Essay by Melania Prosyankina

“Liberty, equality, fraternity” is a motto known to everyone nowadays, as it reflects the principles of  most modern societies and countries. However, our character was not familiar with it, and would have probably condemn us of lacking Catholic and monarchical faith. Charles Perrault… An inarguable name of a brilliant story-teller and founder of the genre of fairy tales. In this work we are going to consider the reminiscence of his original masterpieces in a contemporary culture with an example of “The Sleeping Beauty”.

Fairy tales are usually conceived as a childish genre today, though initially they belong to folklore. Furthermore, some tales we are aware of often have nothing to do with neither juvenile literature, nor folk. Perrault's works are debatable in this regard, as the end of the 17^th century was an epoch when preciosity was inseparable from aristocracy, thus allowing infamous salon writers to modify the folk versions beyond recognition. Nevertheless, those literary tales were constructed to ironically and wittily to entertain and convey Christian morality to the audience.

The plot of “The Sleeping Beauty” has found a lot of reproductions, including Disney's interpretation about a princess who can be saved by genuine mutual love. In this case, the second part of the original tale is forgotten by the public, which obstructs the freedom of interpretation and makes the story disconnected from its values. Perrault's “beauty” is concerned not by love, but by the questions of male authority and female penance. For instance, the authentic version does not ends by the awakening: the prince has two children with the Beauty. Some differences in meaning can be noticed by means of comparison with those who had influenced Perrault religiously.

Tertullian in particular had been the one who played a tremendous role in the writer's conception of women and their relation to disobedience and sin. In his work “ The Apparel”  he states that women should not wear fine clothing, but they should dress "in mourning garments ... acting the part of mourning and repentant Eve in order to expiate more fully by all sorts of penitential garb that which woman derives from Eve…” These ideas can be found in an authentic text of Perrault’s tale. In the beginning the princess is blessed by six fairies to be “ the most beautiful person in the world”, to “ have the disposition of an angel”, to “sing like a nightingale” etc. However, after the hundred-year-sleep there is no description of her at all, as she has passed through a process of purification that redeems the inherent sin and renders her powerless and completely subordinate to male power and authority.

The second part of “ The sleeping beauty” considers the opposition of “good” and “evil” women through antithesis of the princess and her mother-in-law. In modern interpretations it is jealousy that impels the Evil to send the Beauty to sleep. However, Perrault had depicted the queen-mother's motive to kill her grandchildren as her ogress-urge to devour them. At the end, the Evil hurls herself in the pot with “ repulsive reptiles” and dies. The figure of the mother-in-law is still open to interpret.

To conclude, I would like to emphasize that Perrault has been a crucial part of our   culture, and if not based on folklore, has become one today. His works may cause lots of discussions among many groups, his morals might be controversial, but as responsible and mindful reader one should take into account not the modern vision, but the specific context. Only then one can truly enjoy and find something renewed in the well-known works by Charles Perrault.