When I was slogging through the introduction of Charles Perrault’s The Complete Fairy Tales, I was very much worried that I’d hate the tales within in. The introduction was forty-six pages long and the translator felt the need to explain every single tale which more or less amounted to: “blah blah blah, Freud, blah blah blah, sexual symbolism.”
This is just a personal bias but I think people who view everything as sexual are crass and not very intelligent.
Nevertheless, the beginning of The History of Griselda almost had me in tears with laughter. Not really because the tale itself was that funny but because of the sheer historic recurrence of it. I would have loved to quote it, but the quotes would have been too long and the poetic format would’ve made them longer.
The History of Griselda tells of a nameless Prince who is basically a 17th-century version of MGTOW. However, he falls in love with the titular character, Griselda, who is beautiful both soul and body. (Because beauty in fairy tales is more about conduct than looks.)
The Prince, though, has trust issues with women because all women are lying, deceitful hussies, basically, and after the birth of their first child he starts projecting these trust issues onto Griselda for no particular reason. So he decides to test her virtue and loyalty. For fifteen years.
I get what the tale is about; it’s basically an exaltation of (supposed) female virtue and how this virtue would change even the most cruel husband. The author even says it himself in the dedication to “Mademoiselle”:
For as we have consistently been shown
Patience is what their husbands need.
I get it, I just disagree with the method used to show how virtuous Griselda is. You see, at a certain point the Prince sends their daughter away to a cloister because of a deluded and imagined slight, tells Griselda she’s dead, and then fifteen years later pretends he’s going to marry said daughter to still! test his wife, and both his daughter and the daughter’s husband-to-be’s love for each other.
Let me say this: if my dad did something like this, I most certainly would not joyously throw myself at his feet and embrace him upon disclosure.
As virtuous and good the Prince is as a prince, as a husband and father he’s a complete ridiculous twat.
In conclusion: I liked the message in The Story of the Beauty and the Beast better. The one in The History of Griselda is too one-sided and unbalanced. Because what’s his lesson? Not All Women Are Like That. And what’s her lesson? If you’re patient you’ll turn that abusive git around.
“It is much better to have an amiable husband than one whose only recommendation is a handsome person. How many girls are compelled to marry rich brutes, much more brutish than the Beast, who is only one in form, and not in his feelings or his actions?”
— The Story of the Beauty and the Beast
Hiraeth 