Tales of the Sleeping Beauty

A Glance Back in Time

by Nancy Partridge

2

Sleeping Beauty is a very old fairy tale, with roots going back at least a

thousand years. Containing universal themes of beauty, prophecy, loss, and the

awakening of desire, it has captured our collective imagination for centuries. The

story of a beautiful sleeping girl, caught in an enchantment that can only be

broken by true love, has made its way from 10th century Baghdad, to Baroque

Italy, pre-revolutionary France, Victorian England, and beyond.

It is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “child of air/that lingers in the garden

there,” who decides the fate of all fairy tales. Stories live inside the imaginations

of those who listen to or read them. Each fresh telling gives birth to new

meanings, as cultural blueprints are projected onto the text. While Bruno

Bettelheim examines universal themes from an orthodox Freudian perspective, I

am focusing on the cultural variations of the tale as they are transmitted

through translation, and the consequent transculturation of Sleeping Beauty’s

enduring motifs and patterns.

Briefly, I am going to examine four major versions of Sleeping Beauty:

The Ninth Captain’s Tale, found in the Thousand and One Nights from

somewhere between the ninth-thirteenth centuries; Sun, Moon and Talia, from

the Italian storyteller Giambattista Basile, published in his popular collection “The

Pentamerone;” La belle au bois dormant or The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood by

Charles Perrault; Little Briar Rose (Dornröschen) by The Brothers Grimm, and a

few examples of modern re-tellings. The tale has traveled far.

Translation is such an important part of that journey. As Jack Zipes

comments, translations are “…vital to the historical survival of fairy tales.”i

Since the time of Galland’s first translation of A Thousand and One Nights, our

ability to interact with foreign cultures has multiplied exponentially, and the

modern sensibility has developed a firm global awareness. Our society now

thrives on multicultural exchange in such diverse areas as education, business –

and, of course, literature. Intrinsic to all such interaction is communication, or,

3

more specifically, language. The more mobile we become, the more it becomes

necessary to move between languages with ease. As a result, translation is

being re-examined as “a means of fostering transcultural awareness.”

Translation studies are a world unto themselves. The process is intuitive

and analytical at the same time. The work is deep and, at times, introspective

and philosophical. Translation is a kind of literary alchemy, melting the veil of

separateness that has plagued man since the Tower of Babel. Sam Weber talks

about the movement of symbols through languages, with translation as a bridge

allowing passage. When the translator touches the language of origin, he

suggests, it needs to be a “touching without taking,” where the origin remains

intact and unsullied. 1 The point of touching is the act of translation.

He goes further to suggest that after the point of contact, the re-birth of

syntax, grammar, and word choice into a new language, the meaning travels in a

tangential line, like an arrow shot out of a bow, to land in a new landscape – the

time and place of the translated narrative. There, it has a new audience, a new

timeframe, possibly a new culture. Does the meaning remain intact? Does

meaning shine through as the point of contact between the two works that pre-

exists before the cloth of language takes its varying forms?

To complicate matters, fairy tales are not only translated through the

centuries; they evolve. Versions arise that start from certain points and then

gallop off in new directions. Each new version serves to deepen the tale, to

explore its possibilities. These changes are not just functions of language. They

are new elements of narrative born from whatever culture and century that re-

tells it. It is useful to borrow here from the postcolonial theorists and think of

this evolution not only in terms of translation, but also in terms of

transculturation. The American Heritage Dictionary defines transculturation as

“Cultural change induced by introduction of elements of a foreign culture.” If we

1 Sam Weber, in his essay on Walter Benjamin’s radical piece of 1921 “The Work of the Translator”, from The Ethics of Translation, pg.

4

exchange “literary” for “cultural,” the concept is apt. For language, in its

deepest and purest form, carries with it meaning. This meaning is shaped by the

inner world of the reader. A piece of literature is not only what is written, but

also what is read. The reader, or, in the oral tradition, the listener, is indeed a

changeable entity, not only due to the isolation of the individual psyche, but also

ironically because each person reads with an internalized set of collective cultural

paradigms. The act of reading a translated text will always imply a kind of

interpretation springing from transculturation, because culture is the lens of the

reader, informing the process, even if unbidden.

