From the Editors

Several of the essays in this issue of Marvels & Tales deal with questions of violence: violence within the family under patriarchy, exemplified in adaptations of “The Juniper Tree”; and different forms of violence and aggression aimed at women, evident in oppressive gender constructions and gender ideologies. Each essay shows how fairy tales have been deployed to uphold and challenge these various forms of violence. In her study of Margaret Atwood, for instance, Rona May-Ron insists that Atwood employs “fairy-tale intertexts” in ways that “challenge and subvert traditional ideologies of gender, class, and political power that are present in some of the earlier variants” of Cinderella tales. Tatjana Menise’s piece on Russian fan fiction provides insight into the processes involved in retelling a source text in ways that can shed more light on questions related to adaptation. Two essays grew out of conference panels on the #MeToo movement. Jessica Campbell’s contribution examines Carmen Maria Machado’s adaptation of animal or supernatural bride tales to foreground the extent of repressive constructions of gender and sexuality. For her part, Shannan Palma explores the television show Beauty and the Geek, which draws from some of the problematic gender constructions in “Beauty and the Beast Tales” that are redeployed to legitimate “sexist entitlement” present in the incel movement. Together and adopting a range of methodologies, the essays explore various practices of adaptation that expand and challenge classical fairy-tale narratives.