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  • Fairy Tale: A Very Short Introduction by Marina Warner
  • Manon Hakem-Lemaire (bio)
Fairy Tale: A Very Short Introduction. By Marina Warner, Oxford University Press, 2018, 156 pp.

With language full of imagery and references to fairy tales that anyone can identify, Marina Warner dives straight into her history and analysis of the genre. She makes it clear: fairy tales are no longer reserved for children, and many aspects of them still remain unexplored. Of interest to both academic [End Page 129] and popular audiences, the fairy tale is a perpetually malleable genre whose ancient myths allow us to relate to contemporary cultural anxieties.

Despite the always problematic enterprise of defining a genre, Warner manages a simple definition: fairy tales are short narratives that tell familiar stories. They contain the orality of anonymous narratives once told among unlettered people and passed down the generations. Fairy tales have recurring motifs (e.g., magic and violence), characters (e.g., innocent children, witches, and princesses) and plots (e.g., injustice, epic journeys, and dramatic or happy endings). Above all, these tales give a sense of wisdom coming from our ancestors. With this comprehensive definition and references to popular titles such as “Red Riding Hood,” “Cinderella,” or the Arabian Nights, Warner then engages with authors’ and theorists’ approaches to fairy tales, from Italo Calvino’s term “consolatory fables” to Angela Carter’s “heroic optimism” (xxviii–xxix). Thus, Warner achieves an effective, enticing prologue that paves the way for an accessible manual, promising a good overview of fairy tales for a large audience.

If they do not seem to follow a logical order at first, this Very Short Introduction’s nine chapters transition very well into one another. Their amusing titles are perfectly evocative of the themes addressed by each chapter, from fairies and magic to stage and screen, through translation and psychology. Inside each chapter, the reader will find inspirational quotes from fairy tales. These quotes are not prompts for a close analysis of a particular tale, but rather a starting point for a more general discussion around the theme at stake (fairies, for instance). Then, the reader will find welcome illustrations from old and new paintings, books, and films. Numbered “boxes” giving attention to a particular tale are also a very useful addition to support each chapter’s arguments. Because Warner’s writing style is colorful and creative, one may find it difficult to follow the progression of her argument while juggling between the main text, the quotes, the illustrations, and the boxes. Nevertheless, handy subheadings, brief chapters, and small transitions before each new one ease this slight difficulty. Averaging fifteen pages, the chapters each treat their specific theme while gradually building towards Warner’s main arguments: first, that fairy tales have been taken as “scriptures” to guide us, adults, through life (136). Second, that they are progressing from being considered childish illusions and are increasingly seen as realistic in their capacity to create “an alternative world” that, by effect of contrast, reflects contemporary anxieties and trauma (135).

By combining her analyses of traditional tales by Perrault or the Grimms with Disney classics and more recent works such as Pablo Berger’s film Blancanieves (2012), Warner makes another notable point: that role models in fairy tales are crucial to understanding past and current appreciations of [End Page 130] gender and sexuality. About modern representations of fairy tales, Warner argues that they “reveal an acute malaise about sexual, rather than social, programming of the female,” all the while striving to depict stronger, more independent heroines, such as in Disney’s Frozen (2014), written and directed by Jennifer Lee (132, 109). By acknowledging both the progressiveness of fairy tales and their problematic depiction of gender and sexuality, Warner does not denounce an inconsistency of the genre; she compellingly illustrates her argument that fairy tales are, after all, about reality, and that, as they are told and reinvented, fairy tales reflect current malaises of society. With this focus on gender in chapters 7 and 9, Warner addresses an aspect of fairy tales that once lacked academic attention, as pointed out by Daniel Peretti in his 2008 review of Myth: A Very Short Introduction (2004...

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