Curses and Blessings

Curses and Blessings
A review of Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted (Harper, 1997)
By Derek Newman-Stille

Ella Enchanted is a fascinating take on the Cinderella tale that exposes issues of patriarchal control in fairy tales. Ella of Frell is given a gift by a fairy at birth, something that in other fairy tales would be a blessing, but Ella comes to see her “gift” as a curse. Thinking young women should be compliant, the fairy Lucinda gives her the “gift” of obedience. No matter what she wants to do, she has to follow any command given to her. Being a person with a powerful personality, Ella does not submit easily, but finds ways to rebel against her curse by resisting it as long as she can (often to the point of pain) and by finding ways to comply with someone’s command without granting them their desires.

Gail Carson Levine’s version of the Cinderella tale is one of resistance and of a woman who seeks to make her own way in the world while everyone around her tries to control her. It is a tale that critiques recent Cinderella tales that espouse the idea that wishes can come true and that magic always helps. In Ella Enchanted, magic is dangerous, often bringing with it dire results.

Gail Carson Levine critiques fairy tales on multiple levels in her tale. By making Ella a person who loves fairy tales, Carson Levine makes her character a critical witness to the creation of fairy tales. Ella is given a book of fairy tales by a fairy that gives substance and character development to the tales. We are told by Ella that she encounters  “a real fairy tale this time, “the Shoemaker and the Elves.” In this version, though, each elf had a personality, and I came to know them better than the shoemaker. And I finally understood why the elves disappeared after the shoemaker made clothes for them.” Carson Levine provides us with a microcosm of what she is doing with Ella Enchanted, providing readers with a fairy tale where characters are given personalities and substance and supernatural beings are more than just deus ex machina. Where most traditional fairy tales, like those of the Grimm Brothers, tend to focus on the story over the personalities of the characters, Gail Carson Levine creates a character-driven narrative that allows the reader to have an insight into the personalities of the characters.

To discover more about Gail Carson Levine, go to https://www.gailcarsonlevine.com/index.php

To find out more about Ella Enchanted, go to https://www.gailcarsonlevine.com/ella.html

A Krampus-fur Dress for Cinderella

A Krampus-fur Dress for Cinderella

A review of Steven Grimm’s “Villainess Ascending” in He Sees You When He’s Creepin’: Tales of Krampus (World Weaver Press, 2016)

By Derek Newman-Stille

Folklore and fairy tale collide in Steven Grimm’s “Villainess Ascending”, a tale that adds a monstrous twist to the tale of Cinderella. Grimm begins his story with the mythology that there have been multiple past Cinderellas and this one has gone through the same things as the others – a dead devoted mother, a remarried father, a stepmother and two stepsisters and like the other Cinderellas, this one doesn’t want a life of domestic servitude. Yet, Grimm adds a twist to the tale, setting the Prince’s ball near Krampusnacht, a time when the Austrian devil of Christmas, Krampus, is out prowling the world for people in need of punishment.

Krampus and Cinderella have something in common. They both want justice… and the punishment of those they view as wicked and Grimm intertwines their narratives in a way that adds nuance to both the folklore of Krampus and the fairy tale of Cinderella. Grimm’s tale draws on other figures from Austrian holiday legends as well, bringing in Frau Holle and Frau Perchta. Frau Holle (about whom the Grimm Brothers have also written a fairy tale) is able to bring on snowfall by shaking out her bedding and her tales generally revolve around rewarding people for hard work and punishing people for laziness. Frau Perchta has a more sinister presence in Austrian folklore and is generally portrayed as having two faces – one kind and gentle and the other demonic. During the yule holidays, she shows her good face to good children and gives them treats… but shows her demonic face to naughty children to punish them. Frequently she is portrayed slitting open the bellies of children, removing their organs, and filling their bodies with pebbles and straw. Steven Grimm’s Perchta isn’t quite as terrifying though she is connected to Krampus. Instead, she is a force of nature with otherworldly magical powers and an interest in seeing humanity become good rather than corrupt.

