Sleeping Beauty (French: La Belle au bois dormant, "The Beauty in the sleeping wood") by Charles Perrault or Little Briar Rose (German: Dornröschen) by the Brothers Grimm is a classic fairytale involving a beautiful princess, enchantment, and a handsome prince. It is the first in the set published in 1697 by Charles Perrault, Contes de ma Mère l'Oye ("Tales of Mother Goose").[1]
The most familiar Sleeping Beauty in the English-speaking world has become the 1959 Walt Disney animated film, which draws as much from Tchaikovsky's ballet (premiered at Saint Petersburg in 1890) as it does from Perrault.
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The basic elements of Perrault's narrative are in two parts. Some folklorists believe that they were originally separate tales, as they became afterward in the Grimms' version, and were joined together by Basile, and Perrault following him.[2]
At the christening of a long-wished-for princess, fairies invited as godmothers offer gifts: beauty, wit, and musical talent. However, as her gift, a wicked fairy who was overlooked, places the princess under an enchantment, saying that, on reaching adulthood, she will prick her finger on the spindle of the Spinning Wheel of Death and die. However, one last fairy has yet to give her gift. She partially reverses the wicked fairy's curse, proclaiming that the princess will instead fall into a deep sleep for 100 years.
The king forbade spinning on distaff or spindle, or the possession of one, upon pain of death, throughout the kingdom, but all in vain. When the princess was fifteen or sixteen she chanced to come upon an old woman, who was really the wicked fairy in disguise, in a tower of the castle, who was spinning. The princess asked to try the unfamiliar task and the inevitable happened. The wicked fairy's curse was fulfilled. The good fairy returned and put everyone in the castle to sleep. A forest of briars sprang up around the castle, shielding it from the outside world: no one could try to penetrate it without facing certain death in the thorns.
After a hundred years had passed, a prince who had heard the story of the enchantment braved the wood, which parted at his approach, and entered the castle. He trembled upon seeing the princess's beauty and fell on his knees before her. He kissed her, then she woke up, then everyone in the castle woke to continue where they had left off, and they all lived happily ever after.
Secretly wed by the reawakened Royal almoner, the Prince continued to visit the Princess, who bore him two children, L'Aurore (Dawn) and Le Jour (Day), which he kept secret from his step-mother, who was of an ogre lineage. Once he had ascended the throne, he brought his wife and the talabutte ("Count of The Mount").
The Ogress Queen Mother sent the young Queen and the children to a house secluded in the woods, and directed her cook there to prepare the boy for her dinner, with a sauce Robert. The humane cook substituted a lamb, which satisfied the Queen Mother, who then demanded the girl, but was satisfied with a young goat prepared in the same excellent sauce. When the Ogress demanded that he serve up the young Queen, the latter offered her throat to be slit, so that she might join the children she imagined were dead. There was a tearful secret reunion in the cook's little house, while the Queen Mother was satisfied with a hind prepared with sauce Robert. Soon she discovered the trick and prepared a tub in the courtyard filled with vipers and other noxious creatures. The King returned in the nick of time and the Ogress, being discovered, threw herself into the pit she had prepared and was consumed, and everyone else lived happily ever after.
Perrault transformed the tone of Basile's "Sole, Luna, e Talia". Beside differences in tone, the most notable differences in the plot is that, in Basile's version, the sleep did not stem from a curse, but was prophesied; that the king did not wake Talia from the sleep with a kiss, but raped her,[3] and when she gave birth to two children, one sucked on her finger, drawing out the piece of flax that had put her to sleep, which woke her; and that the woman who resented her and tried to eat her and her children was not the king's mother but his jealous wife. The mother-in-law's jealousy is less motivated, although common in fairy tales.
There are earlier elements that contributed to the tale, in the medieval courtly romance Perceforest (published in 1528), in which a princess named Zellandine falls in love with a man named Troylus. Her father sends him to perform tasks to prove himself worthy of her, and while he is gone, Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep. Troylus finds her and impregnates her in her sleep; when their child is born, he draws from her finger the flax that caused her sleep. She realizes from the ring he left her that the father was Troylus; he returns after his adventures to marry her.[4]
Earlier influences come from the story of the sleeping Brynhild in the Volsunga saga and the tribulations of saintly female martyrs in early Christian hagiography conventions. It was, in fact, the existence of Brynhild that persuaded the Brothers Grimm to include the story in later editions of their work rather than eliminate it, as they did to other works they deemed to be purely French, stemming from Perrault's work.
The second half, in which the princess and her children are almost put to death, but hidden instead, may have been influenced by St. Genevieve.
This fairy tale is classified as Aarne-Thompson type 410.[5]
The princess's name has been unstable. In Sun, Moon, and Talia, she is named Talia ("Sun" and "Moon" being her twin children). Perrault removed this, leaving her anonymous, although naming her daughter "L'Aurore". The Brothers Grimm named her "Briar Rose" in their 1812 collection.[6] This transfer was taken up by Disney in the film, which also called her Aurora.[7] John Stejean named her "Rosebud" in TeleStory Presents.
