Stories for Free Children
My friend is very close to finalizing her adoption process. She will be mother to a little daughter very soon. As Sita and I have been gathering things to send them, it occurred to me that the single most influential and important book of my childhood was this one.
For someone like me, who rarely mines her childhood for anything -- not being much into memoir, or "creative nonfiction" as the Columbia College course went -- it's been startling to slowly realize how very profoundly this book has effected me.
I'll tell you about the table of contents, shall I? Not all of them - just the section titles.
Part 1: Fables and Fairy Tales for Every Day Life
Part 2: Famous Women, Found Women
Part 3: Fun, Facts and Feelings
There are fairy tales from around the world - Japan, Vietnam, West Africa, city stories, kid stories, radical stories that question gender specificity - like "Baby X." There are articles about people like Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and journalist Amelia Bloomer - who were among the first women to champion trousers for women. A history of Opal Whitely, which used to make my mother weep to read it. Stories about adoption, divorce, death, disability.
This was the 70's, so some of the language and concepts are not as sophisticated as they've grown to be in the 21st century - and if they ever re-issue the collection, much of this would need updating - but still, the seeds were planted.
An excerpt from Amelia's Bloomers:
"Young boys taunted them as they walked.
Heigh! ho!
Thro' sleet and snow,
Mrs. Bloomer's all the go.
Twenty tailors to take the stitches,
Mrs. Stanton wears the breeches.
Heigh! ho!The carrion crow."
But perhaps the thing I most wanted to talk about was a fairy tale called "The Princess Who Stood on Her Own Two Feet," by Jeanne Desy. It was my favorite of all the stories.
The sad, strange thing about this story was that when I was trying to remember the title, many years after the last time I had read it, I thought it was called "The Princess Who Was Too Tall."
Certainly I knew it was about a tall princess, whom everyone thought was too tall, including her suitor. And how the princess, trying to please her family and her suitor, gradually stopped standing up, stopped sitting, stopped talking, only to recline on her bed looking beautiful so that no one would be angry at her for speaking up, standing straight, having opinions, being clever.
The only one who loves her and accepts her is her dog, who can talk. When she stops talking to everyone else, she and the dog still have these long conversations, as she is cooped up in her bedroom and he stays with her. One day her suitor comes in, then leaves because the dog is there. "I believe you love that smelly thing more than you love me."
The princess asks her wizard, writing in a notebook:
"Why does he want me to give up the dog?"
"Because you love it."
"But that takes nothing from him!"
"If you could convince him of that, my dear, you would be more skilled in magic than I."
Eventually, the dog, who loves her, decides to die so that she won't have to choose between him and the prince. Well! This pisses princess off. She gets up from her bed. She puts on her clothes. She wraps her dead dog in her wedding dress and MARCHES OUT OF THAT G-D BEDROOM to bury "the one who really loved me."
She refuses to marry the prince (thank the gods), who says, "You're talking!"
To which she replies, "The better to tell you good-bye. So good-bye." And off she goes to tell off her parents too, who try to convince her about her Duties.
"A Princess says what she thinks," she retorts. "A Princess stands on her own two feet. A Princess stands tall. And she does not betray those who love her."
Now, in today's Disney Princess culture, it's hard even to read the word "Princess" and not groan. Especially as my current personal tastes trend to, "DOWN WITH THE MONARCHY!" Still. It was a profound thing to read about a girl - a princess (I was of course VERY INTERESTED in princesses as a small child) - who must realize at the end of her journey: "How foolish we are. For a stupid Prince, I let my wise companion die."
Which is such a great metaphor for ALL THE THINGS WE SACRIFICE for the most INANE REASONS. Even if they seem like good ideas at the time.
She does end up with a new suitor. A beautiful young man who is much shorter than she is, but who has kindly eyes - just like her dog. In fact, it is intimated that he is her companion come again, in human's form. Death and rebirth. A white rose. She decides to stand tall for him, even though he is shorter.
(You know, I tend to write men short in my own fiction, to combat all those gorgeous, enormous hero-types flinging themselves around the Mythosphere. I tend to write my women plain, too, and clever. And I tend to let those characters find each other, and find each other beautiful.)
He says, "It is a pleasure to look up to a proud and beautiful lady."
Sigh.
ENCHANTMENT! ROMANCE! FEMINISM!
And then, to realize that the world, the culture, the slow weight of years had turned the title of this beautiful story in my own head from "The Princess Who Stood On Her Own Two Feet" to "The Princess Who Was Too Tall."
GAH!
I find that VERY CREEPY, personally. The way things twist, from inertia or neglect or forgetfulness. The way things twist until they become not what they are.
