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From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers
This study looks beyond the Freudian interpretation of fairy tales, to the tellers of the tales, and to the social and cultural contexts in which the tales are told and re-told through the centuries, from the ancient sibyls to the 18th-century salonieres, and from Disney to Angela Carter.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 1994
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5781 people want to read
About the author
Marina Warner
172 books343 followersMarina Sarah Warner is a British novelist, short story writer, historian and mythographer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth.
She is a professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre at the University of Essex, and gave the Reith Lectures on the BBC in 1994 on the theme of 'Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time.'
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 99 reviews
October 8, 2015
I entered this tale full of naivity, and emerged with Knowledge. I'm indebted to the lovely organisers of Into the Forest group, because I'm glad I read this the sooner, since it gave me some doors and handles into (or out of) things that touch me daily. Fairy tales break the silence Warner tells us. The silence around fear and trauma, the silence imposed on women.
(and the silencing of women does not always mean a padlock through the lip or hurled abuse (Shrew! Nag! Termagant!) because we are taught through a million signals to hush. Sometimes radical kindness, radical openness, radical love, great tenderness and patience is required to open our mouths and hearts)
Before re-reading what the English call fairytales, stories collected and interpreted by Perrault and the brothers Grimm and Disney, Marina would like to re-hear them, or at least, recover the voices in which they were told before those men came along and got the credit. Women's voices. Some readers, and I count myself among them, may warm at once to her project of telling of the tellers first, before delving into the told, but others may feel some impatience at the prospect of two hundred pages of historical meandering as prelude to a discussion of the stories themselves. To these readers I say trust her, it's worth it, because the later discussion draws deeply on this well of memory and circumstance Warner has lovingly dug. Many things happen to a tale when you think differently about who told it and why, and to whom and some of those things are urgent, and might lead us to liberations.
Warner has her feminist lens firmly in place, and as usual I will attempt to review from a feminist angle, but I don't want this endorsement to be interpreted as a description of the book's scope or focus; she discusses the female origin of fairytale because their origin is female, and so their content reflects female perspectives. The fact that I had never realised this suggests that the perception of fairytales like that of other literary endeavour reflects a masculinist vision of the world. Warner quotes Woolf: for centuries Anonymous was a woman. Warner gives her a few of her names, but the act of gendering her is in itself a small reparation.
Having read so far you might be as surprised as I was by the heterogenous, sometimes bizarre content of the first half of the book. Marina is leading us a dance, a quest full of transformations and magical beasts. With chapter titles like 'The Glass Paving and the Secret Foot' this yarn can only be a fairy tale itself, told in their characteristic matter-of-fact tone, only for a change it is fact after a fashion, oft stranger in her wild imaginings than her dreaming, artistic sister, fiction. In this story there are many Sibyls, one of whom takes up residence in a cave, and the Queen of Sheba, who, perhaps due to a monk's typo, is sometimes part goose. Or is it stork? Or even ostrich? There are a lot of birds in here too, twittering like gossiping women, delivering babies, offering a convenient comic mask, like the ass ears of the fool. Tellers put on costume, sometimes, like Perrault, drag, in order to adjust how their stories are perceived. Read this primarily for pleasure as well as instruction!
But some tellers, or rather writers, of literary fairy tales, like Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, wore no special costume, and yet have been forgotten by all but afficionados and academics like Warner, although they wrote far more prolifically than male creators or even collectors. Their stories have apparently lost their relevance, since the agonies and aspirations that inform them have passed from the European social body. In general, women are no longer forced into marriages advantageous to their fathers, and the solutions passionately advocated by women like L'Heritier, D'Aulnoy and their contemporaries through the medium of their literature have lost all urgency.
Perrault certainly casts himself as a female champion, but his benign intentions don't cancel out his patriarchal enculturation. Both his pat morals (he prided himself on tidying up the 'inscrutable' ethical orientations of the tales he collected) and his revisions involve a loss of self determination or subjectivity for women or girls. I learned that early versions of the Red Riding Hood story ended with the girl escaping, after being tricked into eating a piece of her granny, by pretending she needed to pee. The wolf urges her to do it in the bed(!) but when she insists, he lets her out tied to a string, which she manages to slip off, thus escaping through her own ingenuity. In Perrault's version, she instead ends up eaten and dead, while the Grimms added the now standard woodcutter/father to rescue both girl and granny from the wolf's belly. The trajectory is from spirited, deceitful, valiant young girl to damsel in distress via two male interpreters. Perrault's moral casts the wolf as a predatory young man whom young women are advised to avoid, and Warner finds this tacked on to a tale with different depths, such as the fear of wild(er)ness and otherness that reflects a beast-world to which humans remained vulnerable.
Warner critiques the archetypal approach of Bettelheim and his ilk from a feminist perspective. This kind of psychologism destroys history, erases the realities of women's lives, and results in a medicalisation of trauma that actually arises from oppressive structures that can, with effort, be changed for the better. Her approach is historical, delving repeatedly into the realities of tellers and hearers. When I chatted to my mum about reading this book, she asked me why fairytales are so terrible, and the answer, which I didn't have at that moment, is that they reflect the deepest horrors and hardships their tellers experienced
For example, the conflict between mothers and daughters in law, which reflects the precarious situation of both as dependants on a male head of the house, is dramatised vividly in tales of the mistreatment of young girls and nasty older women, and on the flipside the power of crones and fairy godmothers to reward kindness and other virtues. 'The teller furthers her interest in fairytales as in gossip, often by disparaging others'. Warner repeats: the legal and social frameworks at the root of these conflicts and vulnerabilities can be remedied, and fairytale is a veiled indictment of them which should be heeded. Therefore, it obscures a valuable truth if we interpret the harsh misogyny of many tales as simply the generalised social current or the prejudice of male tellers.
(Please see Margaret's marvellous review for a very clear explanation of the material reality that is lost in an ahistorical psychoanalysis of the Bluebeard tales. Feminist writing that draws on the tale, such as Bluebeard's Egg by Margaret Atwood and Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi, rewrites lost context, reconnecting narrative and materiality)
Warner says that it is urgent to confront the trope of the heroine's blondness 'as its consequences are so dire', but I felt that she had only opened the can here, and left the worms for us all to sort in a collective project. There are various strange reasons why blonde became aligned with virtue and beauty but I found her treatment somehow toothless. Her readings of hair in general, and those she points to, are more interesting.
