Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship (31 page)

3. Max Lüthi,
The European Folk Tale: Form and Nature,
 trans 
.
 John D. Niles (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 11.

4. Zipes,
Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion,
 8.

5. Ibid., 11.

6. Bottigheimer,
Fairy Tales: A New History,
 21.

7. Ibid., 22.

8. See Seifert
,
 
Fairy Tales: Sexuality and Gender
; Hannon, 
Fabulous
 
Identities;
 Tatar, 
The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales
; and Robert Darnton
,
 
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History
 (New York: Basic Books, 1984)
.
 
Marvels & Tales
 16, no. 2 (2002) devoted a special issue to the “Socio-historical Study of Fairy Tales.”

9. Bottigheimer’s
Fairy Tales: A New History
 provides an overview of the evolution of the literary fairy tale. Bottigheimer has been at the center of the discussion about the oral and literary influence on fairytale development; she points out that “it has been said so often that the folk invented and disseminate fairy tales that this assumption has become an unquestioned proposition. It may therefore surprise readers that folk invention has no basis in verifiable fact. Literary analysis undermines it, literary history rejects it, social history repudiates it, and publishing history (whether of manuscripts or books) contradicts it.” See also Zipes, “The Origins of the Fairy Tale in Italy,” in 
Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion,
 13–28 and “Cross Cultural Connections and the Contamination of the Classical Fairy Tale,” in
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition
 (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 2001), 845–69.

10. Harries, 
Twice Upon A Time:
 the title of the first chapter is “Fairy Tales About Fairy Tales: Notes on Canon Formation.”

11. See Bottigheimer, 
Fairy Tale Godfather: Straparola, Venice, and the Fairy Tale Tradition.
 Bottigheimer is a leading scholar on Straparola.

12. In addition to Nancy Canepa’s critical work on Basile, see her recent translation of 
Lo Cunto:
 Giambattista Basile, 
The Tale of Tales, or
Entertainment for Little Ones
 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2007).

13. Marie-Jean L’Héritier, Charles Perrault’s niece, wrote several fairy tales which she published in miscellaneous collections between 1695 and 1698. Henriette Julie de Murat published a collection of fairy tales in 1698 as well as individual tales in miscellanies between 1694 and 1715. Charlotte-Rose de la Force published an anonymous collection in 1697. For more information on these women and their literary circle, see Patricia Hannon, Elizabeth Harries, and Lewis Seifert.

14. The most useful introduction to early modern fairy tales is the anthology 
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition,
 ed. Jack Zipes (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).

15. For formalist and structuralist approaches to fairy tales, among the most important resources are Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson,
The Types of Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography
 (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961); Stith Thompson, 
Motif Index
of Folk-Literature.
 6 vols., rev. and enlarged (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); Vladimir Propp, 
Morphology of the Folk Tale,
trans. Laurence Scott (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975).

16. The scholarship of the last few decades on queenship, individually and collectively, is extensive. Studies of individual queens by Bethany Aram, Leeds Barroll, Susan Doran, Susan Frye, Eric Ives, Susan James, R. J. Knecht, Carole Levin, David Loades, Louis Montrose, Judith Richards, David Starkey, Giles Tremlett, Kristen Post Walton, Retha Warnicke, Katie Whitaker, Anna Whitelock, Jenny Wormald and others are listed in the works cited. See also Katherine Crawford, 
Perilous Performances: Gender and
Regency in Early Modern France
 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); 
The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe,
 eds. Anne J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009);
Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth,
 eds. Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Sharon Jansen, 
The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern
Europe
 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); 
Elizabeth I: Always
Her Own Free Woman,
 eds. Carole Levin, D. Barrett Graves, and J. E. Carney (Burlington, VT: Ashgate: 2003); 
High and Mighty Queens of
Early Modern England: Realities and Representations,
 eds. Carole Levin, D. Barrett Graves, and J. E. Carney (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); 
Queens and Power in Medieval and Early Modern England,
 eds. Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009).