“Villainess Ascending” is a tale about the damage that patriarchy does to humanity. It is a story about the way that patriarchy has taken away rights from women and has often only allowed women success in the world through marriage rather than through their own skills and abilities. Steven Grimm’s story focusses on the messages in the Cinderella tale about beauty meaning success, about the only way for women to rescue themselves from poverty is through marriage to a rich man, and about the intentional toxicity of the prince’s ball and generating jealousy between women.

Grimm subverts the simple idea of the punishment of the wicked by pointing out that “wickedness” has social roots and is created by social structures that damage people in oppressed groups.

To find out more about He Sees You When He’s Creepin’: Tales of Krampus, visit https://www.worldweaverpress.com/store/p121/He_Sees_You_When_He%27s_Creepin%27%3A_Tales_of_Krampus.html

Prophetic Stories or Spells of Destiny?

Prophetic Stories or Spells of Destiny?

A review of Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy by Serena Valentino (Disney Press, 2017)

By Derek Newman-Stille

 

With Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy, Serena Valentino once again adds moral complexity to a Disney villain, providing a backstory that allows the reader to see how her choices were made. Mistress of All Evil examines one of my favourite Disney villains, Maleficent, the villain from Sleeping Beauty. Rather than turning Maleficent into a hero as the film Maleficent did, Valentino makes her a villain with a complicated morality and provides more context for why Maleficent feels justified in her actions.

 

Valentino’s Maleficent is a character whose life has been shaped by loneliness, isolation, and rejection… and along with all of that, a fuse that, once lit, causes her to lose control. Although this Maleficent was born in the fairy realm, she was born from a tree covered in ravens and rather than having wings, she was born with horns. She was rejected by the fairy community and teased for her difference. Even the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella and the three “good fairies” from Sleeping Beauty have sought to reject and isolate her from the rest of fairy kind. Maleficent buries herself in books and accepts her isolation until she discovers Nanny, a figure that has appeared in all of the other Valentino Disney books. Nanny gives Maleficent a sense of belonging and a sense of family, but like most things in Maleficent’s life, this sense of comfort is short lasting and she loses her connection to Nanny for many years as Nanny loses her memory and Maleficent thinks she is dead.

 

Valentino constructs a meta narrative about storytelling, linking tales to ideas of fate and toying with the idea that Maleficent’s story has already been written. Snow White discovers a fairy tale book that already has Maleficent and Aurora’s tale written down and characters start to wonder whether the book is a prophetic book or whether it is a spell, locking characters into a narrative that was written to control them.

 

Like most of Valentino’s book, every character thinks that they are doing the right thing, believing that they are making things better for others and protecting others from terrible truths, but, of course, secrets and lies are dangerous in fairy tales and they always have consequences.

 

Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy, although written for young adults, is a complex exploration of fairy tales and ideas of tradition, challenging ideas of the simple Disney narrative and the easy morality of fairy tales for children and providing an engagement with ideas of “best intentions” to explore how even people who think that they are doing the right thing can end up harming others.

 

To discover more about Serena Valentino, visit http://www.serenavalentino.com

 

To find out more about Mistress of All Evil: A Tale of the Dark Fairy, visit http://books.disney.com/book/mistress-of-all-evil/

A Deaf Cinderella

A review of Roz Rozen’s “Cinderella” in Deaf Culture Fairy Tales (Savory Words, 2007)
By Derek Newman-Stille

Roz Rosen tells a tale of a Deaf Cinderella who has been encouraged in her use of sign language until her mother dies and her hearing step mother and step sisters prevent her from using her own language. Indeed, from the moment she meets Cinderella, the stepmother feels disgust at her step daughter for being death, describing her as “burdensome”. Despite talking about her as a burden, the stepmother forces Cinderella to do all of the work around the house, refusing to learn sign language and instead yelling at her step daughter. 

Cinderella experiences extreme isolation in her inability to express herself to her family and their prevention of her using her own language. She is only able to sign when she is by herself, engaging in sign singing with the animals around her while she works, tying a close bond to her animal friends and expressing her need for a change in the oppression she is experiencing every day of her life. Her community of animal friends refuses to let her give up on her dream of a change in her life, signing at her that she can make the impossible possible. 

