Sleeping Beauty
"Sleeping Beauty", also titled in English as The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, is a French fairy tale about a princess cursed by an evil fairy to sleep for a hundred years before being awakened by a handsome prince. A good fairy, knowing the princess would be frightened if alone when she wakes, uses her wand to put every living person and animal in the palace and forest asleep, to awaken when the princess does.
The earliest known version of the tale is found in the French narrative Perceforest, written between 1330 and 1344. Another was the Catalan poem Frayre de Joy e Sor de Paser. Giambattista Basile wrote another, "Sun, Moon, and Talia" for his collection Pentamerone, published posthumously in 1634–36 and adapted by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697. The version collected and printed by the Brothers Grimm was one orally transmitted from the Perrault version, while including own attributes like the thorny rose hedge and the curse.
The Aarne-Thompson classification system for fairy tales lists "Sleeping Beauty" as a Type 410: it includes a princess who is magically forced into sleep and later woken, reversing the magic. The fairy tale has been adapted countless times throughout history and retold by modern storytellers across various media.
Origin
Early contributions to the tale include the medieval courtly romance Perceforest. In this tale, 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, the child draws from her finger the flax that caused her sleep. She realizes from the ring Troylus left her that he was the father, and Troylus later returns to marry her. Another early literary predecessor is the Provençal versified novel .The second part of the Sleeping Beauty tale, in which the princess and her children are almost put to death but instead are hidden, may have been influenced by Genevieve of Brabant. Even 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. Following these early renditions, the tale was first published by Italian poet Giambattista Basile who lived from 1575 to 1632.
Plot
The folktale begins with a princess whose parents are told by a wicked fairy that their daughter will die when she pricks her finger on a particular item. In Basile's version, the princess pricks her finger on a piece of flax. In Perrault's and the Grimm Brothers' versions, the item is a spindle. The parents rid the kingdom of these items in the hopes of protecting their daughter, but the prophecy is fulfilled regardless. Instead of dying, as was foretold, the princess falls into a deep sleep. After some time, she is found by a prince and is awakened.In Giambattista Basile's version of Sleeping Beauty, Sun, Moon, and Talia, the sleeping beauty, Talia, falls into a deep sleep after getting a splinter of flax in her finger. She is discovered in her palace by a wandering prince, who "carrie her to a bed, where he gather the first fruits of love." He abandons her there after the assault and she later gives birth to twins while still unconscious.
According to Maria Tatar, there are versions of the story that include a second part to the narrative that details the couple's troubles after their union; some folklorists believe the two parts were originally separate tales.
The second part begins after the prince and princess have had children. Through the course of the tale, the princess and her children are introduced in some way to another woman from the prince's life. This other woman is not fond of the prince's new family, and calls a cook to kill the children and serve them for dinner. Instead of obeying, the cook hides the children and serves livestock. Next, the other woman orders the cook to kill the princess. Before this can happen, the other woman's true nature is revealed to the prince and then she is subjected to the very death that she had planned for the princess. The princess, prince, and their children live happily ever after.
Basile's narrative
In Giambattista Basile's dark version of Sleeping Beauty, Sun, Moon, and Talia, the sleeping beauty is named Talia. By asking wise men and astrologers to predict her future after her birth, her father, who is a great Lord, learns that Talia will be in danger from a splinter of flax. Talia, now grown, sees an old woman spinning outside her window. Intrigued by the sight of the twirling spindle, Talia invites the woman over and takes the distaff from her hand to stretch the flax. Tragically, the splinter of flax gets embedded under her nail, and she is put to sleep. After Talia falls asleep, she is seated on a velvet throne and her father, to forget his misery of what he thinks is her death, closes the doors and abandons the house forever. One day, while a king is walking by, one of his falcons flies into the house. The king knocks, hoping to be let in by someone, but no one answers, and he decides to climb in with a ladder. He finds Talia alive but unconscious, and impregnates her. Afterwards, he leaves her in bed and goes back to his kingdom. Though Talia is unconscious, she gives birth to twinsone of whom keeps sucking her finger. Talia awakens because the twin has sucked the flax from her finger. When she wakes up, she discovers that she is a mother and has no idea what happened to her. One day, the king decides he wants to see Talia again. He finds her awake and a mother to his twins. He describes what has happened, and they bond. After a few days, the king must return to his realm but promises he'll return to take her to his kingdom.Back in his kingdom, his wife hears him saying "Talia, Sun, and Moon" in his sleep. She bribes and threatens the king's secretary to reveal the backstory. She then pretends she is the king and writes to Talia asking her to send the twins. On their arrival, the queen orders the cook to kill the twins and make dishes out of them to feed the king; instead, the cook takes the twins to his wife and hides them. He then cooks two lambs and serves them as if they were the twins. Every time the king mentions how good the food is, the queen replies, "Eat, eat, you are eating of your own." Later, the queen invites Talia to the kingdom intending to burn her alive, but the king discovers the truth. He then orders that his wife be burned along with those who betrayed him, while he rewards the cook. The story ends with the king marrying Talia and living happily ever after.
