Fairy Support

This morning I woke up and yet again had to be reminded that a post is due. It was particularly difficult because I was finishing one of those books that makes you snarl at anyone who interrupts the experience. But the reading gave me my next post.

First let me highly recommend Olivia Atwater. It is because of her books, Half a Soul and Ten Thousand Stitches, that I was again able to enjoy reading a book in one sitting. Her take on faerie tales is engaging and such a balm when escape is dearly needed. Nevertheless, I wasn’t just struck by her books, I was struck by her Afterword, something more readers (and writers) should pay attention to.

“The faerie godmother, I decided, was really the most admirable character in the whole story. She was the one, after all, who saw an injustice and tried to fix it.”—Olivia Atwater

I thought her assertion, that Cinderella’s story was really about a nobly born woman being returned to her rightful place was such a revelation that I’m almost embarrassed that it never occurred to me. On more than one occasion in fairy tales, the protagonist is a princess down on her luck and is then swept off to become a princess once more. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are the ones that come to mind. Of course, Rapunzel and Belle from Beauty and the Beast have different stories, but in those the prince was cursed and therefore “understood” being powerless.

In the future I hope to use some of my posts to focus on modern fairy tale writers and their takes on what it means to rewrite time honored stories. In the meantime, check out https://oliviaatwater.com

Cinderella, a more genteel Hunger Games

This idea got stuck in my head after a confluence of events. Last week I posted about Diamonds and Toads, aka The Fairy, and drew comparisons to Cinderella. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it was part of the same fairy tale canon (Charles Perrault) and that even the author made changes to the story to make sure The Fairy didn’t resemble Cinderella too closely. At the same time, I was thinking about a blog I recently started following and she posted about reading The Hunger Games. The two ideas rolled around in my brain like billiard balls on a pool table. Then the two smacked together. The Hunger Games (if you haven’t read it) is about a girl who lives in a world that has been ravaged by a war. The people in charge coordinate a gladiator type game to the death made up of children every year and the winner gets essentially a better life. Cinderella is about a girl who lives in a world that has been turned upside down by the arrival of her father’s new wife and mean daughters. Because she’s good, a fairy godmother grants her the wish of going to the ball. She dazzles the prince for two nights and because she beat all the other pretty girls, she gets a better life. Granted if Katniss had been Cinderella, she likely would have run away from home, shot arrows through the overfed guests and brought all the food back to the less fortunate, ala Robin Hood, but I think the idea has merit. Balls designed to pit one woman against another in order to win the heart of a prince they don’t know, for a life they dream about but don’t understand sounds like a more refined (and less deadly) version of the Hunger Games. Call it Hunger Games, 17^th century edition. Just a thought.