French Fairy Tales: A Jungian Approach

Chapter 2. Charles Perrault’s Multi-Veined Donkey Skin, Sleeping Beauty, and Bluebeard

CHAPTER 2 Charles Perrault’S Multi-Veined Donkey-Skin, Sleeping Beauty, and Bluebeard BORN INTO MOMENTOUS TIMES, little did the Parisian-born Charles Perrault (1628–1703) know that the publication of his Tales of Mother Goose (1695) would bring him fame both during his lifetime and for centuries to come. ECTYPAL ANALYSIS That Charles Perrault had a mind of his own was made evident when, at the age of fifteen, following an altercation with one of his teachers, he left school, greatly disappointing his father, an attorney at the Parlement of Paris. Henceforth , the largely self-taught Perrault studied not only the required curriculum, but the Bible, La Serre’s History of France, and Latin authors, such as Tertullian , Vergil, and Cornelius Nepos. Although he earned a law degree in l651, he gave up his career five years later to become “secretary” to his brother, Pierre, Paris’s tax receiver. Having also taken to writing vers galants—“Iris’s Portrait ” and “Portrait of Iris’s Voice”—by 1661 he had become a “public poet,” his mission being to proclaim the achievements of Louis XIV. Appointed to Colbert’s “little council” in 1663, then advisor to this renowned statesman, he was made a member of the French Academy in 1671. At the age of forty-four 65 Perrault married the nineteen-year-old Marie Guichon, who died after the birth of their third child. Perrault’s vociferous support of contemporary arts in the famous “Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns” is evident in his poem, “The Century of Louis the Great” (1687), written in praise of such creative spirits as Corneille, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, and La Tour. His four dialogic volumes include commentaries on a broad spectrum of topics: Parallels of the Ancients and the Moderns . . . On the Subject of the Arts and the Sciences, Dialogues (1688), Eloquence (1690), and so forth. At the age of sixty-three Perrault branched out to the new and relatively popular field of narration of moralistic legends in verse. Unlike the poet and critic Boileau, a misogynist who attacked the female sex, Perrault defended women in his creative writings as well as in such tracts as Vindication of Wives (1694). He urged men to marry early and to care for and be caring to their wives. ARCHETYPAL ANALYSIS Donkey-Skin: An Adolescent’s Struggle Against Incest and for Independence The sources for Perrault’s Donkey-Skin may be traced back to the The Golden Ass by the Latin writer, Apuleius (second century C.E.); to the Nerones episodes in the anonymous fourteenth-century French novel Perceforest, and to “The She-Bear” by the seventeenth-century Italian Giambattista Basile (included in his Pentameron (The Tale of Tales) (Barchilon and Flinders, Charles Perrault 92). Characteristic of many a fairy tale, Donkey-Skin opens in an Edenic world. The king and queen of a powerful kingdom share a deep love and harmony in their marriage, and are blessed with a beautiful, delightful, and gentle daughter. Unique among the royal couple’s possessions is a donkey who, rather than excreting manure, discharges gold coins, thereby assuring the economic wealth of the nation. A state of bliss being incompatible with the vagaries of life, the royal family’s perfect existence screeches to a halt. The still-young queen becomes mortally ill. Whether out of bitterness or an unwillingness to allow another woman to replace her upon her demise, she extracts the following promise from her husband. If he marries again—and she is certain he will—he must promise that his future wife be more beautiful, better formed, and wiser than she. Although he agrees to her request, the king tells her outright that he has no intention of ever remarrying. 66 FRENCH FAIRY TALES Following his beloved’s passing and the king’s period of mourning, the perceptive courtiers predict he will soon be looking for a new bride. Indeed, the king’s messengers are sent far and wide to scour the land in search of a match that would fulfill his bond. All efforts are in vain, until he suddenly realizes that his daughter not only fits his wife’s requirements, but surpasses them in every way. Fully aware of the interdict placed on father/daughter marriages , the king, now burning “with extreme love” for the princess, decides to rid himself of all possible judicial impediments to such a union. He consults a...