When Cinderella encounters her fairy godmother, she discovers that the words her animal friends have been signing to her are a magic spell and she uses them to transform her rags into a magnificent gown. When this Cinderella finally meets her prince, she fears that he won’t accept her once he discovers that she is Deaf and will treat her the way that her stepmother and stepsisters have. But, when he sees her sign, he responds in sign, telling her that his kingdom uses sign language on the battle field. Before she can share details about her identity with him, she is forced to leave and loses her glass slipper on the steps.

This Cinderella is able to distinguish herself from other women in the kingdom not by fitting into a glass slipper, particularly since her stepmother breaks the slipper, but, rather, through her ability to use sign language and she and the prince are able to create a kingdom of access by making sure that ASL is taught throughout the kingdom, preventing others from experiencing the isolation of being surrounded by those who can’t or won’t speak to them. 

Rosen’s tale is one of linguistic isolation as much as it is about being treated as a servant. It is about a denial of access to Cinderella’s language and culture, her ability to express herself, and her ability to be part of conversations around her home. This is a tale about a revision of a society that privileges spoken languages into one that provides a space for bilingualism, allowing for ASL (standing for Amina Sign Language) and English. Rosen’s Cinderella doesn’t just change social status as many Cinderella characters do in fairy tales, rather, she changes the status of Deaf people in her kingdom, creating a space where language multiplicity is the norm.

To find out more about Deaf Culture Fairy Tales, visit http://www.savorywords.com/dcft-by-roz-rosen-2/

Under the Slippers

A review of Sarah Pinborough’s Charm: A Wicked Cinderella Tale (Titan Books, 2015)
By Derek Newman-Stille

What does it mean to live your whole life imagining court life and fantasizing about princes and castles only to be offered everything you’ve always wanted? What does it mean to grow up in a household where your stepmother and stepsisters come from noble bloodlines but you come from more humble origins? Is beauty or noble blood more important?

Sarah Pinborough’s Charm transforms the quintessential Love at First Sight story into a gothic romance, populated with hidden truths, secrecy, locked doors with hidden keys, curiosity, jealousy, dusty old turrets, and dark corridors hung with cobwebs. Pinborough explores the darker side of Cinderella, warning her readers of the danger of getting everything you wish for and pointing out that sometimes the dream is better than the reality you dream of. 

Pinborough highlights the potential problems of Cinderella’s magic slippers, pointing out the issues of consent for a Prince who has been forced by magic to fall in love with a woman that he couldn’t even recognize outside of her slippers. She asks what happens when the slippers come off and the prince goes back to his non-spell-addled self. Court life isn’t the dream that Cinderella imagined and full of a lot more darkness than she had envisioned. Just like her slippers, Cinderella is about to discover that her imagined perfect life is nothing more than outer dressings.

To discover more about Sarah Pinborough, visit https://sarahpinborough.com/

Tales within Tales

A review of Malinda Lo’s Ash (Little Brown, 2009)

By Derek Newman-Stille

 

Malinda Lo’s Ash is a narrative of change where everything is in flux: people, life/death, and the environment. Lo creates a chimerical narrative where nothing is certain.

 

Ash is living her own fairy tale at a time of conflict. The wealthy in her society have started adhering to a new religion espoused by philosophers who resist the old green witch religion that embraced fairy tales as part of its belief system. Ash’s own parents were on opposite sides of the debate – her father an adherent to the religion of the philosophers, and her mother believing in the green witch and sharing tales of fairy abductions with her daughter. Ash is shaped by the beliefs of her mother, and finds herself caught in a fairy bargain that could lead her into the fairy realm. This change in religion brings up the classic subject of the Cinderella tale – class change. The class changes of this narrative aren’t just about a girl transcending her perceived class, but about class ideologies themselves changing as religion and class become intertwined and fairy tales become an aspect of the lower class that are disparaged.

 

Yet, the fairies themselves, the subject of fairy tales, still adhere to their aristocratic ideas and Ash ends up coming into contact with the fairies, experiencing their ideas of ownership and their exercises of power. She is given the opportunity to become a fairy princess, though that bargain comes with uncertainty about the fairy world.

