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.