Fiday Five: Books Read in October

1. Medusa by Jessie Burton (Bloomsbury) - Supposedly a feminist retelling of the Greek myth from Medusa's perspective, this is fairly simplistic and reads as young adult fiction. Medusa meets Perseus on an island; they talk from either side of a rock, tell each other their stories and fall in love. They hold hands but never see each other, indicating that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Medusa wonders, “I thought of what it might mean to have a boy admire you, not for how you looked, but for who you were. For your thoughts and your deeds, your fears and your dreams. Was such a miracle to be my inheritance?” It’s what every young adult wants to hear, but it is not achievable. She also claims, “When beauty’s assigned you as a girl, it somehow becomes the essence of your being. It takes over everything else you might be. When you’re a boy, it never dominates who you can be.” This is true, in a world of binaries, and the pair assert agency over their own ‘myth’. Both Medusa and Perseus have been manipulated by the Fates and gods, questioning how much control does one have over one’s destiny? Medusa claims her name is Mirena, which means both duality and strength (and is also the name of the Queen of the Amazons and a contraceptive device). The novella is an introduction to telling one's own story, creating an identity, and learning that an individual can be more than one thing. Medusa revels in the new-found knowledge, “I was growing accustomed to this new sensation of uncomfortable compromises, of living in the grey areas of life, rather than the starker strips of black and white I’d believed in as a child.” It's an entertaining read of self-discovery more akin to the Percy Jackson novels than Natalie Haynes' works.
2. Frogkisser! by Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin) - This is a fantasy/ fairytale mash-up in which young Princess Anya has to go on a quest to restore the kingdom and save her sister, Morven. There is a lot of hokum about collecting ingredients such as a pint of witches' tears and three-day-old hail stones to make a Reversal Lip Balm. With this balm she can kiss the frogs that have been transformed by her evil stepstepfather (her stepmother remarried after her father died) back into their original shape, including the hapless Prince Denholm, with whom Morven has fallen in love. She sets out accompanied by a loyal dog, Ardent, who is easily distracted by food, and falls in with an apprentice thief, Shrub, who has been transformed into an orange newt, and Bert, short for Roberta, leader of the Association of Responsible Robbers who steal from the rich and give to the poor. Bert tells Anya that their ethos is about "making sure that those who have too much do some sharing with those who have too little, and it isn't always just about valuable things like money or even basic things like food. It is also about sharing power and opportunities." Anya doesn't understand this as she is a princess and has always had unrecognised privilege. This is clearly a Life Lesson, and is handled in a rather clunky fashion. As Anya completes her quest, meeting several characters and learning self-awareness, there are nods to Narnia and the Discworld novels but without the complexity of the former or the satirical light touch of the latter. It's fine, but largely forgettable. 
3. Hagitude by Sharon Blackie (September Publishing) -From the author of If Women Rose Rooted, which examined women’s connection to the natural world, comes Hagitude, a reimagining of the second half of life; menopause and how it affects women along with society’s expectations. As with the previous book, Blackie uses the archetypes of Jungian philosophy, and mythical tales to explain her theories. She begins by explaining the negative portrayal of ageing in Western culture. “Older women, when they’re not rendered completely invisible, are still trivialised and marginalised, and often actively ridiculed.” Unlike some of the legends from cultures which revere and respect elders with their gifts of wisdom, our tales of old women suggest they are something to be shunned, and the ageing process must be avoided at all costs. Much of this fear of the old woman can be ascribed to the ‘witch wound’ as many  women fear not conforming to the narrow expectations of society. Due to the witch trials and their associations, many women were culturally oppressed and modified their behaviours to escape unwanted and dangerous attention, and “to avoid being overly visible. Young women are enamoured with sparkly witches and spooky glam, but that is not the connection to nature and the earth that appeals to menopausal women. Blackie makes an interesting case for menopause being like a crucible in which the fire burns through to the heart and essence of the human, just as she quotes Michaelangelo talking of his sculpture, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” By considering the body as a thing that carries us, rather than the totality of who we are, she raises some thoughtful propositions and encourages a refreshing outlook.
4. So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (Faber) - A very short work (a mere 47 pages) in which Cathal, at the end of his working day, reflects on his relationship with his ex-fiancée, Sabine, a French gallery worker. The economy and efficiency of language is remarkable as it paints pictures that lodge in the brain far more than wordier works of fiction. From the opening sentence - “On Friday, July 29^th, Dublin got the weather that was forecast.” - with its hints of mundanity and brilliance, we know what to expect. Like Joyce, Proust or Woolf, the commonplace is juxtaposed with the specific in a slightly unsettling way. The construction of sentences and the use of verbs to shorten actions - “He took up the coffee, leaving before he sugared it" - gives it a lyrical lilt and an immediacy I also noticed recently in Paul Lynch’s work – it is an Irish thing? Keegan introduces feelings and emotions in the description of events. We learn that the narrator is mean and petty as he remembers an evening with Sabine in terms of value. “She took a long shower then and changed and drank a full litre of Evian over a Chinese which he’d had to order, over the phone. The restaurant charged four euros for delivery." He expects some reward for being kind – “Did I not order your dinner tonight and pay for it? Did I not buy all those cherries for your fancy tart? And haven’t I helped you here all day, moving all your stuff?” It is powerful to make the narrator so unsympathetic halfway through the novella, noting that the story was originally published in French under the title Misogynie. This is a tense tale without hyperbole or dramatic effects, but it resonates in a disturbing way as it questions what men really want from women and whether we have made any significant progress in gender equality.
5. Dark Queen Rising by Paul Doherty (Crème de la Crime) -Dark Queen Rising is billed as a murder mystery with a meticulously researched political and historical setting. In the later fifteenth century, while the House of Lancaster is in disarray (King Henry VI is locked in the Tower of London; his wife Margaret of Anjou and their son, Prince Edward are captured and imprisoned), the House of York is rampant and the three brothers Edward (later King Edward IV), George (Duke of Clarence), and Richard (Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III) are at war amongst themselves. The novel is full of set pieces and action; double crossing and espionage; smuggling and disguises; secret passages and hidden doorways. The immediate mystery is that people are found dead in room locked and bolted from the inside with the key turned. This leads to the search for a document - the Titus Regulus - containing secret ciphers, that could change attitudes to the right of succession. The problem is that “No one really knows what the ‘Titulus Regius’ truly is, where it’s hidden, or what form it takes.” It falls to Christopher Urswick, the personal clerk of Margaret of Beaufort (married to Edmund Tudor, half-brother to Henry VI of England – due to having the same mother, Katherine of Valois) to solve the mystery. Doherty writes in his notes that, “Some people even regard Urswick as the founder of the British Secret Service", and there is plenty of chaos and suspicion as people are constantly swapping loyalties, and death is everywhere.

