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Heidi
Unregistered User
(10/31/00 5:59:15 pm)
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Back to glass--almost
(Actually, my wish list serves as a reminder of books I need to investigate, add to my site, or actually buy sometime!)
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Terri
Registered User
(11/1/00 1:01:17 am)
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insecurity
Kate: I know entirely what you mean. I'm always insecure about my work, even after 20 years in the publishing business. It seems that the only writers/editors who aren't are the ones who ought to be!
But heavens, don't ever feel insecure about Mirror, Mirror. It is constantly on my desk, and I peruse it again any time I need a little jolt of inspiration. That A.S. Byatt essay in particular, and the Margaret Atwood....I've lost track of how many times I've reread them. By drawing all these women's voices together, it seems to me that you're continuing the bold tradition of the 17th century French salons, where women like D'Aulnoy and Murat were banding together to talk about women's lives through the language of fairy tales.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/1/00 6:40:55 am)
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Glass
I’ll weigh in late on this topic.
I like the alchemical/transmutational nature of glass, but I also wonder if it isn’t serving as well as an emblem of purity and chastity (and maybe these two things fit together perfectly and everyone but me has already worked this out).
The glass slipper for Cinderella——she’s dirty, folks, but she’s pure. The glass coffin separating a sleeping beauty from her prince. The glass mountain enclosing the cold princess—these all seem to me as well to be potent sexual symbols—barriers and membranes (seems to me even more reasonable an argument if the glass was NOT crystal clear)—implying that it’s going to require a rescuing male to come along, have sex with the princess and so awaken or fulfill the enclosed/entombed/ice maiden.
(I’m sorry this all sounds terribly Freudian. I hate that.)
Were mirror glass and window glass perceived as the same thing? They don’t seem to carry the same properties in tales. One seems to reveal the true nature of the soul; the other to keep things in or out.
GF
| karen
Unregistered User
(11/1/00 1:37:07 pm)
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very Freudian....
but completely plausible. Remember,
however, that our hero often has to scale the glass mountain, at
great peril!
K.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/1/00 1:49:44 pm)
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Mountain climbing
Hmm, yes. So is this an expression of the mortal terror with which males held (hold?) sex, women, and reproductive mysteries in general? A glass Sheela-na-gig?
GF
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CoryEllen
Registered User
(11/1/00 3:16:43 pm)
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Viennese Waltz
If the glass is a Freudian symbol dealing with female sexuality, then what of the glass mountains that heroines climb in search of the bear-princes they looked at when they shouldn't have? Conquering their own fear of their sexuality - "getting dirty" - in order to win back their man? Eeek. Double eek, even.
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Kerrie
Registered User
(11/1/00 5:04:10 pm)
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Re: Glass
I see what you mean, Greg. If you look at Cinderella, her sisters must go through torture and bleed if they are to fit the slipper, where she fits it perfectly. Does that say something else about them? Perhaps the easy fit means she isn't pure? That her sisters were the ignorant ones?
| Carrie
Unregistered User
(11/1/00 7:11:11 pm)
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glass and mirrors
I was thinking about the superstition that a vampire has no reflection and began to wonder if reflections have anything to do with the superstitions and symbolism of glass in fairy tales. There is also the seven years of bad luck when a mirror is broken. And the custom of covering a mirror in a dead person's house. Perhaps the doppleganger has something to do with mirrors -- the other image of the person gazing into it. I also believe mirrors have a history of use in the occult. Let's not forget to add "Through the Looking Glass." I have an annotated copy -- I should probably leaf through it.
Carrie
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/1/00 7:12:13 pm)
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Glass Slippers
Kerrie,
I don't want to go too far down this road. But I'm inclined to think that her easy fit is an indication of her purity, however that concept is interpretted. The sisters dissemble and fight over who fits, who doesn't. You can take this to ridiculous heights (no glass mountain here please); however, the sisters do seem like the slovenly, sluttish creatures, long since having lost their virginity. So, is there hidden in Cinderella and all its variants some sort of cautionary tale?
| Midori
Unregistered User
(11/2/00 8:13:03 am)
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glass as purity
Greg,
I don't think I agree with your take on glass as emblematic of purity or chastity in the folk tales. The reason I say this is because the narratives themselves deal with the moment of sexual awakening and all its ambiguities and dangers. It is not the preservation of sexual purity, or even the privileging of chastity in the character of the heroine--it is more part of a group of images and actions that signal her transformation from a presexual-child in to a sexualized marriage partner. If anything the glass slipper is sexually suggestive, not of purity, but of readiness. Especially if we consider the possibility that Cinderella's slippers were once made of fur--then the image holds something similiar in texture to Rapunzel's hair as a signifier of female sexuality. These fantastic objects have power in the moment of transformation, in the acceptance of a sexual future.
