Please join me in welcoming Naomi Stone to The Roses of Prose.
Thanks so much for having me here with the Roses of Prose
today. I thought I'd talk about a lifelong interest of mine: Fairy Tales.
I’ve read a lot of fairy tales in
my time. The complete collection of Lang’s colorful fairy books (‘The Red Fairy
Book,’ ‘Blue Fairy Book,’ etc., through a spectrum of twelve colors) more than
once. I've read 'The Thousand Nights and
a Night,' both abridged and in the complete Burton translation, the Grimm
Brothers collection, Hans Anderson and many lesser-known folklore collections
from cultures as diverse as Gypsies and Polynesians. I’ve read modern
retellings of the old tales, from Disney to Tanith Lee and read the articles of
folklorists such as Terri Windling, Jane Yolen and.Jack Zipes.
Based on all this reading, I could enumerate
countless examples (but will spare you) of fairy tales all leading to a happy
ending in which the happy ending is thanks to the poor but good-hearted
(simpleton, youngest son, shepherd, wood-cutter, etc.) winning the hand in
marriage of the beautiful princess -- or the beautiful, good-hearted (goose
girl, orphan, youngest daughter of a peasant or merchant) winning the love and
hand in marriage of a handsome prince.
The sheer prevalence of this trope
tells me that there is a deep-seated longing in human hearts for an ideal match
– for a mate combining physical attraction with social success (position,
wealth and power). In days of old, fairy tales expressed and offered vicarious
fulfillment for this longing – just as romance novels do today.
Fairy tales are the age-old root of
modern romance. Fairy tales address a deep-seated human longing that still
exists today. Fairy tales offered blatant, unapologetic wish-fulfillment in a
world where life was harder than we can even imagine who live in a world with
modern plumbing, electronics and health care.
But, in the evolution of fairy
tales, a time came when fantasy and romance grew apart.
Romance eschewed magic for more
realistic settings, with rational modern day men and women for heroes and
heroines. Romance grew in its comprehension of what constitutes a happy ending.
It taught us that there's more to a hero than a princedom. That actual
individuals are involved in marriages and their individual personalities and
feelings offer challenges as mysterious as any found in a fairy tale quest.
Romance moved away from the realm
of the fantastic and vice-versa. And while her followers might do so, Jane
Austen did not write of zombies or eldritch monsters. If Mary Shelley and Bram
Stoker did, well 'Frankenstein' and 'Dracula' were not romances. During the Age
of Reason and for long since, Fantasy set aside Romance, pulled on its Grown Up
Pants, embraced the machine age and gave birth to Science Fiction.
Both genres have grown and matured
through the time they spent apart, but they have been coming back together in
recent decades. At first, when romance
and the fantastic met in modern times, romantic fantasy sneaks back in its
horror-tinged vampire fangs and howls at the moon. Coolly logical SF often
dismisses the happiness of two little people as not amounting to a hill of
beans in this world with its larger, world-spanning concerns. Yet,
story-telling has room for more than our limited genre-expectations can
imagine, and all the old fairy tales are with us still, reminders of a natural
affinity between romance and far-flung fantasies of magic and adventure.
Increasingly, modern writers such
as myself seek to bring the best of both worlds together again. I've been
pleased with reviews telling me that the romance in my stories doesn't get in
the way of readers coming from the world of science fiction, and that the
science fiction elements don't prevent romance readers from finding the
fulfillment of a satisfying love story.
I'd like to ask your readers today
to tell me about their favorite fairy tales as children, and whether they can
still find something meaningful in the tale.
Naomi Stone
Latest release: 'Spirited' from
Champagne Books,
Amelia Swenson's plans for the
weekend didn't include a sexy djinni or saving the world from demons, but plans
change.
NaomiStone0RWA (on Twitter)
