I am not a scholarly or knowledgeable person, so I will answer the questions simply, from my point of view. Thank you for the opportunity.
From compact works I gain insight into cultures, what they valued, and what they wanted to share. In more complex works it seems that what is communicated is focused more on an individual interpretation or vision. It still contains cultural clues, but it is more the author’s view than the entire culture. I could be really off there, but it seems that one is a generalization of a rule and one is commentary. The consequences might be a change in tradition--something lost, something gained in search for meaning.
I grew up in a household with a parent who spoke English as a second language and am well-acquainted with language barriers. It is enough of a challenge to foster relationships when both speak the same language. Language barriers are generally accompanied by cultural barriers. Often, what one believes a word to mean is something completely different from how another person interprets it even when speaking the same language. When there is a language barrier, clear communication is all the more difficult.
I came away with the feeling that the spoken language barrier emphasized the power of love to overcome obstacles. Love itself was the language the two main characters shared, and love won despite the odds.
Changing into animals seems to represent the ability to become invisible or safely disguised as someone/something else. It could also be used to justify actions or reactions that our feelings may bring to mind but our conscience struggles with. If I am a wolf, I can eat you, because I am hungry. I find those things very useful.
Hello Mamma Yaga! Thanks for dropping by. (I'm picturing you flying in in your mortar and pestle, sweeping the stars free of dust as you pass). I'm so glad you popped in to offer your wise and thoughtful responses to the discussion prompts!
I love your profound insight that 'language barriers are generally accompanied by cultural barriers'. Yes! I've often found that even when we do speak a shared language, or even share a culture that looks sort-of similar (as white Australians do with, say, white Canadians and Americans), there's still a lot of opportunity for misunderstandings or poor communication because of cultural differences. As you say, a word might have a quite different connotation in one culture compared to another.
I completely agree that one reading of this story suggests that love is the universal language, capable of being heard, felt, and seen without the need for a shared spoken or written language.
I also really love your idea that transformation into a nonhuman animal provides a human with a place (!) to hide or a way to become invisible to the human world. And I'm so curious about that final statement about how you find it useful to (think about? play with?) the idea that particular nonhuman bodies help us to justify our emotions or actions. Can you share an example? I'm really intrigued.
What a nice response to come back to, and you have given me a lot to think about! For the moment, I can share that what I was thinking about were many times when I repressed feelings or emotions, and those things would have been conveniently, freely, and naturally expressed by, say, a tiger? : ) Stuff for my journal. I have taken the writing prompt and written down a few thoughts. Thank you for the inspiration!
A friend shared this and brought it to my attention, and I immediately subscribed, thinking it a project just after my own heart ... and then I read the story in the first issue, of the Orange Tree and the Bee ...
My first rather flippant reaction was the following (but the more I think about it, the more it's bothering me; I'll put a further note below) : never have I so clearly felt on the side of the Ogres ; rarely have I so detested the insufferable, saccharine, pale and pretty little prigs we are asked to admire as protagonists ... It must be my heritage, as a Savage from a Land of Ogres, Cannibals, and Monsters, but I feel that one would need a heart of stone not to wish ardently for the Princess and the Prince to be most gorily devoured ...
.... On further reflection, I'm actually kind of troubled. I don't want to rush to any kind of judgement : I do not know you, the editors of this new venture. However, while this story has very many and complex things one might say about it, the one that immediately and forcibly strikes me is this : the MOST cursory and basic Post Colonial reading of this tale immediately turns up a very clear discourse of proto-White Supremacy and Apologia of Imperial Colonialism ; considering the context in which d'Aulnoy was writing - of the rise of the French Caribbean plantations as a massive source of upper class wealth - it seems very very obvious that there is this propaganda element present. I am not one to see these things everywhere I look, nor to be paranoid about the Wicked Forces of Problematic Things plotting against us... But this is just howlingly obvious to me.
Now, by all means, let us read this story and discuss all aspects of it, including this one ; but in the questions and prompts that follow it, nary a mention of such an idea. And so I find that unsettling ; I assume that you are scholars, and as such will not be remotely surprised that someone might propose this kind of reading. And to offer it as your very first issue, and the source of the name of your publication, without even the barest mention of this kind of discourse being present in it is tone-deaf at best, in my opinion.