Before translation there is always the “notion of origin,” as Walter

Benjamin notes. Benjamin posits origin as something that exists in a kind of

eternal present – stable and unchanging. Once it’s translated however, even if

the translation is faithful to the original, there is a shift. Even translation that is

faithful to the syntax of the original allows it to fleetingly touch – glancing off –

the meaning of the original and then to follow the trajectory that results. He

suggests that it is the very distance between the two points, or the difference

between them, that carries the meaning.

This difference can also be seen in a narratological sense as the world of

the implied reader. Wolfgang Iser talks about “a moving viewpoint which travels

along inside” that which is read. ii(Iser, pg. 108) This moving viewpoint,

equivalent to Benjamin’s tangential encounter, is the perspective of the implied

reader.

The origins of fairy tale are tangled and obscure, but it is obvious that

readership changes, as time goes on. Narrative is an act of communication

between author and reader – with a number of transitional mental constructs

that spring up from the act of reading. For it has been seen that narrative is

twofold: it is about telling and listening, writing and reading. You cannot have

one without the other. Iser clarifies; “The combined efforts of author and reader

bring into being the concrete and imaginary object which is the work of the

5

mind.” In this scenario, the act of reading entails a dialogue, or rather several

dialogues going on simultaneously. These are facilitated by “gaps” which act as

catalysts for the imagination; blank spaces that the reader fills in, to produce

meaning. It is a process of communication, moving in both directions, between

several “empirical mediating entities,” which can be charted as follows:

Real Author Implied Author Narrator Implied Reader Real Reader

Iser asserts that meaning is created through the act of reading. It is as if

the narrative itself is a kind of bridge that, once crossed, lands us into a kind of

world – one that we construct as we engage with the text. This necessarily

springs from the world of the real reader. Since the real reader is going to

change through time – and bring to that relationship a new understanding, a new

cultural paradigm – then the implied reader is also going to change. It is

important to remember that encounter of two different languages happens at a

specific historical time and place. The implied reader of a text is thus a “time

specific and culture-specific entity” and therefore cannot be exactly the same as

the implied reader of the original, source text.2

In his essay “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” Hans

Robert Jauss explains his theory of the “horizon of expectation,” which is a kind

of mind-set based on the reader’s pre-understanding. These horizons create a

series of expectations that are met, which cause pleasure and satisfaction, or

not met, which cause distress and a kind of negotiation on the part of the

reader. In the same way, when the infant Beauty is cursed by the evil fairy to

die after pricking her finger on a spindle, the last fairy is left to re-negotiate: the

curse cannot be entirely lifted, alright, but it shall be sleep, not death, which

claims her. This type of bargaining is what charms us, keeps us engaged, and

2 Emer O’Sullivan, in Jack Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick, pg. 205.

6

reading. Thus in this paper I ask not so much who has written or re-told Sleeping

Beauty, but who has read it, and bargained with it, and how has this kept the

story alive?

In all narratives there are certain important moments upon which hinges

the whole piece; these are accompanied by an underlying motivating emotional

force which powers the movement, from which all the rest flows, like the source

of a river. These spots feel almost sacred in their purity, and their currents

travel beneath the surface of the story, imbuing it with life. Such moments are

not always joyful; it is often a painful truth that gives the underlying integrity

necessary for a story to endure. As the versions of Sleeping Beauty evolved,

certain vital and essential plot elements remained intact:

– the longing for a child/grief at the loss of a child

– a splinter of flax either in the finger or under a nail

– the prophesy/curse

– the interdiction, fulfillment of the curse

– grief of the father/abandonment

– the sleeping princess

– romance or the awakening of desire and the leaving behind of

childhood

In addition, there are stock characters (which can be found in Propp’s

catalogue of character roles and functions) though not all of them appear in all

versions. These are the king and queen, the princess, an old or wise man or

woman who prophesies or curses, a chosen prince, his steward, and an ogre who

is either a mother or a wife.

In the following pages as I summarize the aforementioned versions of The

Sleeping Beauty, I hope to capture the unique culturally specific features of each

one. From this we will be able to see the progression of the tale as these

features rebound from one culture to another.

