SOURCE: "Sleeping Beauty: The Meaning and Form of Fairy Tales," in Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1970, pp. 21-34.

[In the following essay, Lüthi analyzes the Grimms' version of "Sleeping Beauty" and considers other variants of the tale.]

Our attitude toward fairy tales (Märchen) is ambivalent. "Don't tell me any fairy tales," we say, in the derogatory sense. Here, the term is only a politer expression for cleverly contrived lies. On the other hand, when we admire something especially beautiful, the word märchenhaft (i.e., like a fairy tale) almost spontaneously comes to mind. Here, it does not mean unreal in the sense of untrue, but in the sense of unearthy or divine. Thus, even in everyday usage, our language suggests both rejection of, and fascination by, the fairy tale.

For centuries, educated people have looked down on popular fairy tales as stories properly belonging in the nursery and the servants' quarters; yet great writers have repeatedly drawn inspiration from them. Great literature of all ages has borrowed from fairy-tale motifs and often exhibited an imaginativeness not unlike that of the fairy tale. In the life of the individual, there are periods when one is fascinated by fairy tales and periods of indifference. After the actual fairy-tale age (between five and ten), there follows a realistic stage during which one is ill-disposed toward fairy tales. Some people persist in this attitude all their lives. But in others, understanding and love for these once-coveted stories returns later in life, not only because now as mothers or grandfathers they themselves are called upon to tell fairy tales, but just as much because they again feel moved by their peculiar charm.

When something has the ability both to attract and repel one so forcefully, one may assume that it deals with fundamentals. One is challenged to take sides, explicitly or implicitly. The role fairy tales play in the lives of children, and the role they played in the lives of adults in the millennia prior to the coming of the printed word, strengthens us in the belief that we are dealing with a peculiar form of literature, one which concerns man directly.

When we speak of fairy tales today, we cannot help thinking of the collection by the Grimm brothers—and this applies not only to the region where German is spoken. Grimm's Fairy Tales, which first appeared in 1812 and 1815, is in many countries the most popular, the most oft-reprinted German book. Even among primitive folk they show their great effect: the Grimm tales missionaries have told to natives in some cases have the power to supplant indigenous tales. In the following passage from "Sleeping Beauty," one of the best-known tales in the Grimm collection, certain basic features of the fairy tale can be discovered. The introductory section reads as follows:

Once upon a time there was a king and a queen and every day they said, "O, if we only had a child!" But they never had one. Now it happened one day while the queen was sitting in her bath that a frog came out of the water, crept ashore and said to the queen, "Your wish will be fulfilled; before a year goes by you will give birth to a daughter." This happened just as the frog had said it would and the queen gave birth to a girl so beautiful that the king was beside himself with joy and ordered a great feast. He invited not only his relatives, friends and acquaintances, but also the Wise Women, so that they would be well-disposed and feel kindly toward the child. There were in his realm thirteen of them, but because he had only twelve golden plates for them to eat from, one of them had to stay at home. The feast was celebrated with great splendor, and when it was over the Wise Women presented the child with their magic gifts. One gave virtue, the next beauty, the third wealth, and thus everything desirable that there is in the world. Just as the eleventh had announced her gift the thirteenth suddenly walked in. She wanted her revenge because she had not been invited, and without a greeting or even a glance at anyone she cried in a loud voice, "The princess shall in her fifteenth year be pricked by a spindle and fall down dead." And without saying another word she turned around and left the hall. Everyone was dismayed. Then the twelfth Wise Woman who still had her wish came forward, and because she could not break the spell but only modify it, she said, "But it will not be death. The princess will fall into a deep sleep that will last for one hundred years."

