Sleeping Beauty: Facts

1. Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959)

This is typical good versus evil story based on Grimms', and Perrault's tales with additional characters, humor and action. There are only four (three good and one evil) fairies altogether, prince and the princess met before she falls asleep and the evil fairy is punished what is not the case in Grimms' collection.

Disney's movie disappointed at the box office and it was last adaptation of a classic fairy tale in Walt Disney's lifetime. Only full three decades later they continued with their visualizations of classic tales what eventually built a powerful Disney Princess franchise.

2. Brothers Grimm called her Little Briar Rose (1812)

It was their version which became one of the most popular fairy tales ever. Why? Probably because their editorial interventions.

They changed many not so unimportant details in first half of the older version and used the second part as standalone tale named The Evil Mother-in-Law which is not included in later versions of Children and Household's Tales.

Here are some of the changes:

- they increased the number of fairies from eight to thirteen what emphasized the mythological side of the tale (lunar calendar can have 13 months while solar always have 12 what makes a difference for the uninvited fairy)
- they gave more power to the king who desperately tried to save his daughter who is after all the victim of his mistake
- they added a thorn hedge growing around the castle and many princes who died trying to penetrate the hedge
- they added a kiss (in earlier versions this is done by her son (!) and in Perrault's version arrival of the prince awakens her)
- Grimms' story ends with a marriage and we don't hear anything about the kids or prince's first (!) wife

We have astrologers instead of fairies in this oldest known written version of the Sleeping Beauty.

When Talia (this is the sleeping beauty's name) falls asleep, her father simply leaves the castle. Few days (not a hundred years) later another king enters the castle, finds the sleeping princess and joins her in bed. She woke up much later, when one of her kids (Sun and Moon are names of her twins) sucked out a flax which was pricked under her nail.

Then things really became complicated. While Talia wasn't angry on the king who took advantage of her condition, his wife became totally pissed off.

5. Perceforest (1528)

While this is the date of first known printed version, we know parts of Perceforest (lengthy series of adventures very similar to so called Arturian novels) were written and performed at least two hundred years ago. Among other adventures of the king Perceforst we can find an episode with a sleeping beauty in a castle who is raped by him and wakes up only after she gives a birth to a child.

This theme was quite populer in many medieval romantic novels what can be a nice start of debate in the spirit of Sigmund Freud.

6. Sexual maturity

This is without doubt the most common theme in all fairy tales. While superficial readers in most cases focus only on passivity of heroines, we can easily identify related subthemes of rebelious teenagers (prince and princess don't listen to advices of older and wiser people) and arrogant-turned-into-helpless father (at first he ignored the evil fairy, later he tried to protect his kid with futile action of burning spindles).

7. Isolation

This is not so obvious, but also pretty common theme in fairy tales. Sometimes a hero is isolated due his/her tasks (travel to the end of the world), sometimes isolation is caused by enemies (imprisonment), sometimes it is form of protection (caused by parents). No matter which version of the Sleeping Beauty we examine, she is all alone in the castle, just like unpopular teenager feels isolated from the world in his/her own home.

8. Forest

It's hard to find a decent fairy tale without a forest, representation of labyrinth of life, a place where the hero and/or heroine has to be lost if he/she eventually wants to transform in a responsible adult (what is the ultimate task in most fairy tales). In all variations of The Sleeping Beauty (Perrault added word 'Woods' even in the title) a forest serves as sort of protection and a media from where the conqueror/rescuer/danger comes.

Sleep as symbolical death and journey in the Underworld, especially if it is accompanied with dreams. World literature is full of characters who are sleeping until something will happen.

We can find them in Bible, Arthurian legends and of course in the myth about Brynhildr which convinced Jacob and William Grimm to include The Sleeping Beauty with clearly French origin into collection of German tales.

Storytellers and writers were really fascinated with mysterious reasons for sleep, sleeping disorders and dreams. We still are.

There are numerous messages in Sleeping Beauty. Let me write down just a few:

- No matter how powerful somebody is (king), some things still can't be avoided (fulfillment of the curse).

- With enough attempts (hundreds and hundreds of knights trying to get through the thorns), succes (Prince Charming) will come.

- Even the most terrifying conditions (one hundred years of sleep) can eventually pan out well (marriage with a prince).

10.

a) Beauty and the Beast (isolation, incompetent father, jealousy, sleeping...)
b) Snow White (jealousy, sleeping, awakening kiss, isolation...)
c) Rapunzel (isolation, incompetent father, vengeful witch, extramerital children...)
d) Bluebeard (isolation, curiosity, life saving postopenement, blood
e) Red Riding Hood (symbolical death, disobedience, bed, sleep...)

I could go on and on until I would use up the whole alphabet but this is probably enough to prove how many similarities share classic fairy tales.

Both illustrations above are made by Arthur Rackham, on the left we see a scene from The Ring of Nibelung and on the right the same scene from the Fairy tale about the Sleeping Beauty.

All used images are in public domain.

You can find more about them on this address:

http://topillustrations.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/sleeping-beauty-by-various-artists/

Additional reading:

http://tolovaj.hubpages.com/hub/Surprising-messages-and-interpretations-of-Sleeping-Beauty