But then again, maybe I'm crazy. Does anyone else see what I see here? Or am I, as the descendant of Savages, Ogres, Monsters, Child-Eaters, being unnecessarily sensitive? This is a genuine question, and genuine concern. I do not know if everyone can see what I see here, but I would be shocked if they did not.
Hi Mark. Thanks for subscribing to The Orange and Bee, and for reading d'Aulnoy's tale. You have highlighted one of the challenges for contemporary readers in reading traditional and classic fairy tales: there is often as much to be troubled by as to admire in them.
Applying a post-colonial and historicist lens to the reading of this story does, as you note, draw attention to the ways in which the cannibalistic ogres (Ravagio, perhaps, in particular) are coded as subaltern. And provides a framework for critical analysing the ways in which this story—the work of a French noblewoman—is, at best, Eurocentric. Part of a long history of works by white Europeans that contributes to the mythology of the non-European Other as monstrous and strange.
You might find Marina Warner's Reith 1994 lecture on cannibalism and colonialism (Cannibal tales: a hunger for conquest) a productive piece to read alongside d'Aulnoy's tale of a castaway living among ogres. As Warner notes: "Cannibalism is used to define the alien, but actually mirrors the speaker. By tarring the savage with the horror of cannibalism, settlers, explorers, colonisers could vindicate their own violence. It is a psychological manoeuvre of great effectiveness. Seeing the conquered as brute barbarians helped the confidence of the first empire builders."
I'm very interested in this reading of d'Aulnoy's tale, as I'm sure others are, too.
At the same time, I'm wary of the implication that the fact that this story is problematic in its depiction of the ogres is either the most important thing that can be said about it. The last word.
Personally, I'm a fan of Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick's discussion of "paranoid" and "reparative" reading (which she articulates in her essay 'Paranoid reading and reparative reading, or, you're so paranoid, I bet you think this essay is about you'). It's pretty tough to reduce Sedgewick's complex argument to a Substack comment, so I'll just stick to the main bits I think are useful here: what each reading strategy is, and why it's useful to embrace both approaches.
1. Paranoid reading: an approach to reading a text that is partly driven by an "aversion to surprise" and that therefore "places its faith in exposure". That is, in order to avoid the surprises a text might offer (either pleasurable or painful), a paranoid reading seeks to expose the truth about a text—a definitive response—and thereby limit its capacity to proliferate meanings or effects. When we read using paranoid strategies, we seek to delimit and define a text, eliminating any ambiguity. The aim of a paranoid reading is to make a ruling as to whether a particular text is problematic or progressive, and thereby (often) to accept or reject it. In the contemporary context, paranoid readings are often used to dismiss texts (and their creators), and even--at times--to provoke a sense of shame in those who have found solace, inspiration, comfort or pleasure in a text that has been deemed 'problematic'.
2. Reparative reading is a complementary approach. Not one that replaces the keen analysis and essential critical insight so often produced by paranoid readings, but one which expands and complicates such sometimes reductive readings. Sedgewick argues that while a paranoid reading is based on a fear of being surprised, a reparative one is open to surprise, and hopeful. As Sedgewick writes: “Hope, often fracturing, even a traumatic thing to experience, is among the energies by which the reparatitvely positioned reader tries to organize the fragments and part-objects she encounters or creates". To engage in a reparative reading is to seek pleasure and recognition in a text. To identify what resonates, what feels good, or beautiful. What is affirming.
3. (And this is more me than Sedgewick) I think such a two-pronged approach is particularly useful when approaching historical texts, like d'Aulnoy's story, and many other traditional and classic fairy tales, which most often reveal as much about the limitations of their creators as they do about their wit, insight, and courage. We can use critical theory, including postcolonial theory, and contemporary ideas about ethics and politics, to interrogate a text. But we can also seek out and acknowledge the ways in which a text offers us hope, pleasure, surprise. The trick is, I think, to be able to do both. To hold onto both types of responses to a text as useful, and true.