The Brothers Grimm included a variant, Briar Rose, in their collection (1812).[6] It truncates the story as Perrault and Basile told it to the ending now generally known: the arrival of the prince concludes the tale.[8] Some translations of the Grimm tale give the princess the name Rosamond. The brothers considered rejecting the story on the grounds that it was derived from Perrault's version, but the presence of the Brynhild tale convinced them to include it as an authentically German tale. Still, it is the only known German variant of the tale, and the influence of Perrault is almost certain.[9]
The Brothers Grimm also included, in the first edition of their tales, a fragmentary fairy tale, The Evil Mother-in-Law. This began with the heroine married and the mother of two children, as in the second part of Perrault's tale, and her mother-in-law attempted to eat first the children and then the heroine. Unlike Perrault's version, the heroine herself suggested an animal be substituted in the dish, and the fragment ends with the heroine's worry that she can not keep her children from crying, and so from coming to the attention of the mother-in-law. Like many German tales showing French influence, it appeared in no subsequent edition.[10]
Italo Calvino included a variant in Italian Folktales. The cause of her sleep is an ill-advised wish by her mother: she would not care if her daughter died of pricking her finger at fifteen, if only she had a daughter. As in Pentamerone, she wakes after the prince rapes her in her sleep, and her children are born and one sucks on her finger, pulling out the prick that had put her to sleep. He preserves that the woman who tries to kill the children is the king's mother, not his wife, but adds that she does not want to eat them herself but serves them to the king.[11] His version came from Calabria, but he noted that all Italian versions closely followed Basile's.[12]
Besides Sun, Moon, and Talia, Basile included another variant of this Aarne-Thompson type, The Young Slave. The Grimms also included a second, more distantly related one, The Glass Coffin.[5]
Joseph Jacobs noted the figure of the Sleeping Beauty was in common between this tale and the Gypsy tale The King of England and his Three Sons, in his More English Fairy Tales.[13]
The hostility of the king's mother to his new bride is repeated in the fairy tale The Six Swans,[14] and also features The Twelve Wild Ducks, where she is modified to be the king's stepmother, but these tales omit the cannibalism.
Some folklorists have analyzed Sleeping Beauty as indicating the replacement of the lunar year (with its thirteen months, symbolically depicted by the full thirteen fairies) by the solar year (which has twelve, symbolically the invited fairies). This, however, founders on the issue that only in the Grimms' tale is the wicked fairy the thirteenth fairy; in Perrault's, she is the eighth.[15]
Among familiar themes and elements in Perrault's tale:
Sleeping Beauty has been popular for many fairytale fantasy retellings. These include Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters novel The Gates of Sleep; Robin McKinley's Spindle's End, Orson Scott Card's Enchantment, Jane Yolen's Briar Rose, Sophie Masson's Clementine, Anne Rice's (as A. N. Roquelaure) Sleeping Beauty Trilogy and Jim C. Hines Princess Series.
The curse of the fairy godmother, by itself, has been taken from the tale and used in many contexts. George MacDonald used it in his Sleeping Beauty parody, The Light Princess, in which the evil fairy godmother curses the princess not to death but to lack gravity — leaving her both lacking in physical weight and unable to take other people's suffering seriously.[16] In Andrew Lang's Prince Prigio, the queen, who does not believe in fairies, does not invite them; the fairies come anyway and give good gifts, except for the last one, who says that he shall be "too clever" — and the problems with such a gift are only revealed later. In Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, a princess laments that she was not cursed at her christening. When another character points out that many princesses are not (even in the Chronicles' fairy-tale setting), she complains that in her case the wicked fairy did come to the christening, "had a wonderful time", and left the princess with no way to assume her proper, fairy-tale role. Another Wrede short story, "Stronger than Time," from the collection "Book of Enchantments," has a ghost story of Sleeping Beauty. In M.M. Kaye's The Ordinary Princess, the queen insists on inviting fairies to the princess's christening for the sake of tradition, despite the king's protestations, and the fairy Crustacea gives Princess Amy the "gift" of being ordinary.
Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber" provides a postmodern retelling of Sleeping Beauty entitled "The Lady of the House of Love". Although she deviates significantly from the original subject matter she keeps intact what she terms the "latent content", for example though not actually asleep there are repeated references to the protagonist existing as a somnambulist. The story follows the life of a Transylvanian vampire condemned by her fate until a young soldier arrives who, through his innocence, frees her from her curse.
Annaliese Evans's "Night's Rose" continues to play on the same elements from part two of Sleeping Beauty, in which the heroine, Rosemarie Edenberg (the princess) has her mind set on wiping out the entire orgre tribe. Through her journey she is joined by her fairy advisor Ambrose Nuit and a Vampire Lord Gareth Shenley.