7

Of Spindles and Curses

One of the earliest versions of the tale is “The Ninth Captain’s Tale” of The

Arabian Nights, which are, as Robert Irwin notes, “commonly regarded as a

collection of Arab fairy tales, the oriental equivalent of the Märchen. (fairy tales

or household tales) of the Brothers Grimm,” who were, Irwin assures us, “great

admirers of the Nights.” iii(Irwin, pg. 2). There are other, interesting

connections. Charles Perrault was evidently an ardent patron of the Biblioteque

orientale, a work of Antoine Galland, the first European translator of the Nights,

and he and Galland used the same publisher. As the Nights stories were

introduced in Europe, they were read and discussed among the educated

aristocracy, who loved them and thereby apparently developed a passion for

oriental stories.

“The Ninth Captain’s Tale” would originally have been told by a

professional storyteller in the marketplaces of Baghdad or Cairo, as early as the

10th century.3 It begins with a woman longing for a child, who prays to Allah,

saying, “Give me a daughter, even if she be not proof against the smell of flax!”

The text goes on to explain, “In speaking thus of the smell of flax she meant

that she would have a daughter, even if the girl were so delicate and sensitive

that the anodyne smell of flax would take hold of her throat and kill her.” Here

seems to lie the origin for both the prophesy (or curse, as it were) of the spindle

and the spinning wheel, in later versions. The existence of flax and spinning in

the Arab world checks out, historically. Clinton Gilroy, in his history of textiles,

has noted that the Arabians, as far back as five centuries before the great flood,

were skilled in fabricating silken textures,”4

Irwin mentions that “We may safely assume that the story of ‘Sayf al-

Muluk and Badia al-Jamal’ (one of the Nights tales) was regularly listened to by

the common people in the market-places, including slaves and women.”

3 “In medieval Persia, the naqqal (literally, the ‘transmitter’) used to recite from the great national epic…” Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion, pg. 116. 4 Clinton Gilroy, “History of Silk, Cotton, Linen, and Wool, and other Fibrous Substances,” Introduction.

8

Listeners in the marketplace would thus be familiar with both the tendency to

pray to Allah, and the making of textiles; these would have been part of their

world. 5

Returning to the story: A sultan’s son (here is our prince) sees the little

girl, now ten years old, and falls hopelessly in love. This love at first sight is

intrinsic to almost all the Nights tales, and is a widely respected cultural

phenomenon. Doris Behrens-Abouseif writes that the subject of many Nights

tales “is the power of beauty that hits the heart at the first glance” (Behrens-

Abouseif, pg. 30). ivThis type of love, a “religion of beauty,” is deeply rooted in

the Arabic aesthetic, which attaches great importance to physical beauty as a

reflection of Divine perfection. In the story, the girl is described as “fair as the

rising moon, as pale and delicate as moonlight.” The comparison of feminine

beauty to the moon is a very old expression, one still current in modern Arabic.

Ten years old is younger than the teenage princess in later European versions of

the story, but in traditional Arabic culture, that is not too young to marry.

An old woman (the go between) helps to broker a meeting between the

two, and is also the one to suggest to the girl Sittukhan that she should learn to

spin flax, “..for there is no more delightful sight than a spindle in spindle fingers.”

Apparently Sittukhan’s fingers are long and thin, like a spindle. She pleads with

her mother to let her go to the flax mistress, and, against the mother’s better

judgment, is allowed to go. In Labor in the Medieval Islamic World, weavers and

spinners of flax are listed as being active in Basra, Iraq, in the 10th century. The

flax mistress therefore would be someone that was part of people’s everyday

lives. Sittukhan resolutely goes there, and on her first day “a morsel of flax

entered behind one of her nails [and] she fell swooning to the floor.” This is the

5 However, Irwin goes on, the tendency of the stories to become vulgar were seen as a reason for

women to beware: “ A twelfth-century Andalusian Muslim market inspector’s manual indeed warns of the

dangers of unaccompanied women entering the booths or homes of story-tellers and fortune-tellers.”

9

violation of the interdiction, which leads to the false death or sleep. “They

thought her dead…”

Again the old woman appears and tells the grieving parents not to put

such a beautiful girl in the earth, but rather to “Build her a pavilion in the midst

of the waves of the river and couch her there upon a bed, that you may come to

visit her.” They build a pavilion out of marble, creating a garden around it with

green lawns, and “set the girl upon an ivory bed.” Now this is telling. The Middle

East is dry and very, very hot, and gardens were a luxury, meant for the wealthy.

