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| "Furball," (a story variant of "Donkeysin,") by Margaret Evans Price |
Editor's note: I am excited to see what Christina Ruth Johnson is going to do with her excursions into the fabulous lore of fairy tales. I think her first trip is a big success. Read on into the past!
I want to extend a hearty thank you to Kate Wolford for
bringing me on board as the new “Fairy Tale Vintage Sleuth.” I am so thrilled
to be a part of this wonderful blogazine, and I hope everyone will enjoy
reading these posts as much as I enjoy writing them.
For my first post, I would like to stretch the “vintage”
concept and travel back in time to the Middle Ages. This period gave birth to a
bevy of fantastic tales full of adventure and chivalry, betrayal and love, good
and evil. These stories came not only from oral folklore but also from literature
written for the upper classes. We can see remnants of this literature in many of
the fairy tales that we know and love today.
Two tales of particular interest are “Donkeyskin” by Charles
Perrault (and its variants) and “Girl Without Hands” by the Brothers Grimm (and
its variants). Each tale owes integral elements of its plot to what
medievalists refer to as the “Constance-cycle”—a set of narratives with similar
plots, themes, etc., including, most famously, Chaucer’s The Man of Law’s Tale from his late-fourteenth century Canterbury Tales. The name Constance
comes from Nicholas Trevet’s Anglo-Norman prose chronicle from the early-fourteenth
century, which includes one of the earliest versions of the narrative. The
oldest known narrative in the cycle is the Vitae
duorum Offarum, a literary history written as early as the late-twelfth century.
Another prominent permutation is the anonymous romance poem Emaré
from the late-fourteenth century. The narrative also appears in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, again from the
late-fourteenth century—both Gower’s and Chaucer’s versions were based on
Trevet’s. Many other versions and variations survive in multiple languages.
The main plot element inherited by Perrault’s “Donkeyskin” from
the Constance-cycle is the desire of the father (a king) to marry his daughter.
She rejects him, which results in her exile from her homeland. Although incest
does not play a part in all the medieval narratives within the cycle, it plays
an integral role in the beginnings of both Vitae
duorum Offarum and Emaré. Despite
their trials, the heroines of both of these stories and of “Donkeyskin” eventually
find suitable royal husbands. The impossible dresses in “Donkeykin” made out of
sky, moonbeams, and sunshine do not appear in the Constance-cycle as such, but Emaré does posses a beautiful if
somewhat enigmatic robe that seems to have supernatural qualities pertaining to
love and desire.
Unlike the heroine of “Donkeyskin,” the heroine of the medieval
narratives (let’s call her Constance, though she takes on a variety of names) must
face further trials after her marriage: she gives birth to a son, but due to
the falsification of letters sent to her husband, the king, who is abroad when
she gives birth, Constance and her son are exiled. This same series of events
occurs in “Girl Without Hands.” The traitor who substitutes the false letters in
both The Man of Law’s Tale and Emaré is the king’s mother, while in
“Girl Without Hands” it is the very devil himself. Although Constance is never
disfigured like the title character in “Girl Without Hands,” scholars interpret
the father cutting off his daughter’s hands in the Grimms’ tale as symbolic of
incest. This interpretation more closely aligns “Girl Without Hands” with the
two Constance-cycle narratives mentioned above, Vitae duorum Offarum and Emaré,
as well as with “Donkeyskin,” each of which figures incest more explicitly. (It
also brings to mind an earlier version of the Grimms’ tale found in Giambattista
Basile’s seventeenth-century compendium Il
Pentamerone. In this version, “Penta the Handless,” Penta’s trials begin
when she refuses to marry her brother.)
While both “Donkeyskin” and “Girl Without Hands” can
clearly be seen as descendents of the medieval Constance-cycle, “Girl Without
Hands” certainly has the most elements in common. Like Emaré and the princess
of York from Vitae duorum Offarum, the
heroine is molested by her father; then, like the “Constances” from all the
narratives listed above, the heroine leaves her home, marries a king, gives
birth, is betrayed through false letters, and is exiled with her child(ren),
before she is finally found once again by her loving husband.
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| Christina Ruth Johnson, Vintage Fairy Tale Sleuth |
Christina Ruth Johnson just received her Masters in Art History with a focus on the ancient Mediterranean and a side interest in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her other great love is fantasy literature from ancient times to present day.
References:
SurLaLune Fairy Tales: “Donkeyskin,” “Girl Without Hands”
eChaucer: “The Man of Law’s Tale”
TEAMS online Middle English Texts series: Emaré
Wikipedia: Vitaeduorum Offarum
Geraldine Heng, Empire
of Magic [chapter 4], 2003
Further reading:
Margaret Schlauch, Chaucer’s
Constance and Accused Queens, 1969
Christine Li-ju Tsai, “Emaré’s Fabulous Robe,” 2003: http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/