What I love about this book, what moved me, was Warner's insistence on fairytale's relevance. She is a partisan of the form, but a highly critical one. Fairytales, she argues, break the silence (a silence of women, continually reimposed) and cry out in protest. She diagnoses a 'thinning' culture (which I see as the cultural hegemony of a neoliberal kyriarchy) and persistent injustice, not the progress implied when tales are sanitised for ever more confined children or their misogynies brushed off as outdated archetypes. Spaces of imagination such as that offered by fantasy stories create room for new possibilities and transformations, for wishful thinking than can be made into reality, like the precieuses protests against arranged marriage. Our futures are still in forests...
The limited scope of the book speaks for itself; Marina neither explains nor apologises for her European focus, the tales familiar to her as an English-speaker with Italian heritage. She certainly tempted me to read Italo Calvino's collection of Italian fairytales (and ignited an interest in Leonora Carrington), but while the 1001 Nights are occasionally mentioned, and an ancient Chinese tale which seems to be a root of Cinderella is compared to later versions, our questing heroine does not much leave the shelter of her shores. I will have to read her other books to explore elsewheres since I know she has written them.
This edition is delectable, from its kitschy cover art to its many lushly printed illustrations. Its heft made it rather a pain to lug around London town, and it will be much more at home on the shelf, from which I shall doubtless often pick it up and peek into it again.
(and the silencing of women does not always mean a padlock through the lip or hurled abuse (Shrew! Nag! Termagant!) because we are taught through a million signals to hush. Sometimes radical kindness, radical openness, radical love, great tenderness and patience is required to open our mouths and hearts)
Before re-reading what the English call fairytales, stories collected and interpreted by Perrault and the brothers Grimm and Disney, Marina would like to re-hear them, or at least, recover the voices in which they were told before those men came along and got the credit. Women's voices. Some readers, and I count myself among them, may warm at once to her project of telling of the tellers first, before delving into the told, but others may feel some impatience at the prospect of two hundred pages of historical meandering as prelude to a discussion of the stories themselves. To these readers I say trust her, it's worth it, because the later discussion draws deeply on this well of memory and circumstance Warner has lovingly dug. Many things happen to a tale when you think differently about who told it and why, and to whom and some of those things are urgent, and might lead us to liberations.
Warner has her feminist lens firmly in place, and as usual I will attempt to review from a feminist angle, but I don't want this endorsement to be interpreted as a description of the book's scope or focus; she discusses the female origin of fairytale because their origin is female, and so their content reflects female perspectives. The fact that I had never realised this suggests that the perception of fairytales like that of other literary endeavour reflects a masculinist vision of the world. Warner quotes Woolf: for centuries Anonymous was a woman. Warner gives her a few of her names, but the act of gendering her is in itself a small reparation.
Having read so far you might be as surprised as I was by the heterogenous, sometimes bizarre content of the first half of the book. Marina is leading us a dance, a quest full of transformations and magical beasts. With chapter titles like 'The Glass Paving and the Secret Foot' this yarn can only be a fairy tale itself, told in their characteristic matter-of-fact tone, only for a change it is fact after a fashion, oft stranger in her wild imaginings than her dreaming, artistic sister, fiction. In this story there are many Sibyls, one of whom takes up residence in a cave, and the Queen of Sheba, who, perhaps due to a monk's typo, is sometimes part goose. Or is it stork? Or even ostrich? There are a lot of birds in here too, twittering like gossiping women, delivering babies, offering a convenient comic mask, like the ass ears of the fool. Tellers put on costume, sometimes, like Perrault, drag, in order to adjust how their stories are perceived. Read this primarily for pleasure as well as instruction!
But some tellers, or rather writers, of literary fairy tales, like Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy, wore no special costume, and yet have been forgotten by all but afficionados and academics like Warner, although they wrote far more prolifically than male creators or even collectors. Their stories have apparently lost their relevance, since the agonies and aspirations that inform them have passed from the European social body. In general, women are no longer forced into marriages advantageous to their fathers, and the solutions passionately advocated by women like L'Heritier, D'Aulnoy and their contemporaries through the medium of their literature have lost all urgency.
Perrault certainly casts himself as a female champion, but his benign intentions don't cancel out his patriarchal enculturation. Both his pat morals (he prided himself on tidying up the 'inscrutable' ethical orientations of the tales he collected) and his revisions involve a loss of self determination or subjectivity for women or girls. I learned that early versions of the Red Riding Hood story ended with the girl escaping, after being tricked into eating a piece of her granny, by pretending she needed to pee. The wolf urges her to do it in the bed(!) but when she insists, he lets her out tied to a string, which she manages to slip off, thus escaping through her own ingenuity. In Perrault's version, she instead ends up eaten and dead, while the Grimms added the now standard woodcutter/father to rescue both girl and granny from the wolf's belly. The trajectory is from spirited, deceitful, valiant young girl to damsel in distress via two male interpreters. Perrault's moral casts the wolf as a predatory young man whom young women are advised to avoid, and Warner finds this tacked on to a tale with different depths, such as the fear of wild(er)ness and otherness that reflects a beast-world to which humans remained vulnerable.
Warner critiques the archetypal approach of Bettelheim and his ilk from a feminist perspective. This kind of psychologism destroys history, erases the realities of women's lives, and results in a medicalisation of trauma that actually arises from oppressive structures that can, with effort, be changed for the better. Her approach is historical, delving repeatedly into the realities of tellers and hearers. When I chatted to my mum about reading this book, she asked me why fairytales are so terrible, and the answer, which I didn't have at that moment, is that they reflect the deepest horrors and hardships their tellers experienced
For example, the conflict between mothers and daughters in law, which reflects the precarious situation of both as dependants on a male head of the house, is dramatised vividly in tales of the mistreatment of young girls and nasty older women, and on the flipside the power of crones and fairy godmothers to reward kindness and other virtues. 'The teller furthers her interest in fairytales as in gossip, often by disparaging others'. Warner repeats: the legal and social frameworks at the root of these conflicts and vulnerabilities can be remedied, and fairytale is a veiled indictment of them which should be heeded. Therefore, it obscures a valuable truth if we interpret the harsh misogyny of many tales as simply the generalised social current or the prejudice of male tellers.
