I love fairy stories and folklore. I love the adventure and romance alongside the capacity for great darkness, the strange rules that don’t always quite make sense, the sense of an old magic that has existed since the beginning of the world, the ways in which the stories adapt and change, and the odd way that they all seem somehow interconnected.

It seems fairy tales are more popular than ever these days, and we’re seeing a wonderful variety of re-tellings and re-imaginings. With this have come books that offer a deeper exploration of what fairy tales mean to us, how they can be analysed and re-shaped. These are books about fairy tales, not necessarily re-writings of classic fairy stories, though some of them do use this approach. These are books that engage with the fairy story and then twist it, perhaps a little or perhaps a lot, to tell us something different about something familiar.

Layers and Meaning

“And pleasant is the fairy land for those that in it dwell,

But at the end of seven years they pay a tax to hell” – Tam Lin

One of the most interesting approaches to the fairy story that I’ve read is Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce, recently reviewed on Fantasy-Faction here. In it, a missing teenager called Tara returns home after 20 years, claiming to have been taken by the fairies. Her brother asks her to see a psychiatrist, who attempts to dissect and interpret her story in order to learn where she has really been for the last 20 years. This allows the author to explore some interpretations of the classic elements of fairy tales, stories related to blossoming sexuality and the transition between youth and adulthood. This analysis within the story itself is fascinating, as the reader is invited to engage with the story in a number of different ways, and to question what fairy tales mean to them.

Interestingly, Some Kind of Fairy Tale is not the only book to use this kind of character to delve deeper into possible interpretations and meanings that lie behind fairy tales. In Gretel and the Dark by Eliza Granville, Doctor Breuer, a psychoanalyst, attempts to find the truth behind the fiction when a mysterious, nameless woman is found naked and alone in 19th century Vienna. She claims she is not even a real human, and that she has come on a mission to slay a monster.

Both of these books not only explore different interpretations of fiction, but also take a deeper look into psychology and the reasons why we may want to interpret certain things in certain ways. In both stories, the doctor’s insight can only go so far and reveals only partial truths. At their roots, fairy stories are more raw and real than either of these characters would like to admit.

Versions of Reality

“Of course, everything depends on who is telling the story. It always does.” – Some Kind of Fairy Tale

Gretel and the Dark and Some Kind of Fairy Tale have another thing in common. Both have a lot to say about our perception of reality, and how sometimes the realities that we construct, and those that are socially acceptable, can become more real than ‘the truth’. That some people’s truths will always be more accepted than others. Both of these stories play with the reader, guiding and then twisting the reader’s own view of events.

Diana Wynne Jones’ excellent and sometimes disturbing Fire and Hemlock, which draws on the tale of Tam Lin, also asks questions about our perception of what is real and what is not. Polly, like Tara in Some King of Fairy Tale, has to fight every influence that attempts to make her discredit her own experiences. There is a similar kind of feeling in both Fire and Hemlock and Some Kind of Fairy Tale – of fairy tales as a method of understanding and portraying both love and loss, and of the transition from childhood into adulthood, but at the same time of the power of fairy tales themselves as something real, of the ancient magic that might exist in the world.

Another fantastic book that uses the classic elements of fairy stories and explores the shifting nature of reality is Poison by Chris Wooding. Following the familiar set up of a girl who sets off to rescue her sister from the fairy creatures that took her, this book reveals layers that go much deeper. Exploring ideas of truth and fiction, determinism and autonomy, and questioning even the reader’s perception of their own reality; the author turns a simple fairy story into something that questions its own purpose and meaning.

Something Old, Something New

“I remember Greet telling me how proper stories change with the wind and the tide and the moon” – Gretel and the Dark

This is another feature of fairy tales that makes them so fascinating – their constant ability to adapt and change. Fairy stories are fluid. They may have any number of different versions: alternate endings and new beginnings, characters who fall out of the plot and those who demand a greater role as the years go by. Or they may remain superficially unchanged, and yet their whole meaning, the ways in which we relate to them, changes as society changes. The stories themselves are not rigid, and so characters both are and are not controlled by destiny. Cinderella will always go to the ball and lose her slipper and get her prince, but in what way; what form will the slipper take; who does her prince turn out to be, and does she even want him/her by the end? This is the strength of fairy tales; they’re familiar and enduring, yet can always be new and surprising.

We can look to a different Poison for a great example of how a traditional fairy tale can be told in a recognisable form and yet changed in many ways to suit new audiences and new values. Poison by Sarah Pinborough, and its companions Charm and Beauty, are wonderful retellings of classic fairy tales, examining the common threads between them and showing some of the traditional elements within them from a new perspective. Her stories also give a new voice to characters that may have been overlooked or misunderstood, and offer an alternative view on heroes and villains.

Short stories are a particularly good medium for exploring how fairy tales adapt to the times in which they are told. There would be far too many to name, but there are two collections – Glitter and Mayhem edited by John Klima, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman – that I think present some very interesting takes on the fairy tale, whether it be examining the tropes and rules or showing us an entirely new way to interpret something we thought we knew.

Breaking The Rules

“This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.” – Tiffany Aching, Wintersmith

There are certain rules that are common amongst most fairy stories, sometimes reflecting the social values at the time the tale was created or when it was formed into its most lasting version, and sometimes simply reflecting the weird laws of storytelling.

One of the interesting things about Chris Wooding’s Poison’s approach to fairy stories, for me, is that it highlights the role of fate in fairy tales. Fate is a strong theme that runs through a lot of folklore, mythology and fairy tales, but so is the idea that a character can change or guide their fate in some way, that they can fight back and push on, never giving up, perhaps even changing the rules along the way in order to come out on top. In Poison, the main character of the novel, literally fights against these two driving forces.

In Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, Sophie Hatter knows that as the eldest sister she will never be fated to accomplish much in life and that it is her youngest sister who is bound to find adventure and magic in the world. Each sister is sent off along the path the fairy story lore would dictate, and each finds their own way to defy the rules.

Both Lords and Ladies and Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett demonstrate the power and importance of folklore. The author shows fairy tales’ strong connections to the past and to the land, as well as how they can be turned around and combated. In Wintersmith, Tiffany Aching takes the role of the human girl loved by a fae king. Like many of the characters in the books I’ve mentioned, Tiffany finds a way to manoeuvre between the inevitability of myth and story, and her own free will and power to choose.

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The books mentioned in this post perhaps show that the enduring power of the fairy tale lies both in its simplicity and its complexity, the simple stories of magic and adventure and the layers beneath the surface. They are both familiar and constantly surprising. The tales can tell us something about ourselves and about who we want to be, both good and bad, and they are incredibly adaptable. But one thing’s for sure; fairy stories aren’t going away any time soon.

“Some say that the land has still to settle and that it continues to roil and breathe fumes, and that out of these fumes pour stories. Others are confident that the old volcanoes are long dead, and that all its tales are told.” – Some Kind of Fairy Tale

Title image by randis.