Bedtime stories: Witches Abroad

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

Corgi Books

Pp.286

This, the twelfth novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, is the second that revolves specifically around the three witches: Granny Weatherwax; Nanny Ogg and Magrat. In Wyrd Sisters, readers were introduced to these characters, and it is a delight to welcome them back like old friends. Magrat inherits a wand from Desiderata so she must become a fairy godmother and interfere in stories: she can’t help but turn things into pumpkins and she tries to stop Embers from going to the ball and marrying a prince, who is, in fact, a frog. Stories have power because they inform belief, and those who control the narrative have the greatest power of all.

It transpires that Granny Weatherwax has a sister, Lily – now calling herself Lilith – who wants to force people into enacting the stereotypes of the fairytales, living in a land where everyone must be happy whether they like it or not. Lily lets several stories happen simultaneously; like the evil queen who appears in the mirror, she uses mirror magic as a form of control. She has her own form of power (is she the good or the bad witch, and which one does that make Granny Weatherwax?). “She had buried three husbands, and at least two of them had been already dead.” Pratchett touches upon myths and legends as well as fairytales, so Circe, Bluebeard, Casanova, vampires and the Wizard of Oz intermingle with Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, the Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Bears, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty – “There’ll be a spinning wheel at the bottom of all this, you mark my words.”