When history falls away from a subject, we are left with Otherness, and all its power to compact enmity, recharge it and recirculate it. An archetype is a hollow thing, but a dangerous one, a figure or image which through usage has been uncoupled from the circumstances which brought it into being, and goes on spreading false consciousnessThe changing priorities of people are reflected in the shifts in popularity of particular tales and in the character of retellings. One of the most interesting surveys here is of Beauty and the Beast, which has metamorphosised in response to many cultural currents. Unsurprisingly it's always been Beauty who has to change, to do the work: in the eighteenth century she must learn to become a loving wife to a beastly husband, while in the twenty-first she must learn 'to be game in bed', since wildness, animal-ness, has become something to celebrate, the idealised state of nature rather than a threat. As well as discussing the domesticated feminism of Disney's interpretation, Warner rather laments that the current trend, for tales in which the Beast does not need to be disenchanted, tends towards celebrating the male (the rise of the teddy bear's popularity is another strand in this trend, which is exemplified in many other tales). Such retellings remove 'the energy and exuberance from female erotic voices' as heard in Angela Carter, whose heroines are excited by beastliness. Her disenchantments demythologise, liberating female desire. The loss of this disenchantment returns us to the story's root, the woman-blaming admonition of Psyche disobediently looking on Cupid.
(Please see Margaret's marvellous review for a very clear explanation of the material reality that is lost in an ahistorical psychoanalysis of the Bluebeard tales. Feminist writing that draws on the tale, such as Bluebeard's Egg by Margaret Atwood and Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi, rewrites lost context, reconnecting narrative and materiality)
Warner says that it is urgent to confront the trope of the heroine's blondness 'as its consequences are so dire', but I felt that she had only opened the can here, and left the worms for us all to sort in a collective project. There are various strange reasons why blonde became aligned with virtue and beauty but I found her treatment somehow toothless. Her readings of hair in general, and those she points to, are more interesting.
What I love about this book, what moved me, was Warner's insistence on fairytale's relevance. She is a partisan of the form, but a highly critical one. Fairytales, she argues, break the silence (a silence of women, continually reimposed) and cry out in protest. She diagnoses a 'thinning' culture (which I see as the cultural hegemony of a neoliberal kyriarchy) and persistent injustice, not the progress implied when tales are sanitised for ever more confined children or their misogynies brushed off as outdated archetypes. Spaces of imagination such as that offered by fantasy stories create room for new possibilities and transformations, for wishful thinking than can be made into reality, like the precieuses protests against arranged marriage. Our futures are still in forests...
The limited scope of the book speaks for itself; Marina neither explains nor apologises for her European focus, the tales familiar to her as an English-speaker with Italian heritage. She certainly tempted me to read Italo Calvino's collection of Italian fairytales (and ignited an interest in Leonora Carrington), but while the 1001 Nights are occasionally mentioned, and an ancient Chinese tale which seems to be a root of Cinderella is compared to later versions, our questing heroine does not much leave the shelter of her shores. I will have to read her other books to explore elsewheres since I know she has written them.
This edition is delectable, from its kitschy cover art to its many lushly printed illustrations. Its heft made it rather a pain to lug around London town, and it will be much more at home on the shelf, from which I shall doubtless often pick it up and peek into it again.
November 24, 2012
Stepmothers were framed! Yes. The wicked stepmother in fairy tales is a modern stitch-up, and stepmums should be asking for a retrial. I made some amazing discoveries in this fabulous book about fairy tales, but the notion that stepmothers were framed is probably the one which will stick with me. Apparently, the evil maternal figure in lots of old folklore – the queen who sends the hunter to kill Snow White because she is jealous of her beauty, and the greedy (or starving) woman who leaves Hansel and Gretel in the woods in order to have fewer mouths to feed, they were actually the MOTHERS of those children. And why not? There is an emotional truth to mothers’ jealousy of their daughters, for example. So, in the original spread of folklore, there were many good mothers balanced by a few bad mothers. But then selected fairy tales were written down, and the editors couldn’t bear the idea that mothers would be cruel, because the nineteenth century ideal of maternal perfection was evolving, and also because the assumed audience for fairy tales was moving from adult to child. So the editors turned those bad mothers into stepmothers. And so the balance was completely skewed. Lots of good mothers, and no bad ones; some bad stepmothers and no good ones. The wicked stepmother was born. This is a challenging and surprising way to look at the stories we thought we knew, and a clear indication of how vital stories are in creating our view of the world. This entire book is a comprehensive and fascinating look at fairy tales, their history, their context, their tellers, their evolution and their effect on our culture. It’s unashamedly feminist, it’s fairly Freudian, and it’s also a little dated (written in 1994, it obviously couldn’t take in the huge numbers of recent YA books which bounce off the traditional tales) but for anyone interested in folklore, the origins of much of our culture, and how women are seen as both tellers and protagonists in stories, this is a wonderful and thought-provoking read. It is dense and heavy in places, clearly written for a serious audience, but it’s so packed with amazing insights, that I often chose to read this non-fiction research book over whatever novel I was actually reading for pleasure!
August 14, 2011
I have a fondness for the huge, synthesising variety of history that either takes lots of seemingly disparate things and draws interesting connections between them or starts with something small and moves outward to take in a huge swath of information that I wouldn't have thought to connect until someone brilliant does so for me. This is a literary/cultural history of the latter sort, and you couldn't ask for a more articulate, erudite, and interesting guide than Marina Warner. Sybilline prophecies, riddles, the Queen of Sheba, the semantics of hair, Mexican postcards, the court of the Sun King, foot deformities, mediaeval European childbirth practices, the Virgin Mary, arranged marriages, governesses, Shakespeare: all these and more connected by threads radiating outwards from fairy tales, especially those written down in early modern France.