Perrault's narrative
's narrative is written in two parts, which some folklorists believe were originally separate tales, as they were in the Brothers Grimm's version, and were later joined by Giambattista Basile and once more by Perrault. According to folklore editors Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek, Perrault's tale is a much more subtle and pared down version than Basile's story in terms of the more immoral details. An example of this is depicted in Perrault's tale by the prince's choice to instigate no physical interaction with the sleeping princess when he discovers her.At the christening of the king and queen’s long-awaited child, seven good fairies are invited to be the baby princess’s godmothers and bless her. At the palace banquet, each fairy receives a golden box of bejeweled utensils. Then, an old fairy arrives, forgotten because she has not left her tower in fifty years and was thought to be dead. Nevertheless, she is given a seat and a box of plain utensils. When the seventh fairy hears her muttering threats, she hides behind the curtains, determined to give her gift last in case the uninvited guest tries to harm the princess.
After the first six fairies have bestowed their gifts on the princess, the eighth fairy, furious at not being invited, curses the princess so that one day she will prick her finger on a spindle and die. The seventh fairy then offers her gift, attempting to soften the curse by having the princess fall into a deep sleep for a century, to be awakened by a prince.
The King then orders all spinning wheels in the kingdom banned and destroyed in an attempt to avert the eighth fairy's curse on his daughter. One day, after the Princess has come of age, She wanders through the palace rooms and comes across an old woman—really the evil fairy in disguise—spinning at her wheel. The Princess, having never seen one before, asks to try it, but as soon as she pricks her finger on the spindle, the curse is fulfilled and she falls into a deep sleep. The old woman cries for help, and efforts to revive the Princess fail. The King, accepting it as fate, places her in her bed. The seventh fairy, foreseeing the Princess’s distress upon waking alone, casts a spell to put everyone in the castle to sleep, except the King and Queen. After kissing their daughter goodbye, they leave to prevent anyone from disturbing her, while the fairy summons a forest to grow around the castle, hiding it from the world.
After a hundred years, a prince from another royal family comes across a hidden castle during a hunting trip. An old man shares its history, telling him that a king’s son is destined to awaken the princess. The prince pushes through the forest, enters the castle, and is captivated by her beauty. The spell breaks, the princess wakes, and she gives the prince a look “more tender than a first glance might seem to warrant”. They talk for a long while, as the castle’s servants awaken and resume their duties. Eventually, the prince and princess are married in the castle chapel by the chaplain.
After marrying the Sleeping Beauty in secret, the Prince visits her for four years and she bears him two children, unbeknownst to his mother, who is an ogre. When his father, the King, dies, the Prince ascends the throne and he brings his wife, who is now twenty years old, and their two children – a four-year-old daughter named Morning and a three-year-old son named Day – to his kingdom.
One day, the new King must go to war against his neighbor, Emperor Contalabutte, and leaves his mother to govern the kingdom and look after his family. After her son leaves, the Ogress Queen Mother sends her daughter-in-law to a house secluded in the woods and orders her cook to prepare Morning with Sauce Robert for dinner. The kind-hearted cook substitutes a lamb for the princess, which satisfies the Queen Mother. She then demands Day, but the cook this time substitutes a kid for the prince, which also satisfies the Queen Mother. When the Ogress demands that he serve up the Sleeping Beauty, the latter substitutes a hind prepared with Sauce Robert, satisfying the Ogress, and secretly reuniting the young Queen with her children, who have been hidden by the cook's wife and maid. However, the Queen Mother soon discovers the cook's trick and she prepares a tub in the courtyard filled with vipers and other noxious creatures. The King returns home unexpectedly and the Ogress, her true nature having been exposed, throws herself into the tub and is fully consumed by the creatures. The King, young Queen, and children then live happily ever after.