Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship (26 page)

Fairy Tales: Sex and Sublimation

In his analysis of the role of beauty in fairy tales, Max Lüthi argues, “Even though beauty thus appears in feminine trappings, one notices scarcely a hint of the erotic...there is no talk of sensual vibration, either with respect to the beautiful girl herself or to those affected by her...there is little trace of the actual erotic to be found in European fairytales; they tend to sublimate everything real.”
²
Concrete descriptions of sexual attraction and behavior, Lüthi argues, would be too realistic in a genre he sees as largely abstract. But as we have seen, the artificial surface of the fairy tale is often ruptured by historical allusion, explicit metaphorical references, or precisely the type of detail we associate with realism.

Still, if fairy tales are often short on Lüthi’s notion of “actual eroticism” or “sensual vibration,” explicit sexual attraction and encounters are abundant, including those featuring kings with incestuous longings, commoners who curse princesses into pregnancy, and women mated to beasts. Basile frequently describes sexual desire and consummation in his tales with his inimitable enthusiasm. In “Petrosinella,” a version of the familiar “Rapunzel” tale, the young prince’s amorous advances are depicted with culinary zest: “He jumped through the little window into the room, and there he made a little meal out of the saucy parsley of love.”
³
Another Basile story, “The Three Fairies,” describes how the eager prince “whose heart had been palpitating and who had been dying to squeeze his dearly beloved in his arms...said to himself, ‘Oh night, oh happy night, oh friend of lovers, oh body and soul, oh ladle and spoon, oh love, run, run, at breakneck speed so that, under the cover of your shadows, I can seek refuge from the flames that are consuming me!’”
⁴
In his satire of melodramatic courtship rhetoric, Basile frequently blurs the boundaries between love and lust.

Much of the inappropriate sexual activity in fairy tales is driven by male aggression. Whereas some of this behavior is deemed morally wrong within the context of the tales—particularly the king’s incestuous longings in stories such as Basile’s “The Maiden Without Hands” or “The Bear,” Straparola’s “Tebaldo,” or Perrault’s “Donkey-Skin”—the tales often manage to minimize aberrant male desire, whereas in other tales, the king’s adulterous behavior is validated by the queen’s wickedness, as in Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia.”
⁵
On the other hand, women often endure significant suffering and punishment for sexual misconduct, regardless of their guilt or innocence.

Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia,” a precursor to Perrault’s later and more well-known “Sleeping Beauty,” is remarkable for its unabashed endorsement of male sexual misconduct and the displacement of blame on the female.
⁶
A “great lord,” anxious about the future of his daughter Talia, asks wise prophets to forecast her destiny. They warn that her life will be endangered by a piece of flax, but in spite of attempts to protect her, Talia eventually encounters an old woman spinning cloth. The princess is wounded as predicted and falls “down dead on the ground.” The grieving father orders Talia to be locked up in a palace in the countryside and soon after, a king, out hunting, happens upon the palace and discovers Talia. The king assumes she is asleep or enchanted, so he “called to her, but no matter what he did and how loud he yelled she did not wake up, and since her beauty had inflamed him, he carried her in his arms to a bed and picked the fruits of love.” Afterward he returns to his kingdom “where he did not remember what had happened for a long time.”

In short, the king rapes and impregnates a comatose female body and then simply returns to his royal affairs.
⁷
Talia, still unconscious, gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, who are cared for by two fairies. When one of the nursing babies accidentally sucks the piece of flax from Talia’s finger, she awakens but is bewildered about “what had happened to her and how it was that she was alone in that palace with two children by her side.” Around this time, the king remembers Talia and upon his return visit is thrilled to discover his children, Sun and Moon, his “two painted eggs of beauty.” Back again at his own palace, the king mentions their names so frequently that his queen grows suspicious and summons Talia and the babies to court whereupon she orders the twins to be slaughtered for their father’s dinner and Talia to be burned to death.

