If you ask any writer, I suspect they will most likely tell you that we as humans convey information by means of story. If you ask any moral philosopher, they will most likely tell you the same thing. Work on narrative extends even further to a host of academic disciplines.[1] A broad overview of theoretical physics will tell you the story of the universe. Modern psychology hinges on the notion of the ‘storied nature of human conduct.’[2] Current AI research finds much of its present work determined by narrative.[3] Indeed, there are few professions that cast aside the relevance of story—though finance brokers, corporate attorneys, and tech billionaires might tell a different… er… story. As important as ‘narrative’ has become both academically and professionally since the work of Paul Ricœur in the mid-20th century, that same century invoked a wave of focus on scientific reason where critical analysis superseded storytelling and narrative was viewed as both trivial and infantile in a way that continues well into the 21st. [4] Thus, despite story’s prevalence in the work of individual lives, society’s trajectory, and the conveyance of history and research, as a matter of societal importance it is swept aside. And like all things associated with children, no kind of story is swept aside more dismissively than the fairy tale.
Yet, the point of this article is to look at why fairy tales are still relevant to modern society.[5] Why might such stories have a place when the focus of such a society tends to be on critical analysis and corporate gains, leaving little time for tales about the good fairy rewarding the young woman for being kind? The question becomes: how much does society value virtue? How much does a person value being noble and kind? How much does a person want to think about her own character? In the answers to these questions lies the answer to the fairy tale’s modern place. Because if any person values introspection of this sort, then fairy tales have an awful lot of relevance. To get to that conclusion, the first step toward a more thorough understanding of a fairy tale’s modern place is to define a fairy tale.[[6]
This is no easy task, as fairy tales run the gamut on definitions. Some suggest that they are the kinds of tales that end happily. This bodes poorly for the Brothers Grimm stock of stories – anyone who’s read ‘Cat and Mouse Partnership’[7] will find this argument falls rather flat on its face. Perhaps, then, it’s more of a ‘know it when you see it’ kind of thing. But then we need to start distinguishing a fairy tale from other similar though distinct tales.
Distinguishing folk tales from fairy tales is one way to start narrowing the category. A folk tale is not the same as a fairy tale.[8] A folk tale is to a fairy tale what, in one sense, a rectangle is to a square – a far broader category under which fairy tales are couched. Too, fairy tales are understood as having written elements, while folk tales are understood to come from oral traditions spanning centuries. Moreover, and most importantly, fairy tales include a moral element that folklore may or may not have. The key to understanding this distinction is an understanding of purpose. The purpose of a fairy tale, historically, has been to convey a moral truth – much like a fable, but, going beyond the fable, offering a fantastical narrative backdrop. The reader enters into the world through the characters, but as the characters engage in a fantastical journey of some kind, the fantastical journey is set in a world so peculiar that the reader can’t help (in theory) but see the moral truth of the tale.
The term ‘fairy tale’ originated with the first wave of French salons in the 17th century that specifically offered stories largely featuring fairies. Literary men of Louis XIV’s court, particularly those clerically inclined, called these stories inconsequential, and relegated them to the ranks of stories for the simple-minded – i.e. for weak-willed women. It should come as no surprise, then, that contes des fees were apt descriptions of tales that involved mostly young, clever girls whose stories began with the ill-fate that came from having few rights, abusive marital outcomes, and the curiously horrid control that came from elderly women who knew best.[9] It is perhaps needless, then, to say that the majority of these tales were written by educated women distraught with the status quo. Some were re-written tales of the earlier Italian stories of a similar literary pattern. Some were entirely new tales in the same style. And none of them were for children.
