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  Perrault’s writings in the closing years of his life were extremely varied, from lives of famous men to a poem on sugar-cane, but the Contes were not to have a sequel, despite their immediate popularity. The nearest we find was a work of 1699 translating or adapting some fables by Gabriele Faerno, an Italian writer of the sixteenth century. They imitate La Fontaine in style, with less deftness and grace. 10 Unhappiness centred on Pierre might explain the absence of any further tales: in April 1697, only a few months after the publication of the Histoires ou Contes, he had a sword fight with an even younger neighbour, who died as a result. Charles Perrault had to pay a large amount in compensation. Pierre himself, who became a soldier, died in 1700; his father three years later.

  2. The Tales in Verse

  In all sorts of ways, the poem of Griselda is an unusual work. It is distinct from the other tales in being (comparatively) realistic: Perrault seems to have believed that the subject was real, for he tried to discover which particular lord of Saluzzo, the northern Italian town in which the action is situated, had married a local girl called Griselda, 11 and the poem’s own full title is La Marquise de Salusses ou la Patience de Griselidis, nouvelle, the last word indicating a short narrative of a realistic kind, as Perrault observes in the Preface to the tales. Modern readers may disagree, given the stereotyped romantic incidents of a hunt followed by the discovery in a remote spot of a beautiful shepherdess, but a personal drama then unfolds which is certainly an attempt on Perrault’s part to portray the more-or-less pathological psychology of the husband and the efforts of his wife to endure her sufferings. She could be described as a secular saint, if not quite a martyr; it may be significant that, among Perrault’s other works, the closest in nature to Griselda was a long biographical poem, Saint Paulin, much derided by Boileau. Christian faith is paramount for Griselda, for whom the marriage oath is absolutely binding; in her worst moments she turns to God, expressing submission to her fate in the style of contemporary devout poetry.

  In this respect Perrault revises his source significantly, since in Boccaccio the religious element is unimportant. In England the story was treated by Chaucer, who gives it to the Clerk of Oxford in the Canterbury Tales; in France, paradoxically, it was a Latin translation by Petrarch which made it popular, from the late fourteenth century onwards, as a presentation of the highest feminine virtue—helpful for feminist writers defending women against misogynist attacks, of which there were many. It became a staple of the so-called ‘biblio thèque bleue’, the cheap popular booklets, or chapbooks, in blue paper covers, hawked around the country by pedlars. But another great literary figure is important here besides Boccaccio: La Fontaine (1621–95). He had written, besides the famous Fables, a notorious collection of verse tales, Contes again, of the same genre as those in the Decameron and often based on them. Perrault disapproved, despite his admiration for the senior poet, whom he knew. He explains in the Preface that Griselda and La Fontaine’s tale La Matrone d’Ephèse are the same in nature, but criticizes the morality of La Fontaine’s poem; the implication, he says, is that there are no truly virtuous women. 12 In sum, Perrault took his subject from Boccaccio, the form from La Fontaine, but rejected the unflattering view of women found frequently in both.

  Hostility to women was also, in a particularly vehement style, a feature of Boileau’s poetry. Passages in his satires had often attacked them, but in 1694 he published a much longer and more virulent onslaught in his tenth satire. The poem had been long in the making and Perrault had some knowledge of its content well before its publication; among the jumble of intentions from which Griselda came we should certainly include the desire to defend women against Perrault’s own enemy. He also attacked Boileau in an Apologie des femmes, published in a matter of days after the appearance of the tenth satire. It consists of a poem with a long Preface; the defence of women is also a defence of marriage. 13 As to the personal inspiration for the poem, Perrault was a widower devoted, it would seem, to a wife who had died young, and who may or may not have given birth to a daughter. Among the genuinely moving scenes in Griselda are some describing the bond between mother and daughter, and the anguish caused by the husband’s worst act of cruelty, the removal of the baby from her mother’s care; he later tells her that her child has died. It is tempting, though perhaps sentimental, to think that Perrault felt moved to pay tribute to the memory of Marie Guichon, while rebutting the misogynistic views of his old adversary, and chose a well-known model of feminine virtue in order to do so.