Jim C. Hines retells the story of Talia aka Sleeping Beauty (along with Danielle (Cinderella) and Snow (Snow White) in his Princess series of books which include "The Step Sister Scheme", "The Mermaid's Madness" and "Red Hood's Revenge". In this retelling Talia is a cunning and deadly warrior. Due to the gifts bestowed to her by the fairies she possesses grace, beauty and the voice of an angel. Hines uses the less popular "Sun, Moon, and Talia" version of Sleeping Beauty's awaking-- as opposed to the romantic "kiss" scenario-- as her back story. Talia is also a lesbian in this series, which gives her a whole new dimension and an interesting take on the character.
Francesca Lia Block's The Rose and the Beast contains a story entitled "Charm", where Sleeping Beauty is re-imagined as a heroin addict with a history of sexual abuse living in modern-day Los Angeles.
Alex Flinn's A Kiss in Time is a modern version of Sleeping Beauty, in which Talia, princess of Euphrasia, touches a spindle, falling into a deep sleep for three-hundred years.
Michele Carafa composed La belle au bois dormant in 1825.
The last movement of Märchenbilder (Schumann) depicts scenes from the story (source: section of Schumann's journals "hard to find and not translated into English".[17] Gerhard Schmidt, who taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and at the City of London School for Girls, had access to a copy of this section before he left Austria for the UK).
Before Tchaikovsky's version, several ballet productions were based on the "sleeping beauty" theme, amongst which one from Eugène Scribe: in the winter of 1828–1829, the French playwright furnished a four-act mimed scenario as a basis for Aumer's choreography of a four-act ballet-pantomime La Belle au Bois Dormant. Scribe wisely omitted the violence of the second part of Perrault's tale for the ballet, which was set by Hérold and first staged at the Académie Royale in Paris on 27 April 1829. Though Hérold popularized his piece with a piano Rondo brilliant based on themes from the music, he was not successful in getting the ballet staged again.
When Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the Director of the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg, wrote to Tchaikovsky on 25 May 1888, suggesting a ballet based on Perrault's tale, he also cut the violent second half, climaxed the action with the Awakening Kiss, and followed with a conventional festive last act, a series of bravura variations.
Although Tchaikovsky may not have been very eager to compose a new ballet (remembering that the reception of his Swan Lake ballet music, staged eleven seasons earlier, had only been lukewarm), he set to work with Vsevolovzhsky's scenario. The ballet, with Tchaikovsky's music (his Opus 66) and choreography by Marius Petipa, was premiered in the Saint Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre on 24 January 1890.
Besides being Tchaikovsky's first major success in ballet composition, it set a new standard for what is now called "Classical Ballet", and remained one of the all-time favourites in the whole of the ballet repertoire. Sleeping Beauty was the first ballet that impresario Sergei Diaghilev ever saw – he later recorded in his memoirs – and also the first that ballerinas Anna Pavlova and Galina Ulanova ever saw, and the ballet that introduced the Russian dancer Rudolph Nureyev to European audiences. Diaghilev staged the ballet himself in 1921 in London with the Ballets Russes. Choreographer George Balanchine made his stage debut as a gilded Cupid sitting on a gilded cage, in the last act divertissements.
Mimed and danced versions of the ballet survived in the distinctly British genre of pantomime, with Carabosse, the evil fairy, a famous travesti role.
Maurice Ravel's Ma Mère l'Oye includes a movement entitled Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant (Pavane of the Beauty in the Sleeping Wood). This piece was also later developed into a ballet.
The band Alesana also has a song related to Sleeping Beauty called "The Uninvited Thirteenth" which is on the their album Where Myth Fades to Legend. "It's in the point of view of the uninvited thirteenth and the prince. Many princes before him had tried to wake Sleeping Beauty up but before they could reach her they got pierced by the thorns. The uninvited thirteenth is talking about revenge and killing the both of them. As for the prince is talking about saving her and how he struggles to pass the thorns. In the end he reaches her and kisses her. His prize is his darling Rosamond."
A new opera is currently in progress, with a German libretto by Peter Munns and music by Canadian composers Ian Dives and Roger Parton.
The Walt Disney Productions animated feature Sleeping Beauty was released on 29 January 1959 by Buena Vista Distribution. Disney spent nearly a decade working on the film, which was produced in the Super Technirama 70 widescreen film process with a stereophonic soundtrack. The film cost six million U.S. dollars to produce. Its musical score and songs are adapted from Tchaikovsky's ballet. This tale includes three good fairies - Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather - and one evil fairy, Maleficent. As in most Disney films, there are considerable changes made to the plot. For example, it is Maleficent herself that appears in the upper tower of the castle and creates the spinning wheel on which Princess Aurora (called Briar Rose by Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather in the years before the event), pricks her finger. In the original, a drop spindle rather than a spinning wheel was specified. The princess' hair is also changed from dark brown, as in Perrault's original book, to blonde. The princess has been described as Disney's most beautiful heroine,[18] and while it has been observed that "comparisons of this statuesque blonde to the contemporaneous Barbie doll are difficult to avoid,"[19] all the sequences of the film were first filmed in live action.[20]
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