Sleeping Beauty

In May 1999, I agreed to take part in a panel discussion on the role OF fairy tales in modern literature at Wiscon 23, a convention for feminism in speculative fiction held in Madison, Wisconsin. My fellow panelists were Terri Windling, an editor and author whose own work with fairy tales had strongly influenced many modern retellings; Heinz Insu Fenkl, novelist and scholar, with a strong background in both the Eastern and Western folk tale traditions; and Elizabeth Matson, who approached fairy tales with the perspective of a storyteller and dramatist. (Our moderator was Beth Plutchak.)

"Sleeping Beauty" by Gustaf Tenggren

With some impatience we waited for the program to arrive that would announce the specific topic of our discussion. We were prepared for anything: the heroine's journey, the ambiguous power of female villains from Baba Yaga to evil stepmothers, and the sheer imaginative magnitude of women who for centuries have expressed the conditions of their lives in a wealth of fantastic stories. We were not prepared for what, or rather I should say, "who" we got. The title, itself a gentle irony, arrived by e–mail: "What Does Sleeping Beauty Mean to Me?" A brief description indicated we would explore the relevance of fairy tales and their modern day interpretations using Sleeping Beauty as our primary model. "Oh no," we groaned. "How can this be?" Out of a stock of brave heroines, of determined and clever girls, we found ourselves waiting at the bedside of a heroine whose talent rested on her ability to . . .well. . .rest. What indeed did this mute slip of a girl who became the epitome of passivity mean to young, contemporary women eager to claim their own destinies? What did she mean to us, as writers and folklorists who as children had felt emotionally stranded by a heroine whose awakening from death–feigned–as–sleep depended on a Prince's perseverance?

"Sleeping Beauty" by Millicent Sowerby

We grumbled. We made excuses about the poverty of versions worth discussing, made snide remarks about Disney, and made one rebellious attempt to change the direction of the panel. Give us Donkeyskin, who donned wild furs and escaped into the forest. Give us Beauty, whose dauntless courage saved her father, her sisters, and a hideous Beast. Even the mutilated girl of the Armless Maiden narratives had more chutzpah when she faced her tormentors. Snow White, that sister in sleep, managed to leave home and learn a thing or two before she fell into her trance. But Sleeping Beauty, how she betrayed us by her sleep! Among the pantheon of heroines, even those who married easily in happily–ever–after tales, Sleeping Beauty's inertia was almost an admission of failure, of shame at my gender's lack of spirit. And yet, Sleeping Beauty has a strength about her that is undeniable. Though she sleeps, she has stubbornly retained her place in our fairy tale traditions, despite our attempts as feminists to chastise her for being so passive. Over the centuries the perimeters of her tale have been redrawn, her dilemma reshaped, her salvation changed — but she has endured each reincarnation with something of her original story intact. In the end, it was Sleeping Beauty's own power to sustain her existence, even from her bed, that won us over. We may not have liked her passivity, but we had to yield to her enduring presence and salute her tenacious survival.

"Sleeping Beauty" by Jennie Harbour

In the weeks before the convention began, Terri, Heinz and I began a flurry of e–mails, throwing out ideas and arguments about why this narrative continues to be popular to this day. Heinz dug into the archives and plucked out old versions of the tale that proved to be shocking in their bawdiness and frank in their lechery. The Prince, it seemed, had a past. Sleeping Beauty had a few tricks up her sleeve. We read through the narratives and tried to untangle the threads of the tale's structure. What was really happening? Who was the story really about? Terri gathered contemporary versions in poetry, mainstream and genre novels. Sleeping Beauty, it appeared, had much to offer our panel discussion on the transformation of fairy tales — from its early variants around the world to contemporary English–language renditions by Jane Yolen, Robert Coover, Anne Sexton and numerous others.

