Once upon a time, fairy tales were read to you at bedtime. Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, maybe. As you’ve grown older, you might even have encountered books from this rising genre, that of fairy tale retellings, largely catered to young adults and adults. Prevalent over the past decade, more books—and even movies—are marketed annually as retellings of fairy tales. Just take a look at this Goodreads-recommended list of 237 Beauty and the Beast retellings; the market is thriving, for sure. Although the original fairy tales are aimed at children, there is a burgeoning market for reimagined fairy tales targeting older demographics. But what is it about these retellings that make them so popular?
Warning: Mild spoilers ahead if you don’t know your fairy tales.
I. The Psychology of Magic
Fairy tales remain popular in our society because they are magical, whimsical, and better than reality. According to British medievalist and narratologist Anne Wilson, fairy tales and their retellings allow us to enter “magical thought,”: what “we all engage in when we are not making the effort to think rationally.”Wilson, Anne. “Magical Thought in Story”, Signal 36 (September, 1981): 138–151. “Happily-ever-afters” give us hope, depicting scenes of evil being vanquished and good emerging triumphant, no matter the infeasibility. The simple fairy tale logic that good is rewarded while evil always gets punished appeals to our sense of what is morally just. Perhaps this can be connected to the just-world hypothesis, a cognitive bias assuming we receive consequences based on our actions. “The Just-World Phenomenon Overview and Examples – Verywell Mind.” 9 May. 2020, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-just-world-phenomenon-2795304. In Hansel and Gretel, the child-eating witch gets a taste of her own medicine when she is pushed into her oven and roasted alive, while our innocent protagonists happily run back home.
Our need to escape reality has been analysed by French psychoanalyst Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, who wrote that “man has always endeavoured to go beyond the narrow limits of his condition.”Chasseguet-Smirgel, Janine. “Creativity and Perversion.” (1985): 61. As children, the line between reality and fantasy is often blurred, and these stories simply inspire our innocent wonder, sustaining and fuelling our belief in magical things. As adults, though we may scoff at magic that seems childish, the idea of possibilities existing outside the realm of reality can, at the very least, entertain our imaginations. Being intrigued by the possibilities of more may help us “deal effectively with the external world.” Joosen, Vanessa. “Disenchanting the Fairy Tale: Retellings of ‘Snow White’ between Magic and Realism.” Marvels & Tales 21, no. 2 (2007): 228–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41388836. Even when retellings are rooted in different settings or periods, the magic remains. Reimagined fairy tales enable us to let our imaginations run free, beyond the boundaries of reality, no matter our age. Alice enters a mirror, Jack climbs up a beanstalk into a land of giants, Cinderella finds out she has a fairy godmother, who helps her attend the ball of her dreams. In this way, fairy tales and their retellings require us to be vulnerable and to be receptive to the possibility of magic—asking us to (temporarily) return to being wide-eyed children.
II. Modernising Values
Fairy tales deliver messages that resonate acutely with us, both as children and as adults. In original fairy tales, core societal values are highlighted: being good equates to having a happy ending. It’s not a complex thesis-level message; they are statements we can easily agree with. Cinderella’s virtuous nature eventually wins her the prince; by contrast, her stepsisters’ evil natures cause them to face gruesome punishments—their eyes get pecked out by birds, and their feet get hacked to bits.
Retellings, despite all their uncensored gore, similarly impact us with direct, powerful messages. On top of that, retellings modernise the values that original fairy tales promote. The original fairy tales, coming from a more patriarchal time, framed the passiveness of the female protagonist positively (think Snow White, Sleeping Beauty… etc). Many fairy tale retellings today subscribe to a feminist view, with the heroine being given more agency and power in deciding her happy ending.
Snow White retellings are amongst the most popular fairy tale retellings today. The female characters—Snow White herself, and the Evil Queen—are given agency through their ability to make their own decisions and their characterization by more than just their physical traits. In the original fairy tale, the Evil Queen’s actions are based on her desire to be the most beautiful woman in the land. We can interpret this as an attempt to please her husband, where her vanity does not stem from an inherent fault in her nature but manifests from the society she lives in—a society in which the male gaze is pervasive, even in private spaces such as the Evil Queen’s mirror, which only aids her obsession over appearances. In contrast, retellings like Mellisa Bashadoust’s Girls Made of Snow and Glass is a story from the perspective of the female characters, where they vie for more than physical beauty and the love of a man.
