This particular "Donkeyskin" type of tale has a godmother in it, just as the Cinderella we are familiar with has a godmother. An outsider grants the daughter/Cinderella her wish.
All hope seems lost and it looks like the daughter is going to have to marry her father, and the godmother tells her to escape to the woods and change her appearance to that of an old woman.
Tatar mentions that the "heroine of Catskin tales is mobile, active, and resourceful" (105).
However, this story shares similarities to the Cinderella tales in that the prince searches for 3 years for the ring of the beautiful girl he dances with at the ball. What shocks me, or maybe I probably shouldn't be shocked, is that the prince kicks, punches and pinches the old lady when she asks to go to the ball, yet he is in love with the beautiful girl he dances with, (who is actually the same person.)
This gives some insight into gender roles, in that the girl in the story goes from one kind of abuse (incest) to another at the end of the story. She still ends up marrying the Prince, and I almost wish that she would leave, or get revenge on him because when she is an old lady, he physically hurts her. It seems like the ending is only made to fit the stereotypical "happily ever after," but it doesn't go with the story.
It is obvious that Cinderella and Donkeyskin overlap, however, I wouldn't read a story about incest to my little sister, if only the first reason being that she wouldn't understand why the father wants to marry the daughter, and I don't think she would understand the prince hurting the princess either. A child cannot make sense of these adult themes, and I think that is the main reason that Donkeyskin tales have fallen out of favor.
I think that by saying children can't make sense of adult themes undermines the children's ability to reason logically. The king has sound "fairy tale logic" in these tales. His wife wants him to remarry someone as beautiful, or with similar aspects, as herself. The king searches for this person, can't find her, and decides that his daughter is the only one who fits the bill. This makes sense, at least in the fairy tale world it seems to. And it's meant to illicit a response. Just as a child would react with repulsion at the prospect of marrying her dad, so to does Donkeyskin.
ReplyDeleteThe real reason for why this fairy tale type continues to lessen in popularity, in my opinion, is because of, as we saw in Bettelheim's argument, parents fearing that their children should not be exposed to such sexual violence lest they learn that behavior, rather than learn from that behavior. It is more on the part of the adult to not be able to handle such things, not the child.
As Tatar quotes Warner in Classic Fairy Tales (104): The fantastical elements are okay while the incest plot is hard to accept "because it is not impossible, because it could actually happen, and is known to have done so. It is when fairy tales coincide with experience that they begin to suffer from censoring." This links back nicely to Faith's post for the week.
I think, if you take the approach that the two tale types should be read together, then this is a good angle to work from... comparing why Cinderella stories are so popular while their somewhat similar cousins, the Donkeyskin narratives, are often forgotten.
Thank you for your comment Nicole, I had not considered this possibility and it makes sense. Maybe I should have made the point that I wouldn't read "Gold Teeth" to my sister, (who is 4), because of the physical abuse the princess suffers at the hands of the prince when she is disguised as an old lady. She ends up marrying him despite how he treated her in the past, and so the story is all very twisted, and I am definitely not underestimating a child's ability to "understand" a story, but I'm just questioning whether or not these stories of incest and abuse are good for children. Perhaps a Donkeyskin story where the princess triumphs at the end because she marries a prince who loves her, children should recognize that through her hard work and disguise, she finally gets the prince she deserves. What is not okay though, is when the princess marries the prince who has acted maliciously towards her. Even I don't fully understand what the story teller was thinking.
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