Everyone knows how the tale goes on from here. The king's decree "that all spindles in the entire kingdom be burned" cannot save the child. When she is fifteen years old, she pricks herself with a spindle (which arouses her interest for the very reason that she has never seen one before), and at once falls asleep under the magic spell, together with the king, the queen, and the whole royal household. All around the palace there grows a dense hedge of thorns. The princes who try to force their way through are caught and held in the thorns, where they suffer greatly. After exactly 100 years, another prince ventures forth. Now, instead of thorns, there are only big, beautiful flowers which separate by themselves, permitting him to pass through unharmed, and then they close again behind him. The prince's kiss brings the sleeping princess back to life again, the whole household awakens with her, and a splendid wedding is celebrated.

The Grimm brothers themselves wondered about the meaning of this fairy tale, which appears in a similar form among other peoples. What is its core, its essence? What does it stand for? Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm saw in fairy tales remnants of ancient myths, playful descendants of an ancient intuitive vision of life and the world. Sleeping Beauty, wonderously endowed and mysteriously threatened, suffers death or a sleep similar to death. But she is awakened again and begins to flourish—and with her, the world about her. Our fairy tale tells of death and resurrection. The flowering of the hedge of roses and the awakening of the sleeping maiden suggest the earth in lifeless repose which, touched by spring, begins to live anew and blossom as young and beautiful as ever. It suggests also the awakening of sleeping nature at the first glimmering of the new day. Processes which eternally recur have taken shape in "Sleeping Beauty"—processes in nature which surrounds man, but also processes in the human soul. Sleeping Beauty is fifteen years old when she comes under the spell: the time of transition from childhood to maidenhood. Every important turning point in development, every transition from one stage of life to another, is felt as a threat. At this age it is natural for the young man to be self-conscious and the young woman retiring, for both sexes to become for a period either shy and withdrawn or caustic, defiant, and unfriendly. A hedge of thorns seems to grow around young people and to shield them from the world. But in the protection such seclusion affords, the youth matures and will awaken to a new, larger, and brighter life.

The characters of the fairy tale are not personally delineated; the fairy tale is not concerned with individual destinies. Nor is it the unique process of maturation that is reflected in the fairy tale. The story of Sleeping Beauty is more than an imaginatively stylized love story portraying the withdrawal of the girl and the breaking of the spell through the young lover. One instinctively conceives of the princess as an image for the human spirit: the story portrays the endowment, peril, paralysis, and redemption not of just one girl, but of all mankind. The soul of man again and again suffers convulsions and paralysis and, each time—with luck—it can be revived, healed, redeemed. With luck! The abnormal individual, of course, can also remain in the paralyzed condition, unable to rediscover the fountainhead of life in himself and to reestablish contact with his surroundings. But the fairy tale does not portray the abnormal case, but natural development, and it fills its hearers with the confidence that a new, larger life is to come after the deathlike sleep—that, after the isolation, a new form of contact and community will follow.

This mercy and threat is depicted in a number of variations in the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. The fairies are both a blessing and a curse for the child; the royal palace is for Sleeping Beauty both paradise and prison; the deathlike sleep both a spell cast upon her and a refuge. The hedge of thorns, which can kill but which finally bursts into bloom with magnificent flowers, expresses most vividly this all-pervading polarity of death and resurrection.

In the dominant image just mentioned (palace and tower, thorns and roses, humans and fairies), there is revealed another peculiar capability of the fairy tale, not just in "Sleeping Beauty," but in the popular fairy tale in general. Despite its brevity, it embraces in its own way the world: nature both dead and living, man and the works of man, and the supernatural. In the beginning of "Sleeping Beauty," the world in its essential elements is already present: animal, man, and material objects all together. Only plants are missing. Not until the later episodes and the development of the tale will trees, thorns, and leaves also grow and flowers burst into bloom. Of the visible elements (the fairy tale clings to what is visible), water and earth are already mentioned in the introductory section. The third, fire, will flare up later on; and wind and breath will also be mentioned. The human world is represented by man, woman, and child. Objects of the workday and those of the festive day will appear: spindles and golden plates. The precious metal, the figures of the king and queen, and the festivities indicate that matters of significance are involved. Human feelings—like privation, longing, grief, joy, horror, hope, bitterness, irritability, vindictiveness, and compassion—are expressed. Loud talk and startled or threatening silence stand side by side, yet words of consolation are also not wanting. Sorrow, mistakes, and helplessness testify to the peril in which even royalty stands. In the figures of the prophetic frog and the fairies who give their blessings and imprecations, a supernatural world, again clearly visible, is joined to the world of man. The fairy tale is a universe in miniature; and since every good work of literature displays its peculiar characteristics even in its individual parts, the tendency of the fairy tale to embody the world is strongly evident even in this brief introduction to "Sleeping Beauty."

