I apologize in advance if I'm raking over old ground: I've been severely time-
lagged lately trying to meet a deadline, not being able to read most of the
posts coming in so fast & furious, and I'm a new subscriber to this listserv
as well.
Marina Warner, who wrote a wonderful book on myths of the Virgin Mary (Alone
of All Her Sex) and Joan of Arc (Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism),
has a terrific book called From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and
Their Tellers.
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994).
Rats, and now that I've started this I don't have time to go into any
detail---she has some new things to say about the purpose of fairy tales as
instruction for adults, rather than as learning aids for children (and gives
nasty Mr. Bettleheim some stiff rebuttal along the way). Her reading of the
evil stepmother as the mother-in-law encountered by the young bride gives you
more sympathy for both the "evil" mother and the feckless girl coping with
her. This isn't theory-babble, by the way, but a careful cultural history.
I'll post again with more about her ideas, more coherently put---I was
especially struck with her history of women storytellers. It put William
Bennet's tales, with his strong male narrator (at least in the PBS series
based on his stories that I saw) and his moralizing in a context that
justified the queasy feeling I have about him and other Christianity-grounded
narrators like C.S. Lewis. Ever read "The Shoddy Lands?"
Have to run again; more later
Kathleen
Kfriello@aol.com
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