WisCon is a unique convention. Attended by an even mix of academics, writers, and readers, it boasts of a very loyal and attentive following. We were fairly certain the panel would be well attended and we were not disappointed. We began the discussion by recounting some of the oldest and certainly most provocative versions of Sleeping Beauty. The first was called "The 9th Captain's Tale," found in The Book of the 1001 Nights (translated by Pows Mathers). Despite an exotic Eastern setting, it begins with familiar conflicts. A woman longs for a child and declares, "Give me a daughter, even if she can't endure the odor of flax." Her wish is granted and a daughter is born. As she grows, the Sultan's son is taken with her beauty and begins to court her. Then, in a mishap, the girl's hand touches flax and she falls into a death–like sleep. Her distraught parents transport her incorruptible body to an elaborate shrine on an island. The Sultan's son, still very much in love with her, comes to visit her shrine. A kiss awakens the sleeping maiden and they have sexual relations for forty days.

"Sleeping Beauty" by William A. Breakspeare

But the Sultan's son cannot remain on the island indefinitely, and eventually he abandons her. Angry, the young woman uses the magic ring of Solomon and wishes for a palace to be built next door to the Sultan's. She also wishes to be transformed into an even greater beauty, unrecognizable and irresistible to her former lover. The Sultan's son is quick to discover his exquisite neighbor and falls in love. He sends her gifts, which she discards — feeding the gold to her chickens and using the bolts of fine fabrics as rags. Desperate, the Sultan's son begs to know how he can prove that he is worthy enough to be her husband. She tells him that he must wrap himself in a shroud and allow himself to be buried on the palace grounds and mourned as dead. The young man agrees and permits his parents to dress him in funeral clothing and bury him. His mother sits by the grave and mourns his death. Satisfied, the young woman comes to the palace, retrieves the Sultan's son from his grave, and reveals her true identity. "Now I know," she says, "that you will go to any length for the woman you love."

What is startling about this old version of Sleeping Beauty is that the tale is about both of the lovers and both of their journeys of transformation. Each one experiences a death, an end to their lives as children. Two sets of parents prepare their children for funerals; two sets of parents mourn the loss of a beloved child. The Sultan's son is responsible for awakening Sleeping Beauty, but their subsequent relationship is not an adult one — it is not sanctioned by the social bonds of the community. When she comes to him again, she is changed — transformed by the fantastic. The Sultan's son, in accepting her condition of marriage, has also accepted that his privileged life as a child must end. When she revives him from the dead, they are now equal and their marriage is one between adults. Who could not admire this Sleeping Beauty? She is a divine bride sprung from the fantastic, incorruptible in death, able to call upon magic to perform at her will a clever trick to test her future husband. He dies and is buried in the earth and her final act of reviving him only emphasizes her creative powers and her fertility. He is a Sultan's son but she, confident in her own power, is equal to him.

We then presented two European versions of the tale from the 17th century. The first, titled "Sun, the Moon, and Talia," comes from the Italian storyteller Giambattista Basile, published in his popular collection The Pentamerone. Italian fairy tales were among the earliest versions of such stories to be published in Europe. These old renditions were bawdy and sexually charged (and clearly not meant for children).

Illustration by Peter Newell

In Basile's version (learned from women storytellers in the countryside near Naples), Beauty, known as Talia, falls into a death–like sleep when a splinter of flax is embedded under her fingernail. She sleeps alone in a small house hidden deep within the forest. One day a King goes out hawking and discovers the sleeping maiden. Finding her beautiful, and unprotesting, he has sex with her — while Talia, oblivious to the King's ardent embraces, sleeps on. The King leaves the forest, returning not only to his castle but also to his barren wife. Nine months later a sleeping Talia gives birth to twins named Sun and Moon. One of the hungry infants, searching for his mother's breast, suckles her finger and pulls out the flax splinter. Freed of her curse by the removal of the splinter, Talia wakes up and discovers her children. After a time, the King goes back to the forest and finds Talia awake, tending to their son and daughter. Delighted, he brings them home to his estate — where his barren wife, naturally enough, is bitter and jealous. As soon as the King is off to battle, the wife orders her cook to murder Sun and Moon, then prepare them as a feast for her unwitting husband. The kindhearted cook hides the children and substitutes goat in a dizzying variety of dishes. The wife then decides to murder Talia by burning her at the stake. As Talia undresses, each layer of her fine clothing shrieks out loud (in other versions, the bells sewn on her seven petticoats jingle). Eventually the King hears the sound and comes to Talia's rescue. The jealous wife is put to death, the cook reveals the children's hiding place, and the King and Talia are united in a proper marriage.

