Three faerie tales, and the magic of women writing
Mother Goose, Henriette-Julie de Murat, and Susanna Clarke: How it started, how it’s going
Fantasy, whether horror, Gothic, science fiction, or the fairy tale, invokes subliminal cultural fears. It vanquishes those fears, when it does, with a moral lesson. Consider the Godzilla-themed horror films from last century, which dramatized lingering anxieties after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cinematic monsters, also unleashed by scientists working for the military, couldn’t be destroyed by conventional weaponry. To these unimaginably powerful forces, humans, their buildings, and even their cities were as trivial as gnats. The monsters could be killed, or at least temporarily banished until the next sequel, only by the cleverness, courage, and solidarity amongst would-be victims—that is, by their humanity. The moral was clear: guard against the destructive potential of the military-industrial complex. President Eisenhower approved that message.
Fairy tales, especially as imagined by the Brothers Grimm, depict a world in which evil and cruelty reign over the lives of innocent children. At their worst, they frighten children into obedience and acceptance of their lot, regardless how miserable.1 At their gentlest, they reinforce social hierarchies and values.
A French aristocratic writer named Henriette-Julie de Murat published three volumes of fairy tales in the late 17th century. Around the same time, Charles Perrault—who gave us Mother Goose—was also publishing fairy tales. Their perspectives could not have been more different, and their differences are telling. A 21st century faerie tale from Susanna Clarke, set two centuries ago, rounds out the comparison.
This essay is part of a series called “Shut Out, Not Shut Up” on women through the ages who’ve written despite being dismissed because of their sex. They persisted.
Henriette-Julie de Murat (1668-1716)
Born in Paris to a marquis who died when she was four years old, Henriette-Julie grew up within the French aristocracy. She married Nicholas de Murat, Count de Gilbertez, when she was 18 years old. She became a member of France’s salon society, which afforded wealthy women space to interact with leading philosophers, writers, and statesmen. Henriette-Julie was also a member of les conteuses, a group of women writers in the emerging fairy tale genre.
In 1697 she published Memoirs of the Countess of M***, two volumes of fictional memoirs that responded to Charles de Saint-Évremond’s book Memoirs of the Life of Count D***, which had been published the year before. Henriette-Julie’s book, which skewered Saint-Évremond’s misogynistic views of women, enjoyed success in both its original French and in an English translation.
Henriette-Julie soon turned her focus exclusively to the emerging boom of the fairy tale genre. Inspired by folk tales and medieval legends, books of fairy tales were becoming enormously popular. Henriette-Julie published three volumes of fairy tales between 1698 and 1699.
At the end of 1699, she became the target of a scandal involving her purported lesbianism (and other ‘shocking’ acts) and was investigated by the police. The fallout was catastrophic for her. She became estranged from her husband and disinherited by her mother. She was forced to quit publishing. She was exiled to a château prison in the Loire valley, from which she attempted to escape dressed in men’s clothing.
As her health deteriorated, she was shuttled from one prison to another, until a well-placed friend negotiated Henriette-Julie’s release to the house of her aunt in Limousin. She published her last work in 1710.
Henriette-Julie wasn’t allowed to return to Paris until the death of Louis XIV in 1715. She was by then quite ill from arthritis and dropsy (now called edema, indicating a disease of the heart, kidney, or liver). Years of persecution had exacted a fatal toll. She died in 1716 at the age of 48.
Charles Perrault (1628-1703)
Charles Perrault’s life began 40 years before Henriette-Julie’s. He was born into the bourgeoisie and enjoyed the educational opportunities and social connections offered to well-born men of his day. He was appointed to honorific posts in the French academies, and became a member of the prestigious Académie Française. He advised Louis XIV on the design of fountains being constructed at his Versailles palace.
