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199 24 Henriette Julie de Murat, Sublime and Allegorical Histories (1699)1 Mme Henriette Julie de Castelnau, the Countess de Murat (1670–1716), wrote breathless dedicatory letters to the Dower Princess of Conti on the opening pages of her first two books, Contes de Fées (Tales of Fairies, 1698) and Les Nouveaux Contes des Fées (The New Tales of the Fairies, also 1698).2 The Dower Princess Marie-Anne de Bourbon (1666–1739) was even closer to Louis XIV than was “Mademoiselle,” to whom Perrault had dedicated his tale collection, for the Dower Princess was Louis’s favorite natural daughter, whom he subsequently legitimated, brought to court, and married to a prince of the blood, whose death left her a wealthy widow at the age of twenty. Although Mme de Murat’s scandal-ridden life made her unwelcome at the royal court, which by the 1690s was subject to the piety of Louis’s morganatic wife Mme de Maintenon, she positioned her tales as high in the royal hierarchy as she possibly could by dedicating them to the Dower Princess. In her preface to Histoires sublimes et allégoriques (Sublime and Allegorical Histories, 1699), dedicated instead to the modern fairies, Mme de Murat defined and described “the ancient fairies.” A few were like Melusine, she said, but for the most part, the ancient fairies consisted of crones and beggars, people who swept the house well, put the pot on the fire, did the laundry, rocked and put the children to sleep, milked cows, churned butter, and a thousand other trivialities of this kind. Moreover, the ancient fairies were “old, ugly, poorly dressed, and badly housed.” Their only noteworthy acts were “weeping pearls and diamonds, blowing emeralds into handkerchiefs, and spitting rubies.” For entertainment they danced by the light of the moon 1. Histoires sublimes et allégoriques Par Madame la Comtesse D** Dediées aux Fees modernes (Paris: Chez Florentin & Pierre Delaune, ruë Saint Jacques, à l’Empereur & au Lion d’Or, M. DC. XCIX [Arsenal]). 2. The privilege for publishing Contes de Fées was granted on 7 January 1698, the same day on which a privilege for Les Nouveaux Contes des Fées was also granted. 200 / Fairy Tales Framed and shape-shifted to frighten little children into obedience. All of this was suitable only for amusing “Servants and Nurses.” It is noteworthy that Mme de Murat’s characterizations of ancient fairies are consistent with portrayals of female figures, magical and otherwise in Basile’s Pentamerone, in particular the ten sniveling scabrous crones of his frame tale.3 She used language (crying, blowing her nose, spitting) whose coarseness approximated the vocabulary that Basile put into the mouths of his repellant female narrators. So too is the coarse language Mme de Murat used to describe the magic results of one such fairy: a good girl’s crying, blowing her nose, and spitting. Her choice was inept, because, in fact, in “The Three Fairies” Basile had the same heroine comb pearls and garnets from fairies’ hair, not from her own, although he introduced floral and gemmological imagery in his “Two Little Pizzas” (Day 4, Story 7), where a good girl, Marziella, is rewarded with a fairy’s prayer “that when you breathe roses and jasmines may come out of your mouth, when you comb your hair pearls and garnets may fall from your head, and when you put your foot to the earth lilies and violets may spring forth.”4 Mlle Lhéritier adopted the fairy gift of jewels, when the fairy Eloquentia nativa blessed her heroine Blanche with the ability to have pearls and jewels issue from her mouth (NB: not from her hair, as in Basile) to mark the sweetness and brilliance of her speech. Perrault—in language that was as refined as his purpose in telling stories that should shame neither parent nor confessor—reverted to Basile’s flower and jewel imagery, blessing his heroine with a flower or jewel falling from her mouth, although, in fact, his heroine actually produced two roses, two pearls, and two large diamonds when she spoke. Thus, Mme de Murat’s overall “spitting” criticism is, in effect, directed as much at Mlle Lhéritier as at Perrault. When Mme de Murat flatly stated that the ancient fairies’ deeds survived in her day only in Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose, she must have understood that to compose his own tales, he had used Basile’s work as well as...

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