This would make the girl extremely desirable to the listening crowd. In addition,

gardens are prevalent in the Islamic vision of Paradise, which is always set in a

garden with many fountains. The tradition goes back all the way to 2700 BC

and the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh: “In this immortal garden stands the

Tree….beside a sacred fount the Tree is placed.”v (Emma Clark, pg. 23) In the

Koran these gardens are called the jannat (gardens) al-firdaws (paradise). In this

way, appropriate to the cultural and spiritual paradigms most alive in the

listener’s minds, the girl is imbued with a powerful energy, a symbol of all that is

desirable in life.

The old woman brings the sultan’s son to the girl, telling him that she is

waiting for him. Weeping at her beauty, he kisses her hand and notices the

sliver of flax, which he gently dislodges – and wakes the girl up. Immediately

they get back into bed and stay together for forty days and forty nights. Very

Nights. This suggests that the audience for this tale would be men, since it

would not do for women or children to be hearing such inappropriate details. In

this case then the tale may have been told in one of the Ottoman coffee-houses,

which arose during the Ottoman conquest of Egypt and Syria in the 16th century,

where the clientele was entirely male and “often somewhat disreputable,

numbering the unemployed, off-duty soldiers and drug addicts among its

patrons.” (Irwin, pg. 110) A far cry from the nursery crowd of later audiences!

10

Here the story takes an intriguing turn, one that is not repeated in later

versions and so must be pertinent to the real and implied listeners of the era.

After admiring various aspects of Sittukhan’s beauty, such as her carob-shaped

brows, the Prince decides not to return – he leaves her! This separation and

longing for the beloved has its roots in the mystical love poetry of 10th century

Persia. Originally the beloved was the Divine Beloved, with whom the soul

eternally seeks union. The choice is up to the reader, or listener, whether to

“stop at the literal meaning or to look through this veil into deeper religious

passion.” (Behrens-Abouseif, page 84). So here again the Nights is a mix of the

spiritual and the earthly, and the relationship between Sittukhan and the Prince

is one which the audience could relate to, through their poetry and their

tradition.

Wandering around in despair and longing, Sittukhan finds a magic “Ring of

Sulaiman” (Soloman) which grants her wish for a palace next to the Prince, with

herself in it, only more beautiful than ever before. Her plan is to trick the prince,

perhaps to punish him. The prince of course falls madly in love with this new

girl, which is very funny, and asks his mother to bring her gifts and beg the girl

to marry him. Here the plot parallels the story of Ala-al-din, whom we know as

Aladdin. It must have been customary for mothers to do this for their sons. At

this point the audience would have been mentally negotiating like mad, with

those who favored the prince hoping that he would win the girl, and those

fathers who perhaps had daughters hoping she would refuse him, the cur.

Perhaps the way of young men was so taken for granted that no one would think

twice about his predicament, but the humor is there all the same.

Mysteriously, Sittukhan-as-the-new-princess says she will only marry the

boy if he pretends to be dead, which he agrees to do. So here we have both the

girl and the prince feigning death, with two sets of parents grieving, which

evokes the motif of parental loss, as offspring leave childhood behind. In the

11

end all is revealed and forgiven, and the pair dwell together “in love delight,” the

equivalent to living happily ever after.

On a narratological note, one can find rudimentary traces of the implied

author or narrator even in an essentially oral tale such as this one. While there is

likely no one author to the work, Scheherazade in the Arabian Nights is the

quintessential narrator, and both the frame story and internal structure of

stories within stories in the Nights give a breathtaking model for the two-way

communication theories prevalent in current day narratology. Commenting on

the structural properties of narrative to be found there, Stephen Benson writes,

“Every teller is in turn a listener in the Nights, as is to be expected from a text

that grew out of oral storytelling.”6 Narrators in the oral tradition became

embedded in written fiction, and, in the same way, the real and implied readers

grew out of the listeners engaging with the tale. Such narrative elements have

evolved along with the stories themselves.

It is curious to note that the publication of Galland’s translation of the

Nights came at precisely the same time as Perrault’s La Belle au Bois Dormant,

but it must be remembered that the “The Ninth Captain’s Tale” is a much earlier

story. There is actually an intermediary, Baroque version, which appeared as

“Sun, Moon and Talia,” from the Italian storyteller Giambattista Basile, written at

the end of the 16th century and published in his popular collection Lo cunto de li

cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille ("The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment

for Little Ones").

6 From Zipes, Why Fairy Tales Stick, pg. 18.