  Whatever his intentions in writing Griselda, its origins should dispel the idea that the poem is hostile to women. Nowadays, to hold up wifely patience for admiration might seem anti-feminist, in that it reinforces the belief that the male is dominant by right; but in the seventeenth century such was the assumption made by virtually every one, not only in Perrault’s poem. The law in France, as elsewhere, gave husbands almost unlimited power over their wives, and although contemporaries of feminist views protested, it would have been futile to suggest that, in practice, a wife could do anything but put up with it. Boccaccio’s tale had remained popular, it would seem, among women rather than men, because it ends in a triumph, painful but genuine, for the maltreated wife. As in Chaucer, her husband is openly criticized. In Perrault there is an attempt, not entirely convincing, to elucidate his psychology, which looks like an attempt to excuse his admittedly bad behaviour. He is often portrayed in the flattering, but entirely conventional terms invariably used for royalty, 14 but throughout the reader is invited to sympathize with Griselda; several scenes were clearly invented for that purpose. 15

  Griselda was from the outset a work of literature. Although its heroine had become, in effect, a figure of folklore, all its antecedents are literary, and no authentic folk-tales are recorded on the subject. The situation is different with Perrault’s subsequent stories, verse and prose, which all originate in folk-tale, directly or indirectly. The subject of the next, Three Silly Wishes, is taken from folk-tale, although showing the influence of salon style in its dedication. 16 Authorities on the subject classify the type of tale in question as religious, because in many versions the wishes are granted by a divine figure, whether Christian or other, but there is no trace of religious feeling in Perrault’s tale; Jupiter is the deity inherited from antiquity who had become merely a character in narrative. In Three Silly Wishes conjugal relations are the basic subject, as in other versions, which usually poke fun at husband or wife or both. However, the anecdote readily lends itself to more or less obscene treatments, and passing insinuations are frequent. 17 It is possible that Perrault knew of a bawdier version, and cleaned it up to some extent. He could well have been aware of the suggestiveness of the sausage, if the tongue-in-cheek preliminaries are anything to go by; here he makes fun of ‘simpering girls’ who might be shocked by the subject. If he did in fact make the story less lewd, it would have been consistent with what he had done with a notorious moment in Boccaccio’s tale of Griselda: before the marriage, his Marquis has her stripped naked in public, which is said to have been a medieval Tuscan custom. 18 Perrault expunged this detail, though he preserved the scene in which the bride is reclothed. The revision was certainly made consciously, in order to comply with one of the rigid norms of seventeenth-century French writing, bienséance, or propriety; with Three Silly Wishes we can only guess.

  This may be a light-hearted example, but it confirms that, in the matter of origins, all the tales after Griselda need to be considered with reference to folk-tale. For present purposes the versions recorded in print by other authors are often of the greatest importance: the Brothers Grimm in the nineteenth century, and before Perrault’s time the Italians Giovanni Straparola and Giambattista Basile. Both compiled collections of stories, usually called novellas, taken from various sources. This was the genre founded by Boccaccio, whose style was followed closely by Straparola in the 1550s with his Piacevoli notti (‘Entertaining Nights’). Basile’s Pentamerone (1634—6), although the title
recalls Boccaccio’s, is further from him in its earthy, picturesque style. Both must have been sources for Perrault. 19

  To judge by an article about the Contes in the Mercure galant which almost certainly reflected Perrault’s views, 20 he shared the stance on authorship commonly taken by students of folk-tale. The argument was that, although the authors of such works liked to be considered their inventors, it was really a matter of oral tradition: ‘an infinite number of fathers and mothers, grandmothers, governesses and much-loved nannies, who for perhaps as long as a thousand years have contributed, each one improving on the one before, many entertaining circumstantial details which have been preserved, while anything ill-conceived has been forgotten’. As one in the long line of tellers, then, his aim would have been to ‘improve on the one before’, the versions he had heard or found in print, by adding details for entertainment and suppressing those deemed unsuitable or uninteresting. The process is perceptible in Donkey-Skin, where much if not all the humour comes from Perrault. The subject, however, must have been chosen in response to La Fontaine, who had written: ‘If I were told of Donkey-Skin, | I’d listen with extreme delight.’ 21 In Perrault’s version, the tone and many of the incidents resemble those of Three Silly Wishes and are quite different from Griselda. However, it shares some important elements with the earlier poem, since both have a Cinderella-like heroine who is found by a prince. Moreover, the last part of Griselda preserves the episode in Boccaccio’s tale when it seems that the Prince might marry his daughter, only for him to reject the prospect at the last moment as ‘a terrible fate’.