When his professional life suffered a downturn in 1695 (when he was 67), Perrault turned to writing for children. In 1697, he published “Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals: Tales of Mother Goose” (Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé, avec des moralités: Les Contes de ma Mère l’Oye). His tales are well-known today (e.g., “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Cinderella,” “Puss in Boots,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Bluebeard”) and became immensely popular when Perrault published them. For this, he’s credited with creating the fairy tale genre, despite having based his tales on well-known folk tales and also the fact that the phrase “fairy tale” was coined by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d’Aulnoy, who was publishing fairy tales as early as 1690, seven years before Perrault.
A century later, the Brothers Grimm retooled some of Perrault’s fairy tales to versions more recognizable today. However, Perrault’s Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are the versions told to modern children.
Perrault died in Paris at the age of 75.
Mother Goose morality tales
Perrault expressly wrote tales to instruct children in the moral universe he inhabited. Consider the tales most familiar to us: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, and Bluebeard. All of these tales place the role of women central to the plot, and all involve the predation of women either by other women or venal men. Puss in Boots involves a trickster cat who helps a man marry a princess. Bluebeard is about a man who murders his wives. Given this, you might expect the morals of the tales to chastise the ill-use of women, but, sadly, that’s not the case. Let’s consider two of these tales.
Perrault’s version of Little Red Riding Hood warns girls against trusting men who give false appearances and deceive young women in order to bed them.
I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition – neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!
The tale ends gruesomely. The young girl, anonymous but for her attire, climbs into bed with the wolf, who devours her.
In Sleeping Beauty, seven good fairies celebrate the birth of a Princess with gifts of golden, bejeweled utensils in gold boxes. An old fairy, a crone who’s been long forgotten by the kingdom, arrives with a box of ordinary utensils and is overheard muttering threats to the infant. She bestows a curse on the girl: one day, she’ll prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and will die. A good fairy does what she can to reverse the curse: instead of dying, the Princess will fall into a deep sleep for 100 years and will be awakened by a king’s son.
The king, thinking he can avert fate, orders all spinning wheels to be banished from the kingdom. One implication of his decision is that the Princess grows up never having seen a spinning wheel. One day when she’s 15, she’s wandering through the castle when she happens upon an old woman at a spinning wheel. Intrigued, the Princess asks the woman about it, and the woman invites her to use it. The Princess’s hand is pricked by the spindle and she succumbs to the curse, falling into a deep sleep from which she can’t be woken.
The good fairy decides to put the entire kingdom (with the exception of the King and Queen) into slumber with her, so that when the Princess awakes in 100 years, she will be surrounded by people she knows. The King and Queen leave the castle to spread word abroad that the Princess must not be disturbed. After they leave, the good fairy causes a forest to emerge around the castle, hiding it from sight.
A hundred years later, a prince from another kingdom discovers the hidden castle. An old man tells him the tale of the sleeping beauty, and the Prince battles through the bristling forest to reach the castle. He finds the Princess and is struck to his knees by her beauty. The spell is broken. The servants awaken and bring the castle back to working order.
The Prince and Princess must marry in secret because his mother, an ogre, would not approve. They have two children (a girl named Morning or Aurore and a boy named Day or Jour). When the Prince ascends the throne, his marriage and children are finally recognized in the kingdom.
This tale combines several elements that are common to other fairy tales. Old women are hags, crones, or ogres, who resent and prey on young women. For women, fate is stronger than the most powerful king—their futures are governed by mysterious risks from which they’re helpless to protect themselves. Beauty defines the value of women; they can be expected to be hapless in their ignorance. The life of a woman is to be sequestered as in a live burial. Even the naming of the children tells us that girls are but subsets or precursors to their brothers, who are the foundations of life itself.
The curse could have been avoided if the Princess’ parents had simply educated her. Instead, they kept her in ignorance and she fell victim to the curse. As with Riding Hood, the tale reinforces that evil is stronger than good, and that women will always be prey because of their gullibility and naivete.
In the more than 300 years since the Mother Goose tales were published, generations have given tacit approval to what the tales espouse as universal truths. Each successive generation underscores the morals, even when modern storytellers update the ending to ‘she saves herself.’ The existence of a concept called the ‘Disney Princess,’ which is widely known and inspires the play of young girls even now, testifies to how deeply Mother Goose morality is embedded into social consciousness.
