Parents of kids besotted by the Disney channel might roll their eyes at how successfully the movies have mesmerized their children. But the practice of telling fanciful stories featuring youths who must navigate magic and non-human creatures is quite old. The genre owes its name, _Les Contes des Fees_, “Fairy Tales” to one Madame d’Aulnoy, who published a volume by that title in 1697. (See the second image for her picture.) It turns out that the majority of fairy tale authors in France at the time were women. Madame d’Aulnoy’s writings are not folk tales: their audience and concerns are aristocratic. But through them one can detect a female voice of criticism at the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King. For instance, in “Le Mouton,” or “the Ram,” a self-centered king decides to send his youngest daughter out into the woods and murdered because she had had a dream where he was acting as her servant (self-esteem issues). Due to magic and the sacrifice of her servant and animal friends, she escapes and discovers a palace ruled by an enchanted Ram. (The first slide is an early illustration.) The creature had been turned into that form by an evil queen sorceress (petty jealousy). The daughter falls in love with the ram (this is, in fact, an early version of “Beauty and the Beast”), but eventually desires to return to her father’s palace when she learns her sisters are going to be married off (many arranged marriages happen in d’Aulnoy’s stories — at 15 her father married her to a 45-year old man). The ram urges her not to go, but out of loyalty, she does. Once in the castle, her father bars the doors, and time passes so that the ram becomes distraught and dies of sorrow. The end. Not so Disney-esque, but it was another time. Madame d’Aulnoy’s final words to the tale reflect the viewpoint of a rich woman who saw much tribulation: “This was taken as a striking example, therefore, that people of the highest rank are subject, like others, to fortune’s blows, and that often the worst luck comes to them just when they think all their wishes are about to be fulfilled.”
Source(s): “The Ram,” Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy, trans by Miss Annie Macdonnell and Miss Lee. London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1892, @surlalunefairytales.com; “Fairy Passages: Madame d’Aulnoy,” by Mari Hess, Jan 12, 2017, @Tor.com; Patricia Hannon, “Feminine voice and the motivated text: Madame 2and the Chevalier de Mailly, _Merveilles & contes_ vol 2, May 1988, pp. 13-24, published by Wayne State UP; image of Madame d’Aulnoy Wikipedia; illustration from “The Ram” by Jean Lamsvelt, notice n. A9034, @utpictura18, “Reserche par source textuelle de l’image”.