And yet, I keep this story inside me.
I always thought it should be a ballet.
***
For someone like me, who rarely mines her childhood for anything -- not being much into memoir, or "creative nonfiction" as the Columbia College course went -- it's been startling to slowly realize how very profoundly this book has effected me.
I'll tell you about the table of contents, shall I? Not all of them - just the section titles.
Part 1: Fables and Fairy Tales for Every Day Life
Part 2: Famous Women, Found Women
Part 3: Fun, Facts and Feelings
There are fairy tales from around the world - Japan, Vietnam, West Africa, city stories, kid stories, radical stories that question gender specificity - like "Baby X." There are articles about people like Elizabeth Smith Miller, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and journalist Amelia Bloomer - who were among the first women to champion trousers for women. A history of Opal Whitely, which used to make my mother weep to read it. Stories about adoption, divorce, death, disability.
This was the 70's, so some of the language and concepts are not as sophisticated as they've grown to be in the 21st century - and if they ever re-issue the collection, much of this would need updating - but still, the seeds were planted.
An excerpt from Amelia's Bloomers:
"Young boys taunted them as they walked.
Heigh! ho!
Thro' sleet and snow,
Mrs. Bloomer's all the go.
Twenty tailors to take the stitches,
Mrs. Stanton wears the breeches.
Heigh! ho!The carrion crow."
But perhaps the thing I most wanted to talk about was a fairy tale called "The Princess Who Stood on Her Own Two Feet," by Jeanne Desy. It was my favorite of all the stories.
The sad, strange thing about this story was that when I was trying to remember the title, many years after the last time I had read it, I thought it was called "The Princess Who Was Too Tall."
Certainly I knew it was about a tall princess, whom everyone thought was too tall, including her suitor. And how the princess, trying to please her family and her suitor, gradually stopped standing up, stopped sitting, stopped talking, only to recline on her bed looking beautiful so that no one would be angry at her for speaking up, standing straight, having opinions, being clever.
The only one who loves her and accepts her is her dog, who can talk. When she stops talking to everyone else, she and the dog still have these long conversations, as she is cooped up in her bedroom and he stays with her. One day her suitor comes in, then leaves because the dog is there. "I believe you love that smelly thing more than you love me."
The princess asks her wizard, writing in a notebook:
"Why does he want me to give up the dog?"
"Because you love it."
"But that takes nothing from him!"
"If you could convince him of that, my dear, you would be more skilled in magic than I."
Eventually, the dog, who loves her, decides to die so that she won't have to choose between him and the prince. Well! This pisses princess off. She gets up from her bed. She puts on her clothes. She wraps her dead dog in her wedding dress and MARCHES OUT OF THAT G-D BEDROOM to bury "the one who really loved me."
She refuses to marry the prince (thank the gods), who says, "You're talking!"
To which she replies, "The better to tell you good-bye. So good-bye." And off she goes to tell off her parents too, who try to convince her about her Duties.
"A Princess says what she thinks," she retorts. "A Princess stands on her own two feet. A Princess stands tall. And she does not betray those who love her."
Now, in today's Disney Princess culture, it's hard even to read the word "Princess" and not groan. Especially as my current personal tastes trend to, "DOWN WITH THE MONARCHY!" Still. It was a profound thing to read about a girl - a princess (I was of course VERY INTERESTED in princesses as a small child) - who must realize at the end of her journey: "How foolish we are. For a stupid Prince, I let my wise companion die."
Which is such a great metaphor for ALL THE THINGS WE SACRIFICE for the most INANE REASONS. Even if they seem like good ideas at the time.
She does end up with a new suitor. A beautiful young man who is much shorter than she is, but who has kindly eyes - just like her dog. In fact, it is intimated that he is her companion come again, in human's form. Death and rebirth. A white rose. She decides to stand tall for him, even though he is shorter.
(You know, I tend to write men short in my own fiction, to combat all those gorgeous, enormous hero-types flinging themselves around the Mythosphere. I tend to write my women plain, too, and clever. And I tend to let those characters find each other, and find each other beautiful.)
He says, "It is a pleasure to look up to a proud and beautiful lady."
Sigh.
ENCHANTMENT! ROMANCE! FEMINISM!
And then, to realize that the world, the culture, the slow weight of years had turned the title of this beautiful story in my own head from "The Princess Who Stood On Her Own Two Feet" to "The Princess Who Was Too Tall."
GAH!
I find that VERY CREEPY, personally. The way things twist, from inertia or neglect or forgetfulness. The way things twist until they become not what they are.
And yet, I keep this story inside me.
I always thought it should be a ballet.
***