“The Juniper Tree” as Primal Scene: English-Language Literary Adaptations since 1985

This essay examines English-language literary adaptations of “The Juniper Tree” from 1985 to the present for the ways in which they address violence in the relationships between parental figures and children. These adaptations emphasize the tale’s excessive elements in order to resist the restorative narrative closure of the tale’s ending and to point to an unresolvable trauma within parent–child relationships. I broaden Freud’s concept of the primal scene to refer an experience that cannot be integrated into memory or narrative and argue that these adaptations use the fairy tale to figure experiences of violence and loss that resist representation