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Helen
Registered User
(10/3/01 12:33:34 pm)
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Deerskin & Cultural interplay/implications ...
Dear All:
After a fair amount of thought, I decided to amalgamate the topics of my last two posts,and expand upon the article on "Deerskin" to arrive at my research project for my Master's thesis; I'll be exploring the the two subsets of 510B that I seem to be coming across most frequently; in one, the princess is rather subservient, tends to depend upon the advice of the mother's spirit/fairy godmother more heavily, and shows less initiative; in the other, the princess is far more self-reliant, more capable of independent action, and far cleverer than her male counterparts. In the latter, she not only escapes from her father, but occasionally leaves him destitute from his attempts to buy her affection (one example can be found in volume II of Jack Haney's marvelous collection of Russian wondertales, entitled "The Golden Lantern"). Also, while she disguises herself from the prince in both variants, in the latter he is shown to be rather more dim for his failure to recognize her (also from volume II, The Hunchback"). Versions of the two variants seem to appear in many of the languages which have 510B tales to begin with. I will be working with Russian, French, English, and possibly German variants (the German in translation, and possibly the French as well).
My theory is that the tales with the stronger princess tend to appear in societies which are more comfortable with their sexuality in general; more repressed cultures attempt to skirt the issues, of sex in general and incest in particular. I will also be examining modern retellings of this tale, to see which path our society is taking - this last chapter is the section that I am planning to send out for publication. It is an interesting subject to research. In fact, the reading that I was doing for the article is what made me want to branch out, and to explore the topic more deeply. I'd love to hear your collective thoughts on this ...
Best,
Helen
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(10/4/01 1:39:39 pm)
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Don't know...
Helen,
I strongly agree with you that Deerskin and the likes are a lot more active and self-reliant than the Cinderellas (An active female! Yeah!!) But are you sure about one version of the tales being predominant in a more restricted culture and the other in a culture which is discussing sex and incest more openly? Or are our perception of the tales and of how often they appear just influenced by the anthologies and collections? I am thinking of the Brothers Grimm, and the fact that it took me quite a while to discover that there were a lot more tales collected by them than your average set included in the generic "Your Grimm favourites". For example, they have both "Aschenputtel" (Cinderella) and "Allerleirauh" (Many furs). I just wondered if not both sub-variants are present in the cultures you mentioned?
Just some food for thought...
Lotti
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Helen
Registered User
(10/4/01 4:39:02 pm)
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Oops!
Dear Lotti:
It appears that I mispoke myself; I *meant* to say, that where you see the tale-type at all, generally you see both varients of it, but that when the culture is accepting of sexuality in general, the subtype of independence is more prevelant than it is in cultures that are sexually repressed. Cultures of repression will attempt to skirt the issue as broadly as possible, prefering the submissive version to the exclusion of all others. For example, I've found both varients in French. In Massignon's _Folktales of France_ we see a tale entitled "The She Donkey's Skin" which has all of the elements which I discussed, side by side with Perrualt's "Donkeyskin," which belongs to the upper strata of society, and thus follows the rules of propriety. "Donkeyskin" has enjoyed far more attention, becoming the dominant version. I'm still trying to formulate the correct conclusions from this.
I'm not judging culture by culture - one country repressive, another permissive, etc. - but also by period, taking the shifts in attitude into account. I definitely think that the publication history is *very* important! That's actually going to be one of my gauges for the permissive/repressive system of judgement. Another example; Russian folklore contains a great many tales with bawdy or ribald material, some of which touches upon incest; yet, under the Communist regime, very little of this material was published, for fear that it might present the "wrong impression." If anyone knows of sources which might help me figure out specific figures concerning publication, I would be very grateful ... the Library of Congress, perhaps? I'm also trying to figure out a few other questions, which I really ought to have posted in the first place. Would any of you happen to know if any of the French fairy tale authors besides Perrualt handled this mofit? So few of the tales have been translated ... sigh. Thank you, though, Lotti, for your point; that's one of the reasons that I love coming to this board. The feedback always inspires you to think about your topic in greater detail!
Best,
Helen
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Midori
Unregistered User
(10/5/01 4:43:20 am)
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gender of the teller
Helen,
It might also matter who is telling the tale? Even looking at Perrault and the women of the Contes de Fees we can read different agendas on the part of the story tellers within the same story. So I would think it would be important to look at the specfics of the collected tale: is it a revision/retold version by a male author? Is it a relatively unvarnished reproduction from a woman story teller? (even Grimms can be seen to do a little editing) and is it possible that within the same historical period the tale was told in one way to one class of females and another to a different class? (does restrictive behavior matter more to Bourgeois families rather than working class or peasant girls? Does the oral version retain more of its bite/violence/sexuality than the printed versions in nice collections for middle class girls?)
just a thought...since I think there is a great deal of overlap between the anthologized versions of these tales and the spoken ones...it might be interesting to look at relatively modern field work of the tales to see if the oral versions persisted more stubbornly in their earlier robust forms, even though literate culture tried to contain them in tidier versions.
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Helen
Registered User
(10/7/01 6:24:29 am)
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Yes!
Dear Midori:
I am terribly sorry that it's taken me so long to reply (bad weekend; breakup). I think that your approach will be enormously useful to me. It's been a while since I've seen you on the board, but congratulations again on the degree! How is your term going so far?
Best,
Helen
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Terri
Registered User
(12/4/01 7:06:08 am)
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Deerskin/Donkeyskin
Helen's excellent article about the Deerskin/Donkeyskin fairy tale
is now up on the new edition of the Endicott Studio web site,
www.endicott-studio.com, in the Forum section. There's also
a great article about mesmerism in the French salons by Greg, and
two of Carolyn Dunn's poems in the Coffee House. It's an honor to
have all three of you on the Endicott site -- thank you, Helen,
Greg, and Carolyn for contributing these pieces.
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(12/4/01 8:05:19 am)
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Helen's article
Wow--thanks Helen. Great article.
Jane
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Helen
Registered User
(12/4/01 9:32:23 am)
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Re: Helen's article
Dear Terri and Jane:
Thank *you* both (as well as Ms. McKinley) for providing such inspirational source material!
Best,
Helen
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