Fairy Tales revisited, Part 2

The Dangerous Vows

In another of his Spinningwheel Tales, Cautulle Mendès tells of how two fairies met on the edge of a wood near a large town. As usual in such encounters, one of the magical beings was grumpy and mean-spirited, harboring long-standing grudges against all the other fairies, as well as the beautiful young princesses and handsome princes who always passed through their ordeals successfully and won each other’s love in order to live happily ever after; the other was a younger, more sweet-tempered  creature. 

Though they greeted each other amicably enough, the pretty little fairy suspected some trick from her older acquaintance when she brought up the topic of a newly-born daughter for the local royal couple. 

“You’re not going to give one of your curses disguised as a gift, are you?” she asked, with a look of accusatory pain in her face.

“Of course, not, my dear,” the elderly being responded.  “I know much better than to call down the wrath of my sister fairies after all these years.”

“Can I really trust you?” asked the sweet diaphanous creature. 

The older fairy pursed her lips, tut-tutted, and said, “I just want to look at this lovely little baby and give her a gift that will please her parents and the entire court.”

Then the two flew into the city, right through the gates of the palace, and into the large room where the proud parents sat on either side of their darling child.  Many people were there, courtiers, diplomats, important citizens, representatives of various trade and neighborhood societies, all offering their best wishes and congratulations, smiling down at the child, and presenting various presents appropriate to their station in life. 

The Good Fairy’s turn came and she waved her wand and promised the King and Queen that their daughter would grow up beautiful, wise and generous in all things.  The parents thanked her profusely, but then noticed the infamous old fairy and began to tremble a little

.

“Now, now, please don’t worry everyone,” she said.  “I am not here to make trouble.”

Now I should remind my readers at this point that the real author of this tale, way back in the 1860s, used all his skills as a Romantic poet and member of the newly founded movement known as the Parnassians, to embellish all the descriptions and speeches in an ornate, precious language, so that everything in the story was cast in the mode of superlatives—all the words are colorful, metaphoric, and studded with jewels, flowers, butterflies and everything else that is considered beautiful.

But just as everyone in the great hall of the palace was starting to breathe a sigh of relief, the old wicked fairy began to whisper over the golden cradle where the little princess was sleeping.

“What is that you are saying?” asked the Good fairy.

“Heavens, what is she doing?” asked the Queen mother.

“Up to your old tricks, are you?” muttered the King father.

“Nothing much,” said the old magical person.  “I just am saying that when this gorgeous and wonderfully delicate child reaches the age of marriage and finds her Prince Charming, at that very moment, instead of being a bride, she will become a groom.”

Everyone in the room gasped.

“Hahaha,” said the Wicked Fairy.  “That’s right, as soon as some handsome young prince asks her to marry him, your daughter will become your son.  A handsome prince himself, more handsome than any.”

Well, as is to be expected, Good Fairy herself bent down and whispered her own words over the young royal infant.  However, as everyone else was in a commotion, wailing, tearing out their hair, and searching for the terrible creature that blighted the life of the princess, no one noticed what the Good Fairy did and no one knew what she said to ameliorate the terrible doom pronounced a few minutes earlier.

Then the years passed.  All the courtiers and servants were instructed to guard the growing princess and to make sure that she received no suitors, in the hope that she would in this way not undergo the horrible sex-change that would come about as soon as someone asked to marry her and she accepted.  In fact, all young men were forbidden entry to the palace, and only old or malformed servants were allowed to work there any longer. 

This was not too bad while the princess was still too young to understand the oddity of the court and the absence of young men.  But when she passed into adolescence and started to read books, listen to songs and feel the promptings of certain feelings in her body and mind, she started to ask embarrassing questions which her nurses, maids and parents found difficult to parry.  They made up stories for a number of years.  Then her father took her apart and said that there was a curse over her head and it was important for her not to see young men at all because something very unpleasant would happen if she should meet such a person.  No one could bring themselves to tell her what that unpleasant change would be.

Now as you read this story, my dear readers, being denizens of a very different kind of world, well into the sexual revolution and imbued with politically correct ideas about gender equality and the nature of homosexual desires, you don’t perceive anything really untoward in the impending transformation of the sweet little princess into a handsome young prince nor even ion the prospect of two healthy, well-educated and amiable young men meeting, falling in love, and entering into a single-sex marriage or civil union, whichever is available in your jurisdiction.

As it was bound to happen, according to the generic laws of fairy tales, albeit somewhat filtered through a mind-nineteenth-century lends of idealism and conformity to bourgeois norms, just before she turned eighteen and at the height of her innocent beauty, the princess chanced to meet a young man.  He was a Prince Charming in every way, and as he was leading a small army across the territory of the King and Queen who were in alliance with his father, they could not forbid his entry into the city nor insult his parents by refusing him hospitality in their home.  So there he was in the palace.  After dinner—which the Princess did not attend on some excuse made up to keep her away from this dangerous young man—he went for a walk in the garden, and while there, by sheer chance—or by the inevitable fate wound up into the curse of the Wicked Fairy—the two young people bumped into one another—quite literally.

This proved to be the first contact, and physical contact at that, between the adolescent girl and the somewhat older but also rather naïve Prince.  They looked at one another, were entrapped by love, and somehow started to stammer out words of love.  At that very moment, the King and Queen who had become aware of what might happen and thus rushed out into the garden to prevent a catastrophe, and arrived, alas, just too late.  The fatal words of love had been spoken and the deep metamorphosis in body and soul of the Princess had started to occur.  This was visible at once, as everyone could see who had gathered around the couple, with the breasts of the girl shrinking, a beard sprouting on her face, and a new strength coursing throughout her body. 

Sighs and cries of grief went all around the group.  It was too late.  The curse had taken effect. 

Then, for this is, to be sure, a fairy tale, something else happened, and in a few moments everyone noticed it too, thus realizing what words the other fairy, the sweet and good one had uttered eighteen years earlier.  The visiting Prince also was undergoing a change.  His blood slowed down and his whole body became softer.  His whispers shrank into his cheeks and chin.  His contours became rounder until he took on the shape of young woman. 

All this can be considered an illusion, the magic of suggestion and dream-fulfilment, or perhaps some strange hormonal reaction to an awakening for sexual instincts too long repressed, an expression of genetic peculiarities occasioned by the shocked look on all the gathered audience around the young man and young woman, as they assumed the gender identities they had always had but could not reveal until this moment.  We can never know for sure because for all his poetic creativity and later understanding of psychology which he showed in his later novels and plays, often about sexual changes, homosexual relationships, and repressed desires, Catulle Mendès never tells us.