As the witches set off to right the wrongs of the world, they learn about the structure of stories: “Three was an important number for stories. Three wishes, three princes, three billy goats, three guesses… three witches. The maiden, the mother and the… other one. That was one of the oldest stories of all.” Naturally, not all these conventions are true, for example, “The natural size of a coven is one. Witches only get together when they can’t avoid it.” Meanwhile, Nanny Ogg sends postcards home to our Jason, about what it’s like to be abroad or in foreign parts (where they do odd things like ‘drink fizzy wine out of ladies’ boots’) and obviously the structure and convention of writing postcards is its own artform – sadly, practically lost in 2023.

Granny Weatherwax dislikes stories because she thinks they are unnatural, and they try to make people conform. “You get too involved with stories, you get confused. You don’t know what’s really real and what isn’t. And they get you in the end. They send you weird in the head. I don’t like stories. They’re not real. I don’t like things that ain’t real.” She explains the laissez-faire approach to life. “You can’t go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it’s just a cage.” One could contend that she (and by association Pratchett) is arguing against interventional socialism. “No more stories. No more godmothers. Just people, deciding for themselves. For good or bad. Right or wrong.” Or one could just enjoy it as a right rollicking story of witches abroad.

Thorny Issues: Briar Rose

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen

Tor

Pp. 281

Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose is one of a series of re-told fairy-tales created by Terri Windling, who states in the foreword, “For countless centuries, storytellers have used the richly symbolic language of fairy tales to explore all the dark, and bright, and shades of gray of the human experience. Jane Yolen knows this better than most. And does it better than most.” Yolen takes the story of Briar Rose (also known as Sleeping Beauty) and links it to the Holocaust in ways that seems perfectly feasible while simultaneously fantastical. It is a Young Adult novel, with simplistic and unrealistic plot devices and characterisation, but it is also interesting reading for anyone who understands the power of the land of make believe.

Rebecca Berlin (Becca) is a young woman who has grown up hearing her grandmother (Gemma), always telling the same story, Briar Rose, in exactly the same words. No one knows much about Gemma, but after her death, Becca finds a box of personal effects which leads her to think there may be a war-time past. Her editor, Stan, encourages her to go to Poland to seek out the mysterious past of her grandmother. With the ease of stories over reality, he arranges her travel and translator through his journalistic contacts, so that when Becca reaches Poland she is assisted by a woman named Magda an incredibly hospitable tour-guide, translator, and unlocker of gates both literal and metaphoric.

They conveniently find a man, Josef Potocki, who knows Gemma’s story, which he relates to them in the middle third of the book – a story within a story, within a story. It transpires that the castle is a concentration camp, the brambles are barbed wire, the sleeping beauty is gassed, and the prince’s kiss is the breath of life. Tales are told as a means of coping with events, and if they are painful and don’t provide relief, one wonders what is the point. Becca is desperate to paint herself as the heroine in this tale; the Cinderella of the story. She can’t wait to return to America and boast to her sisters that she found the truth, even though they thought she was crazy for trying – yes, there are two of them with similar names (Sylvia and Shana) and she is the youngest.

The fairy-tale tropes loom large throughout the novel, and the narration is tightly constructed at the expense of character. This is satisfying in and of itself, and true to the genre. It may read like a creative writing challenge, but it certainly passes the test it has set itself.

The Rose Bower from the Briar Rose series (1885-1890) by Edward Burne-Jones 

Friday Five: Books Read in July

By sheer coincidence it appears that I have read five books in July, and that red features quite prominently in the covers. Here, then, are brief overviews (full reviews to follow later).

