The Lost Princess: Women Writers and the History of Classic Fairy Tales

by Anne E. Duggan

Once upon a the forgotten female fabulists whose heroines flipped the fairy tale script.
 
People often associate fairy tales with Disney films and with the male authors from whom Disney often drew inspiration—notably Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen. In these portrayals, the princess is a passive, compliant figure. By contrast, The Lost Princess shows that classic fairy tales such as “Cinderella,” “Rapunzel,” and “Beauty and the Beast” have a much richer, more complex history than Disney’s saccharine depictions. Anne E. Duggan recovers the voices of women writers such as Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier, and Charlotte-Rose de La Force, who penned popular tales about ogre-killing, pregnant, cross-dressing, dynamic heroines who saved the day. This new history will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about the lost, plucky heroines of historic fairy tales.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

320 pages, Hardcover

Published December 4, 2023

About the author

Assistant professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan).

Reviews

[Marquise]

To me, pop fairy tale scholarship lives or dies on their analysis of "Beauty and the Beast." And this one dies.

Review may or mayn't come.

[Soulla Christodoulou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge thanks to @reaktionbooks for an ARC copy of this incredibly fascinating read!

“Fairytales as we might not know them! The original stories, long before Disney, adapted for today’s modern world are dissected and the often not-so-sweet and sugarcoated tales written by French women are so far removed from the originals. The tales of old portray the female leads as strong, dark characters with their own unique personalities and their rebellious ways of doing things which don’t match up to the pink, fluffy happy-ever-after versions many of us are used to and have grown up with. There are no knights in shining armour or princes in the original stories. This is an interesting read and the author’s research opened my eyes to how stories change over time and took me back to when my own grandmother, of Greek Cypriot origin, used to tell me stories which did not glitter but, rather, were filled with wickedness and deceit, despair and fear. A fascinating read and I loved the beautiful black and white and full colour illustrations too.”

[southernmyst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Duggan traces some of the histories of several classic fairy tales from their inception or popularization in the 17th century by a handful of female French writers she's chosen to focus on through the 19th and 20th centuries.

The tales/groups of tales she focuses on are:
* Cinderella
* Beauty & The Beast
* The White Cat
* Amazon Warrior tales

The authors she focuses on are:
* Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy
* Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier
* Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve
* Charlotte-Rose de La Force
* Henriette-Julie de Murat
Collectively, they were the conteuses (storytellers).

She makes a compelling case, repeatedly, that each of these kinds of tales had much more female-empowered versions that were equally popular, widespread, and "classic," for centuries before Walt Disney chose the most misogynistic version to animate and popularize in the 20th century - which in many cases is now the only version that's known. Not always, and she tells us of the exceptions she's found.

You don't need to know anything about any of these tales before you read this book; she summarizes each plot of each version for you. (I'd never come across The White Cat or Puss in Boots, both of which are traced in that chapter, but it's okay: they were summarized well.)

After a cracking start with the Cinderella chapter, it becomes a lot more academic, so I went through it slower. I am an avid fan of traditional oral storytelling and listening, so I am well familiar with the way tales morph and change to suit different times and places; the author's tracing and explaining of some of this felt extremely belabored to me, and at times quite tiresome: much more suitable to an academic paper than a popular book. But this may be because I'm immersed in this world already.

Regardless, I learned a lot, and am really glad I read this book, and do recommend it to anyone interested in fairy tales, folktales, myths, and legends. And also anyone interested in feminism.

I did not realize there were these much more empowered princesses out there, nor that the versions I grew up with from Walt Disney were based on the most misogynistic version available, from Charles Perrault.

The author shared research that found that Perrault's daughter, after inheriting from her mother, was placed under house arrest by her father and brothers, to pressure her into giving up her inheritance to her brothers. We know this from court documents that were found, where she said she was unable to protest the transfer of the inheritance earlier because of these conditions, but here she was in court now to protest it. The court found in her favor.

This came up because one of the tales she was tracing the lineage of, the version written by that conteuse, was dedicated to Parrault's daughter, and there was debate about whether he even had a daughter. In his memoir, he claimed to only have sons! He was that sexist and misogynistic.

I am appalled that his versions of fairy tales are shaping hearts and minds across the Western world today, and am thrilled to now have better versions to spread instead. Many thanks to Anne E. Duggan for writing this volume! I now hope others follow suit, as she calls for at the end, and help bring out the more balanced, less misogynistic versions of other tales.

[Shreedevi Gurumurty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since its beginnings, the fairy tale has been a fluid, ephemeral category. Though existing earlier, largely in oral form, the term “contes de fées” or “tales about fairies” was coined by Countess Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy in 1697, when she published her first collection of tales. Madame d’Aulnoy and countless other authors of her time put stories that had previously existed only in oral form into print for the first time.Female authors produced two-thirds of the fairy tales written between 1690 and 1715. Soon, the term “fairy tale” became a declaration of resistance against the 17th century literary and social status quo, and the genre took on a rather satirical or subversive tone. D’Aulnoy’s term signalled the arrival of a genre dominated by women, both in terms of its female authors, such as Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force,Henriette-Julie de Murat,Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve,Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont,Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier etc.
and the powerful goddess-like characters they created.The conteuses(storytellers) relied on the oral tradition of the fairy tale for both its broadly accessible nature and its marginalization within literary society. Ties with this tradition gave conteuses access to common mythology, and its marginalization allowed their work to go largely unchecked. Simultaneously, however, they relied on personal experiences and the supportive salonnière community to reconfigure the oral tradition into a sophisticated and subversive literary genre that challenged existing social and political structures.Just as the fairies in their tales possess powers to determine human fate and uphold a moral code, the conteuses wished to act as real-world fairies themselves and to employ their tales to begin to establish and guide others towards a more ideal society in which women could possess greater influence and agency.Other female fairytale writers,storytellers and authors were Bozena Nemacova,Sara Coleridge,Sarah Fielding,Elsie Spicer Eells,and Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić.

[Jennifer Wadman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked up from the “New Arrivals” shelf at the library partly because of its whimsical cover and partly because I have invested in reading the less popular fairy stories that emerged from the 18th century. I anticipated an engaging look into lives and times of the authoresses as well as captivating retellings. What I worked through was a deeply researched academic tome which lacks heart and charm. The synopses of the focus tales were dry and clinical (with the exception of the Belle-Belle variations in the final chapter) and inspired neither imagination nor a desire to reread a full version. The biographical sections on women writers who take first billing on the cover were brief sketches sprinkled among the minutiae of analysis of iterations of the tales. I suspect that in the classroom, or in quiet conversation, the professor is warm and engaging and a captivating storyteller who has a love of the genre that inspires her students. This book might be a helpful tool for academics, and demonstrates the authors abilities as a researcher, but I suspect will be a DNF for most library patrons looking for an entertaining and approachable understanding of the origins and histories of fairy tales.