December 17, 2015
A powerful history of Western fairytale storytellers (for the most part, it focuses exclusively on the Western fairytale tradition). The first half traces the history of the storytellers—from French literary tellers like L'Heritier and d'Aulnoy to the Grimm brother's mainly female sources; to how the image of Mother Goose and old women storytellers developed (a combination of goose symbology, Saint Anne, the sibyls, and the social attitude toward older women). The second half examines specific tales within their historical context, and what those tales would’ve meant to the tellers and listeners. For instance, Bluebeard tales (which have women marrying a rich stranger and discovering in a secret room that he’s been murdering his past wives) reflect the historical reality of an early death due to childbirth (in 1800, the average lifespan for a woman in Burgundy was 25!!!). Many widowers remarried, and their past wives would of course been a source of fear for the new bride, and the marriage bed threatening. Bluebeard tales serve as both warning and catharsis for teller and listener.
In her conclusion, she gives both a warning and a call to action for current fairytale tellers and researchers, saying:
"as individual women's voices have become absorbed into the corporate body of male-dominated decision-makers, the misogyny present in many fairy stories--the wicked stepmothers, bad fairies, ogresses, spoiled princesses, ugly sisters and so forth--has lost its connections to the particular web of tensions in which women were enmeshed and come to look dangerously like the way things are. The historical context of the stories has been sheared away, and figures like the wicked stepmother have grown into archetypes of the human psyche, hallowed, inevitable symbols, while figures like the Beast bridegroom have been granted even more positive status . . . The danger of women has become more and more part of the story, and correspondingly, the danger of men has receded: Cinderella's and Snow White's wicked stepmothers teach children to face life's little difficulties, it is argued, but films about a Bluebeard or a child murderer, as in 'Tom Thumb', are rated Adults Only."
While modern subversive retellings are prevalent, the dominating storyteller is still that of Disney, and with the surge of live action remakes, Disney's versions are set to instill a new generation with their versions. But I feel that fairytale retellings will still thrive, and that storytellers will find ways of using them to push boundaries and question social norms. And perhaps this new enthrallment with Disney's versions will push a new generation to seek out more--and find writers like Angela Carter, Cathrynne M. Valente, Italo Calvino, Charles De Lint, and so many more.
From the Beast to the Blonde is not a light read. It’s a densely packed history rich with insight, and something I know I can return to and always find something new and challenging.
And here's another quote from the conclusion: “Who tells the story, who recasts the characters and changes the tone becomes very important: no story is ever the same as its source or model, the chemistry of narrator and audience changes it.”
In her conclusion, she gives both a warning and a call to action for current fairytale tellers and researchers, saying:
"as individual women's voices have become absorbed into the corporate body of male-dominated decision-makers, the misogyny present in many fairy stories--the wicked stepmothers, bad fairies, ogresses, spoiled princesses, ugly sisters and so forth--has lost its connections to the particular web of tensions in which women were enmeshed and come to look dangerously like the way things are. The historical context of the stories has been sheared away, and figures like the wicked stepmother have grown into archetypes of the human psyche, hallowed, inevitable symbols, while figures like the Beast bridegroom have been granted even more positive status . . . The danger of women has become more and more part of the story, and correspondingly, the danger of men has receded: Cinderella's and Snow White's wicked stepmothers teach children to face life's little difficulties, it is argued, but films about a Bluebeard or a child murderer, as in 'Tom Thumb', are rated Adults Only."
While modern subversive retellings are prevalent, the dominating storyteller is still that of Disney, and with the surge of live action remakes, Disney's versions are set to instill a new generation with their versions. But I feel that fairytale retellings will still thrive, and that storytellers will find ways of using them to push boundaries and question social norms. And perhaps this new enthrallment with Disney's versions will push a new generation to seek out more--and find writers like Angela Carter, Cathrynne M. Valente, Italo Calvino, Charles De Lint, and so many more.
From the Beast to the Blonde is not a light read. It’s a densely packed history rich with insight, and something I know I can return to and always find something new and challenging.
And here's another quote from the conclusion: “Who tells the story, who recasts the characters and changes the tone becomes very important: no story is ever the same as its source or model, the chemistry of narrator and audience changes it.”
September 17, 2024
REREAD 2024-25
THIS IS THE ULTIMATE BOOK ON THE HISTORY OF FAIRY TALES AND TELLERS. I am reading another on the same subject right now. Well, two of them to be exact and both are equally good, but this one is truly PERFECTION, a skillful narrative of the history of fairy tales and how people came to tell them and how they still capture our attention. Fairy tales are eternal. Some see these through Jungian and similar lenses. I have, but currently I DO NOT. They are more open and plain and perfectly Freudian. If you read Shakespeare, if you understand Shakespeare, you can see why I wrote that and what I mean by it. Human stories. While fairy tales usually reach into areas of wonder, enchantment, transformation, etc. these stories are distinctively about us and at sometimes universal and very much, relevant in the modern world. While we retell them in our own image, I have tried to read them as they were meant at different moments in order to see and feel perspectives not my own. THIS IS A CHALLENGE. But not entirely impossible. I have come to a realization I once did not possess when younger, that to look at the past and history, to look at what it truly means to be human, we can no longer afford to be judgmental, to interpret stories only through our own lens and times. This is a fatal mistake. We cannot pick what lens. We must use ALL LENS to view stories and history in order to grasp our full humanity and perhaps even our futures.
Stories were once the best friend of our species. Now the art of storytelling is hurting us. We have to ask ourselves why this IS happening. At least try. Because not everything beautiful is pretty.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Beautiful and fascinating look at fairy tales, their tellers, and history. Highly recommended for lovers of fairy tales and feminist studies.
All girls want love. But what kind? And why? That is at the heart of many fairy tales. I hate to say it, but it's so Freudian. Laughing.
THIS IS THE ULTIMATE BOOK ON THE HISTORY OF FAIRY TALES AND TELLERS. I am reading another on the same subject right now. Well, two of them to be exact and both are equally good, but this one is truly PERFECTION, a skillful narrative of the history of fairy tales and how people came to tell them and how they still capture our attention. Fairy tales are eternal. Some see these through Jungian and similar lenses. I have, but currently I DO NOT. They are more open and plain and perfectly Freudian. If you read Shakespeare, if you understand Shakespeare, you can see why I wrote that and what I mean by it. Human stories. While fairy tales usually reach into areas of wonder, enchantment, transformation, etc. these stories are distinctively about us and at sometimes universal and very much, relevant in the modern world. While we retell them in our own image, I have tried to read them as they were meant at different moments in order to see and feel perspectives not my own. THIS IS A CHALLENGE. But not entirely impossible. I have come to a realization I once did not possess when younger, that to look at the past and history, to look at what it truly means to be human, we can no longer afford to be judgmental, to interpret stories only through our own lens and times. This is a fatal mistake. We cannot pick what lens. We must use ALL LENS to view stories and history in order to grasp our full humanity and perhaps even our futures.
