Assist. Prof.

Şeyda İnceoğlu
Pamukkale University
sinceoglu@pau.edu.tr

From Oral Folk Tale Tradition to Fairy Tales and their Representations in the
Postmodern Novel: Once upon a time where evil resides

In a world where dualities constructed since the age of Plato are being questioned
the dichotomy between good and evil has been challenged. The battle of these two, the
good and the evil is represented in a never ending game. Once upon a time there was this
clear distinction between them however, the boundaries of the traditional meaning of evil
as propagated by the Orthodox institutions in the given culture are blurred in today’s
world. What wittingly or unwittingly is revealed to us is the impossibility of “good”
existing in a world where “evil” is absent. The boundaries between good and evil, right or
wrong were still comparatively relevant when Grimm Brothers wrote their tales in the
nineteenth century. When it comes to the postmodern era, the evil myth completely breaks
away from the norms; the borders between fiction and reality; history, philosophy and
literature collapse and the roles of good and evil are blurred. According to this
assumption, in this paper, the traces of the evil are going to be scrutinized in the light of
the contemporary fairy tales, with, echoing in the background, the reverberations of
previous texts from previous ages. Fairy tales which are addressed to the children
represent the idea of evil which was determined by the set rules of a community
symbolizing the folk psychology. Thus, these ideas are transmitted to the children through
these stories fed by the folk tradition. Concepts of evil, gender roles, sex differences,
political notions are spread and settled first on the young minds. Wendy Kaminer, in her
book A Fearful Freedom: Women’s Flight from Equality, states that: “Men and women
may not be the same, but what we call masculine and feminine characteristics may be
distributed unpredictably, in varying degrees among them... If there are natural sex and
gender differences, they exist and develop in the context of culture. Perhaps they are, in
the end, what we make of them.” (Kaminer: 1990, 9) As Wendy Kaminer points out if we
are to mention gender roles and differences, they are shaped according to the context of
culture in other words, culture which is fed by society itself. Similarly, understanding of

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good and evil, the acceptable and the unacceptable are also determined by society. What
is noteworthy in the codes of social, economic, sexual norms which lie beneath the fairy
tales is their being products of the traditional patriarchal discourse. Thus, social and
gender roles which are constituted by society mostly represent the male voice. Thus, it
would not be awkward to say that female is depicted as morally good as long as she
serves to the conventions of traditional patriarchal society and portrayed as wicked, evil
and cruel if she is beyond the borders, in other words, if she transgresses the limits drawn
by the institutionalized male authorities.
A. S. Byatt’s Possession (1990) focuses on two fictional narratives one set in the
Victorian Era and the other in the present, intertwining the fairy tales of the nineteenth
century and their postmodern interpretations in other words, subversions. Iona and Peter
Opie argue that people misinterpret fairy tales when they say “it was just like a fairy tale”
in encountering some remarkable success, for the tales are about “reality made evident” in
their view.

In the most-loved fairy tales, it will be noticed, noble personages may be brought low by
fairy enchantment or by human beastliness, but the lowly are seldom made noble. The
established order is not stood on its head. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are girls of
royal birth. Cinderella was tested, and found worthy of her prince. The magic in the tales
(if magic is what it is) lies in people and creatures being shown to be what they really are.
The beggar woman at the well is really a fairy, the beast in “Beauty and the Beast” is
really a monarch, the frog is a handsome prince, the corpse of Snow White a living
princess. Fairy tales are unlike popular romances 1 in that they are seldom the
enactment of dream-wishes. We would ourselves be willing to face the hazards the heroes
have to face, even if we were certain, as the heroes are not, of final reward. (Opies: 1974,
13-14)

This quotation is significant since “fairy tales are unlike popular romances”
sentence conveys a contradiction because Possession is addressed as a romance. Thus we
are prepared not to expect a romance in the traditional patriarchal sense. The unhidden
meaning of the evil in the 19th century is going to be redefined and reinterpreted in this
postmodern text through the stories of two contemporary Victorian critics: Maud Bailey
and Roland Michell and two Victorian poets: Christabel LaMotte and Randolph Ash.
While LaMotte remains unknown in her century, Ash becomes very famous in his age,
when we come to Bailey and Michell, it becomes totally opposite, the descendant of Ash
and LaMotte: Bailey is a very well-known scholar, but Mitchell is the relatively unknown.
So Michell fails to fulfil the roles of the patriarch in the beginning of the novel in spite of