Finally, I want to offer a gentle provocation—a kind of 'extra' writing prompt, if you like. Fairy tales are, by their very nature, never finite. Never finished. They are works in a constant state of change and evolution. Like other forms of folkloric narrative, they travel across time and space, and are transformed over and over again, by new writers, artists, editors, curators, and others. Whenever a particular tale excites our imagination or, more often, when we find something in a tale that is bothersome—irritating or infuriating—we are free to take the bones of that tale and construct it anew. In a form or fashion that is more pleasing to us. To put this another way, as one of the storytellers says to her listener in Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch: "This is the tale you asked for, I leave it in your mouth" (1997. p. 228).
Thank you for taking the time to make this thoughtful and thorough response. I appreciate it.
I'm quite familiar with Warner's work, though I don't know that particular text, so thanks for that ; I also do know Kosofsky Sedgwick's, though not as well as I would like : again, good tip, thanks! I'll read that essay with much interest. I think I've come across the idea you mention, about the Paranoid vs the Reparative Reading, or in any case the concept is familiar.
For my own part, I am certainly not, by predilection, a "Paranoid Reader" ; I find these kinds of readings to often be reductive and to "dis-enchant" the Fairy Tale material. And I did not mean, and forgive me if it was implied, that this Post-Colonial reading be the most important thing, or the last word to say, on this particular story. No, I believe that it is AN important thing to bear in mind, and especially when we're dealing, as we are here, with an authored, "literary" fairy tale, rather than one that evolves and grows more organically from a Folk Tradition. In these instances, I think that it's always interesting to take into account the person and the politics, the historical circumstances, of the author : all popular fiction, such as this is, is a vehicle for ideology, whether overtly or not, whether consciously or not. In this light, I would add to your readings suggested above, Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch, which gives a Marxist analysis of the links between the European Witch-trials, the Colonial Project, and the process of "Enclosure" in the shift towards a Capitalist World-System, all of which are also exactly contemporary with d'Aulnoy.
However, your answer made me reflect further on my immediate distaste for this story : I think that my initial reaction was a gut-feeling, a recoiling, from this story ; I think then I tried to intellectualise this reaction, rather than just responding with "Ew! Vibes are off ..." And I reached, as we often do, for the Post-Colonial Materialist Reading, which is one we often resort to when looking for the Authority of Disapproval (which is exactly as you say, a reading in the "Paranoid Style" ...). Now, on further reflection, I think I can better identify my initial distaste : it was an aesthetic and ethical one.
You see, I reacted strongly against the very present thread in the story (and in many fairy tales) of the equation of Beauty = Good ; of the idea that "Goodness" and "Beauty" are inherent qualities that are possessed by birth, and not by actions ; that some people (Aimée and Aimé in the story) are just "Better Born" than others. To me, this is very much a kind of "Great Chain of Being" idea : linked to the concept of Natural Aristocracy, of the Divine Right of Kings, of a "Natural Order" in which class and caste are inborn. Now, myself, as an Anarchist, as an enemy of Monarchy, of Empire, of Authority of all kinds, I find this immediately suspicious and distasteful. Obviously, it is very common in all sorts of fairy tales, but often moreso in the ones authored by aristocrats, and maybe a little less so in the tales that come from folk tradition. I'm not a fan of Presumptuous Princes and Prissy Princesses ; give me a scullery-maid, a woodcutter's third son, a poor little match-girl, any day of the week.
And so, I absolutely accept your provocation, your prompt, and your spur : I am of the Party of the Ogres, the Witches, the Weird, the "People of the Outside" (to adopt the title of a forthcoming book by my friend Lee Morgan, which is a fascinating look into just these questions : of the Othered, the Cannibal, the Outcast Folk). In recent times, there has been a great upsurge in these Fairy Tales, Retold, from the perspective of the "Others": a sort of "writing back" just as the Colonial Other, the Subaltern, writes back to the Metropole in so much Post-Colonial Literature. I'm thinking of (perhaps the best example here), Shrek, or Wicked, or Malificent, or any number of tales told by "The Monster". And I myself do write in that same spirit. On the topic of "Beauty = Good", I even have a tale in hand, which, if you don't mind, I'll paste in below (it's brief). It's a good reminder to me! I had published it on my blog, but in looking for it, I remembered I had taken it down in order to submit it somewhere : obviously, I never heard back! Now I'll post it again there!