17. I am grateful to Elaine Kruse for this reference, cited in “The Virgin and the Widow: The Political Finesse of Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici,” in 
Queens and Power,
 129.

18. John Knox,
The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment
of Women
 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1972).

2 The Queen’s (In)Fertile Body and the Body Politic

1. See G. R. Elton, 
Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in
the Age of Thomas Cromwell
 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 59.

2. Nicholas Sander,
Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism
 (1585), ed. D. Lewis (London: Burnes & Oates, 1877), 138.

3. Samuel Rowley,
When You See Me, You Know Me,
 ed. F. P. Wilson (Malone Society Reprints, 1952). See also Jennifer Loach, 
Edward VI: Yale English
Monarchs
 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 4–8 and Chris Skidmore, 
Edward VI: The Lost King of England
 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), 19–21 for a discussion of the ballads and the various rumors surrounding Jane’s death.

4. See R. L. de Molen, “The Birth of Edward VI and the Death of Queen Jane: The Arguments for and against Caesarean Section,” 
Renaissance
Studies
 4, no. 4 (1990), 359–91 and William B. Ober, “Obstetrical Events that Shaped Western European History,” 
The Yale Journal of
Biology and Medicine
 65, no. 3 (1992), 201–10.

5. Helen King,
Midwifery, Obstetrics, and the Rise of Gynaecology
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 60.

6. Jacques Gelis,
History of Childbirth: Fertility, Pregnancy and Birth in
Early Modern Europe
 (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1984), 16–17.

7. Graham Anderson,
Fairy Tale in the Ancient World
 (New York: Routledge, 2000), 63–39. Anderson discusses how the “Cupid and Psyche” tale serves as a classical variant for many of the familiar tale types in the early modern and modern periods.

8. This tale is a late medieval version of the monster birth “slander tales” that we will explore in chapter 3. The elder queen writes to her son, the king, that his wife “had given birth to two little monkeys, who were the most nasty and deformed creatures one had ever seen.” This falsehood initiates much of the suffering the young queen must endure. Giovanni Fiorentino, “Dionigia and the King of England,” in Jack Zipes, 
The Great Fairy Tale Tradition
 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2002), 507–11. Unless otherwise noted, all fairy-tale references are from this volume.

9. According to Maria Tatar, “What the brothers found harder to tolerate than violence and what they did their best to eliminate from the collection through vigilant editing were references to what they coyly called ‘certain conditions and relationships.’ Foremost among those conditions seems to have been pregnancy.” 
The Hard Facts of
the Grimms’ Fairy Tales,
 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 7–9.

10. Holly Tucker, 
Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early Modern France
 (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2003), 8.

11. Suzanne Magnanini,
Fairy Tale Science: Monstrous Generation in the
Tales of Straparola and Basile
 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008) and Ruth Bottigheimer, “Fertility Control and the Birth of the Modern European Fairy-Tale Heroine,” 
Marvels & Tales
 14, no.1 (2000), 64–79. See also the “Critical Exchange” between Etienne Van de Walle and Bottigheimer in 
Marvels & Tales,
 15, no. 1 (2001), 128–31.

12. Tucker, 59.

13. Giovanni Francesco Straparola, “The Pig Prince,” in Zipes, 51–56.

14. Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, “The Orange Tree and the Bee,” in Zipes, 751–70.

15. Tzvetan Todorov,
The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to A Literary Genre
(Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve University Press, 1973), 163.

16. D’Aulnoy, “The Orange Tree and the Bee,” in Zipes, 751–70.

17. Peter Brooks,
Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative
(New York: Knopf, 1984).

18. D’Aulnoy, “Princess Mayblossom,” in 
The Fairy Tales of Madame D’Aulnoy,
 trans. Annie Macdonell, et.al. (London: Lawrence and Bullen, 1892), 87–103.

19. See Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, 
Women in Early Modern
England
 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 156 and Patricia Philippy, “London’s Mourning Garment: Maternity, Mourning and Royal Succession,” in 
Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in the Early
Modern Period,
 eds. Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavneh (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2000), 319–32. For earlier but significant contributions to this debate, see Lawrence Stone, 
The Family, Sex, and Marriage in
England, 1500–1800
 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977) and Philip Ariès, 
Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life
 (New York: Knopf, 1962).