1
My emphasis.

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the strong connotations of hereditary patriarchy “Ash”. Ash associated with ash tree could
be identified with power, knowledge, and a place for experience to reach wisdom since
according to Norse Mythology, the mighty ash tree Ygdrasill supports the entire universe.
Under the tree lies Ymir, and when he tries to shake off its weight the earth quakes
(Bulfinch: 1997, 330). Moreover, ash trees also serve as the ancestors of the human
beings since after the creation of the world and the sea, man was made out of an ash tree
and, woman out of an elder tree. (the man is called Aske and the woman Embla (Ibid.,
329–330). The tree’s roots point to the underworld, its branches to the sky and both are
associated with human beings’ search for knowledge. Thus, although there are strong
connotations of Ash’s name, Roland Michell fails to function as his ancestor. Instead,
Maud assumes his role. Maud Bailey and Roland Michell reveal a secret love relation
between these two Victorian poets. As they reveal their mysterious relations, they also
reveal the unhidden meaning of the fairy tales intentionally inserted into the text in order
to deconstruct the traditions. Tatar says that:

[a]ny attempt to unearth the hidden meaning of fairy tales is bound to fail unless it is
preceded by a rigorous, if not exhaustive, analysis of a tale type and its variants. That
analysis enables the interpreter to distinguish essential features from random
embellishments and to identify culturally determined elements that vary from one regional
version of a tale to the next. (Tatar: 1987, 43)

Christabel’s poems uncover the unhidden meanings and interpretation, and her
poems are attractive both for their mythic quality and also their fairy tale like qualities
because they recount the experiences of a woman in Victorian society. Both women:
Christabel and Maud are identified with fairytale figures that live in towers – The Princess
in the Tower, the woman in the Glass Coffin, the fairy Melusina, and Rapunzel. In the
original story of “Glass Coffin” by Grimm Brothers, a tailor rescues a princess who was
doomed to an enchanted sleep in a glass coffin by a wicked magician since she refused to
marry him. After the tailor saves her, he marries the “maiden”. Maiden is the word used
by the Grimm Brothers. However, in Christabel’s version, it is the woman instead of the
maiden. And the woman is given free will to choose whether to marry the tailor or not.
“Though why you should have me, simply because I opened the glass case, is clear to me
altogether, and, when, and if, you are restored to your rightful place, and your home and
lands and people are again your own, I trust you will feel free to reconsider the matter,
and remain, if you will, alone and unwed”. (Byatt: 1990, 66) Giving the woman her own

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free will would be a very revolutionary idea in the Victorian age. Christabel, rewriting the
tale of the Grimm Brothers, subverts the ideal woman image of Victorian era reconciling
the male with the female and giving an identity, an autonomous identity to the woman.
Roland refers to Maud as a “princess suffering the muffled pea” (58) and similarly,
Randolph refers to the mattresses upon which Christabel sleeps as “separating a princess
from a pea.” (282) Both Roland and Randolph liken the women poets to the princesses as
in the story entitled “The Princess and the Pea”. The relationship between the pea and
their white, thin-skinned body represent the overpowering effect of patriarchy. However,
the whiteness, having a milky skin also represents the artistic creativity which is only
thought to be reserved by the patriarchy. Like Randolph Ash, Roland also feels he is an
intruder in the lives of females. In other words, they are the obstacles in their creativity
processes: “Blanche Glover called Christabel the Princess. Maud Bailey was a thin-
skinned Princess. He was an intruder into their female fastnesness. Like Randolph Henry
Ash.” (59) In fact, they are the intruders, so they shut themselves into their towers in order
to create so they have chosen loneliness themselves. Maud Bailey, who thinks that her
solitude is her castle, uses her cold features as a defense against male intrusion.
Throughout the novel, she is described by especially two men, namely, Fergus Wolff and
Roland Michell, as one that “thicks men’s blood with cold,” (34) as “untouchable”(48),
“coldly hostile,” (ibid) “remote and patronising,” (69) and is said to have a “frigid voice.”
(48) Fergus Wolff, her ex-boy friend, writes her a letter begging to be together again.
Calling her “The Queen of the Castle,” he wants to know “What is kept in the Keep?”
(138) Maud feels intimidated by the letter of Fergus Wolff2 whose name is associated
with the wolf in other words patriarchy. Wolff tries to dominate her and invade her
personal space intruding her establishing an autonomous female individuality. One
paradigm is that he wanted her to wear her hair long, and she succumbed. Accordingly,
upon seeing the letter, Maud remembers the vision of the tormented bed and she puts her
hand to her hair. Yet another link between Maud and Christabel can be established
through the colour green. As Christabel is conspicuously described in a language that
repletes with green, Maud Bailey is initially described in “green and white length, a long
pine-green tunic over a pine-green skirt” and “long shining green shoes.” (38) She drives
an “immaculately glossy green Beetle.” (ibid.) Her beautiful long blond hair is covered
with a green scarf pinned with a jet-black mermaid brooch, which once belonged to
Christabel. Thus the colour green links both women, and it also associates them with
2
My emphasis