And yet, Henriette-Julie de Murat created another set of tales that could have changed the trajectory of children’s imaginations over those same 300+ years.
The Palace of Revenge (Le Palais de la Vengeance)
Having waited 20 years for a child, the King and Queen of Iceland are delighted when they’re blessed with an infant daughter named Imis. The child’s beauty is unmatched, and the parents imagine a great future for her.
The King’s brother has a two year old boy named Philax, similarly gifted with beauty and good fortune. Imis and Philax are raised together, and they become inseparable and passionate for each other. Everyone, including the children, expects the two will marry when they come of age.
When Imis is twelve years old, the Queen decides the child must have her fortune told by the Fairy of the Mountains. The Fairy delivers a prophecy that Imis will know only sadness, despite a surfeit of happiness. The Fairy places a floral wreath on Imis’ head. The flowers will never fade, says the Fairy. She warns Imis that the flowers will protect her only as long as they remain on her head.
Imis and the Queen return home. When alone, Imis hears a seductive voice imploring her to forsake Philax. She sees a small, winged man: he says his name is Pagan, the Enchanter. He had seen her in the Fairy of the Mountain’s garden and fell in love with her. Imis flees from him, determined to remain true to Philax. The next day, fairies deliver to her room twelve golden baskets filled with jewels, along with an emerald and a rose leaf bearing a love note. Imis gives Philax the emerald. She tears up the rose leaf in front of Philax, to reassure him of her love.
On a hunt, Philax stops to rest and removes the emerald from his pocket. It slips through his fingers, falls to the ground, and is turned into a chariot. Monsters appear and drag him into the chariot and spirit him away.
The kingdom becomes alarmed at Philax’s absence, and search parties are sent out to find him. Imis, distraught, faints and her servants take her to her room. While dressing her for bed, they remove the wreath of flowers, not knowing their protective powers.
Imis awakens in a marvelous palace surrounded by luxurious beauty and discovers she’s on an island ruled by Pagan. Despite the comfort and beauty of her surroundings, she remains inconsolable to be separated from her love, Philax.
Meanwhile, Philax finds himself exiled to a deep and gloomy forest. He passes his days hacking his way through the trees to find an exit. At long last he discovers an abandoned castle. Heaped in front of it is a pile of discarded armor; above it is an inscription he finds curious, which commemorates the fairy Ceora’s defeat of Cupid.
The trees talk to Philax and tell their tale. They are all princes who, 2000 years ago, were drawn to the castle to participate in a tournament. Ceora enchanted them in a hall of mirrors so that they fell in love with her. One prince finally broke the spell by smashing the mirrors, which released the princes from her spell. As much as they formerly loved Ceora, they now hated her. Enraged, she turned them all into trees, but cruelly left them with their minds intact to be aware of their torture.
After hearing this story, Philax finds himself transported to a beautiful island. He sees before him a nymph who promises to bring Imis to him in three days. Philax falls at the feet of the nymph in gratitude.
Pagan had arranged this little scene for Imis to observe, out of hearing, as proof of Philax’s supposed infidelity. But the plan backfires: instead of driving Imis from Philax into Pagan’s arms, Imis becomes even more despairing.
Realizing that Imis will never love him, Pagan creates a Crystal Palace for Imis and Philax to live the rest of their lives. The palace is beautiful and bountiful, and the couple are initially overwhelmed with happiness. Eventually, they grow miserable from the constancy of their lives.
They say that at the end of some years, Pagan was as much avenged as he desired to be; and that the beautiful Imis and Philax fulfilled the prediction of the Fairy of the Mountain, by wishing as fervently to recover the aigrette of lilies in order to destroy the agreeable enchantment, as they had formerly desired to preserve it as a safeguard against the evils which had been foretold would befal them.