20. When Catherine of Aragon and Henry’s son died at seven weeks, both the king and the queen were naturally devastated. But Hall records the difference in their responses: Catherine “like a natural woman, made much lamentation” whereas the king, “like a wise Prince, took this dolorous chance wondrous wisely.” This is not to suggest that one form of grief is superior to the other but to note that the nature of their responses was viewed in gendered terms. Edward Hall, 
Henry VIII,
 Introduction by Charles Whibley, vol. 2, 1904, 27.

21. Basile, “The Three Crowns,” in Canepa, 336–43.

22. Basile, “The Enchanted Doe,” in Canepa, 108–14.

23. Canepa,
From Court to Forest,
 113.

24. Charles Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty” provides another example of a king’s participation in the couple’s fertility crisis: “Once upon a time there was a king and a queen who were quite vexed at not having any children. Indeed, they were so vexed that it is impossible to find words to express their feelings. They visited all the baths in the world. Vows, pilgrimage, everything was tried...,” in Zipes, 688–95.

25. Straparola, “The Pig Prince,” in Zipes, 51–56.

26. D’Aulnoy, “The Wild Boar,” in Zipes, 57–81.

27. For example, see Annette Kolodny, 
The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as
Experience and History
 (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, 1975); Carolyn Merchant, 
Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in
Western Culture
 (New York: Routledge, 2003); and 
Ecofeminist Literary
Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy,
 eds. Greta Gaard and Patrick Murphy (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998).

28. Gelis, 26.

29. For an overview of critical interpretations of the Sleeping Beauty variants see 
New Tales for Old: Folktales as Literary Fictions for Young Adults
, eds. Gail de Vos and Anna E. Altmann (Englewood, CO: Libraries Limited Inc., 1999), 278–92.

30. Bettleheim, Bruno, 
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales
 (New York, NY: Knopf, 1976), 225–36.

31. Straparola, “Biancabella and the Snake,” in Zipes, 406–15.

32. I am grateful to Carole Levin for directing me to several Renaissance images by Lucas Cranach, Michaelangelo, and others in which the snake is depicted as female.

33. Tucker, 56.

34. Cited in Bethany Aram, 51.

35. D’Aulnoy, “The White Cat,” in 
Wonder Tales,
 ed. Marina Warner (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1994), 19–63.

36. Chapter 5 of Tucker’s book, “Like Mother, Like Daughter,” offers an excellent analysis of the fairy tale pregnancy craving in light of lateseventeenth-century reproductive theory, arguing that it can be seen as “calling into question the notion of the seditious woman and by suggesting instead the real possibility of positive, matrilineal transfer across generations,” 99–118.

37. Cited in Paul Friedmann, 
Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History, 1527–1536
 (London: Macmillan, 1884), 190, n1. Friedmann quotes Chapuys’s letter in French.

38. 
The Lisle Letters,
 ed. Muriel St. Clare Byrne (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981), vol. 4, 205-09.

39. Qtd. in Jean Héritier, 
Catherine de Médici,
 trans. Charlotte Haldane (New York: St. Martin’s Press: 1963), 43.

40. Sheila ffolliott, “Casting a Rival into the Shade: Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers,” 
Art Journal
 48, no. 2 (Summer 1989), 138–43.

41. Jean-Pierre Poirier, 
Catherine de Médicis: Épouse de Henri II
 (Paris: Pygmalion, 2009), 59–60.

42. Qtd. in Katherine Crawford, “Catherine de Médicis and the Performance of Political Motherhood,” 
The Sixteenth Century Journal
31, no. 3 (Autumn 2000), 643–44.

43. Ibid., 644.

44. Qtd. in Frieda, 57.

45. Ibid., 83.

46. 
Memoires de Marguerite de Valois
 (New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1910), 64.

47. Eugenio Alberi,
Vita de Caterina de’ Medici
 (Florence, 1838), 36.