Over the last week I've been talking to people about what they expect from a fairy tale. Often, it seems to be a moral or lesson and a satisfactory ending, where as much as possible the virtuous and good characters end up with a happily ever after.
One of the things I want to do with these new stories is use a fairy tale format to highlight gender issues that still exist today. I don’t want us to just look back at the late 17th Century and feel relieved that our gender norms and expectations have changed so much; I want us to look at today and recognise the distance still to go.
There's a question around highlighting common, current issues - are people already aware of the issue, and does anyone want to read about something they perhaps already understand through personal experience? This may be particularly true if it’s a negative thing that they’ve already dealt with or discussed at length with others with similar experiences.
Then there's a second question around endings. There seems to be an expectation that good people get happy endings and bad people must either be punished or reformed. How does this fit with exploring existing issues? Does a story where people are appropriately rewarded or punished for their virtue or lack thereof undermine the actual issues to be explored where one of the problems is that virtuous people do not necessarily get good endings?
For this, I want to reach back to some of the women fairy tale writers in late 17th Century France, at the court of the Sun King. (I haven’t done as much research into this as I would like, and would love to hear from more knowledgeable fairy tale scholars than myself!) The strict expectations about women meant that one way for these authors to be subversive in their fairy tales was not through having their heroines defy expectations and achieve a happy end, but to demonstrate the situation for women, the unfairness of it, through having their heroines upset the social order and be either punished for it or constrained back into being a ‘good’ woman.
I like this idea that we can be subversive through demonstrating, rather than necessarily resolving an issue. It feels trite somehow to always resolve an issue, to not acknowledge that in the real world, breaking social norms has a consequence. And to go one step further, that observing social and gender norms also does not guarantee a ‘happily ever after’ - the good, beautiful girl does not always end up with a prince who respects her and treats her well. I think we can explore some areas of tension in our modern world through stories with endings where the virtuous are not necessarily rewarded and the bad are neither reformed nor punished.
We could argue that this undermines the idea of fairy tales as stories with a lesson or moral (after all, if you’re not showing that virtue will be rewarded, how are you teaching someone to be virtuous?), but I’ve always hated that definition of fairy tales.
(While we’re talking about rewarding virtuous behaviour, it’s also worth considering what behaviour we consider worth of reward today. Is selfless subservience and endless kindness in the face of abuse really a behaviour we value? Or do we value people (especially women) who stand up for themselves, even if it means appearing to break some of the social norms around selfishness and rudeness? Hands up if Cinderella ever annoyed you…)
This gets me back to stories about issues that people can relate to. While we might know that certain behaviours exist in our society and that they are not ok (controlling behaviour in relationships, discrimination against individuals or communities, etc), I think we are often searching for new ways to understand and talk about these issues, even when we have experienced them ourselves. When we read a news article or opinion piece about something we’ve experienced that we know others can relate to, we might share it to say ‘see! This is what I’ve been trying to articulate’, or feel that it has helped us frame an issue differently. We may have talked about workplace discrimination a hundred times with friends who’ve experienced the same thing and still appreciate a new way of explaining it or thinking about it.
I think the fairy tale medium is a good way to highlight issues without having to find a resolution or give everyone the ending they ‘deserve’.
Anyway, that was a long post - I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!
(No cafe review today! I have been out and about all day and am enjoying a quiet evening at home. Although I can heartily recommend the Ainslie Bakehouse, where I got breakfast this morning on the go. 5/5 delicious.)