Later in the same century, a French civil servant named Charles Perrault wrote his own version of Sleeping Beauty based in part on Basile's story. Fairy tale scholar Marina Warner (in her book From the Beast to the Blonde) notes rather wryly that while rape and adultery were too scandalous for Perrault, he had no problems with the cannibalism of the Italian version. Perrault changed the King and his first wife into a Prince and his dreadful mother: an ogress with a terrible temper and a fondness for human flesh. Beauty's children are to be served up in a gourmet sauce, and then Beauty herself is to be butchered. But the kind cook fools the ogress, hiding Beauty and her children and serving a kid, a lamb and a hind in their places. When the ogress discovers the truth, she becomes enraged and makes plans to throw them all into a pot of vipers and toads. Once again the Prince arrives in time to save his lover from harm — throwing his mother into the pot instead, destroying her.

"Flaming June" by Lord Frederick Leighton

These European versions show a shift in emphasis from the older Arabian narrative. Sleeping Beauty is still the centerpiece of the tale — but less as an actor and more as an object of power to be acquired, even at the expense of one's marriage and one's mother. On our panel, I noted that the European tales seem to be focused on the men, not the slumbering heroine. The need for an heir (first by her father, and then by the younger King who wakes her) is pivotal here. Basile spares not a moment of sympathy for the dishonored first wife of the younger King. Her barrenness defines her as evil, and her replacement by the fertile magical bride is a triumph. Talia, on the other hand, is able to give birth even while she lies in the semblance of death — making her not quite human but almost a supernatural creature — and making her impregnation not a crime (the rape it appears to our modern eyes), but the act through which the King engages with the fantastic, simultaneously proving his virility. Heinz pointed out that the children's names, Sun and Moon, suggest a resonance with older cosmological tales and creation myths — many of which involve the birth of children through magical means. Despite this emphasis on the actions of the male characters, Terri argued that the conflict between the women in the tale is also an important element — particularly in the context of women's lives in the 17th century. A new bride, brought to her husband's family home, was firmly under the thumb of her mother–in–law in large parts of Europe — while in other areas it was the mother–in–law who was threatened by the loss of power to a younger woman. (In France after the Revolution, for instance, a widow lost all right to the family home upon her husband's death, the property generally passing to the eldest son. In such a case, she would have been dependent on the good will of her son — and of his wife, the new mistress of the house.)

Fairy tales use emotionally evocative images to engage their audiences and draw them into the web of the story (as Elizabeth, the oral storyteller on our panel, reminded us); the underlying power struggle between the young bride–to–be and the older, established woman was one that would have been very familiar to 17th–century listeners, and thus useful to the storyteller as a means of personalizing the tale. Symbols of feminine power struggle can be found in the figures of the evil fairy, the old woman spinning, the barren wife, and the ogress mother. Read in this context, Perrault's Prince achieves heroic status not only when he passes through the thorns and awakens Sleeping Beauty, but when he is able at last to protect her from the machinations of the older women and assure her a place of authority at his side.

"Briat Rose" by Sir Edward Burne–Jones

Sleeping Beauty underwent more changes in the 19th century when the Brothers Grimm published their version ("Little Briar Rose") in fairy tale collections aimed at children. While the Grimms retained some of the dark imagery from the oral storytelling tradition, the sexuality and bawdy humor of the tales all but disappeared. In 19th–century England, Victorian publishers further sanitized fairy tales, toning down the violence yet again and simplifying the narratives. Victorian readers wanted these stories to be charming, to reflect the gender roles of the time, and above all to instruct proper upper– and middle–class children in appropriate morality. Innuendo replaced the overt and troubling activity of carnal sex and violence. . .but as modern writers from Angela Carter to Marina Warner have pointed out, these underlying themes are tenacious. Looking at the original German language version of the Grimms' "Little Briar Rose," Heinz pulled out a staccato list of suggestive language: the hedge is "penetrated," Briar Rose is "pricked," and she sleeps not in a shrine or a wooded cottage but enclosed within a phallic tower. And yet on the surface, the narrative remains almost painfully chaste. The Prince need not even kiss her to wake her — he merely bends on one knee beside her bed. Sleeping Beauty is diminished in other ways in these later, more "civilized" versions. Earlier variants suggest that the father is the character most at fault, bringing the curse down on his daughter through improper dealings with the fantastic (such as slighting an important fairy). But Victorian versions seem to suggest the girl is responsible for her own fate, punished for her disobedience to her father's command not to touch the spinning wheel. In these versions, it is not only Briar Rose who suffers, but her parents and the entire court who must sleep for a hundred years. (One can imagine that to the class–obsessed Victorians, a privileged daughter handling the tools of the lower classes provoked alarm, threatening to lower the status of the family. Briar Rose's sin can only be expiated when a man worthy enough, both in heart and noble status, redeems her from her transgression — restoring both Beauty and her family to its former social position.)

