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Author
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Comment
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(6/19/04 11:49 am)
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Blood related magic in fairy tales
Dear All:
Recently, I've been thinking over the incantatory uses of blood in fairy tales: in "Snow White," the daughter's birth is called forth by the wish made by the queen upon her sight of her blood on the snow (or linen, depending on the version); in "The Goose Girl," the three drops of blood are intended to provide protection (or to call forth the princesses cycles, depending on critical interpretation, though I've always found them to be singularly useless, acting more as reminders of propriety than anything else - my best guess at their meaning has always been that they blend with the land upon falling into the river, granting the daughter an elemental connection that we see only in her use of the winds to torment Conrad - I'd love to hear other interpretations). Can any of you think of other tales which have similar symbolic blood-borne associations? Not things like the blood of the sisters in "Cinderella," but rather blood shed for a specific purpose? Just curious ...
Best,
Helen
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(6/19/04 12:24 pm)
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Re: Blood related magic in fairy tales
Helen,
I was starting to think of drops of blood as being particularly women's magic, but the tale I thought of is an exception (and my initial assumption may be wrong in the first place). In "The Singing, Springing Lark," the prince who is transformed into a dove leaves "a drop of blood and a white feather" for every seven steps that his lover takes when following him, and he does so for seven years. I tend to think that the blood in this fairy tale is more representative of the prince's loyalty and suffering than it is magical, but it's a powerful image.
Blood is often important in saints' lives, too (and in some very interesting ways). I wonder if there might be some connections there...
I will continue pondering,
Erica
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(6/19/04 4:29 pm)
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Re: Blood related magic in fairy tales
In Angela Carter's "Ashputtle," one of her Cinderella versions involves a bird killing itself so its blood can become a beautiful red dress, though I don't know what, if any version Carter was drawing on there.
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janeyolen
Registered User
(6/19/04 4:57 pm)
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bird/blood
Carter may, in fact, be referencing the Oscar Wilde fairy tale in which the bird helps the lover by staining a rose red with its heart's blood, then dying. And the girl fllinging the rose away.
Jane
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Selkieno
Unregistered User
(6/20/04 3:14 pm)
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initiation
The drinking of grandmothers blood in several versions of "Red Ridinghood" (ex. Achille Milliens "The Story of Grandmother")
Selkie
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Amal
Registered User
(6/20/04 3:42 pm)
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Cinderella
In Cinderella there's that mention of "prithee, look back, there's blood on the track," when the prince is taking each of the stepsisters home in turn, in some versions -- revealing that it isn't Cinderella with him, but the stepsisters who've mutilated their feet to fit the slipper (and Freud is soundly smacked down inside my head).
While thinking about this -- doesn't it seem like there are far more references to women's bodies in fairytales than to men's? Makes me wonder if it's a matter of women tellers talking about themselves, or if it's a case of male tellers being voyeuristic. ; )
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Nalo
Registered User
(6/20/04 9:53 pm)
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Re: Cinderella
In "Bluebeard," the third wife gets blood on the key (or is it on the egg? Too tired to look it up. I think it's the egg) when she drops it onto the charnel house floor that was where Bluebeard killed his previous two wives, her sisters. The blood won't come out, and that's how Bluebeard knows that she's been in the forbidden room. Not a clue what it all means, but I liked the disturbing connotations of blood, ovaries/ovulation/first blood/sexual awakening/first childbirth/danger. Drew on that when I wrote a Bluebeard story of my own.
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Amal
Registered User
(6/21/04 10:24 am)
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Sorry!
Ack! Helen, I should've paid closer attention to your actual question before I went and said the sisters in Cinderella -- but on a critical level, would you consider the shedding of that blood as revelatory? That the appearance of blood also signals the appearance of truth?
Most sheepishly,
Amal
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(6/22/04 1:16 pm)
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The blood is the life...
Dear All:
Thanks so much for the suggestions - in all of these tales, as Amal suggests, blood does play an important role, generally indicating the proper path (whether by very literally, as in "The Singing, Springin Lark," indicating the prince's track, or as in "Cinderella," the truth of the situation as it stands). I think that "Bluebeard" may actually be the most significant version, in terms of what I'm looking for; here, the blood is both a sign of the womanhood which is upon her, and an atypical betrayor of her goals deliberately employed by Bluebeard to give her away. The theological implications are fascinating - i.e., that woman's sin, curiousity, is now linked to woman's punishment, menstruation. The versions that I'm trying to find, now, are the ones in which the blood is actually dedicated to a certain purpose, such as the nature of a daughter, or the protection of one's kin: I'd like to try to trace them through medieval versions (and, yes, definitely, Erica, I'm going to be hunting through the hagiographies to see if I can find any connections there) to see if there are any concrete linkages between what we know of the superstitions of medieval magic and the "good" characters of medieval fairy tales. In her wonderful book, _The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe_, Flint points out that there were both good and bad magics, mostly deliniated by the identities of the persons employing it (Church miracles, good; the incantations of village midwives, bad, to put things in the most simplistic terms possible), but also by the goals of the caster. We see a microcosm of this in fairy tales in the split between the fairy godmother and the witch, but I'm really looking for remnants of folk traditions in tales that don't fit into that dichotomy, and blood magic seems like a good place to start. Thanks for the tips!
Best,
Helen
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