Fairy tales are didactic, presenting the morals of their period to the children who consume these stories Zipes, Jack. “The Cultural Evolution of Storytelling and Fairy Tales: Human Communication and Memetics.” The Irresistible Fairy Tale, 2012, 3. https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691153384.003.0001.. Retellings’ subversions of the original story may be done directly, through direct overwriting, or more subtly, through the addition of elements that criticise the traditional values presented within the original fairy tale. By following the plot or concept of the original fairy tale, but adding in new values, modern retellings reflect and emphasise how societal values have changed over time.
III. Hovering Between Nostalgia and Tantalising Unpredictability
Moreover, fairy tales are comforting because of their repetitiveness, such that we always know what to always expect: a happy ending Hart, Carina. “Gothic Folklore and Fairy Tale: Negative Nostalgia.” Gothic Studies 22, no. 1 (March 1, 2020): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2020.0034.. The nostalgia and longing we have for a happy story is not a strange concept—think of the recent surge of Disney movies that have been, or are slated, for rebooting. In recent years, we have had almost scene-by-scene repeats of classic Disney fairy tales: Cinderella, or Beauty and the Beast. There have even been reboot attempts with a twist; fairy tale retellings such as Maleficent, the story of Sleeping Beauty told through the perspective of the villain.
As such, fairy tale retellings, unlike the original fairy tales, are popular because of their ability to spin away from the predictability of the standard plot. Retellings give us the uncensored versions of fairy tales and change certain elements of the original, not only giving us the pleasurable suspense of waiting for the glass shoe to drop. The Twelve Dancing Princesses, with its simple plot, can easily be transformed into a haunting gothic novel (check out Erin Craig’s House of Salt and Sorrow). Readers enter retellings knowing the original fairy tale plot but remain entertained by the unexpected twists given by modern-day writers. The main charm of retellings might be the way they twist predictable endings, offering a fascinatingly different perspective to previously innocent stories.
Retellings give us the uncensored versions of fairy tales and change certain elements of the original, not only giving us the pleasurable suspense of waiting for the glass shoe to drop.
A classic favourite is Disney’s The Little Mermaid, which has also been adapted into countless fairy tale retellings. Many of us grew up with the Disney version of The Little Mermaid. The little mermaid meets her prince on land, and, despite having to face the sea witch, eventually gets to still live with her prince happily ever after. There’s probably some nostalgia involved in watching Ariel sing “Part of Your World” with all of her worldly 16-year-old knowledge. It is unlikely we grew up with the other version, our parents reading the original Danish Han Christian Anderson version to us at bedtime and explaining how the little mermaid turned into sea foam, tragically failing to win her prince’s heart. The Little Mermaid is a clear example of how many children’s fairy tales are censored; we only learn the graphic truth when we are older, the dark undertones of our childhood tales fully fleshed out. Retellings mean our fairy tales get to grow up alongside us. Take Alexandra Christo’s To Kill a Kingdom, a dark retelling that casts our little mermaid as a lethal siren turned human, a retelling fashioned from the original Grimm version. While we might have been drawn to fairy tale retellings because of nostalgia, we stay for the uncensored versions that intrigue us.
IV. SATISFYING
Finally, fairy tale retellings satisfy our cravings to just know more. Most original fairy tales are short—the bare minimum is given, with little to no character development or worldbuilding. After all, most of these stories were transcribed from oral recitations, a tradition common to past communities. Now, authors are no longer restricted to the remembered word; pen and paper, or even technology, can give life to a much more vibrant, fully fleshed out world. Christo’s To Kill a Kingdom introduces us to a magical underwater kingdom, full of political intrigue and power struggles for the protagonist to wade through including a rebellion against her Sea Queen-mother, and the relations between the human nations on land.