And what, then, became of Sleeping Beauty as she entered the 20th century? What does this fairy tale mean to us in our post–industrial age? As we examined contemporary versions of the story, we discovered that the modern response to the theme proved to be as varied as the individual artists drawn to the old narrative. In our century, Sleeping Beauty no longer speaks to a common identity, a single icon to shape the female image for new generations. Instead, our Princess finds herself portrayed in many different guises: as a helpless 1950s stay–at–home girl, a bold space opera heroine, an oppressed time–traveling queen, a stoic Holocaust survivor, a sexually abused child, and myriad others. Her tale ranges in tone from unbearably bright to psychologically dark and sinister, reflecting our century's ambiguity toward female sexual roles and women's identity.

Illustration by Margaret Tarrant

In 1959, the Disney studios created the animated film version of the story that most Americans know today — simple, bright, squeaky clean, romantic, and unambiguous. This Sleeping Beauty is innocent and demure, her Prince noble and chaste. . .and helpless without the aid of a pair of grandmotherly fairies. Perhaps it wasn't Disney's intention to relieve the Prince of any sexual threat, but there is a certain humor in the way the elderly fairies correct the aim of his sword to insure his success! Everyone in the tale is divided neatly into Good or Evil, and there is only one true villain, the bad fairy Maleficent. All in all, it is a sweet but utterly bland rendition, reflecting the values of post–war America: the world divided into Good and Evil, a passive, pretty girl awaiting her prince before her life can begin, and a square–jawed hero who must fight to save her. The raw emotions that gave the older narratives their vitality have been successfully repressed; the ogress mother, the barren first wife, the twins, and other tangled threads have been neatly snipped off. Yet while the Disney film version (and the countless picture books inspired by it) established the story as a children's tale, stripping it of all complexity, other 20th–century artists began to reclaim it for an adult audience, re–envisioning a Beauty who had lost her innocence and her incorruptibility.

Illustration by H. J. Ford

To Gunther Kunert, an East German poet (whose "Sleeping Beauty" can be found in Spells of Enchantment, Jack Zipes, ed.), the sleeping princess is a lie, her story a falsehood that drives young men to their deaths in the thorn hedge. But even death is better than the disillusionment of the Prince who discovers her at last, "her toothless mouth half open, slavering, her eyelids sunken, her hairless forehead crimped with blue. . .a snoring trollop." In Anne Sexton's poem "Briar Rose" (from her collection Transformations), Sleeping Beauty is the vulnerable child feigning sleep in the night while the shadow of an abusive father looms over her. "In due time," Sexton writes, "a hundred years passed and a prince got through. The briars parted as if for Moses and the Prince found the tableaux intact. He kissed Briar Rose and she woke up crying: Daddy! Daddy!" The poem ends on a sinister note: "It's not the prince at all," says the poet, "but my father drunkenly bent over my bed, circling the abyss like a shark, my father thick upon me like some sleeping jellyfish." Howard Nemerov imagines a young boy's sleepy reaction to the tale in his own "Sleeping Beauty" (in Nemerov's New and Selected Poems), while Maxine Kumin portrays Sleeping Beauty at fifty in her wry poem "The Archaeology of a Marriage" (from Poetry 132, No. 1). Randall Jarrell, Joan Swift, Charles Johnson, Leonard Cohen, Hayden Carruth, and other modern poets have all been inspired by the theme; you can find their work collected in Disenchantments: An Anthology of Fairy Tale Poetry, edited by Wolfgang Mieder.