Stories were once the best friend of our species. Now the art of storytelling is hurting us. We have to ask ourselves why this IS happening. At least try. Because not everything beautiful is pretty.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Beautiful and fascinating look at fairy tales, their tellers, and history. Highly recommended for lovers of fairy tales and feminist studies.
All girls want love. But what kind? And why? That is at the heart of many fairy tales. I hate to say it, but it's so Freudian. Laughing.
October 3, 2011
A fascinating look into the evolution of fairy tales from a women's history perspective--I learned a lot, and I'm inspired to learn more.
Marina Warner begins with the original female character of the storyteller, including the three precursors to Mother Goose: the Sibylline Prophesies, Saint Anne, and the Queen of Sheba. She explores the spread of fairy stories through "old wives' tales" to the grand salons of France and explains how stories change based on who tells them and when in history they are told.
There's a lot of food for thought here, but there were a few parts I found particularly interesting:
*A discussion of the origins of the Fool -- Warner points out that Laughter is an "expression of freedom" that "abolishes heirarchy ... cancels authority, and faces down fear." The Fool is the ultimate rebel but he gets away with it because no one takes a laughing man or woman seriously.
*Why are there so many characters with dead mothers/stepmothers in fairy tales? Death in childbirth was common, and women lived longer than men. The rising number of single older women needing support caused some friction between generations, especially in regards to inheritance.
*Warner explores various fairy tale tropes, including the "wicked" stepmother, the demon lover, incest, and the changing attitudes towards the "beast." Also, the symbolism of hair.
A well-researched, well-written, fascinating read.
Marina Warner begins with the original female character of the storyteller, including the three precursors to Mother Goose: the Sibylline Prophesies, Saint Anne, and the Queen of Sheba. She explores the spread of fairy stories through "old wives' tales" to the grand salons of France and explains how stories change based on who tells them and when in history they are told.
There's a lot of food for thought here, but there were a few parts I found particularly interesting:
*A discussion of the origins of the Fool -- Warner points out that Laughter is an "expression of freedom" that "abolishes heirarchy ... cancels authority, and faces down fear." The Fool is the ultimate rebel but he gets away with it because no one takes a laughing man or woman seriously.
*Why are there so many characters with dead mothers/stepmothers in fairy tales? Death in childbirth was common, and women lived longer than men. The rising number of single older women needing support caused some friction between generations, especially in regards to inheritance.
*Warner explores various fairy tale tropes, including the "wicked" stepmother, the demon lover, incest, and the changing attitudes towards the "beast." Also, the symbolism of hair.
A well-researched, well-written, fascinating read.
February 6, 2009
Absolutely invaluable resource for anyone who has ever wondered about what's really going on in fairy tales. Insightful, entertainingly written, and well organized. Marina Warner is one of my favorite sources when I do my own feminist readings of fairy tales, fairy tale inspired modern fiction, or "retold" fairy tales (like that of McKinley or Donna Jo Napoli or Shannon Hale). Warner strips away the "cutesy" veneer we've all been exposed to, especially with Disney, and shows us all the gory details, and exposes the way these fairy tales are windows into the way women have been exploited and suppressed/oppressed. This book has pride of place on my research shelf.
November 29, 2016
From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner is an exhaustive and comprehensive study of the history and development of fairy tales and their tellers. The book is divided into two parts: Part 1 addresses the tellers; Part 2 addresses the tales. Warner’s basic thesis is that fairy tales consist in narrative form of the lived experiences of women as told primarily by women. In order to understand the content and various permutations of fairy tales, one has to contextualize them within the social, economic, cultural, and legal conditions of women at the time. Fairy tales which pit woman against woman in vying for the affections of and benefits bestowed by the all-powerful male figure were no more than a woman’s strategy for survival in a world hostile to women and all things female.
The book is dense; the research impressive; the breadth and scope wide; the insights, interpretations, and commentary inspired. But this is not a light or quick read, especially Part 1. Her examination of specific fairy tales and their motifs in Part 2 was more accessible. The book is highly recommended but only for those with a serious commitment to understanding the social and cultural context from which these tales emerged.
The book is dense; the research impressive; the breadth and scope wide; the insights, interpretations, and commentary inspired. But this is not a light or quick read, especially Part 1. Her examination of specific fairy tales and their motifs in Part 2 was more accessible. The book is highly recommended but only for those with a serious commitment to understanding the social and cultural context from which these tales emerged.
April 2, 2013
Another reviewer called this book "fact soup", and I'm going to adopt her phrase. Marina Warner has created a very dense history of stories that, so far, is western focused. I can't read it, as I'm not academic in the arts. I can skim it. It's not a book for the average fairy tale lover to read cover-to-cover. But it's more of an occassional reference, skim, or short story for one interested in the role of women in folk lore. The structure is difficult because it is much too fluid. Fact soup just pours out of the author's pen.
August 1, 2008
I love the interpretation of fairy tales. Marina Warner is superb.
March 29, 2014
"The faculty of wonder, like curiosity, can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due."
In the words of Angela Carter, "Ours is a highly individualized culture, with a great faith in the work of art as a unique one-off, and the artist as an original, a godlike and inspired creator of unique one-offs. But fairy tales are not like that, nor are their makers. Who first invented meatballs? In what country? Is there a definitive recipe for potato soup? Think in terms of the domestic arts. 'This is how I make potato soup.'"
And this is how Marina Warner deconstructs potato soup. In this elegant and provocative examination, she peels and pares and probes with a fearless (and often merciless) integrity that somehow never diminishes the tales themselves. Her voice is authoritative, subtly witty, sometimes cynical, but always academic and mindful of the traditions and art she is overturning in her quest. The collection itself is by no means exhaustive but serves rather to provide a spring board for further dialogue, research, and consideration. Her bibliographical net is cast so wide the edges are blurry, yet her citations are faithful and her references are organized, pertinent, and evocative.