Though I agree with you that repressed productions of the tales may have had the notion of chastity and purity attatched, I think in the more robust older narratives, these images associated with the women are indicators of their sexual maturity and arrival. And if that's true, then such an image might work as well for either gender at that point of transformation in their narrative. Which brings me back to a tale like the Princess at the Top of the Ice Mountain (or mountain of glass--I've read it both ways...) Here the hero wears an iron suit of armor, forged in fire and the young woman sits atop the mountain of glass...both iron and glass are transformative elements...the mountain of glass is ambiguous--(like the glass coffin)--it maintains the girl in her presexual childhood, even as it announces and reveals the sexually emerging identity of the adult--both possiblities are present in that image. The hero too has a similar ambiguity in the iron suit of armor. While the glass reveals the girl's transformative state, the iron suit hides the boy in the clothing of a man--even as it provides the boy the opportunity to successfully behave like a man. Glass and Iron work as agent to transform the identity of the child into an adult.
And hey...I don't remember that Cinderella's sisters, were sluts. They were loud, boorish and unpleasant creatures. But I don't remember that they were sexually active...in fact I think much of the hostility and tension of those characters would be lost if they were sexually active...there is far more tension, jealousy and anxious rage in the ugly sisters fearing a life without sex! What's more it highlights the sexual race that is on as the three women "compete" to arrive at that place in marriage where they can be sexually active. But perhaps you have an old version that shows them knocking around with the guys?
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/2/00 10:29:02 am)
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Ready glass
Midori,
I think I agree with you entirely, and I'm not sure there's a great gulf between the two interpretations. Yours returns the glass--as in the coffin--to the barrier/membrane, and once again it becomes the potent sexual symbol, as you say, of her readiness. But I wonder if it has to be one specific thing at all--the potency of so many of these stories seems to be in all the possible connections that can be made of the elements within them, which give them such primal power. The stories like the glass are themselves transformative.
GF
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Kerrie
Registered User
(11/2/00 4:48:57 pm)
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Glass all around!
Wow, I didn't think it would get so philosophical! Ok, just for a broad term recap, for glass objects, we've come up with shoes, caskets, mirrors, mountains (does anyone know specific tales that mention the mountains?), shards in eyes and hearts, churches- am I missing anything? Also, we've talked about sexuality, clarity, transformation, maturity, altered states, reflection, purity and barriers. (did I get it all?)
I feel like there were other tales that mentioned glass- something about a glass key, or having to drink a certain potion out of a crystal goblet. Any more takers?
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/2/00 6:31:21 pm)
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Glass Key, Crystal Ball
I believe in at least one variant of Bluebeard, the key is glass. Usually, it seems to be gold, however, but this element serves more than anything else to distinguish it from all the other keys to the other rooms in the castle.
There's a Grimm story, "The Crystal Ball", that includes both a mirror--which reflects a wretched-looking princess's true beauty--and an egg that contains a magic crystal ball with which the hero defeats an evil magician and wins the princess.
| Carrie
Unregistered User
(11/3/00 9:31:47 am)
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Cinderella's shoe
Just a quick note -- from what I recall of my own research, Cinderella's shoe was originally fur, which makes a certain kind of sense -- a shoe being a sexual symbol -- the foot sliding into the fur slipper -- all rather obvious I suppose. I believe this is why the Victorian version deals with a glass shoe -- a parallel to the mores of the society it was being told in. I think this adds to the story when you take the step-sisters and their willingness to cut off part of a heel or the toes to fit into this ideal sexual symbol. Also, the bleeding feet reminds me of deflowering or menstration. It seems to fit with Midori's comments as well.
Carrie
| Midori
Unregistered User
(11/3/00 10:35:10 am)
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on the glass hill
Kerrie,
There is a lovely version "The Princess on the Glass Hill" to be found in "One Hundred Favorite Folktales" edited by Stith Thompson. Here the hero approaches 3 separate suits of armor, one brass, one silver and the last gold.
Also in Aleksandr Afanas'ev's "Russian Fairy Tales" there is a great story called "The Crystal Mountain" where the hero must rescue the Princess from the crystal that is guarded over by a dragon. Here, becuase of eariler kindness to animals, he has earned the ability to transform into a number of animal shapes that allow him to defeat the dragon and penetrate (as an ant crawling through a crack...o.k...go have fun with that!) the crystal mountain to the princess.