But as you also say, these are too complex a set of issues to discuss "in the comments", as it were. And so: would you like to come onto my Podcast to talk about these things? I would be delighted to have you! The podcast is The Hollow Path, on Art and Magic, and I'll place here a link to that and my other stuff (if that's okay? If not, let me know, I'll erase it!) As you'll see: this stuff is very much up my alley ; so far up my alley, in fact, that it's sitting at my kitchen table drinking tea, trailing strange moss and twigs and odours of the Outside ....
Once upon a time, there was an ugly, smelly old witch who lived alone in a murky pond. She got up when she wanted, and went to bed when she felt like it; she had frogs and toads and bats and rats and snakes and a couple of goats for pets, and she fed them all sorts of strange and venomous mixtures. She larked about in the pond all day, and occasionally went for walks around the neighbouring woods and hedgerows, gathering curious and fragrant things. These she used to decorate her pond, or to mix her heady brews. By night, she watched the sky, and sang softly to herself.
One day, a little girl called Josephine came upon the murky pond, and saw the witch taking her ease on the bank. She asked the witch what she was doing, and the witch replied “Nothing! What does it look like?” Josephine was puzzled. She had always been told not to answer “nothing” to questions. She asked the witch why she was so old and ugly and smelly. “What’s the point in being sweet-smelling and pretty, like you, except to please others? I’m very happy with how I am. And as for being old, well, it’s far preferable to being young, if you ask me! I’ll have you know, I get up when I want, and go to bed whenever I please! I laze around my pond all day, and I feed all the verminous and creeping things. I gather all the strange weeds and flowers from the hedgerows, and I make them into special brews. I answer to no-one and nothing, and I only please myself!”
“Golly,” said Josephine. “It’s a witch’s life for me! How do I go about becoming a witch like you?”
“Well,” said the witch, “it’s a long and arduous process. If you wish to learn to be a witch, there are a few things you must do first : learn all you can about plants and herbs and flowers and trees, listen to them, care for them, gather them, and brew with them ; learn all you can about the sun, the moon, the stars, their turnings and their changes ; learn all you can about the seasons, learn to smell each one coming, and to see everything that each will bring, and that each will take away ; learn all the secrets that you can, and all the stories that you can, learn to tell, and not to tell, learn to lie, and how to find the truth ; learn all the magic that you can, learn how to enchant, and to be enchanted, learn how to become invisible, and how to see ; finally, you must learn all the mysteries of the human heart, learn love, learn pain, learn fear, learn joy and sorrow, learn hate and grief, and reverie and melancholy, learn peace. You must learn all these things by studying them closely, by living them fully; by sucking all the juices out of life, and going back for more.
“Then, when you have done all this, you come back to me, and I’ll teach you how to be a witch like me.”
Josephine went away thoughtfully, and from that day forward, she lived her life rather differently. She thought of all the things she must learn, and all the things she must see and do and experience, and it seemed a lot. But she was quite excited about the prospect, and especially about one day beginning finally to learn to be a witch like the one in the pond.
And so she lived, and learned, and changed, and grew. She loved, and lost, and gathered herbs by the light of the moon, and rose at dawn to learn the songs of all the birds that greet the sun. She married, twice, and had some children, who she loved. She made things, and grew things, and saw and heard things. She kept secrets, and told stories. And every time she thought of going back to the witch in the pond, to finally learn to be a witch, she hesitated; perhaps there was still more to learn, still more she had not done yet? Perhaps there was a little more juice to be sucked out of life, before it was time to learn to be a witch.
One day, when she was not so young anymore, and when there was a weight of things she carried with her that she would not have traded for the world, had it been offered, she finally went back to the witch’s pond. She called out for the witch, and said she had finally come to learn. There was no answer. The pond was still and silent, empty. Josephine looked up and down, and all around, but there was no sign of the witch.
And she understood.
She threw off her clothes, and unbound her hair, and slipped gratefully into the murky water of the pond, and the toads and rats and snakes began to gather round her.