 

Like most Cinderella stories, time plays an important factor in Ash, but it is even more exaggerated in this tale because there is an intrusion of fairy time, and the idea that time in fairy runs differently than human time.

 

This is not a tale of ballroom dresses and the marriage of princes. In this tale, Ash wishes for a hunting outfit, a way to change her world by dressing as a Huntress and running with human hunters. She is not someone who relies on her potential lover to free her from the bonds her family has placed on her. Instead, she makes her own way in the world by forging alliances with others and ensuring that she has her own wishes met.

 

Ash is a tale of the transformative power of love, but also the transformation of the understanding of love. Love for many people in the tale means ownership, but Ash discovers that love is expansive, and contains multiple meanings. She discovers that love, for her, means doing anything in her power to bring happiness to the Huntress, the woman she loves. This is not the fairy tale love of ownership and obligation, but instead a love born from mutual respect.

 

Ash is a queer Cinderella tale, and one that questions and challenges the traditional narrative.

You can discover more about Malinda Lo at https://www.malindalo.com/

Animal Instinct

A review of Marissa Meyer’s Scarlet (Square Fish, 2013).

By Derek Newman-Stille

 

Scarlet is a Red Riding Hood tale with a twist. Scarlet continues Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles that began with Cinder. Like Cinder, Scarlet is a tale of family secrets and the danger of family secrets. Like Cinder, Scarlet has been raised with family secrets and has now become uncertain of her own history and the relationships she created with her family. Scarlet discovered that her grandmother was kidnapped and she realizes that in order to save the woman who raised her, she needs to find out more about her family and herself.

 

Like many Red Riding Hood re-envisionings, Meyer reimagines the wolf as a werewolf, but this is a werewolf with a twist, a soldier of an invading army from the moon. Meyer envisions a battle of instincts with the wolf in the man fighting the man in the wolf. This wolf is torn between two sets of instincts, uncertain what parts of him are real and which parts are genetically manufactured.

 

Cinder’s discovery that she is a Lunar princess continues through this novel as she struggles with this knowledge about herself and debates which part of her behaviour is biological and which part is learned. She wants to find out if she is the product of her Lunar biology or if she is a product of her human upbringing. All that mediates between her two identities is her cyborg programming, which keeps her Lunar powers in check, preventing her from using the biological power the Lunars have to control the minds of others.

 

This is an intertwined tale of Cinderella and Red Riding Hood, but it is also a twined tale of body and identity formation.

 

To discover more about Marissa Meyer, visit her website at http://www.marissameyer.com/

Enchantments

EnchantmentsA review of Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (Square Fish, 2012)

By Derek Newman-Stille

As a person with disabilities and someone who loves fairy tales, I was excited to see Marissa Meyer’s exploration of the Cinderella through the lens of prostheses. For some time, I had thought that the Cinderella narrative’s focus on the foot made it an exciting possibility for examining ideas of mobility. Meyer’s Cinder has more than a leg prosthesis though – she is a cyborg in this futuristic fairy tale. Cinder lives in a world where cyborgs have been treated as second class citizens, their lives shaped by scientific and medical experimentation. In addition to being the product of medical intervention, their bodies are re-visited by science when they are experimented on to try to find a cure for a disease that has been spreading across Earth.

Cinder explores ideas of the stigma that come with disabilities, the social need to conform to an able-bodied norm, and the process of passing as able-bodied. Cinder is a woman who seeks belonging in a world where cyborgs are consistently reminder of their outsider status. The only belonging she is able to achieve early on is to be considered the belonging of other people – property. Like many people with disabilities, Cinder lives in a perpetual state of poverty, her livelihood based on the need to always be the best in her field in order to be able to attract customers. Being part machine, she is attracted to mechanical work and becomes a highly-sought-after expert in the area of machine repair. 

Cinder’s stigma is treated as contagious as she fears that being around her nation’s prince will mean that he will be viewed as somehow diminished by associating with a cyborg. Her stepmother similarly mirrors this concern about Cinder’s stigma when she worries what others will think of her for having a cyborg daughter. This stigma is made literal when Cinder fears that she may be spreading the disease that has been ravaging her planet. Her stigma is associated with her guilt and the belief of her society that anyone “abnormal” should sacrifice themselves for the “normal” population. 