We love the fairy tale not only for its wisdom, but the manner in which it is told; its external appearance, which varies from people to people and from narrator to narrator, also delights us. The Grimm brothers' genius for storytelling is likewise evident in the very first part of the fairy tale. The entire first section is based on the motif of prophecy. Once stated, the theme is varied and intensified. The birth of the little girl is heralded by a frog and the Wise Women bestow on her virtue, beauty, wealth, and other miraculous gifts, that is to say, they proclaim all this. But the thirteenth fairy—and here one anxiously holds his breath—prophesies that the princess will die in her fifteenth year. Following this climax—which is strongly underlined by the sudden bursting upon the scene of the fairy who had been neglected, by her short, loud words and her silent departure—the tension in the story gradually subsides. A final variation on the prophecy motif, the conversion of the death pronouncement into the proclamation of the 100-year sleep, relieves the inner tension, but at once gives rise to the question of how and whether the proclamation will come true and what will happen during and after the enchanted sleep. A truly dramatic exposition!

A comparison of the Grimm brothers' original notations with the final version of "Sleeping Beauty" shows what their poetic imagination and genius for language has added. No one familiar with the tale can forget the humorous description of the palace as it sinks into sleep and reawakens. The passage reads:

This sleep spread throughout the palace. The king and queen, who had returned home and had just entered the hall, began to fall asleep along with their entire royal household. The horses, too, fell asleep in their stables, as did the dogs in the courtyard, the pigeons on the roof, and the flies on the wall. Even the fire flickering in the hearth subsided and went to sleep, and the roast stopped sizzling. The cook, who was about to pull the kitchen-boy's hair for forgetting something, let him go and slept. The wind, too, subsided, and not a leaf stirred any more in the trees around the palace.

What, now, was in Jacob Grimm's notes when he first recorded this fairy tale, which previously had been transmitted by word of mouth? Only this: "Since at this moment the king and his royal household also returned, everybody and everything in the palace—right down to the flies on the wall—began to sleep." The little parenthetical remark "right down to the flies on the wall" inspired the Grimm brothers to draw this picture with its leisurely descriptions and wealth of characters. They give even freer play to their imagination in the concluding section. The original notes ended in this way: "Now as he entered the palace he kissed the sleeping princess, everyone awakened, and the two were married and lived happily ever after." In the Grimm brothers' collection, this single sentence becomes the following:

In the courtyard of the castle he saw the horses and the spotted hunting dogs lying asleep, and on the roof the pigeons sat with their little heads tucked under their wings. And when he entered the house the flies were asleep on the wall, the cook in the kitchen still had his hand stretched out as if he were about to grab the boy, and the maid sat before the black chicken which was to be plucked. He continued on, and in the hall he saw the entire royal household lying asleep—and, up by the throne, the king and queen. And he went still further, but everything was so quiet that one could hear himself breathing, and finally he came to the tower and opened the door to the little room where Sleeping Beauty lay asleep. She was so beautiful that he could not turn his eyes away from her, and he stooped down and gave her a kiss. When his lips touched her she opened her eyes, awakened, and looked at him very kindly. Then they walked down together, and the king and queen and the entire royal household awakened and looked at each other in great astonishment. And the horses in the courtyard stood up and shook themselves, the hunting dogs leapt up, wagging their tails, and the pigeons on the roof took their little heads out from under their wings, looked about and flew off to the fields. The flies on the wall continued crawling, the fire in the kitchen flared up and cooked the meal, the roast began to sizzle again, the cook gave the boy such a slap that he howled, and the maid finished plucking the chicken. Then the marriage of the prince and Sleeping Beauty was celebrated with great pomp, and they lived happily to their life's end.

