Fairy Tales 2010

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Donkeyskin: Not Exactly Bedtime Story Material

It is a phenomenon we see time and time again, so frequent that we have become desensitized to its peculiarity: the beautiful young heroine of a classic Disney film, struggling to navigate her fantastical world in the absence of one or both parents. In some films, a cause is attributed to the parent’s absence, such as a recent death; other times, however, the parent is mysteriously missing, no explanation offered as to their whereabouts. The Disney adaptation of the classic fairy tale Cinderella, for example, opens with the melancholy sight of a young Cinderella, weeping beside her father’s deathbed as the darkened figures of her stepmother and stepsisters loom ominously in the shadows. This hardship, in effect, sets the film into motion and drives its various conflicts.

To someone acquainted with the folktale tradition, this tragedy is something of a relief. In killing Cinderella’s father from the get-go, Disney successfully bypasses the uncomfortable paternal tension that ensues in the tale’s traditional variants.

Indeed, the modern Cinderella story as we have come to know it revolves around the evil, atrocious deeds of the wicked stepmother. It is she, the sinister Disney beauty with the volumptuous body and severely-arched eyebrows, who acts as the film’s demonic, dynamic agent of evil. In spite of ourselves, we delight in her cruel designs, for they imbue the plot with suspense and breathless anticipation. But examine the classic folklore versions of Cinderella, and this compelling femme fatale—this idiosyncratic “evil stepmother”—is glaringly absent. Instead, a new antagonist arises: Cinderella’s father.

Take, for example, Perrault’s “Donkey Skin.” The story begins with a powerful king’s promise to his dying wife that he will only marry another woman whose beauty and intelligence surpasses hers. Fast-forward a few years. The king’s only daughter has blossomed into maturity, and, as luck would have it, she is pretty darn beautiful—more beautiful, perhaps, than her mother, the late Queen. Enamored by her rare and remarkable beauty, the King embarks on a passionate, erotic pursuit for his daughter’s hand in marriage. But the daughter, disturbed by father’s strong sexual desire, disguises herself in a “donkeyskin” cloak and flees the castle, taking up residence as a lowly scullery maid on a farm, doomed to carry out a number of domestic tasks. Starting to sound familiar?

It is understandable why later versions of the tale, such as the Grimm Brother’s 1857 retelling, modified the traditional Donkeyskin plotline almost beyond recognition. Purging the tale of its incestuous encounter, the Grimms substituted the archetypal wicked stepmother in place of the lecherous father. In doing this, of course, they were attempting to preserve the integrity of the nuclear family in keeping with Protestant norms. After all, the concept of an oppressive stepmother is much more acceptable to a Christian reader than the idea of an incestuous father, which was (and is) considered unnatural, horrifying, and taboo. Indeed, in our culture, the issue of incest is generally too uncomfortable and heavy-handed a subject to openly discuss. To include such troubling subject matter in a work of children’s literature would be downright absurd.

But Marina Warner makes a valid point when she argues that the censorship of the core Cinderella plotline is not entirely desirable: “The proposed marriage of a father to his daughter becomes hard to accept…because it is not impossible, because it could actually happen, and is known to have done so. It is when fairy tales coincide with experience that they begin to suffer from censoring, rather than the other way around” (104). Do the Donkeyskin tales bring awareness to a crucial issue that tends to be banished from societal discourse? Yes. In this sense, Donkeyskin serves as a critical reminder of a pressing social issue. But does this mean we should be reading a tale about incest to our four-year-olds? Probably not.

In short, the Donkeyskin versions of Cinderella should remain in circulation, but strictly for adult, scholarly audiences to enjoy. As for mainstream American culture—well, let them be content with their happy, singsong Disney adaptation, no matter how drastically revised it may be.

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