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Author
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Comment
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TimJ3000
Registered User
(12/3/02 1:56:40 am)
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What fairy tale character are you most like ?
What fantasy character/s (be it from any medium - fairytale, book, movie, etc.) are you seriously or humorously most like (or other people have said you are) and is there any reason/s why ?
If this has been well discussed before, please give any links.
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Helen
Registered User
(12/3/02 8:18:35 am)
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Oh, dear ...
... I don't know if I should admit to this in public, but, hey, if it might give you guys a giggle ... being a graduate student, the other night I sat around with my friends and we all tried to think of literary nicknames for one another. What can I say? It's in the grad. student handbook as an acceptable activity (along with dropping allusions at the drop of a hat and doing anything else that a Pam Dean character *might* conceivably do). So what did I get pegged as? Immediately, and to the riotous agreement of the group, I might add? Jadis. The Snow-Queen from Narnia. I took exception at first (after all, I haven't petrified anyone in years, and I don't serve Turkish Delight with any particular frequency), but after a bit of thinking, I kinda got to liking the idea. C.S. Lewis was one of my favorite authors as a child, and, for that matter, still is when I'm an adult, but now, I have to admit that he was a bit of a misogynist. Not one single strong female character except for her ... that makes her overcompensation somewhat more understandable. Though, I hope that this doesn't mean that they imagine me turning into a dove one day ...
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bielie
Unregistered User
(12/3/02 12:47:41 pm)
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Orual
Jadis is not Lewis's strongest female character. It's Orual of "Till we have faces."
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Helen
Registered User
(12/3/02 2:52:59 pm)
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But ...
... within the self-contained universe of the Narnia Chronicles.
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Deb
Unregistered User
(12/3/02 4:02:18 pm)
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Jadis v. White Witch
It's been a few years...the White Witch is in "The Lion, the Witch..." and Jadis is in "The Magician's Nephew." I don't recall them being the same person. Are they? Must have missed that!
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Maria
Cecile
Registered User
(12/4/02 7:55:29 am)
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Jadis/White Witch
I always assumed that they were the same person. At the end of The Magician's Nephew, Jadis eats the apple and goes pale white, then runs off into the wilds to hide. But it's implied that she'll return. Something in LW&W made me think that, too.
Maria Cecile
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MarkS
Unregistered User
(12/4/02 4:02:30 pm)
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Narnia
Yes, Jadis is the White Witch, who re-enters Narnia and Winter falls until the Pevensies defeat her and her armies after Aslan's sacrifice. I remember reading "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" when I was about 13, and it was a magical book. That, and "The Hobbit" are probably responsible for me going on to read fantasy and sword and sorcery throughout my teenage and young adult years. I have a lot of favorite characters from fictional fantasy, but historical fairy tales would be Jack, The Giant Killer. I saw the movie when I was a kid and there was a bonding of some sort. Just the name evokes something powerful. After that would be a fascination with King Arthur and perpipheral myths, especially Celtic ones.
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catja1
Registered User
(12/5/02 3:17:40 pm)
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Fairy tale and characters
Well, as long as you don't try to cancel Christmas, Helen. *g*
For fairy tale characters, definitely the heroine of "Fitcher's
Bird." I'm coming more and more to the idea that this story
is primarily about knowledge, and about those who have it, those
who seek it, those who subvert it -- and the power one gains when
one acquires that knowledge: the ability to raise her sisters from
the dead. An apt metaphor for a female (and feminist) scholar, I
think.
Also, Hermione (from the Harry Potter books) gives me pangs of recognition; this is aided by the fact that my friends tease me with "It's 'levi-OH-sa, not levi-oh-SAH!"
Catja
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Nalo
Registered User
(12/7/02 5:51:16 pm)
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Re: Fairy tale and characters
There is a woman in a folk tale who's walking with her husband on the plains, when he announces that he's hungry, and she should go and hunt down an animal and kill and cook it for their dinner. Well, preparation and cooking of meat is women's work in her culture, but hunting and killing is men's work. So she says, "Yes, husband," and turns into a lioness. Whereupon her husband scuttles up the nearest tree. She asks him what's wrong, that she's merely put on the most suitable shape for hunting down another animal and killing it. He begs her to turn back into a woman. She says sweetly, "If I do, will you go and do your job and stop asking me to do it?" He promises that he will never again ask her to hunt. She turns back into a human woman and lets him go and hunt their dinner. I probably wouldn't get my girdle in such a knot over what's men's work and what's women's, but I think maybe there are ways in which I'm like her.
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Angel Feather
Unregistered User
(1/21/03 4:49:22 pm)
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My Favorite Character
I think that the very first fairytale I fell in love with as little girl was Rapunzel. I think that I'm fascinated with the maiden in the tower motif. When I was a senior in high school, we studied "The Lady of Shallot" poem by Tennyson. I fell in love with that poem and was very excited when I discovered that Lorena McKennit had set the poem to music. I collect cards of paintings of the Lady of Shallot theme.
How I think this relates to me has taken me most of my life to realize in part. (I'm sure there are deeper levels yet for me to explore). What I have learned about myself is that when I'm doing something creative, I hate to be interrupted. Rapunzel sings in her tower. The Lady of Shallot weaves in her tower. Both are creative and soulful endeavours. I love my alone time. And if I ever were to live in a house with a tower room, that would just be the ultimate. It's nice to be up amongst the trees and the birds.
