Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale

Jack Zipes

Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 1987 Proceedings, pp.

107-110 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.1353/chq.1987.0014

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/chq/summary/v1987/1987.zipes.html

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Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale

by
Jack Zip*
When we thkik of the taky tale today, we primarily thkik of the classical taky tale. We thkik of those taky

tales that are the most popular ki the Western world: Ckidereia. Snow White. Little Red Ridlno Hood. Sleeping
BSfluft, BlBurjzeL Beauty and the Beast. Ruirtoelstittskln. The UoIv DuckRno. The Princess and the Pea. Puss ki
Boots. The Froo King. Jack and the BeanatoJk. Tom Thumb. The Uttie Mermaid, etc. It is natural to thkik mainly of
these taky tales as H they had always been with us, as if they were part of our nature. Newly written taky tales,
especially those that are innovative and radical, are unusual, exceptional, strange, and artificial because they do not
conform to the patterns set by the classical taky tale. And, if they do conform and become tamar, we tend to
forget them after a while, because the classical taky tale suffices. We are safe with the tarnftar. We shun the new,
the real innovations. The classical taky tale makes K appear that we are al part of a universal community with
shared values and norms, that we are al striving for the same happiness, that there are certain dreams and wishes
which are irrefutable, that a particular type of behavior wi produce guaranteed result, Hke Ivkig happly ever after
with lots of gold In a marvelous castle, our castle and fortress that wi forever protect us from Inimical and
unpredictable forces of the outside world. We need only have faith and beieve ki the classical taky tale, just as we
are expected to have faith and beieve ki the American flag as we swear the Pledge of Aiegtence.

The taky tale is myth. That Is, the classical taky tale has undergone a procesa of mythldzation. Any fairy
tale ki our society, if it seeks to become natural and eternal, must become myth. Only innovative taky tales are antimythical, resist the tide of mythidzation, comment on the taky tale as myth. Even the classical myths are no longer

vaid as Myths with a capital M but with a smal m. That is, the classical myths have ateo become Ideologically
mythicized, de-hbtoricized, de-podticized to further the medgemonlc interests of the bourgeoisie. As we know from
Roland Berthes, myth is de-podticized speech.
Myth is a type of speech defined by its intention much more than Hs Itrai sense; and that ki
spite of this, its intention Is somehow frozen, purified, eternalized, made absent by this Itrai
sense. ... On the surface of language something has stopped moving: the use of signification

Is here, hkftig behind the tact, and conferring on it a notifying look; but at the same time, the tact
paralyses the intention, gives it something Hke a malaise producing krmobtty: in order to make it
Innocent, K freezes IL This is because mythl is speech stolen and restored. Only speech which

Is restored is no longer quite that which was stolen: when K was brought back, it was not put
exactiy ki Hs place. H is this brief act of larceny, this moment taken for a surreptitious taking,
which gives myth Hs benumbed look. (124-25)
The taky tale, which has become the mythMed classical taky tale, is indeed petrified in Hs restored
consternation: H is a stolen and frozen cultural good, or Kulturgut as the Germans might say. What belonged to

archaic societies, what belonged to pagan tribes and communtttea was passed down by word of mouth as a good
only to be hardened into script Christian and patriarchal. It has undergone and undergoes a motivated process of
revision, re-ordering, and refinement. Al the tools of modem Industrial society (the printing press, the radio, the
camera, the film, the record, the vidocassette) have matte their mark on the taky tale to make H classical ultimately
ki the name of the bourgeoisie which refuse to be named, denies kwoKemerrt; for the taky tale must appear
harmless, natural, eternal, ahistorical, therapeutic. We are to five and breathe the classical taky tato as fresh, free ak.
We are tod to beieve that this air has not been contaminated and potuted by a social otase that wi not name itself,

wants us to continue beievkig that al air is fresh and free, al taky tales spring from thin ak.
Take Sleeping Beauty. Her story Is frozen. H appears to have brays been there, and with each rising
sun, she, too, wi always be there, flat on her back, with a prince hovering over her, kissing her or about to kiss
her. In Charles PerrauH's version we read: "The prince approached her trembing, and fel on his knees before her.
The enchantment was oven the princess woke. She gazed at him so tenderly you would not have thought H was
the first time she had ever seen him. 'Is H you, my prince? You have kept me waiting for a long time" (64).

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In the Children's and Household Tatos of the Brothers Grimm, we read: "FkiaRy, he came to the tower and

opened the door to the smal room ki which Brier Rose was asleep. There she toy, and her beauty was so
marvelous that he could not take his eyes off her. Then he leaned over and gave her a kiss, and when his Hps
touched hers, Brier Rose opened her eyes, woke up, and looked at hkn fondry" (188).
Just the presence of a man ki the Perrault version of 1698 is enough to break the enchantment and revive
the princess. The Grimms added the kJss ki 1812 to bring her back to Hfe. And generady speaking, H is the
Grimms' version which has become frozen into a bourgeois myth. In our day Hs consummate representation is the
Disney Hm adaptation, which made many myths out of the already bourgeoisifled taky tale. Here Sleeping Beauty as
a housewife-in-training sings "some day my prince wi come," and the prince as "the great white hope," not unlike
Rocky, does battle with the black forces of evH. Disney was a mythomaniac ki the broadest sense of the word, and
ki his hands, Sleeping Beauty assumed many mythic components:
1)Women are al naturady curious, and, as we know, curiosity kis cats and even sweet innocent
princesses.

2)Men are daring, persistent and able to bestow Hfe on passive or dead women whose Rves cannot be
fuHMed until rescued by a prince.

3)Women are indeed helpless without men, and without men they are generady catatonic or comatose,
eternaly waiting for the right man, always ki a prone, death-like position, dreaming of a glorious
marriage.