This is non-fiction that combines art, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and literature in a way that whets the appetite. Her combination of scholasticism and reverence, criticism and apology, becomes a tribute to the tales and their tellers. Her writing begins to mirror the tales themselves, that "store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, [which] holds out the promise of...creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings."
In the words of Angela Carter, "Ours is a highly individualized culture, with a great faith in the work of art as a unique one-off, and the artist as an original, a godlike and inspired creator of unique one-offs. But fairy tales are not like that, nor are their makers. Who first invented meatballs? In what country? Is there a definitive recipe for potato soup? Think in terms of the domestic arts. 'This is how I make potato soup.'"
And this is how Marina Warner deconstructs potato soup. In this elegant and provocative examination, she peels and pares and probes with a fearless (and often merciless) integrity that somehow never diminishes the tales themselves. Her voice is authoritative, subtly witty, sometimes cynical, but always academic and mindful of the traditions and art she is overturning in her quest. The collection itself is by no means exhaustive but serves rather to provide a spring board for further dialogue, research, and consideration. Her bibliographical net is cast so wide the edges are blurry, yet her citations are faithful and her references are organized, pertinent, and evocative.
This is non-fiction that combines art, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and literature in a way that whets the appetite. Her combination of scholasticism and reverence, criticism and apology, becomes a tribute to the tales and their tellers. Her writing begins to mirror the tales themselves, that "store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, [which] holds out the promise of...creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings."
April 25, 2010
Groundbreaking, in-depth, absolutely essential work of faerie tale criticism, and a hell of a read. This scholarly tome encompasses everything from the history of literary tales and the oral tradition, to the role of feminism and female authors and storytellers, and the motifs behind the tales that make them so compelling and retain their grip on the imagination of contemporary audiences. Brilliant, wonderful, highly recommended.
February 14, 2016
This book addressed so much that, while it was an interesting and enjoyable read, I find it difficult to remember any specific points I liked. Warner covers the evolution and messages of various fairy tales, with an underlying theme about how they often provided a voice for women in a misogynistic society. Many ancient themes that would be incorporated into fairy tales are brought up here, including the Sibyls of the Roman world, tales of the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon, and the accounts of saints' lives. The book tackles the recurring themes of absent mothers, weak-willed fathers, evil stepmothers, and the seeking of forbidden knowledge. A lot of attention is focused on tales of the Bluebeard and Beauty and the Beast type, where a woman is the central figure. They're sort of opposite takes on the same story, with the former making the husband into a horrible person, and the latter presenting the beast form as not reflective of the husband's true nature. Also, Bluebeard's wife is punished for her disobedience (although, as has been often pointed out, the guy would have still been a serial killer even if she hadn't looked into his forbidden closet), and only saved by the fortunate intercession of her brothers. In stories like that of Cupid and Psyche, sort of the ur-example for such tales, the woman does what she isn't supposed to do but is still able to redeem herself in the end. Warner's style involves giving a lot of examples of each theme she deals with, which can be fascinating but sometimes a little hard to follow.
November 6, 2015
Fairy tales feel out the rules: the forbidden door opens on to terra nova where different rules apply. Curiosity, so closely linked to speech, runs live electricity through many of the stories, and though the questor...is often punished for not abiding by the rules, the story also runs against its own grain by rewarding her just the same (p. 415).
From the Beast to the Blonde took me a couple months to work my way through, but the good kind of "work" that's fun; plus, I learned A LOT. Already added to my wishlist because I know I could re-read it a dozen times and still make new discoveries. (The bibliography alone will keep me busy for years!!) I will say, after my first read, I am most fascinated by Chapters 21 and 22: The Language of Hair. That one wrinkled my brain, and I cannot wait to explore further.
4 stars
From the Beast to the Blonde took me a couple months to work my way through, but the good kind of "work" that's fun; plus, I learned A LOT. Already added to my wishlist because I know I could re-read it a dozen times and still make new discoveries. (The bibliography alone will keep me busy for years!!) I will say, after my first read, I am most fascinated by Chapters 21 and 22: The Language of Hair. That one wrinkled my brain, and I cannot wait to explore further.
4 stars
February 5, 2008
This is an excellent cultural history of fairy tales and the people who tell them. Many studies of fairy tales focus on the archetypes and the psychological symbolism of the tales, but as Warner points out, this kind of broad interpretation ignores the changing cultural context of the stories. For example, the terms "stepmother" and "mother-in-law" used to be interchangeable, which adds another layer to all those stories of wicked stepmothers... The first few chapters of this study are kind of hard going, but once Warner starts examining individual tales like "Cinderella," "Bluebeard," and "Beauty and the Beast," it really gets fascinating.
April 21, 2017
From the Beast to the Blonde: In Fairy Tales and Their Tellers by Marina Warner was a slog for me. I found the first half on the "Tellers" to have too many references to art history and too many historical generalizations. I had hoped for a more factual look at female storytellers and instead plodded through more of a history of how women were perceived. In part two which was supposed to cover stories, I did enjoy some of the comparisons of different versions of a story, but the constant Freudian psychoanalysis was overabundant and not at all interesting to me. 1 star.
September 26, 2019
Okay, so first of all, this is a lot more academic than I think I expected. Not light reading at all. This is an advanced course in the study of fairy tales. That being said, I learned a lot and found much of it absolutely fascinating and took lots of notes for my own writing. But sometimes, the density had me swimming. Only can recommend this if this is a subject that already interests you and you've done some previous deeper reading on the subject.
May 13, 2010
An exhaustive review of the many strands of storytelling which led to the stories we know today. At times, I wanted more interpretation and less data, but when Warner did offer a conclusion, I was convinced!
I particularly enjoyed the second half of the book, on the themes she sees in the stories themselves and on women's role in telling the stories and in being told about.
I particularly enjoyed the second half of the book, on the themes she sees in the stories themselves and on women's role in telling the stories and in being told about.
December 24, 2008
This was interesting. The book was about the origin of fairy tales and how they spoke of the times and tragedies by putting them into fairy tales, sort of like reality spun into fairy tales to make it more palatable or easier to come to terms with
January 4, 2009
Super chewy non-fiction book about the origins of the modern fairytale. I enjoyed much of the research presented, but if you don;t speak much or any French or German, this book will drive you round the bend.
