Date: Fri 19-Jun-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: SUZANN

Quick Words:

reading-fairy-tales

Full Text:

Fairy Tales For Summer Reading

(with illustrations)

BY SUZANNA NYBERG

The subject is fairy tales, but the characters of the fairy tales in the C.H.

Booth Library's collection are not the sole protagonists; there are also the

men and women of legend, myth, and saga in a collection that numbers more than

300. Before the summer ends one can read Homer, Robin Hood, and Arthurian

legends as a participant in the library's summer reading program. To this list

one may add Hoffman's Nutcracker, William Tell, and Joel Chandler Harris's

Uncle Remus tales. Greece, India, and Scandanavia all give us stories that are

in this collection.

It has become commonplace to label many of these stories offensively

patriarchal, and it is dogmatic to commiserate with sleeping women waiting for

a prince to awaken them. Supine women discomfit the modern sensibility, and so

they should. But for every supine woman there is a demon that accompanies her,

and if we look at three or four of the best-known characters in these fairy

tales we will find awesome powers imagined for women.

A creature of transformations, able to live 300 years but not to die, the

little mermaid of Hans Christian Andersen's tale can exist forever as foam on

the wave. Her undeniable grace hides tremendous powers. Hardly passive, she is

a siren as well as an angel. "She was the greatest beauty," Andersen writes,

"and she danced as none of the others danced."

When the mermaid opens her eyes upon the human world it makes the ocean below

seem dreary, and so she breaks through her watery boundaries and leaves the

family that lovingly restricts her. Allowing a witch to cut out her tongue and

surrendering her tail to dance on two painful legs, she forfeits her

entrancing song to love a shallow prince.

In such a woman there is nothing new for at least nine out of ten of us would

do the same thing to get the man we want. Unfortunately, the man the mermaid

loves is not worthy of her; the prince's stupidity is decided, his body

feeble, and his mind empty. He doesn't even recognize the woman who saved his

life. It's hard to understand why the little mermaid doesn't put the knife her

sisters gave her into his heart, but then it's impossible to comprehend good

deeds and why someone performs them.

We cannot all lead as virtuous a life as the little mermaid. In Arabian

Nights, Shah Ryar glares savagely when he finds his wife in bed with a slave.

Then, he cuts off her head. No one can fairly blame a shah for being upset at

being cuckolded by a wife, but Shah Ryar's delusion that all beautiful women

are faithless lovers and must be executed, when worked to its logical

conclusion, leaves a land bereft of pretty girls.

The Shah becomes a scourge and a curse to the women he marries until

Sheherazade boldly volunteers to become his wife. Nothing in life could be

nobler for who would not contract and freeze at the idea that the Shah wanted

one's hand in marriage?

Shut up together in the vaulted chamber, no woman could be more helpless, no

man more powerful. Yet Sheherazade takes all power away from Shah Ryar.

Weaving stories of supreme sensuous appeal, what she does is simple, yet of

sheer genius. Every night she mesmerizes the Shah, captivates him with another

tale, Ali Babba and the Forty Thieves, Aladdin and the Lamp, Judar and His

Brothers, and every night Sheherazade's head is spared the executioner's

sword. For one thousand and one nights Sheherazade is the instigator of the

evening's activity, and Shah Ryar is spellbound, monopolized, and yes, ruled.

Sheherazade's talent as a story teller effects miracles and saves lives, and

the awesome, mysterious power of storytelling starts to dawn on one, the power

to choose the right phrases and pick the right words.

In the Nibelungen, a medieval gem, Brunhilde, a virtual giantess, ruling the

Last Land, Iceland, occupies herself as she likes. Affection is an effort for

her. She has little patience with men and their opinions, regarding them all

with extreme antipathy. To face a man on her wedding night is more trying than

going to battle so she clobbers King Gunther: "She turned on him in her fury

like a lioness. Summoning all her strength, she wrestled the startled King to

the floor, and before Gunther knew what was happening she had tied him up with

a belt and, carrying him in her strong arms, hung him on a nail." Brunhilde

lacks tenderness, and it is the absence of tenderness that is the wonderful

thing about her. It takes an invisible Siegfried to subdue her, and even then

she is merely chastened.

A feeling of nightmare comes over one at the prospect of marrying either

princes or shahs, and so we turn to the fantasies of an Oxford mathematician.

Little Alice in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass towers over

everyone, becomes queen and empress, and overthrows her tormenters. Although

she begins life as a helpless pawn, moving slowly across the chess board,

talking to animals and dancing with Tweedledum and Tweedledee, she grows into

a mighty queen by the eighth square.

As in any game, chess or otherwise, queens wield the most power, kings have

only a token presence. The Red King sleeps and the White King has long ago

given up while the Red and White Queens sweep from one end of the board to the

other, zig-zagging here and there, even getting to castle. They also get to

use language in a delightful way, and we, whether we be children or grown-ups,

can take pleasure in their conversations:

"In our country," said Alice, "you'd generally get to somewhere else-if you

ran very fast for a long time as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Red Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes

all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get

somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

For every Beauty asleep there is a fearsome one wide-awake. Perhaps these

stories can provide new icons for the little girls-and boys-who read them.

The summer reading program at C.H. Booth Library begins Thursday, June 25, at

10:30 am, when animal trainer and educator, Lesa Scheifeld, brings her

endangered species program to the library.