5 Books Read in July:

1. To Calais in Ordinary Time by James Meek (Canongate) - Mixing elements of The Canterbury Tales and Shakespearean comedy, this story takes place in South-West England in 1348 as a group of bowmen travel through the country from Outen Green in Gloucestershire to Calais to fight the French, while the plague is advancing steadily towards them. As the novel was published in 2019 all the reviewers drew contemporary parallels with Brexit and the existentialist threat of the climate crisis, but anyone now would automatically think of the Covid pandemic. The novel is narrated from three different people’s perspectives, and the voices are clearly different - there is much merit in juxtaposing the courtly language and behaviour of French romance with the idioms and earthy attitudes of the English soldiers, and the novel was unsurprisingly on many newspapers' 'Books of the year' lists. 
2. An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen (Picador) - this is one of those currently fashionable psychological thrillers about women behaving badly. New York psychologist, Dr Shields conducts an experiment on morality and ethics which make-up artist, Jessica wangles her way onto - fraudulently taking the place of the 'real' subject. It soon transpires that all is not as it seems (surprise!) and that everyone is manipulating each other. The two characters are meant to be written individually but they sound exactly the same, apart from one of them refers to 'you' throughout, which soon becomes intensely irritating. We are meant to find the vapid minutiae of their existence fascinating - from how they dress to what they eat - and it won't be long before someone snaps up the rights and makes another tediously glib and glossy film.  
3. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (Riverhead Books) - Every living body breathes, but it turns out that half of us are doing it wrongly. Ancient humans and Eastern mystics knew the correct methods, but modern lifestyles have ignored them leading to multiple health issues including tooth decay, sleep apnoea, anxiety, asthma, and the preponderance of choking. It may be skewed towards anecdotes and storytelling rather than academia and science (think popular American documentary podcast) but there's enough insight to challenge conventional wisdom and make the case for nasal breathing over mouth breathing.
4. The Good People by Hannah Kent (Picador) - Set in 1825 in South-West rural Ireland, this novel explores liminal spaces and inexplicable things: “The strange hinges of the world, the thresholds between what was known and all that lay beyond”. In this world many follow the ‘old’ beliefs that children (and adults) could be stolen (swept) by the fairies to be replaced by changelings. It is dripping with pathetic fallacy as the female power (herbs and agricultural lore represented by the Wise Woman) is challenged by that of the male (a priest with punishments and preaching of sin). A great one for book clubs, it gives rise to much discussion, but - as to be expected - things are pretty grim. 
5. Briar Rose: A Novel of the Holocaust by Jane Yolen (Tor) - Jane Yolen has form for taking mythical legends and fairy stories, and twisting them into contemporary tales with relevance and meaning. In this YA novel of a young woman, Becca, trying to find out more about her grandmother's mysterious past; the castle is a concentration camp; the sleeping beauty is gassed; and the prince's kiss is the breath of life. That's not a spoiler, because all of that is obvious from the title, but Yolen believes it is not the past that makes us who we are, but the way we tell our histories. Every other chapter returns to the recounting of the familiar fairy tale interspersed by Becca's explorations into the unknown; a way in which ritual can help us comprehend the horrific and inexplicable truth.

The Sting in the (Fairy) Tale: The Bee and the Orange Tree

The Bee and the Orange Tree by Melissa Ashley

Affirm Press

P. 362

Think ‘fairy tales’, and the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault are probably the names that spring to mind. What about Baroness Marie Catherine D’Aulnoy, the woman who coined the term ‘fairy tale’, and who published the very first one – The Isle of Happiness – in 1690? Probably less so. She burst onto the Parisian salon scene at age forty, a fully formed writer, and during the next decade, along with holding a salon in her home on Rue Saint-Benôit, she published thirteen books comprising novels, courtly histories, travel memoirs, two volumes of fairy tales and two sentimental pamphlets. Melissa Ashley is keen to reclaim women’s stories and make them as well recognised as those of their male counterparts, so she focuses this novel on the later years of Marie Catherine.

We are welcomed into the literary world of seventeenth-century France where writers tried out their stories and poems before a receptive audience at a salon and asked for their feedback. Marie Catherine encourages female authors and, “She had wanted to create a place where women might recite their works, rejecting the cruel satirising of female writers by famous men of letters – Molière, Boileau, Perrault. She felt it her duty to lay bare the dark and piquant potential of women unafraid of their own minds.” She advises one young protégé, “An author must be brave. You can say whatever you like in your writing. It’s your opportunity to reimagine the world as you would have it turn.”