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(1/21/03 8:35:42 pm)
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fairytale character
The several versions of "The Two Sisters" have always fascinated me, for all kinds of reasons. I used to wonder if I was the elder or the younger, the innocent, beloved one or the murderer, and what the murder meant from this perspective or that. But in the last year or two the one who makes the magical musical instrument has begun to loom much larger and more interestingly, and I know I'm going to have to write his/her story someday. In an Appalachian version, he's a miller who finds the dead sister washed up in his mill pond.
He made fiddle pegs of her little finger bones,
Oh the wind and rain,
He made fiddle pegs of her little finger bones,
Oh the dreadful wind and rain.
I don't know if it's morbid, but I've begun to identify with this mysterious figure who fashions the remains of the dead into revelation. If only one's own writing could be as transformational -- of oneself or the world.
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Angel Feather
Unregistered User
(1/22/03 9:40:08 am)
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The two sisters
I just had to respond. I have never read the two sisters in fairy tale form, but there are two versions of a folk song that tell the very same tale. One was sung by the singer of Pentangle and the song is called "Cruel Sister". It's a really beautiful song considering the subject matter. In fact most of my favorite folk songs have death in them, but that's not why they are my favorite. Anyway, the other song was arranged and adapted by Lorena Mckennit called "The Bonny Swans." If you love the tale, I'm sure you will love the songs:
He made harp pins of her fingers fair
with a hey ho and a bonny ho
He made harp strings of her golden hair
the swans swim so bonny o
He made a harp of her breast bone
with a hey ho and a bonny o
And straight it began to play alone
the swans swim so bonny o.
Now then, I would love to get to the library and find a version of the two sisters fairy tale. Thanks!
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(1/22/03 11:14:58 am)
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fairytale character
I should clarify -- I don't know if there's a folk narrative version of "The two sisters" (and that's my own name for it, it's not official as far as I know) but I have a memory from some graduate school class that many of the European tale types show up in the British Isles as ballads rather than tales. So ... there *ought* to be a traditional narrative version, somewhere.
I remember the song Pentangle recorded. It has a knightly suitor providing the motivation for the murder:
He courted one with gloves and rings...
But he loved the other above all things.
Greg Frost has a "Two Sisters" story -- he'll have to provide the title. Greg, was your source a ballad or fairytale?
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Lexi
Registered User
(1/22/03 1:12:56 pm)
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Re: fairytale character
I was reading the thread and your descriptions sparked a memory so I went off hunting through my books and voila...a fairy tale style retelling by Patricia C. Wrede called "The Cruel Sisters".
The harp plays the following song....
"Mother and father, queen and king,
Farewell to you, farewell I sing.
Farewell to William, sweet and true,
Farewell dear sister Meg, to you.
But woe to my fair sister Anne,
Who killed me for to take my man."
This version introduces a third sister, and puts a couple neat spins
on the plot. I really enjoyed it. If you're looking for it, it can
be found in Wrede's book The
Book of Enchantments
Hope it helps,
Sarah
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Ys
Unregistered User
(1/23/03 9:51:14 am)
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The Two Sisters
To continue on the subject, I think it is most known as a Francis J. Child ballad...
Here is the link to the (most ?) known version:
www.contemplator.com/folk4/twasist.html
And here is the link to several versions (and some of them have a third sister also):
www.contemplator.com/chil...ant10.html
Hope it helps
Ys
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Gregor9
Registered User
(1/23/03 11:38:07 am)
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Re: fairytale character
Judith,
The source for "The Harp that Sang"--which will be in Terri Windling & Ellen Datlow's anthology _My Swan Sister_--is the folk ballad you mention. But I didn't adhere to it by any means.
I was just at a reading in NYC where the topic of this story came up in conversation and someone asked how, as the ballad portrays, somebody could come along, find the dead girl, and immediately think, "Hey, I'll make a harp out of her bones." In the song, you're pretty much just left to accept that this is what happens. In writing a story, you can't get away with it. Or, to paraphrase something Delia Sherman has observed: "Ballads are just stories with the motivations removed."
They may have been stories before being ballads, but when you try to turn them back into stories, you sometimes have to account for the unaccountable.
Greg
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Angel
Feather
Registered User
(1/31/03 10:24:05 am)
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The Harper
I just finished a trip to the Childs website and read some lyrics. In other versions of the song, the sister's ghost appears to tell the harper how to make the harp. Then once made, the harp tells everyone who murdered her. The title of the book "The Lovely Bones" came to me, and although I haven't read the book, it's about the murder of a teenage girl. I think that the psychological process of making the harp from the girls hair and bones is about wishful thinking. "If only the dead could speak", then we could know who killed the girl. I think it could be a form of magic or divination. A good story transports us. But a story set to music can really take us to another level. I think what's wonderful about the story/song/ballad is that it's not enough for the ghost to appear to reveal the truth, but that it's done through a magical process and through song.
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(2/5/03 9:01:24 pm)
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Narnia's strongest female...
Without a doubt, Lucy. The girl this alleged misogynist started the whole thing for.
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(2/5/03 9:05:21 pm)
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Who am I like?
Since fairy tales are supposed to show us ourselves, who are we NOT like? Still, I'll pick:
* Iron Hans, because I let the Wild Man out of the cage
* Jack the Giant-Killer, for that bag of magic beans
* Parsival, for wandering around aimlessly after being too timid to answer the right question at the right time
* Hansel, because I have a sister who didn't want me eaten
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