The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault

Although much lesser known than his literary heirs the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, 17th-century French writer, Charles Perrault, not only solidified the fairy tale as a literary genre but wrote nearly all of the genres most signature stories, including Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, and the larger designation of Mother Goose stories. Perrault published his Stories or Tales from Times Past (subtitled Mother Goose Tales) in 1697 and arrived at the end of a long and not entirely satisfying literary life. Perrault was nearly 70 years old and, while he was well-connected, his contributions had been more intellectual than artistic. But this slim volume comprised of three of his earlier verse stories and eight new prose stories achieved a success that hadnt seemed possible to the man whod long made his main living as a civil servant.   Impact on Literature   Some of Perraults stories were adapted from oral tradition, some were inspired by episodes from earlier works, (including Boccaccios The Decameron and Apuleius The Golden Ass), and some were inventions wholly new to Perrault. What was most significantly new was the idea of turning magical folk tales into sophisticated and subtle forms of written literature. While we now think of fairy tales as primarily childrens literature, there was no such thing as childrens literature in Perraults time. With this in mind, we can see that the morals of these tales take on more worldly purposes, despite their slyly clever packaging within the fantastical universe of fairies, ogres, and talking animals. While Perraults original tales are hardly the versions that were fed to us as children, they also cant be expected to be the feminist and socialist alternate versions that we might wish them to be (see Angela Carters 1979 story collection, The Bloody Chamber, for this kind of modern twist; Carter had translated an edition of Perraults fairy tales in 1977 and was inspired to create her own versions as a response). Perrault was an upper-class intellectual during the reign of the Sun King. Unlike the fable-writer Jean de La Fontaine, whose rich narratives often criticized the powerful and took the side of the underdog (in fact he himself was not in favor with the megalomaniacal Louis XIV), Perrault didnt have much of an interest in rocking the boat. Instead, as a leading figure on the modern side of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, he brought new forms and sources to literature to create something that even the ancients had never seen. La Fontaine was on the side of the ancients and wrote fables in the vein of Aesop, and while La Fontaine was much more lyrically sophisticated and intellectually clever, it was Perraults modernity that lay the foundation for a new kind of literature thats created a culture all its own. Perrault may have been writing for adults, but the fairy tales that he first put on paper spawned a revolution in what kinds of stories could be made into literature. Soon, writing for children spread throughout Europe and eventually across the rest of the world. The results and even his own works may have gone far out of Perraults intent or control, but thats what often happens when you introduce something new into the world. It seems that theres a moral somewhere in that. References in Other Works   Perraults tales entered culture in ways that far transcend his own personal artistic reach. They permeated virtually every level of modern art and entertainment—from rock songs to popular films to the most sophisticated stories by literary fabulists such as Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood. With all these tales forming a common cultural currency, the clarity and intent of the originals have often been either obscured or contorted to serve sometimes questionable meanings. And while a film like 1996s Freeway creates a brilliant and necessary twist on the Little Red Riding Hood story, many more popular versions of Perraults works (from the saccharine Disney films to the grotesquely insulting Pretty Woman) manipulate their audiences by promoting reactionary gender and class stereotypes. Much of this is in the originals, though, and its often surprising to see just what is and what isnt in the original versions of these seminal fairy tales. Tales by Perrault In Puss in Boots, the youngest of three sons inherits only a cat when his father dies, but through the cats wily scheming the young man ends up wealthy and married to a princess. Perrault, who was in favor with Louis XIV, provides two interconnected but  competing  morals to the  tale, and he clearly had the machinations of the court in mind with this witty satire. On the one hand, the tale promotes the idea of using hard work and ingenuity to get ahead, rather than just relying on your parents money. But on the other hand, the story warns against being taken in by pretenders who may have achieved their wealth in unscrupulous ways. Thus, a tale that seems like a didactic childrens fable actually serves as a double-edged send-up of class mobility as it existed in the seventeenth century. Perraults Little Red Riding Hood reads much like the popularized versions that we all grew up with, but with one big difference: the wolf eats the girl and her grandmother, and nobody comes along to save them. Without the happy ending that the Brothers Grimm supply in their version, the story serves as a warning to young women against talking to strangers, especially against charming wolves who seem civilized but are perhaps even more dangerous. Theres no heroic male to slay the wolf and save Little Red Riding Hood from her own gullible innocence. Theres only danger, and its up to young women to learn how to recognize it. Like Puss in Boots, Perraults Cinderella also has two competing and contradictory morals, and they likewise discuss questions of marriageability and class connection. One moral claims that charm is more important than looks when it comes to winning a mans heart, an idea that suggests that anyone can achieve happiness, regardless of their conventional assets. But the second moral declares that no matter what natural gifts you have, you need a godfather or godmother in order to put them to good use. This message acknowledges, and perhaps supports, societys profoundly uneven playing field. The most strange and amazing of Perraults tales, Donkey Skin, is also one of his least known, probably because its shocking grotesqueries have no way of being watered down and made easily palatable. In the story, a dying queen asks her husband to remarry after her death, but only to a princess even more beautiful than her. Eventually, the kings own daughter grows to surpass her dead mothers beauty, and the king falls deeply in love with her. At the suggestion of her fairy godmother, the princess makes seemingly impossible demands of the king in exchange for her hand, and the king somehow fulfills her demands each time to both shimmering and terrifying effect. Then she demands the skin of the kings magic donkey, which defecates gold coins and is the source of the kingdoms wealth. Even this the king does, and so the princess flees, wearing the donkey skin as a permanent disguise. In Cinderella-like fashion, a young prince rescues her from her squalor and marries her, and events transpire so that her father also ends up happily paired with a neighboring widow-queen. Despite the tidiness of all its ends, this is the story that contains the messiest and wildest of Perraults invented worlds. Perhaps that is why posterity has been unable to tame it into a version that feels comfortable presenting to children. There is no Disney version, but for the adventurous, Jacques Demys 1970 film starring Catherine Deneuve manages to capture all of the storys perversity while casting the loveliest and most magical spell on its viewers.