Fairy tales were introduced to children later. Despite the fact that Mother Goose tales are familiar to a modern audience as stories for children, their original author – Charles Perrault of the same 17th century first French fairy tale wave, an outlier in the king’s court and part of a largely female author’s circle[10] – wrote them as literary tales for the French court of Louis XIV. Perrault’s tales were simpler than the prevailing French literature, which was largely epic in nature after the Greek and Roman traditions, but still for adults. It was the early 19th century and the Brothers Grimm who, inadvertently, introduced fairy tales as morality tales for children. The Grimms’ initial purpose was to create a German cultural format of Volkspoesie (the people’s poetry) in order to unify the state. However, because the title of their collected works was published as Children’s and Household Tales, the result was inevitable: children took to them readily, unsurprisingly given that they were far more exciting than the more didactic prose of prior moral tracts. This circumstance was exacerbated by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, a French woman who, while working as a governess in England in the late 18th century, translated and rewrote an earlier version of Beauty and the Beast tailored for young girls keen on socially proper deportment of character.[11] By the early 19th century, at the same time as Grimms’ tales were circling Germany, de Beaumont’s Beauty was being readily sold as a chapbook and pamphlet for children without attribution. From there, given ready publication, the Victorian era sparked a wave of fairy tale stories for children in England.[12]This historical transition resulted in the place of fairy tales continuing as stories for those considered simple-minded, but the category had broadened: women and, now, children.[13]
Since they first began to be routinely written down[14] – the Chinese version of Cinderella is dated from 850-860 AD, though most European fairy tales find their written origin in the 16th century Italian poet and courtier Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone, Lo cunto de li cunti[15] – fairy tales have had a subversive element.[16] They have a way of embedding something dissident in a story. Often that ‘something’ involves a critical lens, or, to put it another way, a subtle lecture delivered more intriguingly.
In our modern era, such tales, while rarely ranking high on best sellers lists, are no strangers to receiving awards and cult followings, and conveying criticism of the status quo as much as the French first wave ever did. But to take this thought further, it is necessary to identify exactly what kind of stories fall into the category of ‘modern fairy tale.’ Because it would make an enormous difference to our understanding of modern fairy tales if the criteria for them includes all happily ending works of fiction.
There is a big difference, for example, between Naomi Novik’s Rumpelstiltskin retelling Spinning Silver (a contradiction to the claim that modern fairy tales are not best sellers if ever there was one) and Harry Potter. And that difference lies in format.[17] Fairy tales follow a typical trajectory: a morally ‘good’ character overcomes hard tasks or obstacles involving magic in order to receive a particular outcome, usually at the expense of a morally ‘bad’ character and often with a twist. These criteria provide a fairy tale its simplest structure, but there is another key characteristic: morality is central to the plot. This is not to say that there is some sort of objective moral framework to fairy tales. Academic fairy tale scholars often make the argument, for example, that a fairy tale must end happily.[18] The history of fairy tales from ancient to modern suggests that this is not always the case – as noted previously, anyone who has read the Brothers Grimm knows that the ‘good’ do not always end alive, let alone happily-ever-after.[19]
One might notice that we still haven’t separated Harry Potter from Spinning Silver, which brings me to the final criterion of a fairy tale: the point of a fairy tale is not just to make morality central to the plot; it’s central to the plot because the author is trying to make a moral point. In the old Italian version of Sleeping Beauty, rape may be pivotal to the plot, but the moral is: don’t be an annoying, jealous wife.[20] In the classic telling of Little Red Riding Hood by Charles Perrault (another fairy tale where the good (though not wise) end eaten), the moral is never to trust strangers. Neil Gaiman’s Stardust – a lengthy modern fairy tale – tells us that attraction ought to be found in strength of character. There is always a moral in a fairy tale – and one is rarely in doubt as to which one the author is selling. The main difference between Spinning Silver and Harry Potter, then, is that Naomi Novik is telling us a moral within a story: that compassion, even undeserved, makes a heart of gold. J.K. Rowling, on the other hand, is simply telling a story.[21] The straightforwardness of Novik’s tale lies in all parts leading toward a particular moral conclusion. Harry Potter, while it incorporates moral truths along the way, leads to an ending. Therein lies the difference.[22]
There will be those who disagree with placing fairy tales into such a small category. But the purpose in doing so is to fulfill the overall query this article addresses, that of the modern place of fairy tales. This is where the most famous fairy tale writers of today come into play. Well-known, entrenched modern fairy tale writers of novels include Jane Yolen, Robin McKinley, Alice Hoffman, Margaret Atwood, Tanith Lee, Kate Forsyth, Anne Sexton, and the aforementioned Neil Gaiman, Naomi Novik, Terri Windling, and Angela Carter.[23] Theodora Goss (author of novels that extend beyond the fairy tale genre) and Veronica Schanoes have fairy tale anthologies (as does Angela Carter). Modern fairy tale anthologies by various authors are readily published every year, though not often to commercial success. To make the above distinction even more stark, Marissa Meyer, Kalynn Bayron, and Helen Oyeyemi may utilize the foundations of fairy tales in their modern retellings, but their works, each distinct, are fixed firmly in the genres in which they are published (emphasis on the ending without the moral purpose). Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale has all the elements of a fairy tale retelling, but it is rooted primarily in the genre of historical fantasy – like many similar novels. The list of small-published fairy tale writers (of which I am one somewhere near the bottom) is a very long list, and the distinction between fantasy novels and fairy tales could be discussed at length. Regardless, it remains the case that modern fairy tales don’t represent a substantial portion of the publishing industry.