In the final sentence the Grimm brothers return to the actual fairy-tale style, which, in a few well-chosen words, merely suggests the sequence of events, and which has a preference for action rather than lengthy descriptions. We are delighted that here the editors paint a leisurely picture of the two central events: when the palace falls asleep and when it reawakens. In other places they avoid detailed descriptions. They do not go into any details of the wedding celebration, and they summarize the birthday celebration at the beginning in a manner characteristic of the fairy tale, in a single sentence: "The celebration was observed with great pomp." On the other hand, when they allow themselves the pleasure of describing in its grotesque aspect how life comes to a halt and then suddenly begins to dance again—it is as if the figures on a music box had stopped and now, after the apparatus has been rewound, automatically begin to turn again—there is an irony at work which appeals to children as well as to adults. The love scene is thereby deprived of all sentimentality; it develops and unfolds unperceived and pure in the protection of the comical elements which surround it.

It must now be clear that the Grimm brothers did not retell the fairy tales exactly as they heard them. On the contrary, they carefully edited them, simplifying or embellishing them according to their poetic inclinations and pedagogical intentions. Not infrequently, they combined several variants of one and the same fairy tale: they chose from each tale what seemed to them the best. Naturally, they were not completely independent of the spirit and the taste of their times, the era of romanticism and the Biedermeier culture with its painful loss of idealism and acceptance of reality. The romantic charm of forest and flowers and playful romantic irony combine with the warmth and intimacy basic to the outlook on life in the Biedermeier. But if Grimm's Fairy Tales have lived on far past their era and have won the hearts of the world, if they also appeal to us today, and if not only the story, but the manner in which it is told delights us—all this shows once again that both styles are not merely historical: the era of romanticism and the era of the Biedermeier merely revealed in a particularly pure and powerful form feelings that are possible at all times and in every person.

The classical fairy-tale collections of other peoples date from other eras. The most famous Italian fairy-tale book is the Pentamerone, fifty stories which the Neapolitan writer Giambattista Basile compiled at the beginning of the seventeenth century, many of them popular tales previously kept alive by oral tradition. While they are written in the dialect of Naples, Basile also did not retell the fairy tales exactly as he heard them; he fashioned them to his taste. It was the taste of the baroque era. Since our own century has developed a new understanding for baroque style, we are now especially receptive to Basile's charming and humorous tales. The fifth story on the fifth day bears the title "Sun, Moon and Talia." It is similar to our "Sleeping Beauty." The beginning reads as follows:

Once upon a time a nobleman had a daughter, and when she was born he had all the wise men and soothsayers in the kingdom come together for the purpose of prophesying her fate. Now after much deliberation they asserted she was in great peril because of a thread of flax. For this reason, and to guard against any mishaps, her father sent out a strict order that neither flax nor hemp nor anything like them should ever be brought to his palace. But one day when Talia had grown older and was standing at a window, she saw an old woman who was spinning as she walked by. Since the girl had never before seen either distaff or spindle and was intrigued by how they turned back and forth, she was overcome by such great curiosity that she had the old woman sent up and, taking the distaff in hand, began to spin the thread. But while doing this she unfortunately was pricked under a fingernail by a hemp fiber and at once fell down dead. As soon as the old woman saw this, she fled down the stairs; but the poor father, informed of the mishap, paid for this cup of sorrow with barrels of tears. Then he had his dead daughter set on a velvet throne under a canopy of brocade in the summer palace where he was then staying, and at once closed all the doors and forsook this place which had been the source of such calamity, so that he might banish the memory of these events for ever and ever.