  As La Fontaine implied, the Donkey-Skin story was a recognized part of contemporary folklore. The principal episodes—a widowed father who, failing to find another wife to match the first, announces that he wishes to marry his daughter; her flight, assisted by magic and in a degrading disguise; the meeting with a prince and the release from her lowly state through some magic token of love—are found in many traditional tales and written literature throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Perrault would have known the tale in outline, even if he had not heard it as a child. He might also have read the life of the Celtic St Dympna, who was martyred by her father for refusing his advances. 22 However, in contrast to Griselda, there is no religious dimension to his Peau d’ne.

  In the great repertoire of folk-tale known as Aarne-Thompson, now revised by Uther, 23 Donkey-Skin tales are given their own category, type 510B. Among the other versions listed are three from the important printed collections. Straparola, Basile, and the Brothers Grimm all have stories with a widowed king whose daughter flees from his approaches, and like Perrault’s heroine performs domestic tasks for a prince, but the manner of their flight varies, as do the magical elements and the tasks they are set. 24 Straparola and Basile differ from Perrault in presenting their stories as historical anecdotes, despite the magic elements, which are a sign of folk-tale origin; in his treatment, as in the Grimms’ version, it appears as legend. Perrault’s humorous verse further distances his subject from reality. After the jokes about the donkey, it is that much harder to be seriously affected by the heroine’s plight, especially since her fairy godmother is shown to be a little inept in handling it. The character of her father is more mildly treated in Perrault than in Straparola, or in the legend of St Dympna, where both are out-and-out villains seeking murderous revenge on their daughters. In Perrault’s time a king was semi-sacred, at any rate in public writings, and the father’s lust is duly purified, in a scene worthy of the sentimental dénouements of eighteenth-century family dramas.

  Despite all this, it remains striking that in Donkey-Skin the possibility of incest is treated openly, at least as far as adults are concerned. They will understand ‘marriage’ as a euphemism for sexual abuse, but for young children the implications remain hidden; small girls who announce, as commonly happens, that they will marry Daddy do not mean what adults mean. If the story is meant as a cautionary tale, like Little Red Riding-Hood, its openness has advantages. It becomes possible to include the opinions of minor characters who tell the heroine that she must resist her father’s suggestion at all costs, a standard feature of the different versions. If you accept that girls should be warned against sexual abuse within the family, it is difficult to see how the warning can be given more explicitly without unacceptable detail. A related problem arises with a motif found in Perrault and the Grimms, but not the Italian collections: the three dresses and the animal’s skin. These gifts demanded by the daughter have often been held to show that she is not wholeheartedly opposed to her father’s approaches. To my mind, the argument is superficial. The gifts supply, first, the means to attract the suitor she wants when the time comes, and secondly, the ugly disguise which will deter any sexual approaches meanwhile.

  3. The Tales in Prose

  The term ‘folk-tale’ implies an adult audience; fairy-tale, a story for children. The distinction is familiar now, but in the past it scarcely existed. Donkey-Skin illustrates this. Many would be reluctant to give it to children nowadays, but from Perrault’s Preface to the Contes it is evident that in the seventeenth century things were not the same; women tell it to children as a matter of course, he remarks, 25 and his relative Mlle Lhéritier adds in her comments that she was delighted by it as a child. Basile in the 1630s put in his title that his stories are for children. The distinction between adult and children’s literature was also blurred by La Fontaine, whose style brilliantly combines simplicity and sophistication; Perrault followed the same recipe in Three Silly Wishes and Donkey-Skin.