Until that moment a fond pair, so blest,
Had cherished in their hearts Love's constant fire:
But Pagan taught them by that fatal test,
That e'en of bliss the human heart could tire.
This tale includes a number of elements seen in other fairy tales: fateful prophecies that turn true, thick forests guarding empty palaces, opulent gifts, a beautiful princess and handsome prince, revenge, magic mirrors, fairies both evil and good. But the tragedy visited upon the princess and prince isn’t heroic or mortal. Their fate is to endure lives circumscribed by a limited idea of happiness. It is a fate of ordinary proportions: becoming bored of what they fancied as children. Adversity had made them more keen to be together. Despite their unhappiness in being apart, they became more fully convinced of their love while separated.
The moral could be reduced to ‘be careful what you wish for’ if their fates were a repudiation of illicit desires. Rather, it cautions against expecting romantic love alone to furnish a fulfilling life.
Henriette-Julie’s moral is for men as well as women. The princes in the forest were duped by a quest they imagined heroic, but which reflected only their vanity. Philax as well as Imis suffers a life of obtaining his limited desires.
The Fairy of the Mountain provides the tale’s role model for young would-be princesses. The tale depicts the Fairy as a student who spends her days in solitude—much like Imis and Philax trapped in their palace—but she spends her days reading and learning. When asked to foretell Imis’ fortune, the Fairy retires to study for three days before delivering her prophecy. She’s knowledgeable, wise, and humble. These characteristics, unlike the beauty of Imis or the courage of Philax, provide for a life well lived.
A modern faerie tale
Susanna Clarke’s “The Ladies of Grace Adieu”2 sets its faerie tale in the 19th century. Her celebrated novel, “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell,” created an alternative world set in the 1800s in which magic is inexorably a part of life. The faerie tales in “The Ladies of Grace Adieu” explore the world she created in “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell.”
The three ladies of the title, living in the village Grace Adieu, are close friends: Mrs. Field, Cassandra Parbringer, and Miss Tobias. Mrs. Field is the second wife of Mr. Field, uncle to Cassandra. Miss Tobias is the governess of two orphaned girls who live in a manor in the village. The three women are similar in age and very close friends. They all share an interest in magic, and are wickedly clever.
Cassandra, of marriageable age, is resigning herself to marry the man chosen for her by her uncle—the village rector, Mr. Woodhope. Cassandra expects little of marriage, having seen how dull the marriage of her friend and her uncle has turned out to be.3
Returning to the manor one day, the governess, Miss Tobias, is greeted by the unwelcome sight of visitors (the orphans’ cousin Captain Winbright and his friend Fred) taking over the household. Winbright is looking for anything of value he can take from the house; Fred is his lecherous, brutish sidekick. Winbright inquires into the health of the orphaned girls, apparently hoping for their demise and his inheritance.
By chance, Mr. Woodhope’s cousin, Mrs. Arabella Strange, and her husband, Jonathan Strange, have arrived in Grace Adieu for a visit. They plan to meet Woodhope’s expected marriage match, Cassandra.
That night, Mrs. Field and Cassandra meet Miss Tobias at the manor, where they learn of Winbright’s intentions. They gather in the children’s nursery. The children ask Cassandra for a story, and she tells them a tale of the magical Raven King’s origins.4 After the children are asleep, Cassandra takes her leave and starts making her way through the darkened house to return home.
She’s in a dark corridor when Winbright and Fred appear. They claim to see a pretty white owl in the gloom. Miss Tobias joins them and sees that Winbright is preparing to shoot the owl. Miss Tobias attempts to stop him, warning him that owls are protected by the Raven King. The men laugh off her protests, and then are surprised to see two owls. One perches on Miss Tobias. The owls swoop through the darkened hallway. One gives out a loud screech.
Miss Tobias looked down and crossed her hands—the very picture of a modest governess. “They do that, you know,” she said, “to petrify their prey with fear; to turn it, as it were, to stone. That is the cruel, wild, magic of owls.”