June 3, 2013
Absolutely wonderful, well researched, interesting and easy to follow. A great read, and perfect for focusing on the treatment of women in Grimm's Fairytales. Marina Warner is a fabulous writer and brilliant academic.
January 30, 2016
Excellent. She focuses on the context at the time these stories came to be written down, which clarifies a great deal: why did Cinderella's father marry the stepmother? what's the relationship between silkies, mermaids, and Odysseus's sirens? And so on . . . very enlightening and thought-provoking.
April 24, 2016
I have been a huge fan of Marina Warner since I first read No Go, the Bogeyman, a history (as the subtitle would have it) of ‘scaring, lulling and making mock’ which explored the dark realms of ogres, giants and other figures of male terror. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers was written prior to that, and is widely regarded as a landmark study of the history and meaning of fairy tales, but I have only gotten to it now.
Warner is an exceptional academic writer, and wears her learning lightly. Unfortunately its density makes it difficult to do justice to in a short review, given that it ranges across several centuries of fairy tales (or ‘wonder tales’) and the cultural context from which they sprang. Although the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and Charles ‘I even got a Google Doodle’ Perrault are the famous tellers of fairy-tales, it comes as no surprise that the dearth of women in this cannon is merely the result of masculine appropriation of stories that were told, retold and shaped by women. Unlike the majority of fairy tale studies, Warner is not here for psychoanalysis but rather to illuminate the tellers of these tales and then reattach those tales to their historical context.
The book is divided into two sections ‘The Tellers’ and ‘The Tales’. In the first we learn much about how female voices and wisdom were perceived in the Christian west, including how old woman began to be denigrated to crones as they carried secret knowledge about sex, contraception and abortion while simultaneously Saint Anne, mother of Mary, became ever more venerated. In one of many fascinating asides Warner unpacks the etymology of ‘gossip’ – from the Old English godsibb meaning ‘godparent’ (in Old English sibb could mean kinship, relationship, love, friendship, peace, happiness’ while sibling meant any relative or kinsman); to the c.1300 meaning of “familiar acquaintance, friend, neighbour – especially women friends invited to attend a birth” to the 1560s meaning of “anyone engaging in idle talk”.
In the second part we discuss the tales themselves, including looking at the fascinating question of why, if these tales were primarily told and spread by women, are there so many evil female characters. Warner shows how it was a historical reality that women often died in childbirth, widowers often remarried and widows rarely – arranged marriages, constrained finances, and competition for dowries drive fairy tales to “reflect the difficulty of women making common cause within existing matrimonial arrangements”. The flattening of the complexities of these tales by more modern, sanitised, reproductions is decried as is the increasing prominence of more misogynist themes as the dangers of men are downplayed in favour of Prince Charming always being the end goal.
Ranging from the Chinese ‘Cinderella’ story (which goes back over a thousand years) through the Queen of Sheba to the Disney Corporation and Angela Carter, a lot of ground gets covered here. Despite the huge quantities of information, this book is a rattling good read, not least because Warner’s boundless enthusiasm and affection for her subject is so contagious. As she says “"[t]he faculty of wonder, like curiosity, can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due". Although it’s a text book, it became my night time reading! The illustrations are widespread and fascinating – from traditional woodcuts to movie stills. Be you folklorist, historian, fairy-tale enthusiast or feminist - if you care about stories you should make time for this one.
https://eatsplantsreadsbooks.wordpress.com/
Warner is an exceptional academic writer, and wears her learning lightly. Unfortunately its density makes it difficult to do justice to in a short review, given that it ranges across several centuries of fairy tales (or ‘wonder tales’) and the cultural context from which they sprang. Although the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, and Charles ‘I even got a Google Doodle’ Perrault are the famous tellers of fairy-tales, it comes as no surprise that the dearth of women in this cannon is merely the result of masculine appropriation of stories that were told, retold and shaped by women. Unlike the majority of fairy tale studies, Warner is not here for psychoanalysis but rather to illuminate the tellers of these tales and then reattach those tales to their historical context.
The book is divided into two sections ‘The Tellers’ and ‘The Tales’. In the first we learn much about how female voices and wisdom were perceived in the Christian west, including how old woman began to be denigrated to crones as they carried secret knowledge about sex, contraception and abortion while simultaneously Saint Anne, mother of Mary, became ever more venerated. In one of many fascinating asides Warner unpacks the etymology of ‘gossip’ – from the Old English godsibb meaning ‘godparent’ (in Old English sibb could mean kinship, relationship, love, friendship, peace, happiness’ while sibling meant any relative or kinsman); to the c.1300 meaning of “familiar acquaintance, friend, neighbour – especially women friends invited to attend a birth” to the 1560s meaning of “anyone engaging in idle talk”.
In the second part we discuss the tales themselves, including looking at the fascinating question of why, if these tales were primarily told and spread by women, are there so many evil female characters. Warner shows how it was a historical reality that women often died in childbirth, widowers often remarried and widows rarely – arranged marriages, constrained finances, and competition for dowries drive fairy tales to “reflect the difficulty of women making common cause within existing matrimonial arrangements”. The flattening of the complexities of these tales by more modern, sanitised, reproductions is decried as is the increasing prominence of more misogynist themes as the dangers of men are downplayed in favour of Prince Charming always being the end goal.
Ranging from the Chinese ‘Cinderella’ story (which goes back over a thousand years) through the Queen of Sheba to the Disney Corporation and Angela Carter, a lot of ground gets covered here. Despite the huge quantities of information, this book is a rattling good read, not least because Warner’s boundless enthusiasm and affection for her subject is so contagious. As she says “"[t]he faculty of wonder, like curiosity, can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due". Although it’s a text book, it became my night time reading! The illustrations are widespread and fascinating – from traditional woodcuts to movie stills. Be you folklorist, historian, fairy-tale enthusiast or feminist - if you care about stories you should make time for this one.
https://eatsplantsreadsbooks.wordpress.com/
March 1, 2015
A Brilliant Unmasking of our Most Enduring Tales
In this wonderful, scholarly book, Marina Warner explores the social context, meaning, and metamorphosis of fairy tales - from the Queen of Sheba via Old Mother Goose to the Disney Corporation - and the preoccupations of the people (mainly women) who told them. Rather than treating the stories as `archetypal' tales, Marina Warner returns them firmly to their historical context - a context in which small children really were abandoned in the forest during times of famine, where daughters suffered incest in silence, and where the lives of penniless old women were precarious indeed. As she restores the social context that has been airbrushed away since these tales were written down, she reveals them as they were: coded strategems for survival, triumph, subversion, rebellion. Fairy tales, as she says, have `a generic commitment to justice'.
