Tales Charles Perrault Was Responsible for Collecting

¶ … Tales

Charles Perrault was responsible for collecting and adapting many of the fairy tales best known to contemporary audiences, and his collection of Stories or Fairy Tales from Past Times with Morals, also known as Mother Goose Tales, offers a unique insight into both the evolution of fairy tales in general and the socio-political context of Perrault's own writing. In particular, Perrault's use of domesticated and wild animals in certain tales shed light on the gender and class conflicts that under-gird both the stories themselves and Perrault's own historical context. By performing a close reading of Perrault's "Little Red Riding Hood," "Puss in Boots," and "Donkeyskin," one can see how Perrault uses domestic and wild animals in order to reinforce notions of gender that idealized male autonomy and proactivity while condemning female exploration, in addition to simultaneously supporting the preexisting class structure that impoverished the majority while rewarding the nobility; furthermore, because Perrault's sexist treatment of male and female characters is so blatant, this essay will serve the secondary purpose of demonstrating the importance of considering class relations in fairy tales, because the reification of oppressive class distinctions is arguably more pervasive and pernicious than the almost laughably obvious reifications of sexist ideologies, which have already been criticized by a number of scholars.

Methodology

Before discussing Perrault's tales in detail, it will be necessary to first discuss the methodology with which this analysis will progress, if only because fairy and folk tales have, for at least the last century, been considered a form of literature somehow apart from all others that demands a particular approach. There is something to be said for fairy tales' status as a distinct form of literature with their own internal logic and narrative rules, but they are not so different from other forms of literature that they necessarily demand an entirely different mode of analysis (Uther (1), 259). Furthermore, even as most readers would probably have little difficulty in deciding whether or not any given story is a fairy tale, "almost all endeavors by scholars to define the fairy tale as a genre have failed […] because the genre is so volatile and fluid" (Zipes 222). Thankfully, in the case of Perrault, the title of his collections clearly identifies the stories as fairy tales, and so questions of genre identification are tangential in the context of this study. While the goal of this essay is not to discount or criticize the way in which fairy tales have been previously studied, because this essay will employ a different methodology than has been most common, it is necessary to first discuss the history of fairy and folk tale criticism, if only to more comfortably and critically diverge from it.

In many ways the first serious examination of folk and fairy tales may be considered the work of Perrault and others, because although Perrault intended his stories for publication and entertainment, he was also performing a kind of anthropological study in that his Mother Goose Tales consisted of older tales which had previously only been passed down as part of the oral tradition. In fact, one may view Perrault, the Grimm Brothers, and Giovanni Straporola as the first theorists of the folk tale, because each recorded the tales of their respective countries (France, Germany, and Italy, respectively). However, it is important to note that not all researchers agree with the importance given to the oral tradition in studies of fairy and folk tales, and in fact, there are some who suggest that the apparent ubiquity of certain repeated tales has less to do with a widespread oral transmission and more to do with the success of published works like Perrault's (Bottigheimer 449; Zipes 223). Nevertheless, as a result of the inherently anthropological nature of these early collections, early fairy tale "authors" like Perrault inspired the theorists and critics of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, who went beyond the mere collection of tales and began comparing them to each other in an attempt to identify the earliest variations of each one.

The beginning of the twentieth century saw the publication of two books that transformed the way fairy and folk tales were considered by academia. The first was the tale type index of Antti Aarne, which sought to organize all extant folk tales according to certain textual and thematic features under the belief that the wide variety of folk tales could nevertheless be categorized according to a (relatively) few different types. The index was eventually expanded by Stith Thompson, such that it is now referred to as the Aarne-Thompson classification system (Uther (2), 1-2). Any given fairy or folk tale may be identified with an Aarne-Thompson number, which indicates that this story includes whatever narrative content referred to by that number. For example, "Little Red Riding Hood" has the Aarne-Thompson number 333, because it corresponds to the category of "supernatural opponents," while "Puss in Boots" has the number 545 in accordance with its titular characters' status as an "animal helper" (Kaplanoglou 57; Al-rawi 31).

At the same time that Stith Thompson was expanding Aarne's original index, Vladimir Propp was formulating his Morphology of the Folktale, which sought to organize Russian folktales in manner similar to Aarne's index. However, Propp went further than simple classification, and attempted to "make an examination of the forms of the tale which will be as exact as the morphology of organic formations" (Propp xxv). Instead of looking at the surface-level narrative content (which much of the Aarne-Thompson index relies on), Propp examined the underlying functional purpose of any given character as well as the narrative movements performed within any given tale. Thus, instead of focusing on whether a particular character was an animal, an imaginary creature, or a person, he tended to look at the function they performed within the story. As such, Puss in Boots' status as an animal would matter less than the assistance he performs for his master.