As she is sending Talia to the fire, the queen unleashes her jealous wrath on the younger woman: “Madame slut! So you’re that fancy piece of trash, that weed with whom my husband takes his pleasure! So you’re that bitch who makes my head spin like a top!...I’m going to make you pay for the pain you’ve caused me!” Talia tries “to apologize, saying that it wasn’t her fault and that the king had taken possession of her territory when she was under a sleeping spell,” but the queen is unmoved. Just then, the king returns and the queen proudly admits her evil designs, but a brave servant reveals that he secretly cooked goats for the king’s dinner and saved the children’s lives. The king commands that the queen be burned in the very fire intended for Talia. Once the wicked woman is conveniently eliminated, the king marries Talia and they and their children live a long happy life, with Talia comforted by the cautionary reminder that “good rains down even when [people] are sleeping.” Although the adages that conclude many of Basile’s tales are often superfluous or irrelevant, the preposterous consolatory message here is in keeping with the problematic narrative perspective of the tale. A king commits rape and adultery and is rewarded rather than punished; he is allowed to replace an older and presumably barren queen with a younger, beautiful and fertile woman, while the onus of his crime is diverted to a conflict between the two women. The queen, though wronged, becomes monstrous in her sexual jealousy and is burned to death, whereas the violated princess is assured that all good things come to passive women.
⁸

In another group of tales, the female body is an even more pronounced site of sexual aggression. In a group of tales categorized as “the wishes of fools,” the premise involves the retaliation of a poor commoner who is insulted by a haughty princess. Because of a previous act of kindness to an animal or to strangers, the young man has been granted wishing power, and after being laughed at yet again by the princess, he curses her into pregnancy. The king is furious when his daughter’s state is discovered in spite of her protests of innocence. The identity of the child’s father is eventually discovered, and the king orders the young parents and their children to death at sea, but they manage to survive, and the fool’s magical mentor transforms him into an intelligent, handsome man and grants the couple happiness and wealth.

The tension between the upper and lower classes is blatant in these tales; according to Ruth Bottigheimer’s schema, these would be “rise” tales in which a lower-class hero suffers, endures, and eventually triumphs with newly found riches and prestige. As Jack Zipes points out, the class struggle is played out via the sexualized female: “a commoner, who is often degraded by the upper class, takes revenge on the nobility by making off with the king’s prized possession...a woman’s body was regarded as a possession of the male, and any violation of the female body was a violation of patriarchal authority.”
⁹
The punitive pregnancy motif also suggests, albeit in exaggerated fashion, how easily innocent women were presumed guilty for sexual misconduct.

This cycle of tales is similar to the “princess who must be humbled” motif seen in the animal bridegroom tales: just as the princess in “The Frog Prince” is shamed for her prideful refusal of the frog, so also the princesses of the “wishes of fools” tales are punished for mockery and arrogance. In both cases, the punishment is far in excess of the crime and is enacted on the sexualized body of the female. The youth and vulnerability of the princess is highlighted in Straparola’s “Pietro the Fool.”
¹⁰
As soon as Pietro proclaims to his magical benefactor—in this case a large tuna he had previously caught and released—“I only want Luciana, daughter of our King Luciano, to become pregnant,” his wish is immediately granted: “Within days and then months the virginal womb of the young girl began to grow, and she was not even twelve years old. Soon there were clear signs of pregnancy... The queen, who could not bear such ignominy and suffering, rushed to the king... When he heard the news, he felt he would die from grief.” The king’s despair is not for his bewildered daughter but for his own honor and reputation, thus “he decided to have his daughter killed to avoid the disgrace and vicious gossip.” As with the many kings in the monstrous-birth tales who want to kill their unnatural progeny rather than suffer public disgrace, this king is finally persuaded to let Luciana live, but after she delivers a beautiful baby boy, Luciano is determined to discover the paternity of the child. All the young men in the kingdom are summoned to the palace whereupon the young child “naturally” gravitates to Pietro. The king is “tormented” to learn that the child’s father is a foolish commoner and “commanded that Pietro, Luciana, and the child to be put to death.” The king is persuaded that instead of “decapitation,” he will cast the sinners out to sea “with the expectation that the barrel would crash against the reef and they would drown,” a punishment presumed to be more humane but which also, according to narrative convenience, allows for survival.

With the help of the magical fish, the three survive their ordeal at sea and are granted several more wishes: Pietro becomes clever and handsome, Luciana falls in love with him, and they conjure a beautiful castle where they live happily with their child. In the meantime, the king and queen regret their cruel behavior and on their way to the Holy Land to repent, they coincidentally stop by Luciana’s new kingdom. Luciana devises a clever trick that gradually reveals their identities and proves her innocence to her father. The king forgives her—though for a crime she did not commit—and Pietro inherits the throne when Luciano dies. Once again, the patriarchal order survives intact, but only after the sexual reputation of the female has been subjected to cruel and unfair denunciation—and she has fulfilled her duty in providing a future heir to the throne.

