How Sleeping Beauty Became a Reference Point for Society

Roses are red

Violets are blue

Medieval French Catholics were misogynists

Just a fun fact for you

Fairy tales have been around for years, before that they were folk tales and before that they were oral songs and prose made to teach, preparing a younger generation for change and hardship. Fairy tales are quite literally defined as ‘children’s stories about magical and imaginary beings and lands’. Yet, where these stories capitalise on their fabricated narratives, the many folk tales and fables that built their roots were spoken with hushed tones and darker meanings. The difference between source material and the most recent iteration is broad, hundreds of years of adaptation often changing their fundamental meaning. Setting out from the get-go, fairy tales aren’t meant to be realistic, they relish their fictitious nature, emphasising and exaggerating to awe and entertain. This brings the question as to what changed? And why?

Little Red Riding Hood was a tale celebrating female cleverness and resourcefulness, yet the most well-known versions see her being saved from the 'big bad wolf’ by a large lumberjack man (the original himbo?). I think this change in narrative is why it’s so interesting to look at the origins of popular fairy tales, especially those that Disney has cultivated.

When I first started researching, I was drawn to Sleeping Beauty, part of me wondered what the story was really trying to teach us before the careful rounding off and obligatory sprinkles of glitter. The first real mention of The Sleeping Beauty is in the Perceforest, a collection of prose published in the early 1500s (composed by Giambattista Basile in the 1300s). Found in a collection of tales called the Pentamerone we follow Princess Zellandine as she falls in love with a man called Troylus. As the young man proves himself worthy of the princesses’ hand Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep, cursed by a sliver of flax in her finger. Searching for a cure, Troylus consults with three goddesses: Venus, Themis and Lucina (love, destiny and childbirth). Venus encourages him to assault the young princess in her sleep, claiming his love will awaken her, yet she still sleeps on, impregnated by the conflicted Troylus. When the baby is born, he sucks the length of flax from her fingertip, awakening her.

In this story we do not know who the original antagonist is, we only see a manipulative goddess choosing a long, convoluted path to end the spell rather than telling Troylus the real problem. The names in this story are Greek and Roman, Troylus after the city and Venus after the goddess of love. In the 1300s it is debatable as to whether there was a further reason for this narrative as it was a small part of a collection rather than a stand-alone story. Yet there have been several Greek myths surrounding the destructive pettiness of the Gods, and the price for paying supplication. Zellandine still marries Troylus, even after he assaults her, which is a questionable message (and choice), but I guess seemingly acceptable considering its publishing in the 1500s. The belief that there is no assault between spouses is one that regrettably is still debated within some circles; but back when marriage wasn’t necessarily for love or through choice it would have been a far more common and unspoken problem. By having Venus encourage Troylus, it makes the act more forgivable to the bourgeois Christian society reading the Perceforest, making the man more sympathetic.

As a short story in an epic, I think it’s really hard to find a moral lesson within the Perceforest version. Looking at Charles Perrault’s publication, the second iteration I looked at, I think the term fairy tale was really starting to take shape. The Sleeping Beauty was found in a collection of tales called the Histoires ou contes du temps passé. Perrault was an upper-class man who had worked within the government and closely with Louis the XIV of France for several years before pursuing a career in writing. With Perrault’s version, we also get the introduction of the ‘dark fairy’ who cursed the princess to begin with. It’s kind of like our first introduction of Maleficent without really naming her. In this version of the story, it quotes ‘believing she was intentionally slighted; the aged fairy puts a curse on the Princess’. So, we already start to get that aged characterization and this kind of pettiness that reflects the price of piety to the gods that I mentioned in the Perceforest. It’s this warning about supplicating to a higher being and the price of your faith and your beliefs.

At the time of this story’s publication and even composition, there was a lot of political and religious upset in France, the war of religions was waging between the Protestants and Catholics which led to a lot of demonisation. The only people with access to these books at this time were the rich and the educated (basically old white men), so why was the assault taken out? And why did the old goddesses become fae?

Jack Zipes, a German professor who specialises in literature and cultural studies, suggested that:

‘the fairy-tale has undergone an undergoes a motivated process of revision, reordering and refinement to safeguard basic male interests and conventions…. Instead of associating evil with the oppressive rule of capitalist or fascist rulers or with inegalitarian socio-economic conditions, it is equated with a conniving, jealous female, with the black magic and dirty play with the unpredictable forces of turbulence it must be cleansed and controlled … This evil is always associated with female nature out of control, two witches and a stepmother with her nasty daughters. The ultimate message is that, if you are industrious and pure of heart, and keep your faith in the male God, you will be rewarded. He will carry you off to the good kingdom and that is not threatened by the wiles of female duplicity.’

