#les conteuses

[samfosho]

I love when a book lies to my face. Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance pissed me off so bad I did magic about it. I turned a fifteen minute script into 3 and a half entire hours of ranting, and then turned that into an hour fifty of this bullshit.

Uh. Yeah.

[morose-idealist]

When I was in college, I took a grad course on 17th century French fairytales. It was as awesome as it sounds (to be clear, I mean VERY awesome) and I learned so much, enough to have an everlasting bitterness towards the brothers Grimm and how they took a body of work that was surprisingly feminist (being written almost entirely by and for a coven of very well-educated, witty, and— crucially— not-entirely-happily married noblewomen), and very specifically meant to be shared among adults as literary works, and turned it into the didactic and patriarchal genre that most people are familiar with today*.

I'm serious, y'all. I expected nuance and I did NOT get it. The data very clearly indicated that active female protagonists, quite a few of whom have to go rescue their hapless Prince (or sibling or parent), were the norm— not the exception.

*I am not trashing the Grimms' works themselves; I just don't like how their work pushed the 17th-century Conteuses (lady storytellers/authoresses) aside. They are one interpretation, not the ONLY interpretation**

**And their interpretation is heavily derived from the Conteuses' interpretations and their original works. The Grimms described themselves as collectors of fairytales rather than writers; they just weren't above some bowdlerizing and insertion of patriarchal values.

All this to say that up until about a month ago, the only piece of pure creative writing I've ever done was the final project for that class: a fairytale written in the style of the 17th c. French Conteuses. I have parallel versions, one in English and one French, because it was hard to get the ball rolling on that flow state of creativity while not writing my native language. I started in English, would pause after a few paragraphs and switch to the French version to translate. Gradually I was writing directly in French and switching back to the English version to keep it parallel. Eventually I was just full-on composing in French.

I've been re-reading it. And I'm proud of it. It couldn't be over 18 pages so I had to wrap it up way more quickly then I wanted, and I've always wanted to go back and expand on the things I couldn't include.

I might do that.