I am not a scholarly or knowledgeable person, so I will answer the questions simply, from my point of view. Thank you for the opportunity.
From compact works I gain insight into cultures, what they valued, and what they wanted to share. In more complex works it seems that what is communicated is focused more on an individual interpretation or vision. It still contains cultural clues, but it is more the author’s view than the entire culture. I could be really off there, but it seems that one is a generalization of a rule and one is commentary. The consequences might be a change in tradition--something lost, something gained in search for meaning.
I grew up in a household with a parent who spoke English as a second language and am well-acquainted with language barriers. It is enough of a challenge to foster relationships when both speak the same language. Language barriers are generally accompanied by cultural barriers. Often, what one believes a word to mean is something completely different from how another person interprets it even when speaking the same language. When there is a language barrier, clear communication is all the more difficult.
I came away with the feeling that the spoken language barrier emphasized the power of love to overcome obstacles. Love itself was the language the two main characters shared, and love won despite the odds.
Changing into animals seems to represent the ability to become invisible or safely disguised as someone/something else. It could also be used to justify actions or reactions that our feelings may bring to mind but our conscience struggles with. If I am a wolf, I can eat you, because I am hungry. I find those things very useful.
Hello Mamma Yaga! Thanks for dropping by. (I'm picturing you flying in in your mortar and pestle, sweeping the stars free of dust as you pass). I'm so glad you popped in to offer your wise and thoughtful responses to the discussion prompts!
I love your profound insight that 'language barriers are generally accompanied by cultural barriers'. Yes! I've often found that even when we do speak a shared language, or even share a culture that looks sort-of similar (as white Australians do with, say, white Canadians and Americans), there's still a lot of opportunity for misunderstandings or poor communication because of cultural differences. As you say, a word might have a quite different connotation in one culture compared to another.
I completely agree that one reading of this story suggests that love is the universal language, capable of being heard, felt, and seen without the need for a shared spoken or written language.
I also really love your idea that transformation into a nonhuman animal provides a human with a place (!) to hide or a way to become invisible to the human world. And I'm so curious about that final statement about how you find it useful to (think about? play with?) the idea that particular nonhuman bodies help us to justify our emotions or actions. Can you share an example? I'm really intrigued.
What a nice response to come back to, and you have given me a lot to think about! For the moment, I can share that what I was thinking about were many times when I repressed feelings or emotions, and those things would have been conveniently, freely, and naturally expressed by, say, a tiger? : ) Stuff for my journal. I have taken the writing prompt and written down a few thoughts. Thank you for the inspiration!
A friend shared this and brought it to my attention, and I immediately subscribed, thinking it a project just after my own heart ... and then I read the story in the first issue, of the Orange Tree and the Bee ...
My first rather flippant reaction was the following (but the more I think about it, the more it's bothering me; I'll put a further note below) : never have I so clearly felt on the side of the Ogres ; rarely have I so detested the insufferable, saccharine, pale and pretty little prigs we are asked to admire as protagonists ... It must be my heritage, as a Savage from a Land of Ogres, Cannibals, and Monsters, but I feel that one would need a heart of stone not to wish ardently for the Princess and the Prince to be most gorily devoured ...
.... On further reflection, I'm actually kind of troubled. I don't want to rush to any kind of judgement : I do not know you, the editors of this new venture. However, while this story has very many and complex things one might say about it, the one that immediately and forcibly strikes me is this : the MOST cursory and basic Post Colonial reading of this tale immediately turns up a very clear discourse of proto-White Supremacy and Apologia of Imperial Colonialism ; considering the context in which d'Aulnoy was writing - of the rise of the French Caribbean plantations as a massive source of upper class wealth - it seems very very obvious that there is this propaganda element present. I am not one to see these things everywhere I look, nor to be paranoid about the Wicked Forces of Problematic Things plotting against us... But this is just howlingly obvious to me.
Now, by all means, let us read this story and discuss all aspects of it, including this one ; but in the questions and prompts that follow it, nary a mention of such an idea. And so I find that unsettling ; I assume that you are scholars, and as such will not be remotely surprised that someone might propose this kind of reading. And to offer it as your very first issue, and the source of the name of your publication, without even the barest mention of this kind of discourse being present in it is tone-deaf at best, in my opinion.