Furthermore, authors aren’t just confined to singular books: many successful YA novels are duologies or even trilogies. The Princesses of Westfalin Trilogy by Jessica Day George is a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, that also adds elements of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood to the second and third novels in the series, respectively, with a different princess sister as the lead. Through a series of novels set in the same location with the same family, George creates a whole new land for readers to immerse themselves in, all based on old fairy tales, merging elements of different interconnected stories to lead to a satisfying end.
Moreover, in retellings, authors have—and eagerly take—the liberty to fully develop characters; some retellings have given us the backstories of original fairy tale villains, casting a new light on their actions. Recall Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Its ruler, the Queen of Hearts, was a comical, evil character; the bad guy whom children booed at in contrast to Alice and her companions. Yet, Marissa Meyer’s Heartless reimagines the Queen of Hearts as a young girl who slowly and distressingly descends into madness. The villain is humanised, rather than demonised. In this way, the characters can no longer be easily stereotyped as “evil.” As children, morally ambiguous characters might have been harder to understand and accept, but as adults, we recognise the reality of such characters and can sympathise. Similarly, Snow White’s Evil Queen is given more complexity as she turns from a character-driven only by her need to be beautiful, to one who is wrongly accused of superficiality and being a terrible stepmother in Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird. Fairy tale retellings expand the story for us, drawing the adult reader in by telling us more about the characters we thought we knew and loved, or even hated—which, older now, we can appreciate more deeply.
BUT… Western-Centric?
However, while the rise of fairy tale retellings is popular due to the aforementioned reasons, there are problems with the genre too. Despite touting values like feminism, much of the criticism surrounding retellings stem from other values being overlooked, such as diversity. Many of the retellings that have been published and promoted to young readers as “classics” of childhood are often based on the same few fairy tales stemming from European oral traditions. A large pool of “classic” fairy tales stem from the collection of the Brothers Grimm, stories that originated from a wide range of sources—including Germanic, Scandinavian and even Irish oral folklore. Denecke, L.. “Brothers Grimm.” Encyclopedia Britannica, December 29, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Brothers-Grimm. To put it bluntly, it’s a very white genre. Eurocentric fairy tales are the main focus of many retellings you would find at your local English-speaking bookstore.
Many other cultures have their fairy tales and folklore to pass down. Yet, in the broader cultural landscape, the growing dominance of the English language and English-speaking cultures in the world means it’s more likely that these European stories that have been absorbed into English books arrive at bookstores around the world, rather than the other way around.
Fairy tales spanning from other parts of the world can, and should, also be read by others outside their culture. One solution to the dominance of Euro-American stories circulating the Anglophone world would be to actively produce more compilations of translated fairy tales from all over the world, another would be to incorporate them into the aforementioned popular retellings.
It would be remiss not to note how cultures around the world interact and inspire one another: one of Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli’s internationally-successful films is Ponyo (2008)—a film loosely based on The Little Mermaid, but inculcates Japanese culture and values in plot and animation.
Concluding Thoughts
Fairy tale retellings are fun to read. Typically located under the Young Adult genre, fairy tale retellings give us twists on plot, personality, and even ideas. Through fairy tales retold, we bring a bit of our childhood with us to adulthood—tales that stay evergreen whilst we never stop growing. Through modernising values and questioning social traditions and stereotypes, fairy tale retellings serve as effective critiques of society, “stories that try to find the truth and give us glimpses of greater things.”Warner, Marina. Once Upon a Time: A Short Story of Fairy Tale. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Ironically, it’s through these popular retellings that we can see how dark some of the fairy tales we grew up with actually were. Fairy tales are often seen as perfect and innocent—these are but an illusion. But fret not, this does not mean the magic of fairy tales is lost to us. A new kind of magic has emerged instead, one that opens our eyes to the reality of the world.
Recommendations
Feminist retellings
- The Bloody Chamber (Angela Carter)
- Girls Made of Snow and Glass (Melissa Bashardoust)
- Boy, Snow, Bird (Helen Oyeyemi)
- The Robber Bride (Margaret Atwood)
Non-Western retellings
- The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)
- Shadow of the Fox (Julie Kagawa)
- The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (Neil Gaiman & Yoshitaka Amano)
