Mother Goose Tales

"From a young age, Alphonsine Leclerc challenged all expectations of what a female child should be. In a vain attempt to keep her in check, Madame Leclerc taught her to read, and she was gifted a copy of Charles Perault’s Mother Goose Tales. The stories of Chaperon Rouge – Red Riding Hood – and La Barbe Bleue soon became the child’s favourites; but far from keeping her at home and fearful, the stories ignited a passion for reading and a strong desire to “fight the wolf.”

Her overriding conclusion from Blue Beard was that husbands were to be avoided at all costs. By the age of seventeen, her parents had despaired of her ever settling down to a conventional life."

So begins The Power of the Wouivre: Revolution, and I thought, with pantomine season upon us in the UK, and since this book of fairytales is so influential to the protagonist, Alphonsine, that I would offer some background to the Mother Goose Tales by Charles Perrault.

The book was first published in 1697 under the name of P. Darmencour (probably alluding to his son), a practice often carried out to protect author's reputation. However, certainly by 1741 it was known that Charles Perrault was the true author. The book's full title was Stories, or Tales, of Past Times, with Morals, but in the hand-written manuscript of 1695 (housed at the Morgan Library and Museum) it is entitled Contes de ma Mère l'Oye - or Mother Goose Tales - and this title (retained as a subtitle in the published editions) has stood the test of time, with Mother Goose still being used as a monikker for anthologies of fairytales, and children's poems today.

The stories found within the handwritten manuscript are: The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, Little Red Riding Hood, Blue Beard, The Master Cat and The Fairies.

By the 1741 edition, the order and some of the titles had changed - though the stories themselves were the same - plus a couple of additions. Now they were: Little Red Riding Hood, The Fairies, Blue Beard, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, The Master Cat or Puss in Boots, Cinderilla or The Little Glass Slipper, Riquet with the Tuft, and Little Thumb.

Most of these are tales that we all know but many of you may only know the Disney version or think they originated from Germany by the Brothers Grimm, some of which were quite a lot darker than their Disney counterparts! However, most of them either originated from Perrault or before. Although more wholesome than other versions, Perrault's story collection was not originally intended for a child audience, simply because stories specifically for children did not exist in the 17th century. The tales were all given their own morals as well - mostly for young women of the day to teach them to obey their husbands and not give themselves up to immoral behaviours. I won't delve into each and every one but let us consider one or two of the more famous ones individually:

The Sleeping Beauty - Most of you will be most familiar with the Disney adaptation but in Perrault's version the prince does not actually kiss the princess whilst she sleeps but merely approaches her, and kneels by her until she wakes (there is an altogether more sinister version from Italy in the Middle Ages which I will not go into here, though some may know of it). Perrault's wholesome story of Sleeping Beauty and the prince does not end where we think the story ends, however. There is a whole 2nd part in which the prince secretly marries the princess and they have 2 children (whom they call Aurora and Jour - Dawn and Day - note it is not actually the Sleeping Beauty whose name is Aurora) but the prince's step-mother is an Ogre who is suspicious of his regular absences from the palace (while he lives this secret life) and when she finds out of his secret marriage, she resolves to eat the children and then the princess (a whole episode of trickery reminiscent of Snow White and the huntsman ensues) and in the end it is, of course, the Ogress who dies.

Cinderella is a tale that had a version, or versions, as early as the first century from ancient Greece. However, Perrault's tale is the one most familiar to us now, with the fairy godmother, the pumpkin coach and the glass slippers. The Brothers Grimm later created their own version of the tale, with a bird in a hazel tree instead of a fairy godmother. It is this tale that introduces the gruesome twist whereby the ugly sisters cut parts of their feet off to try to fit into the slipper. In Grimm's version, the slipper is made of gold rather than glass. The Fairies was a story first penned by Perrault, though like the others, it may have had origins in verbal tales passed down. It has sometimes also been known as Diamonds and Toads and is a moral tale about kindness being rewarded over rudeness. The Master Cat is more well known to us as Puss in Boots and is another story that had other adaptations, but it is Perrault's version that is the one most closely related to the story we know today.

Both Little Red Riding Hood and Blue Beard, the two tales referenced in The Power of the Wouivre: Revolution as the most influential to Alphonsine's attitude to relationships, would appear to be original works as there is no written evidence of similar stories prior to Perrault's Mother Goose Tales. However, it is possible that they too were pieced together from folklore passed down either verbally or otherwise. The original tale of Little Red Riding Hood ends with the wolf eating the girl. There is no woodcutter in the story at all. Blue Beard is a fascinatingly gruesome story and was, in fact, one of my favourites growing up. Rather than reccount the whole story on this blog, you can read a translated version here (and all the others too).