Illustration by Maxfield Parrish

Elizabeth Matson, looking at fairy tales from a storyteller's point of view, spoke about her own approach to stories like Sleeping Beauty. Before a performance, Elizabeth reads as many variants of a tale as she can find — and then, with this range of imagery to draw upon, she allows her own experience and interaction with her audience to shape the story anew. We were intrigued by Elizabeth's take on another sleeping heroine, a story she calls "Snow White Dreams," suggesting an area of Sleeping Beauty's tale that had not been explored in the past. The drama in Elizabeth's piece occurs during the heroine's period of seeming–passivity, within her trance–like sleep. It is then that the young woman re–examines her relationship to her mother, who appears in her dreams. This is reminiscent of Robert Coover's astonishing novel Briar Rose — a dense, poetic work in which Coover explores rich layers of possible meaning in the folk narrative by contrasting the thoughts of the struggling Prince with the dreams and nightmares of the Princess. Both Briar Rose and her Prince are plagued with doubts; they fear they shall fail to fulfill the expectations of their emerging roles. Briar Rose's fear of adulthood is described in relentless nightmares of bizarre sexual assaults. She struggles unsuccessfully to wake herself, crying out in her sleep, "Why am I the one? It's not fair." Meanwhile the Prince, hacking his way through the thorns, taunted by the bones of failed suitors, suffers his own doubts. As the thorns close in on him, he wonders on the verge of despair, "Perhaps, I am not the one."

Illustration by A. H. Watson

Other authors have used the skeleton of Sleeping Beauty to create larger, more panoramic stories. In his recent novel Enchantment, Orson Scott Card combines a Russian variant of Sleeping Beauty with an adventurous time–travel plot — cracking open the narrow world of the tale, populating it with a large cast, and giving it both historical and contemporary settings. In Card's novel, an American graduate student is transported back to the 9th century, where he wakens the Sleeping Beauty, Katerina, who lies hidden in a forest. Katerina's kingdom is threatened by none other than Baba Yaga — an even more formidable foe than the ogress mother, capable of crossing time and hijacking a 747 airliner in her pursuit of Card's heroes. Sheri S. Tepper draws upon the Sleeping Beauty tale in her science fiction novel Beauty. Like Card, she has opened the confines of the tale into a broader adventure. With her creative powers linked to an older fairy world, Tepper's Beauty is thrust forward in time (at the moment she falls asleep) into a battle between light and dark to salvage what is left of the earth. Once again Beauty is the divine bride, infusing a devastated world with the promise of her creative power.

Jane Yolen has created one of the most effective retellings of Sleeping Beauty in recent years in Briar Rose, a slim novel told in deceptively simple language reminiscent of old folk tales. Despite the homespun flavor of the prose, this is a brutally modern story, weaving the fairy tale into the history of a Jewish family during the horrors of World War II. Sleeping Beauties by Susanna Moore is an evocative mainstream novel mixing Sleeping Beauty imagery with Hawaiian lore. On the Young Adult fiction shelves, Robin McKinley creates a charming version of the tale (with a distinctly feminist subtext) in Spindle's End, and Alyxandra Harvey–Fitzhenry gives the story a contemporary setting in her poignant novel Waking. For other contemporary renditions of the tale, see our Further Reading List below.

Illustration by Jennie Harbour

As the panel drew to a close, we found ourselves somewhat wistful about having to let go of Sleeping Beauty. In our discussions and in our collective research we had found something very appealing about this enigmatic figure, seemingly passive yet surrounded by "thorns sharp as knives," danger, and death. In the oldest versions, we had rediscovered some of Beauty's original wit and strength. Even as each successive generation tried to tame or alter the substance of her nature, Beauty's power as an agent of transformation continued to shine forth from the core of her tale. Contemporary storytellers are still bewitched by the promise of her creative potential, and I believe that Sleeping Beauty will find a new voice in the coming generations that may express something of the older vitality of her character.