Overall, I think Jack Zipes theories really work with the different variations of Sleeping Beauty. Each version was adapted and edited to fit the bourgeois Judeo-Christian expectation of the time. These were usually only read by the upper class who were educated enough to be literate and had the money to buy bound books. I also feel as though the story doesn’t necessarily hold the morals expected from a folk tale; there may have been some that were lost in translation for the Perceforest, yet the earliest publication of this story sits in the prose of the epic. The oral telling of the story, if there ever was one, has been lost over time and therefore the messages it carried as well.

A happier story than the Perrault version, Little Briar Rose by the Grimm Brothers is perhaps the adaptation that really inspired the Disney animation, yet we can still see here the adjustment from the first version. There is no unconsented touch here, only a prince saving a kingdom after a hundred-year sleep. Instead of fairies, the German authors used the term ‘Wise Women’ which is another way of introducing the crone figure. The visual stimuli always portrayed her as having a long nose, warts, deep-set wrinkles and claw-like hands. She is really what theorists today call the phallic woman, her nose and hands bearing the visible representation. The wise women themselves are interesting, immediately we picture them as old and revered through the community, yet the quick vindictiveness of the one left off the invitation is interesting within itself. Who would curse a baby to die at the age of sixteen?

Of course, after Little Briar Rose in 1812 came the third official Disney Princess Aurora in the Disney animation, Sleeping Beauty. This film is interesting to me because it is perhaps the most accidentally feminist of all the old Disney films. Released in 1959, Aurora herself has about 10 lines of dialogue and in that she is singing about meeting the price she dreams about. Philip isn’t much better, although his relationship with his horse adds a little more character.

Unexpectedly the characters with the most development and personality are the three ‘good’ faeries; Flora, Fauna and Merriweather. These three are also the ones with the most agency in the film; they drive everything from the start to finish; altering the curse so that Aurora will live, raising the princess, saving Philip, enchanting his sword do that it fells Maleficent. They are the protagonists; the film is their victory.

This is quite amusing as they are directly classified as faeries and presented like the fairy godmother, elderly and round, completely soft. This is a huge contrast to the ‘mistress of evil’ Maleficent who is tall and imposing, with sharp edges and horns. Everything from the sickly green colour palette to the shape of her dress, Maleficent is clearly the bad guy from start to finish (her name literally means destruction). She turns into a serpentine dragon, magicking up gnarled thorns to prevent the prince from reaching his beloved. I think that this imagery she introduces is then copied throughout a lot of the classical Disney films; Ursula, Lady Tremaine, even Mother Gothel from Tangled.

This different set of evolutions can really be reflected in the 2014 film Maleficent, which, in itself, is a story about consent. Reading the first documented version of Sleeping Beauty and then looking at the most modern film, we see it evolve from a sleeping woman being raped to ‘save her life’ at the advice of a goddess, (named after the Roman goddess of love which is questionable) to a fairy having her wings stolen in drug induced sleep by someone she trusts. This complete U-turn is almost a reflection on society, in a world where we thrive seeing flaws and demand authenticity the fairy tale becomes somewhat redundant. We no longer crave complete escapism, and if we do it needs to be somewhat real. The adjustment in the narrative can also be a reference back to the original message of The Sleeping Beauty; perhaps before it was even made into a documented story.

Fairy tales get their roots in folk tales and stories told to young men and women to warn them of the disadvantages and challenges they will face; whether this is to prepare them for the day they leave home, or perhaps for a time they will be taken advantage of. It is interesting how it takes several hundred years of patriarchal expectations and manipulations of narrative to revert back to this moral. Maleficent herself is a reflection of this, her introduction is to curse a baby with death because she wasn’t invited to a baby shower, and in the 500 odd years it took for her to evolve she only took on Zellandine’s trauma for herself.

Sleeping Beauty will perhaps never be known for its strong moral code, but its reflections on society, whilst subtle, allow the reader to understand the expectations and needs of the time.

References

Cybulskie, D., n.d. Medievalists.net. [Online] Available at: https://www.medievalists.net/2015/06/the-medieval-sleeping-beauty/ [Accessed 3rd March 2021].

Perrault, C., 2003. Pitt.edu. [Online] Available at: https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault01.html [Accessed 10th March 2021].

Course Hero. 2021. Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Selected) Briar Rose Summary | Course Hero. [online] Available at: <https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Grimms-Fairy-Tales-Selected/briar-rose-summary/> [Accessed 13 March 2021].

Sleeping Beauty. 1959. [DVD] Directed by C. Geronimi. United States: Walt Disney Productions.

Maleficent. 2014. [DVD] Directed by R. Stromberg. Unites States: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Zipes, J as cited in Short, S., 2006. Misfit Sisters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Images

Sleeping Beauty, by Henry Meynell Rheam, 1899

Ambrose Dudley (fl. 1920s), “The Prince finds the Sleeping Beauty”

Jack Zipes portrait found here: https://umra.umn.edu/news/2019-09-forum