This is an academic book and the prose is sometimes dense - a small price to pay, in my view, for the breadth and depth of knowledge Marina Warner shares with her readers and for her acute insights and observations. There is barely a chapter in my copy which does not have paragraphs underlined or copious notes in the margins - not because I was using the book to study but because I found it so darned interesting. I particularly enjoyed the second half of the book which deals with the themes that run through the tales: absent mothers, wicked stepmothers, reluctant brides, runaway girls, the language of hair, etcetera.
The original paperback edition has got many fascinating - and sometimes startling - illustrations. The newer edition is much poorer quality and the illustrations suffer as a result. But buy it anyway if you are interested in fairy tales, in cultural history, in the wiles that women have used to galvanize, caution and advise, or in the role that story-telling plays to condition or subvert: this book will bring you both wisdom and delight!
In this wonderful, scholarly book, Marina Warner explores the social context, meaning, and metamorphosis of fairy tales - from the Queen of Sheba via Old Mother Goose to the Disney Corporation - and the preoccupations of the people (mainly women) who told them. Rather than treating the stories as `archetypal' tales, Marina Warner returns them firmly to their historical context - a context in which small children really were abandoned in the forest during times of famine, where daughters suffered incest in silence, and where the lives of penniless old women were precarious indeed. As she restores the social context that has been airbrushed away since these tales were written down, she reveals them as they were: coded strategems for survival, triumph, subversion, rebellion. Fairy tales, as she says, have `a generic commitment to justice'.
This is an academic book and the prose is sometimes dense - a small price to pay, in my view, for the breadth and depth of knowledge Marina Warner shares with her readers and for her acute insights and observations. There is barely a chapter in my copy which does not have paragraphs underlined or copious notes in the margins - not because I was using the book to study but because I found it so darned interesting. I particularly enjoyed the second half of the book which deals with the themes that run through the tales: absent mothers, wicked stepmothers, reluctant brides, runaway girls, the language of hair, etcetera.
The original paperback edition has got many fascinating - and sometimes startling - illustrations. The newer edition is much poorer quality and the illustrations suffer as a result. But buy it anyway if you are interested in fairy tales, in cultural history, in the wiles that women have used to galvanize, caution and advise, or in the role that story-telling plays to condition or subvert: this book will bring you both wisdom and delight!
February 25, 2014
If, like me, you've ever wondered how the heck a goose got to be in charge of telling stories to kids and a stork got to be in charge of delivering babies (not to mention how these animals became associated with women and women's work and voices), this is the book for you.
Warner tells a compelling tale in this volume that encompasses hundreds of years and postulates that fairy tales have a hidden tale of their own about how women came to be valued for their silence rather than their voices, for their docility rather than their intelligence, and how their sexuality came to be feared and seen as a thing to control at all times. Nobody who has ever seen or read "The Stepford Wives" will be shocked to learn that medieval tales and woodcuts exist of a dread Dr. Lustucru who hammered the heads of willful wives at his smithy to render them compliant.
Particularly examined are tales of absent mothers ("Cinderella"), of beastly bridegrooms/brides ("Beauty and the Beast,") of the fear and taboo of incestuous desire ("Donkeyskin"), and of women's voices being silenced ("The Little Mermaid.")
If you are interested in women's studies and/or fairy tales, I can't recommend this one enough.
Warner tells a compelling tale in this volume that encompasses hundreds of years and postulates that fairy tales have a hidden tale of their own about how women came to be valued for their silence rather than their voices, for their docility rather than their intelligence, and how their sexuality came to be feared and seen as a thing to control at all times. Nobody who has ever seen or read "The Stepford Wives" will be shocked to learn that medieval tales and woodcuts exist of a dread Dr. Lustucru who hammered the heads of willful wives at his smithy to render them compliant.
Particularly examined are tales of absent mothers ("Cinderella"), of beastly bridegrooms/brides ("Beauty and the Beast,") of the fear and taboo of incestuous desire ("Donkeyskin"), and of women's voices being silenced ("The Little Mermaid.")
If you are interested in women's studies and/or fairy tales, I can't recommend this one enough.
Read
October 16, 2013Gave up on the book about fifty pages in. While I wanted to like the book, I ended up so annoyed that I had to stop. The author consistently writes 'Paul said,' but then proceeds to give one particular interpretation of a tricky passage. It is, in fact, one of those tricky passages that scholars and theologians are currently arguing about the proper way to interpret it (I think it's from Ephesians). Now, of course I wouldn't have minded if the author had said 'the majority opinion of this passage during this time was' or 'during this time people took this passage to mean,' but I couldn't get past that the author writes 'Paul said,' with various assumptions. Of course, the book may otherwise be consistently full of brilliant scholarship (I don't know enough to comment one way or the other), but I couldn't get past this issue, and couldn't bring myself to trust the author enough to keep reading.
April 6, 2016
I absolutely loved this book. It was fascinating and clever and the best nonfiction I can remember reading. I admit some of the love probably comes from my own interest on the subject of fairy tales, still since I've made it a personal goal to read more than just fiction on a regular basis it's cool to find something that I enjoyed so immensely. Will totally be adding more by Warner to my reading list.
March 24, 2017
Sve vreme sam imala utisak da slušam neverovatno zanimljivo predavanje. Marina Warner je sjajan pripovedač, pa čak i kad na momente otkriva toplu vodu to tako dobro zapakuje da zateknete sebe kako joj skidate kapu, ako ništa drugo, a ono zbog elokvencije i umeća da vam drži pažnju na čitavih 463 strana.
December 25, 2021
Everything you ever wanted to know about fairytales.
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