bench beneath a tree, viewing
the hustle and hurry of the human river, is a girl. She is approximately
fifteen -- an age when everything changes. You can see that she is artfully
pale, perhaps powdered to enhance her natural coloring. Her hair is long
and dark and patently unnatural. Every aspect of her manner and dress
is intended, consciously or unconsciously, to evoke the archetype that
she wishes to subsume -- the Queen of Air and Darkness in all of her glory,
attempted perhaps a few years too early, eliciting a different impression
altogether. Instead, she is a creature of rags and patches, her attire
artfully tattered and torn. Her posture reflects an attitude of dejection
which elicits an echo of Romanticism in a manner that would surely be
appreciated by Byron or Shelly, were they but there to witness it -- as
they are not, it serves only to arouse your sympathy. Her hands echo her
monochromatic color scheme. They are long and pale and narrow, bedecked
and bedizened with a dozen tarnished silver rings, each of which holds
some meaning, some memory, some momentous import on her existence. One
needs no background in palmistry to read these hands, or their bitten
fingernails, ragged to the quick, thinly disguised with chipped dark lacquer,
belying the quick, confident fingers. From her satchel, which is decorated
with various arcane and artful symbols -- the crooked ideogram of anarchy,
a carefully traced pentagram, a patched dragon and a half-obscured band
name, among others -- we can see a messy pile of literature protruding,
consisting mainly of comics and novels that feature characters who are
much, in their own fantastic and fictional manner, as she would like to
be, all concerned with how the world should be, and not, unfortunately,
how it is.
She searches the crowd for one final moment,
not seeing whatever it is that she wishes to, before rising in a swirl
of myrrh and frankincense. She, and her angst, moves further into the
park, continuing the search. What seems to be escapism, pure and simple,
for one moment can be seen for what it is in the turn of her shoulder,
the lift of her chin -- a quest, a search, a journey, looking for something
that even she has trouble putting into words.
I wonder . . . can you
still see traces of her in me?
Sometimes, the mortal followers of fairy
tales never make their own transitions to the point of being able to see
that the magic that they seek isn’t in a past that they can never reach.
Sometimes, they never discover that the external symbols of change --
the glass slippers, and the dresses shining as the sun, and the kisses
bestowed by princes various and sundry, and all the rest of that claptrap
-- are exactly that, external symbols which merely serve to reflect internal
changes. Sometimes, disillusionment and disappointment can sour the love
for and enjoyment of one of the most valid forms of art to have been produced
in our collective civilization.
The form of the fairy tale gives voice
to unspecifiable longings for happiness, growth, success, justice. It
reflects deeply rooted psychological aspects of existence, such as the
attitudes that many have towards their parents and siblings, such as the
relations between men and women (i.e., who is the rescuer, and who is
rescued), such as the place of humans within their environments, within
those selfsame woods. It serves as a medium for some of the greatest endeavors
of the human imagination. It is a form that stands to be abandoned because
a facile examination of it will not, cannot satisfy the longings that
it evokes.
The irony is that the immediate gratification
of the longings evoked by a surface understanding of a form are rarely
asked of fields which seem less, for lack of a better word, magical. It
seems as though the contents of the stories within the form itself encourage
people to expect no less from its effects upon them. That’s simply unrealistic
-- proponents of the hard sciences don’t seem to expect that a love of
calculus will make the world less illogical; they understand that the
study of the form will help them to see whatever elements of it might
be present in the larger world, enabling them to complete the circle,
and add to their understanding of the form to the collective pool of knowledge.
Similarly, scholars specializing in fantasy contribute to the collective
understanding of what it is that we wish for, that can be fulfilled through
the medium of fantasy -- a field of study that combines elements of literary
criticism and psychoanalysis.
It’s a form that isn’t acknowledged as often
as it should be, as I know from personal experience. My own transition
helped me to change from being a fan of Fairy tales, to being an appreciative,
if amateur scholar of them, and it occurred not through the wave of a
magic wand, not through a kiss, not through any overtly "magical"
transformation, but simply through the mundane process of my education.
Every characteristic that made me a less than successful child -- my wordiness,
my introspection, my inquisitiveness -- makes me a fairly successful adult.
Every quality that made my adolescence a sham -- most notably, my complete
and total lack of skill at self-deception -- makes me a decent potential
academic. I wouldn’t have found any of that without a subject that inspired
my interest -- the same subject that lies at the heart of this essay,
the study of marchen. My life seems to mirror the structure of
one of those tales in many ways -- beginning with a dream, following up
with a symbolic solution that became an actuality -- for, in tales, the
symbols typically foreshadow the endings. Sleeping Beauty’s symbolic innocence,
her briar hedge, is penetrated by the same man who will have her hand
in marriage . . . Little Red Riding Hood’s menarchial
cloak is a sign of the trial that will force her into maturity . . . and
so on, throughout all the tales. In my own tale, I began as a wistful
spectator, acted for a time the part of a resplendent character, and then
assumed my current position -- that of a student, content in her rightful
place as a possible heir to the mantles of such authorities as Joseph
Campbell and Jane Yolen, J. R. R. Tolkien and Carl Jung.
However, this fairy tale has yet to come
to its conclusion, for while I may have stumbled onto a field of study
which suits me, the field itself -- not the area of study, but the literal
grounds upon which that study would be conducted, the campuses and libraries,
the offices and academic journals -- have yet to be breached. Graduate
school, and the possibility of a career in academia, still lie tantalizingly
before me, singing their siren song. The study of a subject for the pure
love of knowledge is apparently no longer considered to be a valid justification
for an education by the general society, regardless of the fact that such
a love of knowledge is the only real reason that could drive a person
to pursue such a field . . . we’re none of us in it
for the money, after all. The question is, will I be able to succeed without
it?
I, and others like me, will have to try
to patch and gerrymander whatever programs of education we can, taking
a Comparative Literature course here, an English seminar there, and a
Classics colloquia there, following the same pattern of behavior as professionals
in the field, teaching a survey course here, submitting an article there . . . creating
a niche in the world for the study of literary fairy tales. Ideally, our
makeshift educations will serve as the basis for a resurgence of study
in the field, not only at the bastardized level of the popular culture,
and not only at the rarefied heights of the elite world of scholarship,
but in such a way as to benefit all those who might care to study them,
as other fields are available to all parties interested and sundry.
Five years from now, or ten, in the distant
future which is my then, I hope that you’ll be able to look
at a professor, standing before a lectern, clad in the uniform of academicians
everywhere -- tweed, elbow patches, and all -- expostulating passionately
about the relevance of fantasy. Everything about her will seem faintly
outsized -- her long nose, her horn-rimmed glasses, her furiously furrowed
brow, and her wide eyes. The only glamour that will hang about her will
be one of honest conviction. Before her will sit a sea of students, raptly
fascinated . . . some clad in the gorgeous raiment
of creatures out of legend, some satisfied with the corresponding images
which will germinate in their imaginations as a result of what they will
learn in classes like hers. The cycle will continue.
. . . and we’ll all
live happily ever after.
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About the Author: Helen Pilinovsky is pursuing doctoral studies at Columbia University, where she is working on the archetypal differences between Eastern and Western European fairy tales. For more information, please visit her Endicott bio page Copyright © 2001 by Helen Pilinovsky. This article may not be reproduced in any form without the author’s express written permission. |
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