  The prose tales, however, show a definite change. Most are clearly intended only for quite young children (though they are being read to by adults, no doubt), the exceptions being Bluebeard and Ricky the Tuft. In this respect they are distinct not only from the anonymous tales recounted from ancient times at gatherings of both adults and children in the unlit evenings or during communal work, but also from those by Perrault’s contemporaries, Mme d’Aulnoy and others, who wrote ‘contes merveilleux’ (magic tales) for an adult readership. Perhaps the clearest example is Little Red Riding-Hood. Like another favourite of smaller children, The Three Little Pigs, it is halfway to being a game. It ends with the delicious mock-frightening ritualistic formulas, and (preferably) a hug from the storyteller at the words ‘eat you with’. The manuscript copy spelt it out: ‘You say these words loudly to frighten the child, as if the wolf were going to eat it.’ The Moral, however, is separately addressed to grown-ups—a brief and witty equivalent of our Freudian interpretations.

  Another feature distinguishing his tales from those published for adults at the same period is concision, notably exemplified in Red Riding-Hood. It is a basic virtue in tales for small children, and depends on simplicity, not easy to achieve. Much in the Contes that seems simple is from folk-tale, and is now considered typical of children’s stories: the limited and conventional range of characters, kings and queens, princesses and princes, ogres and fairy godmothers, often morally unambiguous, completely good or completely bad. 26 They may be multiplied, but are never complicated: two hostile sisters, or brothers at the beginning of Puss in Boots, seven brothers including Hop. The same applies with repeated incidents: three wishes, three requests for dresses (though only two visits to the ball: many versions of Cinderella have three). The effect is to increase narrative tension. The technique is taken even further in Bluebeard, with the seemingly endless dialogue between the threatening villain, the victim, and her sister. This example also illustrates the formulaic moments of dialogue that are a feature of folk-tale and which Perrault seems carefully to have preserved. The directions from Red Riding-Hood’s grandmother about opening the door are a particularly clear example, since they are in the language of the Middle Ages. They seem fixed and unalterable, but that is not always the case. At the end of Red Riding-Hood the dialogue with the wolf is found with many minor variations, and it is evident that narrators would have felt free to develop their own versions even of pe
rmanent elements in a tale.

  However, Perrault chose at times to insert self-consciously literary elements in the Contes. He keeps the time-honoured opening, ‘Il était une fois …’ (‘Once upon a time …’), but in the endings to two tales, Hop o’ my Thumb and Ricky the Tuft, permits himself an authorial intervention, questioning whether what we have just heard is genuine. These passages look as if they were intended for more cultivated audiences than those who listened to grandmothers or village storytellers. For some critics, as with the knowing tone of some of the Morals, this sophistication spoils the naive charm of the stories—a fair comment on Hop, in my view, but not with Ricky, which throughout assumes in its hearers a high level of linguistic appreciation. More often, the passages which seem to be Perrault’s own contributions are effective both for children and adults. He marks important moments in the action by tiny dramatic scenes: the wicked fairy’s curse in Sleeping Beauty; the encounter on the path between wolf and grandchild; Bluebeard’s tempting prohibition; and so on. Every tale contains significant and entertaining dialogue of this kind, and it is particularly noticeable in the tales in which speech itself is a vital part of the story, Puss in Boots, The Fairies, and Ricky the Tuft.

  Among Perrault’s greatest talents as a storyteller is his eye for memorable detail. Several of the most famous are in the titles, and it seems certain that he invented them: the red hood, the cat’s boots, the glass slipper, the beard. Although there seem to be many, they are used sparingly. Only very occasionally does Perrault fall into a common fault in tales involving magic, which is to weaken its effect by overuse. 27 Probably the best examples are in the tale of tales, Cinderella, when in the transformation scene the godmother and Cinderella cooperate. It is a masterpiece of narrative partly because of the clever dialogue, which both moves the action forward and shows the little girl developing in maturity. 28 In addition, the objects that the two discuss have great symbolic value: the magical transformation of humble or unpleasant domestic things into the glamorous trappings of court life foretells the change from persecuted child to attractive young woman.