Cinder discovers that the medical is political as political decisions are shaped by the need to keep the population safe and free of illness. Immunology and immigration intertwine in this tale of contagion and security.

Despite the identities she has created for herself, Cinder lives in a state of perpetual uncertainty about her identity. All of her memories from the first 11 years of her life have been erased and her uncertainty about her selfhood is further increased by her uncertain social situation in a society that generally ostracizes people like her. Her questions about identity are deepened by her awareness that people have begun using fake ID chips to disguise their identity, and no one around her is what s/he seems. 
In addition to the mechanical story, there is, of course, an element of enchantment to Meyer’s fairy tale. In this future society, the moon has been settled and it has allowed an offshoot of the human population to develop the ability to control the minds of others, to portray a glamour of beauty that is powerful enough to control others. The enchantment of this tale is tale is one of deception and control, allowing a powerful Lunar queen to rule her people by using her glamour to take away power from others. There are hints of a Snow White tale in this use of glamour since the Lunar Queen can’t bear to see mirrors since a mirror will rob her of her glamour by showing her the reality of her appearance. Reality and lies mix and mingle in Cinder’s experience since she, like a mirror, has an ability to reflect the truth and she is able to see an orange light when people lie. 

With an android fairy godmother, a prosthetic slipper, and a pumpkin of a car for a carriage, Meyer imagines a fairy tale that combines fantasy and science fiction, projecting tales onto the future instead of making them Once Upon A Time.
To discover more about Marissa Meyer, visit http://www.marissameyer.com

To discover more about Cinder, visit http://www.thelunarchronicles.com/books/ 

Dangerous Traditions

Dangerous TraditionsA review of Mercedes Lackey’s The Fairy Godmother (Luna, 2004).

By Derek Newman-Stille

Fairy tales have their own system of internal logic, a certain path that follows ideas of destiny and heroism. In Mercedes Lackey’s “The Fairy Godmother“, this internal logic is called The Tradition and it serves as a guiding force for the world of the five hundred kingdoms. Characters are propelled by The Tradition to make decisions, change their lives, and be brought down the path to destiny. 

Elena ends up being caught up in The Tradition, propelled toward a Cinderella tale that is incapable of ending in a happy ending because her Prince Charming is far too young. However, the accumulated magic around Elena, the force that should empower her happy ending is still swirling around her, trying to compel a narrative that she is unable to live. She is eventually visited by her Fairy Godmother, who explains The Tradition to her and offers to either take the magic away from her so that she can live a normal life or make Elena into a fairy godmother, a being who consistently modifies The Tradition so that people can live happy, safe lives without too much fairy tale tragedy. 

Lackey explores the potential of fairy tales as a shaping narrative, a governing force in a universe. She examines the question of what occurs when a fairy tale goes awry, when it cannot end in a happy ending. Lackey explores the issues with a dual morality system, where one can only either be good or evil and any that have moral ambiguities end up caught between systems, pulled constantly back and forth between destinies. She examines the areas of fringe in a system that doesn’t allow for ambiguities, the uncertainties that are generally erased from the simple ideologies governing fairy tales. Lackey’s “The Fairy Godmother” invites readers to question fairy tales and complicate them, exploring those fringe areas and areas of uncertainty around the narratives we construct to better understand ourselves.

The role of the fairy godmother in this tale is to mitigate some of the tragedy visited on those who don’t fit the fairy tale mould, those who exist outside of the easy systems of understanding provided by our narratives. Through the role of the fairy godmother, Lackey brings attention to the issues that arise from the narratives we create to understand ourselves, and the people who end up suffering when they live lives that don’t fit society’s mould Lackey points out that we are all fairy tale creatures constantly being pushed in certain directions by our society’s traditions and constantly needing a fairy godmother to help shift those narratives to allow inclusion of those who traditions ignore or erase.

To find out more about Mercedes Lackey, visit http://www.mercedeslackey.com
To find out more about the Five Hundred Kingdoms’ tales, visit Luna’s website at http://www.LUNA-Books.com