1994, 458 p.
I was rather startled to see that my CAE bookgroup had chosen Marina Warner's book for our December 2023 read. We're a rather cosy bookgroup, once condescendingly designated 'middlebrow' readers, more drawn to fiction than non-fiction, and I was familiar with Warner's rather erudite contributions to the London and New York Review of Books magazines. From the Beast to the Blonde is a hefty tome, both physically, and intellectually. I raised an eyebrow at the notewriter's opening paragraph in the CAE notes that accompanied the book:
Perhaps the book should be approached by reading the lucid and interesting introduction and conclusion, which summarize all the themes developed at length in the main text, then glancing through the text's handsome and liberal illustrations, which will give a visual impression of the contents.
CAE notes p. 1
Once I felt that I had 'permission' to skip bits, I actually ended up reading most of the book, even though I only started reading it about four days before the meeting, as is my usual practice. It was very dense, with long sentences and a forbidding vocabulary (autochthonous? peripeteia?). It was very digressive, as if Warner couldn't allow a possible association to go unremarked. Most of her material was focussed on European fairy stories. Some Islamic stories do get a look in, but few Asian or indigenous stories are mentioned. In fact, I'm not sure that she ever really defined what a fairy story is, and the distinction between a folk tale and a fairy story.
The book is divided into two parts: The Teller and the Tale. In the first part of the book, she highlights that most fairy stories originated in women's talk, especially in women-only places like child-bed, washing, kitchens etc, even though they were generally published under men's names (e.g. Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Andrew Lang). Wrested into the male realm, they often display a disparagement of the original women tellers, drawing on the imagery of the old crone, or a bird to declare them "Mother Goose's" tales or a grandmother's stories.
In the second part of the book she moves on to specific stories, particularly Cinderella and the rather disturbing Donkeyskin fairytale (where a young girl has to disguise herself in a donkey skin to avoid her father's incestuous designs on her) among others. She discusses the Disneyfication of fairy stories, especially 'The Little Mermaid', and the cultural stereotypes of blondness and step-mothers that are conveyed through them. But this division between the two sections is not clear cut. For example, although name-checking Marie-Jeanne L'Heritier, Henrirette-Julie de Murat, and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy as women writers of fairy stories prior to their absorption into the male-author canon in Part One, it is only in Part Two that she actually gives biographical details about the women and their part in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century French circles. She reveals her indebtedness to Angela Carter, whose adult fairy stories have extended and subverted the genre.
To her credit, she does give a good plot summary of the various stories and their variations, as few readers would be familiar with them, and she does the English reader the courtesy of translating French quotations from them. But it is still a very dense, difficult text. In the conclusion, she embarks on a discussion about a historical as distinct from psychoanalytic reading of fairy stories, arguing that they need to be read within their historical context in both their authorship and allusions, rather than as representatives of archetypes (at least, I think that's what she was arguing).
The proliferation of anti-fairy stories, even more so in the decades after this was written, have picked up on the feminist emphasis on this book which no longer seems particularly radical or new. They certainly do not call on the same intellectual fortitude and commitment that this book requires of its reader. And it did remind me to one day introduce the original versions of the stories to my grandchildren (yes, it will probably only be my granddaughters) from my own mother's 'The Children's Treasure House", which will test their attention spans with its dark themes and its black and white art-deco line drawings. Just like my attention span was tested with this book. I recognize its contribution and I admire its breadth and erudition, but it was hard work.
My rating: 7/10
Sourced from: CAE for my CAE Book Group (AKA 'The Ladies Who Say Ooooh')
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