Two subsequent versions of this tale, Basile’s “Peruonto” and d’Aulnoy’s “The Dolphin,” follow the general plotline of Straparola’s story, though in their own characteristic styles. In “Peruonto,”
¹¹
the king’s wrath against the princess’s sexual body is even more pronounced: “How could that slut of a daughter of mine have taken a fancy to this sea ogre?...Why did you become a harlot for this pig to transform me into a cuckold?” The king’s reference to his daughter as a “slut” and himself as a “cuckold” is a perverse reminder that his masculine honor depends on unchallenged control of all the female bodies in his family. This king even advocates killing his daughter before she delivers the baby: “I’d like her to feel the pains of death before she feels labor pains. I’m disposed towards uprooting her before she plants her germs and seeds in this world.” As in Straparola’s tale, the accused are banished to sea but magical intervention transforms the fool and the princess into a happy, loving couple, though not without severe suffering on the part of the princess whose violated body is made to pay for both the wrath of her father and her eventual husband. In d’Aulnoy’s “The Dolphin,” the punishment of the innocent princess is even more creatively devised.
¹²
The princess delivers a beautiful baby, but it was impossible “to describe the astonishment and anger of the king, the grief of the queen, the despair of the princess... Where did the child come from? No one could tell.” In his fury, the king “made up his mind to have her and her child thrown from the top of a mountain onto some rocks with jagged sides where she would die a cruel death.” The pleasure taken in devising punishments for the allegedly transgressive female in these tales is nothing short of sadistic.

While many fairy tales wrongly accuse women of sexual wrongdoing, another group of tales—the “disguised heroes”—depict cross-dressing princesses and queens who are guilty of lascivious desire and monstrous acts.
¹³
In Straparola’s “Constanza/Constanzo,” a king and queen divide their kingdom among three daughters, each of whom then marries a powerful king.
¹⁴
Years later, though the queen is thought to be past childbearing age, she gives birth to a fourth beautiful baby girl, Constanza, who grows up to be more accomplished and beautiful than her sisters. But because her parents have nothing left to offer her as dowry, Constanza disguises herself as male, and as Constanzo, she sets off to make her fortune. When she arrives at the kingdom of Bettinia, the king takes notice of the attractive young “man” and appoints Constanzo his personal attendant. The queen is also immediately smitten: “When the queen observed the elegant bearing, the laudable manners, and the discreet behavior of Constanzo, she began to pay more attention to him. Soon she could think only of him day and night, and she would throw such sweet and loving glances at him that, not only a young man, but the hardest rock or the most solid diamond would have been softened. The queen...yearned for nothing else than to be with him alone.”

Constanzo understands that the queen’s flirtation is an inappropriate sign of “amorous passion. Moreover, being a woman, he could not satisfy the hot unbridled lust which prompted them.”

When Constanzo does not return the queen’s overtures, the latter’s “ardent and hot love was converted into mortal bitter hatred.” In revenge, the scorned queen persuades the king to send Constanzo on a quest to conquer a satyr, one of the savage and dangerous creatures threatening the kingdom. Constanzo cleverly contrives to inebriate a satyr and brings the prisoner back to the king. As they enter the city, the satyr laughs at several points along the way. When the satyr is forced to reveal why he was laughing at the queen and her attendants, the satyr’s reason was that everyone “believed that the ladies-in-waiting who were serving the queen were really ladies, when most of them were young men.” The king then realizes that the queen has been unfaithful to him, not only in her desire for Constanzo but presumably with several men who have been disguised as her female attendants. He demands quick justice: “Immediately, the king gave orders to have a great fire built in the middle of the piazza, and in front of all the people, he had the queen and her lovers tossed into the fire to burn.” The satyr also reveals that Constanzo is a woman, and “in light of [her] commendable loyalty and true fidelity...not to mention her great beauty,” the king marries her. When he learns of her royal lineage, he is even “more joyful.” The queen in this tale is guilty of infidelity, but her crime and punishment conveniently allow the king’s new marriage. Even in the narrative compression of the fairy tale, the swiftness with which one queen’s execution is followed by and conflated with the next queen’s elevation is astounding.