3 feminist retellings of classic fairytales — dark, beautiful & funny
Warning: Spoilers ahead
Once Upon a Time… Fairy tales were so much more than children’s stories. Instead, they were recordings of social realities and power struggles. They were mutating tales passed down through generations of oral storytelling.
Pre-industrial societies crafted fairy tales as a means of documenting and sharing cultural hardships and morals, or used them as cautionary tales. Especially for women.
Classic fairy tales bring us unlikely heroes, coming of age moments, and of course, gender stereotyping paired with dreams of upward mobility through marriage. Wicked witches and evil stepmothers caution us of the dangers of powerful women. “Happily ever afters” that wrap with marriage to a prince tell us that heterosexuality is compulsory, and a convenient way out of poor social status.
Once you start thinking of giants and ogres as distorted representations of the rich, there’s no going back.
In Woman Hating, radical feminist activist Andrea Dworkin comments on how women like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are characterized by passivity, beauty, innocence, and victimization. Women are prized when they can be objectified and put on display, like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, who are idealized in their sleep—the most passive state aside from death. Because according to Edgar Allan Poe, “the death [of] a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”
But what about the princesses that refuse to be passive? And what if the wicked witches weren’t so wicked after all?
When we revisit and retell these classic stories, we have the opportunity to write marginalized people and nuanced experiences back into the narrative. In the following revisionist fairy tales, “happily ever after” takes on a new meaning. I invite you to indulge in the fantasies—ones that are dark, beautiful and funny.
For a dark tale: The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories
Angela Carter is the godmother of gothic, feminist fairy tales. Her stories are so iconic that people consider them tales of their own, as opposed to retellings. Reading Carter’s tales was my entry-point to understanding fairytales as more than just children’s stories. The Bloody Chamber: And Other Stories is her collection of 10 dark and sexual fairy tales, reimagined to explore themes like objectification, virginity, sexuality and entrapment.
While I found that some stories in the collection were stronger than others, the standout tales will require you to take a moment of silence to process. For most of the heroines, adhering to the male gaze or becoming a reflection of male fantasies becomes a literal death sentence.
My favourite tale:
I first read “The Company of Wolves” for a course I took on fairytales and fantasies in 2016, and have revisited it every year since. We follow a red-hooded girl on her journey through the forest, to her grandmother’s house.
In this retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, the girl is described as innocent and virginal, yet unafraid as she sets foot into the forest despite the danger. Her red cape, which is likened to “blood on snow,” is symbolic of her new menstrual blood. The girl’s journey through the forest is reflective of her limbo state between youth and womanhood.
She meets a handsome huntsman on her journey and makes a bet with him: if he makes it through the woods to her grandmother’s house before her, she’ll give him a kiss. And so the seduction begins. When she arrives late and discovers that the huntsman is a wolf, she does more than save herself. She reverses the power dynamics and (arguably) gives into her own carnal desires.
“All the better to eat you with.
The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody’s meat.”
Instead of succumbing to the wolf and the identity expected of her, she tosses her red cape in the fire, and joins the company of wolves. The ending is disturbing and disorienting in the best way possible.
To me, Little Red joins the ranks of Eve, Pandora and Alice. She’s emblematic of the “curious woman” trope of women who are punished for wandering off the beaten path. The women who don’t want to blindly follow the status quo, and instead something beyond what they’re told. And Carter’s treatment of the curious woman trope is one that treads the line between prey and predator as Little Red steps into her power, no matter how dark or carnal it may be.
2. For a beautiful tale: Kissing the Witch
Through 13 connected fairytales that flow from one woman protagonist to the next, Emma Donahue paints a vivid portrait of the ways in which society has villainized women who refuse to follow the rules of the hetero-patriarchy. Each fairytale leads into the next by asking the question: Who was she before she was an evil stepmother or wicked witch?
Every tale is a continuous unearthing of the main character’s identity and self-discovery, detailing turning points in their stories where naiveté or disempowerment is traded with curiosity and compassion. Donahue’s luscious and smooth prose makes you feel like you could be listening to these stories around a campfire—invoking a sense of the oral tradition these tales came from. But she replaces the patriarchal undertones of their origins with rich queer dynamics.
I’m a sucker for a multi-dimensional villain, and damn, does Kissing the Witch deliver. The best part was that these retellings didn’t try to impart lessons about what made a character good or bad, wrong or right. Instead, boundaries were blurred. Villains became heroines and unlikely alliances and romantic bonds were formed. We met each woman on her individual journey to know and befriend the many voices within herself.
My favourite tales:
Normally, Beauty and the Beast stories don’t captivate my attention, but Donahue worked her magic and respun the story into something totally unforgettable and very queer.
In Donahue’s The Tale of the Rose, Belle is excited about the prospect of going to the castle (despite the fact that she technically doesn’t have a choice since her father made a deal with the Beast). The story is told from Belle’s perspective and illustrates the castle as a place where she can discover knowledge and autonomy.
She initially avoids the Beast because of the gossip she’s heard in the village, but the story takes a turn when she finally discovers who the Beast is beneath the mask—a woman. The “Beast” inspires Belle to choose a life that makes her happy, regardless of whether society deems them beauties or beasts.
I also really loved Donahue’s retelling of The Little Mermaid, The Tale of the Voice. No fins or mermaids are involved, but a woman named Ariel sees a man at the market, and immediately believes that she’s in love (happens to the best of us, right?). Willing to make him fall for her at any cost, she visits the local seaside witch to make a deal. Even though the witch tries to convince her that it’s a bad idea, Ariel persists and eventually forms a deal to sacrifice her voice in exchange for the man’s love.
Of course, he easily falls in love with a voiceless and helpless Ariel, who soon discovers that her prince is not all that after all. Ariel returns to the witch in search of her voice, and the witch helps her realize that she never really lost her voice; she only stopped using it to please the prince.
3. For a funny tale: Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling
Comedians Laura Lane and Ellen Haun offer up wickedly funny parodies of classic tales that tackle a range of feminist issues that include taking ownership of your sexuality, closing the gender wage gap and challenging white hetero-patriarchial beauty standards.
A quick and easy read, Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling takes issues we’re tired of dealing with and transforms them into fairy tales that will have you giggling and feeling like a bad bitch at the same time.
My favourite tales:
In Laura Lane and Ellen Haun’s retelling of Peter Pan, Peter is a man-child who suspiciously wants to whisk Wendy and her brothers away to Neverland through the window in the middle of the night. Despite a language barrier, Tinkerbell and Wendy form an alliship to protect and look out for one another. Instead of pitting Tinkerbell and Wendy against each other in pursuit of Peter’s attention, Lane and Haun cleverly reinvent the dynamic between Tinkbell and Wendy.
Lane and Haun also retell Goldilocks & The Three Bears to give us @TheRealGoldilocks & #TheThreeBears, a reimagining of Goldilocks as a privileged white influencer who essentially exploits the home of the three bears, all in the name of insta-fame.
Sorry but one more, The Little Mermaid Gets a Vagina — nobody talks about what comes with legs when you’re no longer a mermaid but Lane and Haun start that conversation, and it ends magically.