Why, then, do people keep writing fairy tales if they are considered ‘weak literature’ and the publishing industry frowns on the format?[24] And, once written, where do we put them in all this lack of glory? If both of these questions can be answered, then I think we can deduce the place of the modern fairy tale. The last question is more easily answered than the first, but can only be done by begging another question: why does a genre category ‘fairy tale’ matter? That, in my opinion, comes down to the relevance of classification.
Classification allows for an opportunity to know what we’re getting when we’re about to read a story. But for the modern fairy tale there is an extra layer of importance, namely that the vast majority of modern fairy tale writers are women and they are re-writing old tales or crafting new ones to tell a moral truth about women.[25] Whatever that moral truth may be, it is pivotal that the reader knows what to expect so that she might pay attention. Because, more often than not, the fairy tale writer is writing a tale that gives the reader something that not all stories do: the opportunity to reframe the patriarchal world through a different lens. And then, it offers a moral. It tells a truth. It is up to the reader to decide if it’s a relevant one, a good one, or even, perhaps, a morally objective one. Regardless of the kind of truth, the way it’s presented is unique to literature. Thus, the genre of ‘fairy tale’ becomes important in preserving this uniquely ancient method of storytelling as well as informing the potential reader of what they’re about to get into.
Which leads us back to the first question: why do fairy tales persist?
Why do fairy tales persist, despite a lack of popularity and constant demonization as either, at best, a waste of adult leisure time or, at worst, literature for the weak-minded? They persist because of a strain of universality – the idea that archetypes, generalizations, textbook characters (call them what you will) are applicable because we humans have similarities. One beautiful thing about the modern fairy tale is that it allows an opportunity to explore the characterizations that have been polluted by the sands of time or have been misunderstood since time’s beginning. But another beautiful thing is that the idea of a fairy tale persists in modern literature because humans persist in continuing to be so similar. We root for goodness – and somehow we all seem to know, on a grand scale, what that is. We boo the baddies – and, again, somehow on a grand scale we all seem to know who is morally foul. And we long to have someone help us out in describing just what makes someone good and what makes someone bad. Every so often, just as it has for centuries, a fairy tale comes along to help us figure that out – to tell us where we got it wrong, or where our moral compass still shines, or what steps we can take to right our hearts so that, regardless of whether a prince or a princess does the rescuing, we all know it’s a good thing to rescue somebody.