But then again, maybe I'm crazy. Does anyone else see what I see here? Or am I, as the descendant of Savages, Ogres, Monsters, Child-Eaters, being unnecessarily sensitive? This is a genuine question, and genuine concern. I do not know if everyone can see what I see here, but I would be shocked if they did not.
Hi Mark. Thanks for subscribing to The Orange and Bee, and for reading d'Aulnoy's tale. You have highlighted one of the challenges for contemporary readers in reading traditional and classic fairy tales: there is often as much to be troubled by as to admire in them.
Applying a post-colonial and historicist lens to the reading of this story does, as you note, draw attention to the ways in which the cannibalistic ogres (Ravagio, perhaps, in particular) are coded as subaltern. And provides a framework for critical analysing the ways in which this story—the work of a French noblewoman—is, at best, Eurocentric. Part of a long history of works by white Europeans that contributes to the mythology of the non-European Other as monstrous and strange.
You might find Marina Warner's Reith 1994 lecture on cannibalism and colonialism (Cannibal tales: a hunger for conquest) a productive piece to read alongside d'Aulnoy's tale of a castaway living among ogres. As Warner notes: "Cannibalism is used to define the alien, but actually mirrors the speaker. By tarring the savage with the horror of cannibalism, settlers, explorers, colonisers could vindicate their own violence. It is a psychological manoeuvre of great effectiveness. Seeing the conquered as brute barbarians helped the confidence of the first empire builders."
I'm very interested in this reading of d'Aulnoy's tale, as I'm sure others are, too.
At the same time, I'm wary of the implication that the fact that this story is problematic in its depiction of the ogres is either the most important thing that can be said about it. The last word.
Personally, I'm a fan of Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick's discussion of "paranoid" and "reparative" reading (which she articulates in her essay 'Paranoid reading and reparative reading, or, you're so paranoid, I bet you think this essay is about you'). It's pretty tough to reduce Sedgewick's complex argument to a Substack comment, so I'll just stick to the main bits I think are useful here: what each reading strategy is, and why it's useful to embrace both approaches.
1. Paranoid reading: an approach to reading a text that is partly driven by an "aversion to surprise" and that therefore "places its faith in exposure". That is, in order to avoid the surprises a text might offer (either pleasurable or painful), a paranoid reading seeks to expose the truth about a text—a definitive response—and thereby limit its capacity to proliferate meanings or effects. When we read using paranoid strategies, we seek to delimit and define a text, eliminating any ambiguity. The aim of a paranoid reading is to make a ruling as to whether a particular text is problematic or progressive, and thereby (often) to accept or reject it. In the contemporary context, paranoid readings are often used to dismiss texts (and their creators), and even--at times--to provoke a sense of shame in those who have found solace, inspiration, comfort or pleasure in a text that has been deemed 'problematic'.
2. Reparative reading is a complementary approach. Not one that replaces the keen analysis and essential critical insight so often produced by paranoid readings, but one which expands and complicates such sometimes reductive readings. Sedgewick argues that while a paranoid reading is based on a fear of being surprised, a reparative one is open to surprise, and hopeful. As Sedgewick writes: “Hope, often fracturing, even a traumatic thing to experience, is among the energies by which the reparatitvely positioned reader tries to organize the fragments and part-objects she encounters or creates". To engage in a reparative reading is to seek pleasure and recognition in a text. To identify what resonates, what feels good, or beautiful. What is affirming.
3. (And this is more me than Sedgewick) I think such a two-pronged approach is particularly useful when approaching historical texts, like d'Aulnoy's story, and many other traditional and classic fairy tales, which most often reveal as much about the limitations of their creators as they do about their wit, insight, and courage. We can use critical theory, including postcolonial theory, and contemporary ideas about ethics and politics, to interrogate a text. But we can also seek out and acknowledge the ways in which a text offers us hope, pleasure, surprise. The trick is, I think, to be able to do both. To hold onto both types of responses to a text as useful, and true.