She is justifiably proud of her tales, and enjoys creating stories of fabulous kingdoms, ageing monarchs and ambitious offspring; heroic quests; magnificent palaces; miniature worlds – many containing hidden messages of daring triumph. She is principally concerned with the plight of women and fears that marriage and children do not necessarily serve their best interests. The dichotomy of a woman needing protection yet seeking freedom is explored through the character of Angelina who leaves a convent to act as a companion to Marie Catherine. There are several anachronisms, and many other sentiments seem borrowed from our own age and grafted onto a previous time, such as gender fluidity and double standards, meritocracy and fashion influencers.

A couple of subplots feature the Affair of the Poisons and the public executions surrounding the incident at the court of Louis XIV, and Angelina’s father, who is estranged from Marie Catherine after a spell in the Bastille. The novel is written as though it expects to be read aloud, perhaps in one of the salons Marie Catherine conducts. The language is rich and the sounds of the words work well together with poetic assonance and alliteration. It builds drama and tension; then deflates it with a stroke of the pen. Catherine devotes herself so much to her art, that her language becomes that of physical creation, and her struggle with writer’s block is like a fairy-tale itself: “If it were her last act, she would again seduce the gods of story to toss their net of wonders at her feet, to strew their gifts before her, and out she would pluck one starfish, one mushroom, one invisible cloak, one prince dressed as a pauper, one naked king. Oh, she would take it all and rush, her apron lifted and bulging with treasure, back to her desk to make sense of the hoard.”

The Bee and the Orange Tree is instructional and Ashley has a clear message that she wants to impart, re-instating credit to female icons where it is due. At times the narrative is rambling and strays beyond its contemporary boundaries in its need to make satirical stings, but it can be forgiven because it is well-meaning and beautifully written.

Sense and Sensitivity

Once Upon a Mattress

Ickle Pickle Productions

Belconnen Theatre

January 2019

In the programme notes, the mission statement of Ickle Pickle Productions is plainly set out; it was ‘established to provide a wide range of original entertainment to the Canberra community, as well as performance and production opportunities for children and adults of all skill levels and experience’. The current production, Once upon a Mattress, clearly fits this remit. Everyone knows the story of the Princess and the Pea, and just in case they don’t, the opening number, Many Moons Ago, sung by the Minstrel (Elliot Cleaves with an appealing delivery), spells it out through inspired use of puppetry and song. And then the show begins, with a slightly different version.

Prince Dauntless (Isaac Gordon) needs a wife, as he is clearly in possession of a good fortune, or at least a kingdom, and the whole universe knows what that means. He is a dutiful if dopey son who spends a lot of time sitting on a bench and swinging his legs while looking totally clueless. Gordon is charming and sweet in the role, but it is evident that his attributes are capital rather than cerebral. An Opening for a Princess is a sprightly tune that indicates how all the princesses have applied for the position of bozo’s bride, but been found wanting by Queen Aggravain (Deanna Gibbs) and her sidekick the Gypsy (Sarah Hull).

This is the first indication of something rotten in the kingdom; the relationship between the mother and her son is deeply troubling, as she repels all his suitors and actually wishes she were twenty years younger, so that she could… what? That’s not nice. Her husband, King Sextimus (Joe Moores), moons about in the background chasing servant girls with plates of food across the stage in a manner that is more than a little creepy. He is mute due to a curse that cannot be lifted until ‘the mouse devours the hawk’ – the metaphor is evident.

Unfortunately, no one else in the kingdom can marry until Dauntless does, which poses a problem for Lady Larken (Alissa Pearson) and Sir Harry (Steven Galinec) as Lady Larken is pregnant. Obviously this will soon become apparent, as they allude to in the none-too-subtle duet, In a Little While, which showcases Pearson’s operatic tones. Sir Harry undertakes the challenge to find a true princess to satisfy the demanding queen, and he returns with one. This princess (Alex McPherson) comes from a watery land (she sings The Swamps of Home in a charming parody of nostalgia) and is strong and brave – she swims the moat; she lifts impressive weights; she ‘wrestles like a Greek’; she drinks ‘drinks just like a lord’ – and, so she tells us, she is shy.