Although the end result of Propp's work was an index of his own, his attempt to formulate a more robust means of examining different fairy and folk tales independent of their surface-level content; obviously, there is some overlap between Propp's categories and the Aarne-Thompson index, but for the most part Propp's morphology represents a more intense exercise in literary theory than the Aarne-Thompson index. The main advantage of Propp's work over the Aarne-Thompson index is that Propp did not attempt to assign a single category to any given tale, but rather identified movements and meaningful narrative segments that might included in a tale; thus, where the Aarne-Thompson index sometimes arbitrarily distinguishes between tales simply because the indexer decided to favor one element over another such that, for example, "Little Red Riding Hood" counts as a tale of "supernatural opponents" rather than "wild animals and humans," a critic could use Propp's morphology to analyze each aspect of the tale without attempting to assign it to any single category.

Having said all this, the current study will use neither the Aarne-Thompson index nor Propp's morphology, because neither are particularly helpful when attempting to determine the ideological content of Perrault's stories. Again, this is not to suggest that this strain of investigation is not worthwhile in other contexts, but rather to acknowledge that one may study fairy and folk tales without necessarily having to address their relation to every other fairy and folk tale in existence, which is essentially the underlying point of both extant systems of categorization. That is to say, while it is interesting that "Puss in Boots" has correlaries in the folk tales of central Asia, this information will not provide much insight into how "Puss in Boots" reinforces notions of gender and class superiority (Kaplanoglou 57).

Furthermore, while the Aarne-Thompson index includes an entire section related to wild and domestic animals, these classifications actually provide little insight into how wild and domestic animals are actually used in fairy tales. Thus, for this examination of how Perrault uses wild and domestic animals in his tales, it is necessary to forgo an analysis based in the categorical systems of Aarne, Thompson, and Propp, and instead examine the texts directly via a close reading. However, it was necessary to provide this brief history of fairy tales and their treatment in academic study, if only to better contextualize this essay's analysis within the extant literature.

Analysis

Perrault's first collection of tales was published in 1694, but it was not until 1697 that a second edition was published which included the most famous of his tales, including "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Puss in Boots." The other story to be examined here, "Donkeyskin," was included in the first edition. Although Perrault's collection has subsequently become the most famous, it is worth noting that the 1690s saw a relative explosion in the publication of fairy tales (Weinshenker 493). In fact, the French term for fairy tale, conte de fees, did not exist until Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy labeled her own collection of stories with the term (Zipes 222-223). Soon, however, the notion of the literary fairy tale became a popular topic in French salons, and so Perrault found an eager and receptive audience for his collection (Zipes 223).

Perrault himself was part of the Paris literati, having been born into a wealthy family, and was already an important figure in the Academie francaise well before his stories were published; although the collection was initially published under his son Pierre's name, there was and is little doubt that it was Charles who actually wrote the tales (Zipes 224; Ashliman 2012). Previously he had served as secretary to the finance minister of Louis XIV, and thus was deeply entrenched in the dominant power structures of the day above and beyond the culture industry that existed as part of the literary and social scene of Paris. While biography is not absolutely necessary for understanding the ideological content of a work, in the case of Perrault it is especially useful because the stories under discussion here present a clear reification of the same ideological standards that under-girded the French social and political reality of the 1690s, and which have continued to influence contemporary society.

Having provided a brief introduction to the political and social realities of the context of Perrault's writing, it is now possible to address his tales directly in order to see how his use of wild and domestic animals reinforced the gender and class standards of the day. One may as well begin with arguably the most well-known of his tales, "Little Red Riding Hood." Before one even addresses the wolf, it is useful to note how Little Red Riding Hood herself is portrayed almost entirely in reference to her physical beauty; while this is a fairly obvious marker of patriarchal ideology, and persists to this day, it is nevertheless instructive to point out that literally the first sentence of the story introduces "a little village girl, the prettiest you ever saw" (Perrault 30). Little Red Riding Hood is presented as woefully ignorant, as she "did not know that it is dangerous to stop and chat with wolves," and in Perrault's version of the story, this ignorance leads to the death of both her and her grandmother (Perrault 30).

The wolf, on the other hand, is clever and tricky, and manages to outsmart Little Red Riding Hood, thus reinforcing the notion of the naive, ignorant girl corrupted and destroyed by the wider world. While most analyses of the story tend to focus on the sexual innuendo of the wolf's interactions with Little Red Riding Hood, and particularly the moment where the wolf tells Little Red Riding Hood to get into bed with him, there is actually a subtext of class distinction that tends to go unnoticed (Duggan 211; Perrault 33). This focus on the sexual is entirely understandable, particularly because Perrault has a demonstrated tendency to force his female characters to undergo "a penitential process of abjectification and purification" (Duggan 211). In fact, this process will come into play when discussing "Donkeyskin," but for now it will be more productive to demonstrate how the wolf functions as a kind of subtle criticism of the lower classes, particularly because the sexist content of "Little Red Riding Hood" is so obvious that discussing it any further would be a waste of space.