4)Male energy and wi power can restore anything to dfe, even an immense realm ki a coma. We just need
the right man for the job.

These are stid the mythic messages of Sleeping Beauty today. The ancient communal signification Is
buried and lost The tale's history and wisdom are made speechless by the restored, symbolic constettation that
was first molded ki script back ki the 17th century. Whatever the tale enunciated hundreds of years ago Is less
important than the myth It has become and Hs mythic components which are singled out and issued ki
unconscionable reprints. We find repRcations of the classical version everywhere, ki advertisements, in dairy
enactments on the streets, and ki our homes.

Yet, just as the classical taky tale could not totally rob the ancient fo* tale of Hs signification, the myth
cannot rob the classical taky tale of the Utopian impulse of the taky tale. There is something historically kictoibie
about the Utopian wish for a better Rfe ki a tale first told even though we may never know when R was first told.
The myth which is artificial can only Rve because the essence of the ancient folk tale refuses to die. The myth is
also a taky tale that cannot abandon Rs ancient Utopian origins.

Sleeping Beauty is not only about female and male stereotypes and male hegemony; R is also about death,
our fear of death, and our wish for immortally. Sleeping Beauty is resurrected. She triumphs over death. As the
eternal brier rose, she rises from the dead to love and to fulfil her deskes. The rising from the dead is an uprising,

an attack on the borders of mortally. After her uprising, Sleeping Beauty wi know how to avoid danger and death,
as she does indeed ki the aftermath of the first sequence ki the Perrault version. Once awakened, Sleeping Beauty
is the knowing one, and we know, too.

The first-told taky tale imparts knowledge about the world and iumkiates ways to better R ki anticipation of
a better world to be created by mankind. H is wise and sincere ki tendency, and no matter how hardened and
ideologically classical R becomes, R retains a good deal of Rs original wisdom and sincerity. Each innovative re-telling
and re-writing of a well-known tale ki the cultural heritage is an independent human act seeking to align itself with the
original Utopian impulse of the first-told tale. On the other hand, the myth is pretentious and deceitful, it seeks to
distort the Utopian essence and tendency of taky tales by making "ideographs" out of them. Myth IuIs to sleep, to
complacency. The ancient fo* tato, however, remains awake beneath the intended perversion.

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But the classical taky tale's knowing and knowledgeable core, awake as R Is, wi not be realized as long as
myth fetishtzes R as a commodity. The myth can only be seen again as taky tale when the myth Is estranged. This
means that the frozen constelation must become unfamiliar again; R must be thawed by innovative tales that
disassemble the used components of knowing and knowledge and reassemble them into anti-mythic stories.
The revival or resurrection of Sleeping Beauty, our symbolical figure of hope against the forces of death,
cannot occur for us ki the classical version today, for its sexist closure, Rs pristine heterosexual and patriarchal
resolution is a coffin of another kind. The resurrection must take place, take Rs place outside the mythic framework
In such re-creations as Anne Sexton's Transformations. Jane Yoton's Sleeping UcHv. or Olga Broumas' Beginning with
O. Both Sexton and Broumas, ki particular, seek to break the prison house of male discourse. Sexton writes:
I must not sleep
for whHe asleep I'm ninety
and thkik I'm dying.

Death rattles ki my throat

Hke a marble. (111)
She questions whether the awakening Is an awakening and thus opens our eyes to the desperate situation of
women, whose "resurrected" Ives may be just as bad as thek deaths.
What voyage this, little girt?

This coming out of prison

God help -

this Rfe after death? (112)

Whereas Sexton Is overly pessimistic in her "transformations," Broumas is stridently optimistic ki her version of
Sleeping Beauty and flaunts sodety's taboos.
City-center, midtraffic, I

wake to your public kiss. Your name

Is Judrth, your kiss a sign.
to the shocked pedestrians, gathered

beneath the lght that means

stop
in our culture

where red is a warning, and men

threaten each other with final violence: I wi drink
your blood. Your kiss Is for them

a sign of betrayal, your red

lips suspect, unspeakable
lberties as

we cross the street, kissing

against the lght, singing, This
is the woman I woke from sleep, the woman that woke

me sleeping. (62).
Such Innovative poetic adaptations make the fairy-tale genre more fluid. They start again as tales that
revitalize the tradrtJon of first-told tales, rather than freezing R. Innovative tales explore the dormant potential of the

classical tales to bestow knowledge on us, and undke myth, they free ancient knowledge ki the name of the author,
who is not afraid to declare her or his alegiance. Innovative taky tales take sides, are partial, name their class
aHeglance. Then question the illusion of happiness and universality ki the classical tales and make us realize how tar
we have yet to go to bring the antidpatory !Ruminations of concrete utopia to fulfillment. They do not deceive with

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their symbols and metaphors but iumkiate. "Once upon a time" ki the classical taky tale refers to the point ki the
past that was a genuine beginning. There was no myth then, and even though myth is the dominant form of the

taky tale today, tt cannot freeze the genuine beginning forever. Once upon a time keeps shkikig, and Hs rays seep
through the mythic constetation to tel the tale again on Hs own terms, on our own new terms that embody that

which has yet to come. The myth-desptte Hseff-urges us to do this as a taky tale that has not completely forgotten
Hs Utopian origins.
University of Florida
Works Cited

Berthes, Roland. Mvthoteotos. London: Granada, 1973.

Broumas, Okja. Beginning with O. New Have: Yale UP, 1977.

Grimm, Jakob and Wflhekn Grimm. The Complete Fakv Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Trans. Jack Zlpes. New York:
Bantam, 1987.

Perrault Charles. The Fakv Tales of Chartes Perrault. Trans. Angela Carter. New York: Avon, 1977.
Sexton, Anne. Transformations. Boston: Houghton, 1971.

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