Thus, Basile makes no mention of either the prophetic frog or the wishes of the fairies, an indication of how unrelated such figures are to the core of the tale. But here, too, the motif of prophecy and with it the threat of an unavoidable fate is clearly expressed. As in the Grimm tale—and even more clearly here—it is just the attempts to avoid fate which provoke the calamity: only because the girl is unaccustomed to the sight of spindle and hemp is she so anxious to take them in hand. One instinctively thinks of the use of prophesy in the ancient Oedipus myth. It is fascinating to see how the baroque style of the seventeenth century is manifested in Basile's narrative: the baroque love for pomp sets the dead Talia on a velvet throne under a canopy of brocade; the baroque sense of humor has the father cry barrels full of tears; the manneristic-baroque fondness for abrupt changes has him forget his beloved daughter immediately thereafter "for ever and ever." The following section from the Italian fairy tale introduces a motif we do not find in Grimm:

But it happened one day when the king was out hunting that a falcon slipped from his hand and flew in through a window of that castle. Since the bird did not come when they called it, the king, believing the castle to be occupied, ordered his men to knock on the door. But after they had knocked a long time in vain the king sent for a vintager's ladder, so he might enter, too, and see how it looked inside. After he had wandered all through it he was completely beside himself with astonishment at finding not a living soul inside. But finally he came to the room where the enchanted princess lay, and he called her, believing her to be asleep. But since she did not awaken no matter how much he shouted at her and shook her, and since he was enraptured by her beauty, he took her away in his arms to a place where he lay down with her and there picked the fruits of love. Hereupon, leaving her lying on the bed, he returned to his kingdom, where he did not think of this event again for a long time.

But after nine months had passed Talia gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl who were like two precious jewels and were well cared for in every way by two fairies who appeared in the palace and put them to suck on their mother's breasts. Now when the twins wanted to suck again and could not find the nipples, they took hold of a fìnger and sucked on it until they pulled out the fiber. Hereupon Talia seemed to awaken as if from a deep sleep, gave suck to the little angels she found next to her and grew to love them with all her heart. But she had absolutely no idea what had happened to her, since she saw that she was completely alone in the palace with the two sucklings and was brought food and drink by invisible hands.

Jacob Grimm considered it especially delightful that the child sucks the flax fiber out of the sleeping mother's finger. And, indeed, this type of awakening, which combines, in baroque fashion, the natural and the fantastic, has its own charm. The kiss which redeems Sleeping Beauty in the Grimm version has no obvious connection with the cause of the enchantment, the prick of the spindle. But Basile's variant has a sort of artistic economy; the flax fiber which puts Talia to sleep plays a role again in her awakening. And it is especially delightful and significant that the children unintentionally and unknowingly bring about the actual redemption of Sleeping Beauty.

We also find a variant of Sleeping Beauty in the oldest French fairy-tale book, the Contes de ma mère l'Oye of Charles Perrault. Perrault was an architect of the late seventeenth century and a member of the French Academy during the high point of French classicism. In 1697 he published eight fairy tales which, in contrast with the many freely embellished tales of fairies and pixies in fashion at the time, give clear evidence of their origin among the common people. La belle au bois dormant ("The Sleeping Beauty in the Forest") stands at the head of the collection. The passage of the awakening of the princess may serve as a sample of Perrault's style:

The prince, trembling and full of wonder, approached the sleeping woman and fell on his knees before her. Because the end of the spell had now come, the princess awakened and looked at him with fonder eyes than is really proper at first meeting and said to him: "Is it you, my prince? You have been a long time in coming." The prince was delighted by these words, and even more by the way she said them. He did not know how he might show his joy and declare his affection for her. He asserted that he loved her more than himself. His speech was a little incoherent, but this just made it all the more pleasing—little eloquence, much love. His embarrassment was greater than hers, and that is not surprising: she, after all, had had time to think about what she would say to him.