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feminine Nature: the green of the sea and the green of plant life. The colour green
symbolizes an essential element of feminine nature: fertility. Thus, the milky skin, green
colour all refer to the female creativity. Christabel LaMotte’s poem which is presented at
the beginning of Chapter 4 recounts Rapunzel and her surroundings. The physical
features of the tower are somewhat parallel to those of the Department of Women’s
Studies, to begin with. In the poem, the lines “Up snakes the Glassy Tower... / The wind
whistles sourly / Through the Sharp Land” (35) are reminiscent of the features of where
Maud Bailey works: Her office is white-tiled, and on the way, Maud tells Roland that
there are often high winds which are a real hazard to walkers. Maud works in her glass
tower like a princess. To protect herself in a tower is not because of isolating herself from
the evil of the world but from the restraints of the patriarchy. Thus it is made manifest that
universities turn into an ivory tower where they become more and more isolated and
alienated. In this world, there is no co-operation but rivalry. However, it is when Maud
and Roland see the human reality of the two Victorian poets that they come closer to
nature and discover themselves through co-operation. To the chaos of the academic
world, Maud prefers an orderly way of life. She is extremely systematic in her office.
The order in which she classified her index cards is a case in point. It is given from
Roland’s point of view: “[Roland] looked up increasingly at the perplexing woman on the
other side of the table, who with silent industry and irritating deliberation was making
minutely neat notes on her little fans of cards, pinning them together with silver hooks
and pins, frowning.” (130) ‘Icily regular, splendidly null.’ ‘How did you know I used to
think that?’‘Everyone always does. Fergus did. Does.’ (506) The words “icily regular
and splendidly null” that are mentioned in the conversation to describe Maud are rooted in
Tennyson’s poem, “Maud: A Melodrama,” from which the idea of the name Maud might
have derived:

... Maud, she has neither savour nor salt,

But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage past,
Perfectly beautiful...
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more; nothing more...

Cold and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek...

Passionless, pale, cold face, star-sweet...
Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long
Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more...

Ah Maud, you milk white fawn, you are all unmet for a wife.3

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Tennyson’s “Maud: A Melodrama”

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 LaMotte’s long poem about Melusina, “the legendary woman of extraordinary beauty
who sometimes changed into a serpent in romances of chivalry” (Chevalier: 1996, 646)
represent the dichotomy between good and evil. She likes Melusina because she “has two
aspects-an unnatural monster and a most proud and loving and handy woman.” (Byatt:
1990, 191-192)

Hereditary scholarship and womanhood has to be established in order to abolish

the suppressive, evil like quality of the patriarchy. The female has to get rid of the image
which was formed by the male authorities. It is very ironic to read that Christabel inspires
Ash’s Mummy Possest. Mummy both refers to the mummy which is “a body embalmed or
treated for burial with preservatives in the manner of the ancient Egyptians, a body
unusually well preserved” and also to the motherhood. Both connotations indicate the
silence and stillness of the woman.

Embedded fairy tales an mythological narratives in A. S. Byatt’s Possession: A

Romance rather than being subordinate to the novel become the novel itself. Thus the
subversion of the fairy tales deconstructs and rewrites the gender roles eliminating the
evil, wicked quality of the female.

Works Cited

Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy

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 Tales. England: Penguin Books, 1991.

Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch's Mythology. New York: Portland House, 1997.

Byatt, A.S. Possession: A Romance. London: Vintage, 1990.

Chevalier, Jean and Alain Gheerbrant. Dictionary of Symbols. Trans. by John Buchanan-
Brown. Penguin Books, 1996.

Fiander, Lisa M. Fairy Tales and the Fiction of Iris Murdoch, Margaret Drabble, and A.

S. Byatt. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2004.

Kaminer, Wendy. A Fearful Freedom: Women’s Flight From Equality. 1990.

Opies, Iona and Peter Opie. The Classic Fairy Tales. New York: Oxford, 1974.

Smith, Kevin Paul. The Postmodern Fairytale: Folkloric Intertexts in Contemporary

Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Tatar, Maria. The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1987.
Zipes, Jack David. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.