Alex McPherson as Princess Winnifred

The role was originally played by Carol Burnett, who made her Broadway debut and received a Tony Award nomination for her performance. It is entirely to the credit of McPherson and director Anita Davenport that the ghost of Burnett doesn’t haunt the show. Princess Winnifred the Woebegone is nicknamed Fred, which leads to the lively pre-interval Song of Love containing the catchy refrain, ‘I’m in love with a girl called Fred’. McPherson is utterly delightful with her brash and unrefined manners, displayed alongside affection for those who need assistance, and a complete disregard for convention.

Queen Aggravain chooses a test for her based on sensitivity (apparently only a true princess could feel the presence of a pea beneath a pile of mattresses), imagining that she has none due to her rustic presentation, but even the youngest of audience members knows that Fred has genuine compassion and will pass with flying colours. McPherson and Gordon make a cute couple – they play their characters with energy and brilliance in lieu of intellect; both are sweet and affable enough that one isn’t left wondering what on earth they see in each other. When Dauntless says, ‘I like – I mean, I love you, Fred’, it seems genuine and heartfelt.

Isaac Gordon as Prince Dauntless and Alex McPherson as Princess Winnifred

Once upon a Mattress was originally a shorter play, written in 1953, that was expanded for the Broadway stage. It has remained a popular choice for high school and community theatre productions ever since, although it suffers from age and uneven tone. Davenport has cut some numbers, but the show still feels as though it could do with some tightening and pruning. Some of the songs are weak: Normandy and Spanish Panic could have been trimmed from the end of the first act with no great loss, and The Minstrel, Jester and I and Nightingale Lullaby are slightly tedious fillers. Choreography by Jodi Hammond is simple and tidy, and she creates interesting shapes which fit the varying degrees of talent and experience that she has to work with, but the big dance numbers are somewhat underwhelming.

The subplot of Sir Harry and his lady love is incongruous, and introduces a curious note. Generally the show could be considered children’s theatre: the plot is straightforward; the songs are not challenging; the characters are one-dimensional; it’s a fairy-tale world. However, there is an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and the consideration of the consequences that would have on reputations at court as Lady Larken is not so much a lady in waiting as one expecting. This, a couple of ribald references about living in sin, and the fairly painful song, Man to Man Talk, in which King Sextimus has to mime the business about the birds and the bees to his hopelessly naïve son, put this beyond the realm of the young and innocent.

The gender politics are also complicated, as they often are in shows from a time long ago and far away. Although the notion itself is repellent Davenport handles the issue of women fighting over an eligible bachelor better than many a reality TV show. She can’t overcome the misogynistic stereotype of the harridan Queen, as her character hinges on the premise that women in charge are shrill and manipulative, and the retribution that the King will exact once he has returned to his ‘rightful place’ as ruler of the kingdom leaves a sour taste. However, Davenport has given the Queen a great accomplice by changing the character of the Wizard to a Gypsy, played in a comic interpretation by Sarah Hull as a perfect down-to-earth counterpoint to the Queen’s saccharine superficiality.

The split-level set (Steve Galinec) adapts to represent a ballroom, a courtyard (with off-stage moat) and a bed chamber with minimal fuss, and the bed supporting the tell-tale legume is a further example of practical and efficient design (Ikea, eat your heart out). The medieval costumes (Fiona Leach) are exceptional for the small budget from which they are created. The cast appear to be having fun and it seems as though they and the crew have worked very hard to bring this production to the stage, so if that is the avowed intention of the company; then mission accomplished.

The Minstrel (Elliot Cleaves) and the Jester (Jack Morton)

Grimm Stuff

Grimm Stuff is an exhibition on at the National Library Gallery until 8th November, and it’s well worth seeing. Don’t worry; I’m not going to dive off into the realms of poetry this time, although it is tempting. The link between art and poetry is a fascinating one as they are both heightened forms of expression that may clarify or obfuscate depending on the intention of the artists.

Anyway, enough of that. This exhibition is made up of folktales and fairy stories from the Dorothy Neal White and National Children’s collections. Folktales have their origins in oral traditions and they may feature the staples we have come to know – magic; fairies; goblins; witches; ogres. Around the world they are used by authors to preserve the native traditions of their own culture, or of one that is perceived to be threatened.