So, what is the place of the modern fairy tale, then? Its place isn’t so much where it sits, as to what it does. And what the modern fairy tale seems to do is the same thing fairy tales have done all along: to keep telling humans, through as many historical eras as we exist, that we exist alongside other people. The tales tell us what to do about that – as well as what not to do. Each time a wave of fairy tales comes around, the telling may differ. But the morals come through just the same. We relate to them as readers because we recognize the truths they tell. This gives us humans the courage to face the world differently – and, from the best fairy tales, in my opinion, to face it better. Moral truths may convey many different things: what it means to be a bad person, what it means to be a generous person, what it means to be a kind person. But given that society seems to forget the answers to these questions every hundred years or so[26], a wave of fairy tales offering a reminder seems to be no bad thing. In fact, it seems to safely place the modern fairy tale firmly with the modern reader without any cause for pretense or posturing: regardless of the era, a fairy tale’s place is a reminder of how to be good. Pretentious? Perhaps. But, after all, reading a fairy tale is a much more interesting way to get a morality lesson than hearing a sermon.
Amelia Brown is a reader of everything and a writer of fairy tales (among other things). Her work has been published in Gramarye, Corvid Queen, Enchanted Conversation Magazine, Aphelion (among other places) and in the Odd Dreams science fiction anthology. She has been awarded an honorable mention in the Galaxy Writers of the Future competition and is also the author behind the blog Fairy Stories & Other Tales. In a parallel universe that looks oddly similar to this one, she teaches ethics.
Notes
[1] Paul Ricœur begins this modern movement. For a look at a summary of his perspective on narrative identity and the hermeneutic treatment of time, see Patrick Crowley’s “Paul Ricœur: The Concept of Narrative Identity, the Trace of Autobiography.” Paragraph, vol. 26, no. 3, 2003, pp. 1–12. Thus began the great narrative application across disciplines, even as far as medical patient care (Missel M, Birkelund, R. Ricoeur's narrative philosophy: A source of inspiration in critical hermeneutic health research. Nurs Philos. 2020 Apr;21(2).)
[2] Sarbin, Theodore R. (1986). Narrative Psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. Praeger.
[3] Natale, Simone. If software is narrative: Joseph Weizenbaum, artificial intelligence and the biographies of ELIZA. October 2018, New Media & Society 21(10).
[4] As Steve Denning, writing for Forbes on ‘The Science of Story,’ points out, in the 20th century ‘[a]nalysis was king’ and narrative ‘either infantile or trivial.’ While storytelling cannot, of course, be squashed, it can, Denning notes, be despised.
[5] Of course, when a member of Western Society refers to 'society,' they are typically referring to that limitation. But the distinction grows less as the world’s global communication gets larger. A global view of fairy tales is particularly pertinent to moving the concept of ‘society’ to one of global scope, as the history of fairy tales is entrenched as much in Chinese, Indian and Armenian writings (to specify three cultures rarely referenced but with a prolific history of fairy tales) as it is in French, Italian, and Eastern European writings.
[6] Note: this is the point at which I step off my soap box.
[7] For the whole of the disturbing tale, see: https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm002.html
[8] See Terri Windling’s remarkably insightful blog post: https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2020/03/once-upon-a-time.html.
[9] Average marriages at that time began for a young girl around fourteen or fifteen after having been locked away in a convent around the age of seven in order to prevent inappropriate behavior. Often these girls were then virtually sold as wives to much older men. Too, women could then be banished to convents if considered unsatisfactory wives. (See Claire Walker’s Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, and Terri Windling’s blog post regarding the transformation of Beauty and the Beast: https://www.terriwindling.com/folklore/beauty-beast.html)
[10] This circle included Madame d’Aulnoy in the 1670s and ‘80s, Marie-Jeanne L’H’éritier and Catherine Bernard (entering in 1695), Comtesse de Murat (1696), Rose de La Force (1697), Catherine Durand (1699), and Comtesse D’Auneuil (1701).
[11] The original tale was written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, a French novelist influenced by the first French Wave fairy tale writers, and published in 1740.
[12] Particularly influential authors include George MacDonald (The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, and Dealings with the Fairies), Charles Dickens (specifically A Christmas Carol), Mary Molesworth and Edward Lear.
[13] For a more detailed look at the origin of fairy tales, see Terri Windling’s blog posts on fairy tale history.