Finally, I want to offer a gentle provocation—a kind of 'extra' writing prompt, if you like. Fairy tales are, by their very nature, never finite. Never finished. They are works in a constant state of change and evolution. Like other forms of folkloric narrative, they travel across time and space, and are transformed over and over again, by new writers, artists, editors, curators, and others. Whenever a particular tale excites our imagination or, more often, when we find something in a tale that is bothersome—irritating or infuriating—we are free to take the bones of that tale and construct it anew. In a form or fashion that is more pleasing to us. To put this another way, as one of the storytellers says to her listener in Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch: "This is the tale you asked for, I leave it in your mouth" (1997. p. 228).
Hi Nike,
Thank you for taking the time to make this thoughtful and thorough response. I appreciate it.
I'm quite familiar with Warner's work, though I don't know that particular text, so thanks for that ; I also do know Kosofsky Sedgwick's, though not as well as I would like : again, good tip, thanks! I'll read that essay with much interest. I think I've come across the idea you mention, about the Paranoid vs the Reparative Reading, or in any case the concept is familiar.
For my own part, I am certainly not, by predilection, a "Paranoid Reader" ; I find these kinds of readings to often be reductive and to "dis-enchant" the Fairy Tale material. And I did not mean, and forgive me if it was implied, that this Post-Colonial reading be the most important thing, or the last word to say, on this particular story. No, I believe that it is AN important thing to bear in mind, and especially when we're dealing, as we are here, with an authored, "literary" fairy tale, rather than one that evolves and grows more organically from a Folk Tradition. In these instances, I think that it's always interesting to take into account the person and the politics, the historical circumstances, of the author : all popular fiction, such as this is, is a vehicle for ideology, whether overtly or not, whether consciously or not. In this light, I would add to your readings suggested above, Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch, which gives a Marxist analysis of the links between the European Witch-trials, the Colonial Project, and the process of "Enclosure" in the shift towards a Capitalist World-System, all of which are also exactly contemporary with d'Aulnoy.
However, your answer made me reflect further on my immediate distaste for this story : I think that my initial reaction was a gut-feeling, a recoiling, from this story ; I think then I tried to intellectualise this reaction, rather than just responding with "Ew! Vibes are off ..." And I reached, as we often do, for the Post-Colonial Materialist Reading, which is one we often resort to when looking for the Authority of Disapproval (which is exactly as you say, a reading in the "Paranoid Style" ...). Now, on further reflection, I think I can better identify my initial distaste : it was an aesthetic and ethical one.
You see, I reacted strongly against the very present thread in the story (and in many fairy tales) of the equation of Beauty = Good ; of the idea that "Goodness" and "Beauty" are inherent qualities that are possessed by birth, and not by actions ; that some people (Aimée and Aimé in the story) are just "Better Born" than others. To me, this is very much a kind of "Great Chain of Being" idea : linked to the concept of Natural Aristocracy, of the Divine Right of Kings, of a "Natural Order" in which class and caste are inborn. Now, myself, as an Anarchist, as an enemy of Monarchy, of Empire, of Authority of all kinds, I find this immediately suspicious and distasteful. Obviously, it is very common in all sorts of fairy tales, but often moreso in the ones authored by aristocrats, and maybe a little less so in the tales that come from folk tradition. I'm not a fan of Presumptuous Princes and Prissy Princesses ; give me a scullery-maid, a woodcutter's third son, a poor little match-girl, any day of the week.
And so, I absolutely accept your provocation, your prompt, and your spur : I am of the Party of the Ogres, the Witches, the Weird, the "People of the Outside" (to adopt the title of a forthcoming book by my friend Lee Morgan, which is a fascinating look into just these questions : of the Othered, the Cannibal, the Outcast Folk). In recent times, there has been a great upsurge in these Fairy Tales, Retold, from the perspective of the "Others": a sort of "writing back" just as the Colonial Other, the Subaltern, writes back to the Metropole in so much Post-Colonial Literature. I'm thinking of (perhaps the best example here), Shrek, or Wicked, or Malificent, or any number of tales told by "The Monster". And I myself do write in that same spirit. On the topic of "Beauty = Good", I even have a tale in hand, which, if you don't mind, I'll paste in below (it's brief). It's a good reminder to me! I had published it on my blog, but in looking for it, I remembered I had taken it down in order to submit it somewhere : obviously, I never heard back! Now I'll post it again there!