To understand how the wolf functions as a kind of symbol for the lower classes, one must consider other of Perrault's stories, because only within the context of other tales does the ideological function of the deceiving, shape-changing (in that he dresses up as the grandmother) wolf become clear. In short, Perrault seems to view peasants and other lower-class people as inherently dishonest and untrustworthy, and this view of the lower classes is made evident in his use of wild animals, including the wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood." Obviously, the wolf is dishonest and untrustworthy, but to understand how this connects to the lower class, one must consider the wolf's behavior in conjunction with other dishonest, shape-changing characters in "Puss in Boots" and "Donkeyskin."

In "Puss in Boots," the titular cat manages to secure a castle for his master by tricking an ogre into turning into a mouse and then eating him. Although the ogre is "the richest anyone had ever known," he is nevertheless an ogre, and as such his wealth and his castle are not considered to be rightfully his in the same way that a noble or king's property might belong to him (Perrault 50). As such, Puss can quite unproblematically murder the ogre and steal his lands in order to give them to his master, which results in a happy ending for the young man who thus far has done nothing but listen to the directions of his cat. However, in the context of class relations and Perrault's use of wild animals to represent the lower classes, the most important element of the story is the fact that the ogre can change into different animals, although the only two shown in the story are a lion and a mouse.

In both instances, the animals that the ogre changes into is contrasted with Puss himself, who is presented as a kind of idealized servant, clever but never rebellious, and adventurous without being truly dangerous (Perrault 50-51). The lion and the mouse essentially represent wild extremes of the common house-cat, as the mouse is the cat's prey while the lion is the exaggerated, dangerous version of the cat. Thus, the ogre, whose wealth and power are already shown to be illegitimate, also reveals himself to be a kind of trickster due to his ability to turn into wild animals, in the same way that the wild animal of the wolf transforms into Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother. The notion of wild animals and the lower classes as dishonest, dangerous, and ever-changing is only heightened by the fact that Puss is able to get the peasants to change their allegiance to his master by threatening to cut them up (Perrault 50).

However, the best example of the wild animal serving as a stand-in for the lower classes comes from "Donkeyskin," wherein a princess is forced to don a donkey's skin in order to avoid being forced to marry her father. Once again, Perrault demonstrates the sexist ideology of 1690s France by forcing the central female character to undergo a process of penitence, even though the only thing she has done "wrong" is manage to be as beautiful as her mother (Perrault 111). In order to escape her father's advances, the princess asks for the skin of his prized donkey, which has heretofore made the kind rich by leaving droppings of pure gold, under the assumption that he will not grant her this wish.

However, he is so overcome with lust that he does, and thus the princess is forced to don the donkey skin in order to hide her beauty (Perrault 111). She hides, assuming the station of a peasant, until she is eventually married to a prince after a convenient mishap involving a lost ring. What is most important about this story is the fact that the princess uses the donkey's skin to adopt the station of a peasant, because this creates an immediate connection between animals and the lower classes while reinforcing the notion of dishonesty and skin-changing as an inherent characteristic of these classes.

While one might be inclined to argue that "Donkeyskin" contradicts the connection between wild animals and the lower classes due to the fact that the donkey is not wild, but rather domesticated, this ignores an important distinction; namely, that the donkey only exists as a "domesticated" animal until its death, and afterward it has effectively transformed into a wild animal in that its skin has been changed into clothing. That is to say, within the context of Perrault's stories, domesticated animals tend to remain alive and in their place, whereas wild animals, including the ogre and the wolf, are those animals responsible for changing their shape. Thus, one may reasonably interpret the donkey's death as a kind of transition from domestic animal to wild animal, because he has effectively stopped functioning as a domestic animal, whose worth is validated by its life, into a wild animal, who represents nothing but danger and deceit.

The example of the donkey further helps to demonstrate how Perrault's class distinctions are ultimately supported and reinforced by his gender distinctions. The wolf in "Little Red Riding Hood" represents precisely the same kind of sexually aggressive and dangerous male as the king in "Donkeyskin," and because the king allows his sexual urges to "lower" him to the level of the wolf, he ends up losing his main source of income. Thus, even though he remains a king, his "lower-class" urges cause him to lose his fortune.

Instead of this kind of sexually-aggressive male, Perrault suggests that the idealized male will be forward and active but not aggressive, as in the case of Puss and his master. Puss and his master are both deceptive, but neither of them ever actually change their skin or appearance, and their savoir faire is enough to warrant their acceptance into the nobility (Perrault 51-52). The case of "Puss in Boots" is particularly useful for understanding Perrault's stance on the class divisions between the peasantry and the nobility, because the story seems to suggest that nobility is not something inherent, but rather something earned.