But no one answered her, for there was no one in the corridor but herself and the owls (each with something in its beak). “How hungry you are, dearest,” said Miss Tobias approvingly, “One, two, three swallows and the dish goes down.”
Jonathan Strange is awake late that night, reading in Woodhope’s library. He goes out into the night and sees three women; they see him as well. Strange greets them by saying he thought he might have wakened in the land of the Raven King. The women are unimpressed: “You? What do you know of magic?” When they learn his name, they shrug off his celebrity: “You are the London magician.” As they prepare to leave him, he admonishes them not to overestimate their magical powers.
On the last day of his stay, Strange meets the ladies on the village green. He relates a strange dream he had. Before going to bed, he had placed under his pillow some tiny bones that he had recently discovered. In his dream he met a handsome man he’d never met before. Leaving, he tried offering his hand but the man was reluctant to shake it. Finally, the man put out his arm, at the end of which was a tiny grey-furred claw. He wonders what the ladies make of the story; they’re silent. He inquires into the recent visitors to the orphan’s manor. All gone, they say.
Strange laments “Oh, ladies, what have you done?” The ladies admonish him.
“You are no match for us, for we three are quite united, while you, sir, for all your cleverness, are at war, even with yourself. If ever a time comes, when your heart and your head declare a truce, then I suggest you come back to Grace Adieu and then you may tell us what magic we may or may not do.”
Strange is silenced, and the ladies depart. Mr Woodhope receives a job offer that takes him far away. Cassandra is pleased with the news, and she meets her friends walking in the hills, “as free … as any women in the kingdom.”
It is as if Clarke has taken Henriette-Julie’s Fairy of the Mountain and made her the center of the faerie tale. The three ladies are clever, well-read, and fearless. The men in the story are either dull or venal and full of themselves. The women demonstrate courage the men do not: the ladies stand up to bullying and stand up for themselves. The title of the story, a spinning dual-faced coin,5 invites us to be open to seeming inconsistencies. Women can be powerful and independent and exist within society. They can live in the man-made world as well as thrive in a magical one of their own imagining.
They write their own stories.
Charles Perrault, repurposing folk tales for the edification of his children, created enduring tropes that denied women agency and imagination. Henriette-Julie de Murat’s fairy tales gave the world an alternative view in which women are imprisoned by social expectations and empowered by independence and study. The tragic consequences she suffered in life for trying to live on her own terms explain why Perrault’s morality tales survive today and Henriette-Julie’s gathered dust.
Susanna Clarke’s women of magic provide the necessary coda: Henriette-Julie wasn’t wrong. She was unjustly laid to rest, waiting for the curse to dispel.
Ellie’s Corner
Ellie has a way of snoring deeply, a convincing act of being asleep. But if her ears are up, she’s just waiting to see what’s next on offer.
Thanks for reading,
Childhood as an age of innocence is a modern concept with not much history. “Ring around the Rosie” is about the threat of the Black Plague. Most children before the emergence of modern medicine experienced life as a roll of the dice.
This is both the title of a book of short stories as well as the title of one of the stories. This is the first story that Clarke published, written before her novel containing some of the same characters.
Given Cassandra’s first name and surname (similar to harbinger), we should assume she can see the future.
The Raven King is the head of the magic world in this story and in the novel “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.”
Grace Adieu, “goodbye, grace”? Grâce à Dieu, “thanks be to God”)? Yes.
I love all this creative symbolism for woman. I kept thinking the article would bring up the original story of the princes and the golden ball. Where she does not kiss the frog, instead she threw him against the wall. This seems to happen to all young men. When they start dating woman.
This series always confronts us with the fact that misogyny has never been either an inevitability or a mere “fact of life.” It’s a decision that societies make on an ongoing basis, day to day, month to month, year to year, generation to generation. Here, the idea of a chateau prison is particularly evocative. The manifest irony of the phrase itself, and the cautionary undercurrent it embodies combine to spark a full-on rethink how humans build their social structures.