Fée VS Fairy
As I was writing my previous post about Dubois’ theory of the “May Queen of fairy tales”, I realized I forgot to talk here of a VERY important point that needs to be clarified if I go further into a dissection of fairy tales.
The French “fée” is not at all the same thing as the English “fairy”.
The English word “fairy” is basically a catch-all term for every kind of supernatural entity or inhabitant of the “Otherworld” in the folklore of the British Isles. Heirs of the many species of the Aos Si, the Otherworlders (Banshees, Leprechauns, Cluricans, Pucas, Dullahans...), fairies include as much the tiny little winged female imps of Victorian poetry and the miniature flower-girls of Shakespeare, as the selkies, kelpies and black hounds of folklore. It is a very wide and complex world.
The French “fée”, while the equivalent and French translation of the English “fairy”, doesn’t mean the same thing at all. A “fée” is a much more delimited, classified, clarified type of supernatural entity. In fact, to distinguish the British “fairy” from the French “fée”, people sometime use the term “Dame Fées”, “Lady Fairy”, because the Fée is ALWAYS female (the word itself is female) and usually appears human-like (either with a few small traits to separate her from humans, or with no traits at all to distinguish her from humans - unlike the more monstrous and alien fairies). The Fée is still however a creature of magic, but rather in the sense that she is a mistress of spells and enchantments - in fact, the French “fée” is equated and confused with witches and enchantresses. They basically are otherworldy sorceresses that look human and have human desires, and yet perform inhuman feats and usually live in domains of marvel, magic or horrors.
The French “fée” were originally the “pagan goddesses”, the “druidesses and priestesses” of the old religions and the various nymphs and female spirits said to protect or inhabited sacred areas and natural landscapes - in fact, the fées were said to inhabit or manifest always within a specific landmark: a fountain, a spring, a tree, a rock, a grotto... And in turn, as Christianity grew in France, the Church decided to cover and eradicate these “superstitions” and the “relics of paganism” by either denouncing fées as witches OR by turning fées into female saints (this notably explains the unusual approach of French people to Catholic saints, that often only exist as a cover up of a wizard or fairy).
Taking all of this in consideration, the figure of the fairy in French fairytales (and in fairytales in general, as the French fairytales heavily influenced the genre that THEY ACTUALLY CREATED) makes much more sense.
It is also very interesting to see that as the French fairytale genre shaped itself, it actually defined the very archetypal division of the “good fairy” and the “bad fairy” (which wasn’t a thing before, when the fées were ambiguous entities). The French fairytale introduced a manicheist moral dimension to the fée, through the two archetypes of the “Fairy Godmother” (good fairy) opposed to the “Carabosse” (evil fairy).
Before the French fairytales of the Renaissance, in medieval times (as the Middle-Ages were THE age of fées, where the fée figure was shaped, created, popularized) there was actually a “duality” between two different types of fées - but it was not one based on morality. Across the many medieval texts, from medieval folktales to Arthurian myths, the “fée” was divided into two archetypes: the “fairy godmother” and the “fairy lover”. The “fairy godmother” is actually an anachronism, as the position of “godmother” came from the fairytales ; but it was the “fata”, the “fairy of destiny”, the fairy as the shaper of fates, deliverer of prophecies, giver of curses - the inheritor of the Moirae, Parcae and Norns. The other archetype, the “fairy lover” (la fée amante, opposed to the fée marraine) is pretty self-telling: it is the fée as a supernatural lover or a seducing woman from the otherworld.
If you want to have a better grasp of the French fée, the medieval fée and how it evolved into the “fairytale” fée, you just need to look at the three most famous and major “medieval fées” that embody all of the archetypes and elements talked above: Morgan Le Fay and Viviane from the Arthurian myth, and Melusine the legendary half-snake bride. They are the “holy trinity” (if I dare say so) of the French fée in the Middle-Ages.