But as you also say, these are too complex a set of issues to discuss "in the comments", as it were. And so: would you like to come onto my Podcast to talk about these things? I would be delighted to have you! The podcast is The Hollow Path, on Art and Magic, and I'll place here a link to that and my other stuff (if that's okay? If not, let me know, I'll erase it!) As you'll see: this stuff is very much up my alley ; so far up my alley, in fact, that it's sitting at my kitchen table drinking tea, trailing strange moss and twigs and odours of the Outside ....
https://linktr.ee/malachasivernus
JOSEPHINE AND THE WITCH
Once upon a time, there was an ugly, smelly old witch who lived alone in a murky pond. She got up when she wanted, and went to bed when she felt like it; she had frogs and toads and bats and rats and snakes and a couple of goats for pets, and she fed them all sorts of strange and venomous mixtures. She larked about in the pond all day, and occasionally went for walks around the neighbouring woods and hedgerows, gathering curious and fragrant things. These she used to decorate her pond, or to mix her heady brews. By night, she watched the sky, and sang softly to herself.
One day, a little girl called Josephine came upon the murky pond, and saw the witch taking her ease on the bank. She asked the witch what she was doing, and the witch replied “Nothing! What does it look like?” Josephine was puzzled. She had always been told not to answer “nothing” to questions. She asked the witch why she was so old and ugly and smelly. “What’s the point in being sweet-smelling and pretty, like you, except to please others? I’m very happy with how I am. And as for being old, well, it’s far preferable to being young, if you ask me! I’ll have you know, I get up when I want, and go to bed whenever I please! I laze around my pond all day, and I feed all the verminous and creeping things. I gather all the strange weeds and flowers from the hedgerows, and I make them into special brews. I answer to no-one and nothing, and I only please myself!”
“Golly,” said Josephine. “It’s a witch’s life for me! How do I go about becoming a witch like you?”
“Well,” said the witch, “it’s a long and arduous process. If you wish to learn to be a witch, there are a few things you must do first : learn all you can about plants and herbs and flowers and trees, listen to them, care for them, gather them, and brew with them ; learn all you can about the sun, the moon, the stars, their turnings and their changes ; learn all you can about the seasons, learn to smell each one coming, and to see everything that each will bring, and that each will take away ; learn all the secrets that you can, and all the stories that you can, learn to tell, and not to tell, learn to lie, and how to find the truth ; learn all the magic that you can, learn how to enchant, and to be enchanted, learn how to become invisible, and how to see ; finally, you must learn all the mysteries of the human heart, learn love, learn pain, learn fear, learn joy and sorrow, learn hate and grief, and reverie and melancholy, learn peace. You must learn all these things by studying them closely, by living them fully; by sucking all the juices out of life, and going back for more.
“Then, when you have done all this, you come back to me, and I’ll teach you how to be a witch like me.”
Josephine went away thoughtfully, and from that day forward, she lived her life rather differently. She thought of all the things she must learn, and all the things she must see and do and experience, and it seemed a lot. But she was quite excited about the prospect, and especially about one day beginning finally to learn to be a witch like the one in the pond.
And so she lived, and learned, and changed, and grew. She loved, and lost, and gathered herbs by the light of the moon, and rose at dawn to learn the songs of all the birds that greet the sun. She married, twice, and had some children, who she loved. She made things, and grew things, and saw and heard things. She kept secrets, and told stories. And every time she thought of going back to the witch in the pond, to finally learn to be a witch, she hesitated; perhaps there was still more to learn, still more she had not done yet? Perhaps there was a little more juice to be sucked out of life, before it was time to learn to be a witch.
One day, when she was not so young anymore, and when there was a weight of things she carried with her that she would not have traded for the world, had it been offered, she finally went back to the witch’s pond. She called out for the witch, and said she had finally come to learn. There was no answer. The pond was still and silent, empty. Josephine looked up and down, and all around, but there was no sign of the witch.
And she understood.
She threw off her clothes, and unbound her hair, and slipped gratefully into the murky water of the pond, and the toads and rats and snakes began to gather round her.