The tales were gathered by re-tellers such as Madame d’Aulnoy and Charles Perrault (late seventeenth century) and the Grimm Brothers in the late nineteenth century. The Brothers Grimm were supposedly the first to write down the stories without changes, but they actually reshaped the language and the plots. Their work inspired others to collect folk and fairytales, and have since attracted the leading illustrators of each generation.

Hans Christian Andersen created his own stories (The Princess and the Pea; The Tinder Box) and paved the way for the popularity of fairytales in the second half of the nineteenth century through such writers as Charles Kingsley and Lewis Carrol.

The old fairy tales are actually remarkable for their unpleasantness; there are no happy endings and often not even the hero or heroine escapes with their life. The bawdiness seems shocking to modern readers; awaking with a kiss after being asleep for 100 years is far chaster than the story of the rape that woke her in the original version – the quick marriage had nothing to do with love at first sight but was rather about burying the shame of illegitimacy.

In the early versions of Cinderella, her features were also transformed by the fairy godmother along with her gown and accoutrements. She was actually plain and the prince’s task was to recognise her inherent loveliness rather than her physical beauty. This gives the tale an incredibly different aspect from the sanitised Disney version we generally know. Some of these stories are obviously politically incorrect to current audiences and so Little Black Sambo has become The Story of Little Babji.

In the exhibition there are illustrators I recognise and who swoop me back to my childhood, such as Eric Carle (responsible for more than just The Very Hungry Caterpillar); Mervyn Peake (seriously weird); Ernest Shepard (of course more famous for Winnie the Pooh, but he also illustrated Hans Christian Andersen); Quentin Blake (again, more famous for his illustrious – oh, my sides! – partnership with Roald Dahl); and Maurice Sendak – known for Where the Wild Things Are. Parents were afraid those illustrations would frighten children but his view was that ‘through fantasy children receive catharsis for their otherwise ungovernable feelings’. Hmmm.

Jan Pienowski, whom I always thought was a woman, contributes some simply stunning illustrations with trademark bold colours forming the background to stylish, romantic and dramatic silhouettes. There is fairytale menace as well as comedy and beauty here. I love this stuff and remember it well from A Necklace of Raindrops, which was one of my favourite books as a child.

Arthur Rackham is one man who seriously understands the power of myth and fable and the darker side of fantasy. Apparently ‘children relished the thrills engendered by his forests of looming frightening trees with grasping roots and his ogres and trolls that were ugly enough to repulse without being too frightening. And they were drawn to his sensuous but chaste fairy maidens. His backgrounds rewarded close inspection, the observant reader discovering images of animated animals or trees.’ Those trees terrified me – I had nightmares about the ones in Snow White.

More recently we have Anthony Browne with echoes of the great Rackham in his murkily atmospheric backgrounds and animated trees; Michael Foreman with luminous colour washes, and Janet Alberg who claimed her intention was ‘to produce William Morris books at Penguin prices.’

There were other illustrators I’d never such as Lois Elhert who worked with scrap materials from her mother’s material collection and father’s workshop, such as lumber, shavings, and nails. They were brighter than craft paper and easier to reposition – she would only stick them down when she felt happy with them.

Kay Neilsen is a Danish illustrator whose style is influenced by her experience in theatrical design, hence her characters often have impossibly long legs and long flowing dresses. Another, Gavin Bishop, is apparently a noted Kiwi illustrator whose take on The House that Jack Built posits European colonisation as the aggressor; the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat etc.

And so we come to the curious phenomenon that is the Flower Fairies. This sub genre of fairytales portraying fairy children dressed as flowers is different in the Northern and Southern hemispheres. The Northern hemisphere version (as espoused by Cicely Mary Barker) is elegant and romantic; the Southern hemisphere interpretation features cuter, roly-poly fairies who are more scantily clad, as depicted by Trevor Lloyd, Mary Gibbs, and Avis Acres. I have never heard of these, but would like to know if they are responsible for the mawkish abomination that is Anne Geddes.