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Kerrie
Registered User
(11/3/00 2:08:41 pm)
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slight aside...
Ok, I find it interesting that the men have clothes of brass, silver, and gold, whereas the women are to be clothed in starlight, moonbeams, and sunshine. Hmmmm, go figure
| Kate
Unregistered User
(11/4/00 1:27:14 pm)
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Some Inchoate Thoughts on Glass
There is so much to respond to here, and I want to write a lot on it later, but I did want to jump in on the glass/fur slipper question. I have much to say about the question of sexuality and purity--I don't see that it is an either/or situation. But that is for later when I can think clearly. I am also interested in tossing in some thoughts about the clear differences between mirror imagery and glass imagery, which I find a really fascinating topic.
But one little note that may or may not interest all of you on the glass question: Glass is clearly linked to female sexuality in one obvious, oafish-ly symbolic way: in several cultures, including Jewish--and by the way, I am not religiously Jewish, or an expert on the religion, though it is my cultural heritage--glass is a stand in for the female hymen. That is why, at a wedding, the groom stomps on a wine glass. If it breaks, his wife is a virgin (and it always breaks--it's a fixed ritual!). Breaking the glass also symbolizes that on the wedding night, things will go, uh, well.
There is a Yiddish version of Cinderella that I can't find in my shelves today, where the sisters try on the glass slipper and it shatters. The 'prince' (he's not a prince though, I'm just calling him that) has had copies of the slipper made, of course. Anyway, the fact that the glass breaks is meant to signify they are not virgins, and therefore can't possibly be 'Cinderella.' So the idea of the sisters as slatternly, sexually 'impure,' is not completely off base at all, at least in some cultures.
Just thought I'd throw this in, in case it interests anyone. Hope it isn't too off base.
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Kerrie
Registered User
(11/4/00 1:41:02 pm)
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Not at all off-base...
In fact, it's an interesting view point I never heard of! Which makes me wonder how the use of glass in a tale may be affected by various cultural backgrounds. Which ones have we looked at, aside from Jewish, European in general, but what specifics?
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Gregor9
Registered User
(11/4/00 4:38:52 pm)
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Not inchoate at all
Kate,
I knew you were going to name the Jewish ritual before I read that far. How obvious, how wonderful. No, I don't think that purity and readiness are necessarily at odds or have to be seen separately, either. And yes, I think it is the Yiddish Cinderella story that implies the "impurity" of the sisters, although when I referred to them as "sluttish" I meant their slovenliness, sorry, bad choice of loaded word--but here's an example where they are impure and so not worthy of his attentions. My, this is ALL about what he has to have, isn't it?
I still fall in with Midori on the transmutational nature of it--she's so incisive there; but it makes sense perhaps that in order to be transformed, she has to be pure to begin with. As with iron. Impurities will ruin it when it cools. It will crack, turn out to be frangible.
And then there's steel, as in swords, which were sometimes plunged into blood to give them their strength--their purity in fact. (See William Hallahan's terrific horror novel "The Search for Joseph Tully" if you want to take this to extremes.)
Should this move from "Glass" to a separate topic on transformation in general?
Apologies for the digression.
GF
| Kate
Unregistered User
(11/4/00 5:35:54 pm)
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Transformation
Gregor,
Yes, I also agree with Midori's transmutational idea of it all, very much so. Didn't intend to contradict it. I would love to talk more about that. I am also curious if there are any Cinderella tales with 'impure' Cinderellas at their centre--indeed, how can Cinderella be transformed from a state of impurity? She is 'dirty' with earth, but not impure. Yet she is certainly not naive in so many versions, too. Like Catskin. I also remember reading--was it in Warner?--about Cinderbottom and how in the French version at one time, the name was 'Cinder@#%$' (in French of course)...so there have been dirty double entendres in the tales, but not sexually active Cinderellas, as far as I know.
Oh no, this isn't on the subject of either glass or transformation. Sorry.
By the way, sluttish, slatternly, slovenly--I happen to like all these words and use them a lot; but all have sexual connotations, when it comes to women, I think. Even slovenly. (Dirtiness having particular value when it comes to female bodies. 'Vash dos gut,' as the old Yiddish saying to girls on wedding nights goes.)
A dialogue on transformation sounds great to me, by the way. We're not quite talking about glass anymore. What am I talking about, anyway? Too much. Sorry. Maybe a new posting?
Kate
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