Later, the story goes on:

The prince, trembling and full of wonder, approached the splendid attire. But he was careful not to tell her that she was dressed like his grandmother with her stiff collar—she was no less beautiful because of it. They entered a hall of mirrors and dined there, attended by the princess's manservants. The violins and oboes played old compositions—excellent pieces, though they had been seldom played for nearly 100 years. After the supper no time was lost: the priest married them in the chapel and the maid of honor drew the curtain. They had little sleep: the princess did not need it just then and the prince left her early in the morning to return to town, where his father must have been worrying about him.

Here again we find a style differing from that of the Grimm brothers; it is the irony of the seventeenth-century courtly salon, and it is directed at the pair of lovers themselves, not just at their surroundings. But here, too, the irony adds spice to the tale without impairing its basic structure. Perrault cannot forgo the pleasure of making the passage of the 100 years clearly felt by his repeated observations. In doing this, he violates the style of the popular fairy tale, with its characteristic disregard for the passage of time, as the Grimm brothers do when they refrain from calling Sleeping Beauty's dress old-fashioned. But Perrault's irony is only on the surface of his tale; its indifference to the decay which time always brings about in the world of men is stressed all the more by his smiling allusions. The second part of his fairy tale resembles Basile's. Perrault's heroine also gives birth to two children, but their names are not Sole e Luna (Sun and Moon), as in Basile's tale, but Aurore et Jour (Dawn and Day). Basile and Perrault both relate how these children and the heroine herself have to suffer persecution at the hands of an evil queen, how they are to be killed and how they are saved through the compassion of the hired assassin. Is this last part of the fairy tale merely an accidental appendage, taken arbitrarily from another fairy tale in order to lengthen the tale? The theme of the death prophesy and the fortunate deliverance is once again called to mind. Even if this last section should be of external origin, it fits in well as a variation on the basic theme.

The comparison of the different variants shows that we must be cautious about our interpretation of details. The names sun and moon, dawn and day, as they are found in Basile and Perrault, strengthened the Grimm brothers in their belief that a natural process is reflected in the Sleeping Beauty tale. In this respect, we will not raise any objection. But when they claim to see a symbol for dawn in the hedge of roses and, likewise, in the wall of flames surrounding the sleeping Nordic Brynhild, we arrive at a point where interpretations become problematical. Narrow and rigid interpretations cannot be ascribed to a dynamic story. Can we see, in the twelve fairies, the twelve months which bestow their manifold gifts on the earth and on nature? The thirteenth fairy who has been provoked to anger would then be—yes, such suggestions have been made in all seriousness—the personification of the unthroned, neglected thirteenth month; and the whole thing would portray the transition from the lunar year, with its thirteen months, to the solar year, with its twelve. The 100 years, it is explained, is nothing more than a poetic overstatement for the 100 days of winter, when the earth lies imprisoned in sleep. With such sophistical allegorizing the natural-mythological interpretation is carried to absurdity. We need look no further than Perrault's variant, where the entire theory is unacceptable, for Perrault speaks not of twelve good fairies, but of seven. One must guard against the desire to interpret every single feature, every thorn and every fly. Some of these details are mere ornamentation added by whomever told the story last. Seven and twelve are popular fairy-tale numbers, and one should not presume each time that a mystery lies behind them. Yet the three variants discussed—joined by a large number of versions recorded at different times and among various peoples—lead us to believe that, in the over-all course of events, a significant, constantly recurring process is at work: danger and redemption, paralysis and rejuvenation, death and resurrection. The individual compilers cast the fairy tale in the garb of their time, and the tension between the inner form and the outer garb of the fairy tale can be particularly charming for those with fastidious tastes. In any event, we would not care to do without the elegance and incisiveness of Perrault, the sensitivity and refinement of the Grimm brothers, the power and vitality of Basile—or the humor which characterizes all three tales. Basile's often indelicate jokes are not intended for children; but the two other tales have the power to charm and exhilarate both children and adults.