[14] This data is complicated by our lack of source material. And some works hint at the development of fairy tales far earlier. For example, some recent evidence suggests some of our oldest fairy tales, The Smith and the Devil for instance, may have roots as far back as between 2,500 and 6,000 years ago. (See Royal Society Open Science, Vol. 3 Issue 1: Comparative phylogenetic analyses uncover the ancient roots of Indo-European folktales.)
[15] Or The Tale of Tales.
[16] Despite Angela Carter’s perfectly delivered, ‘A fairytale is when one king goes to another king to borrow a cup of sugar.’
[17] One might assume that the research on contemporary fairy tales would make more of a difference between young adult work and fairy tales. However, among university-hired academics there is a dearth of research regarding contemporary fairy tales, their purpose, and their relevance. What scholarship has been done on fairy tales is either not so modern – i.e. the history above – or is made up of a very small pool of academics who mostly examine young adult fiction, which is often considered the pre-eminent example of the modern fairy tale. But is there a difference between classic tropes, archetypes, and the contents of a fairy tale? Ah, but here we are again, begging the definition. Still, as a purveyor and reader of fairy tales both modern and otherwise, I’d like to suggest that there is a difference. That young adult fantasy may rotate slightly into the Venn diagram of fairy tale attributes, but there is something specific to the kind of tale, rooted in folklore and couched in ethical mores, that spins a unique thread. Or, put another way, follows a specific, familiar format. And I’d like to argue that such a tale written in such a specific way is not only relevant, but pivotal to the literary world—and its importance goes ignored at any reader’s peril.
[18] See Dr. Maren Conrad’s work, and in particular this interview: https://www.fau.eu/2020/07/03/news/what-is-a-modern-fairy-tale/.
[19] That said, 19th century fairy tales do often involve the morally good character triumphing over the morally bad.
[20] Of course, the actual text tells us that the moral is, ‘He who has luck may go to bed, And bliss will rain upon his head,’ but a modern reader gets a pretty good idea what Giambattista Basile’s driving at.
[21] Or, rather, a whodunit.
[22] One might say that there is, then, little difference between a fairy tale and a fable. But a fable, though having a moral, is written solely for the moral without the same plot trajectory and magical elements of a fairy tale. Some argue that the Brothers Grimm tales are more fables than fairy tales—some of them certainly follow in the fable line. It might behoove fairy tale scholars to leave the Brothers Grimm behind in fairy tale research, but that would probably feel a bit like cutting off one’s toes.
[23] There are, of course, others of varying levels of fame; the list is not extensive. Holly Black is typically considered a modern fairy tale writer, particularly given the titles of her books, but in the definition of ‘fairy tale’ offered in this article, her work falls far more readily under the young adult fantasy fiction genre in which she’s published. Additionally, there seems to be an unfortunate dearth of modern fairy tales from cultures outside of European tradition (a pity, as some of the richest tales come from Armenia and West Africa, in my opinion) and there aren’t, as yet, many writers of color being published in the fairy tale tradition. Perhaps there will be more in the future – though, again, the publishing industry is not usually keen on the fairy tale format generally.
[24] The publishing industry’s lack of interest in fairy tales, especially in new authors of fairy tales, seems to be that they are a hard sell – though that appears to be the argument for many unpublished works regardless of genre these days. Perhaps this is because readers share the general understanding that fairy tales are ‘nothing more than children’s stories.’ That said, some people argue that it’s because Angela Carter is an impossible act to follow…. Jokes aside, Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow formed a now decades-old editor partnership, a large purpose of which was making it possible for modern writers of fairy tales to be published due to the dearth, which gives some indication of the publishing industry’s reluctance.
[25] Or, as Anne Thériault once wrote for the no longer functioning website Toast: ‘[F]airy tales are women's tales. They're bent-backed crones' tales, sly gossips' tales, work-worn mothers' tales and old wives' tales. They're stories shared, repeated and elaborated on over mindless women's work like spinning or mending or shucking corn. These stories are the voices of those who were, within a social and cultural context, so often voiceless; they're women's whispered desires and fears, neatly wrapped up in fantastical narratives filled with sex, violence and humour.’
[26] And here I am, perhaps, being grossly generous to humans.