DLC Blog

Remembering Women Writers Past...

When discussing literature of centuries past, people often adopt the convenient and somewhat simplistic view that what has been preserved and what remains well-known is inarguably “better” than what has fallen into the more obscure corners of a literary tradition. While this is true to some extent, there are factors unrelated to the literary merit of a text involved in its transmission. One of these factors (the one that I will discuss today) is gender; in traditionally male-dominated societies, the writings of women are often either disdained and considered inferior to those of their male counterparts, or completely disregarded, resulting in the extinction of their texts.


The former is the case with the writings of Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy, an exceedingly popular writer of fairy tales in seventeenth-century France. Though her works have survived, people pay little attention to her today. All French fairy-tale fame goes to Charles Perrault, a member of the prestigious French Academy who also published fairy tales in the seventeenth century. And while I in no way intend to attack Perrault – his writing is excellent – I would like to bring more attention to the less well-known fairy tales of Mme d’Aulnoy, and in some small measure help her to achieve the recognition she deserves.



Mme d’Aulnoy was born to an aristocratic family in the mid-seventeenth century, and kept one of the most popular literary salons in Paris during this period. She published novels and memoirs, but was most widely renowned for her fairy tales. Fascinated by the baroque, her fairy tales often pass from the seemingly normal to the fantastic, then to the exceedingly bizarre. She often satirizes the genre itself within her tales, which lends to her writing a certain maturity and an oddly modern tone. For example, in one of her fairy tales a princess runs away to an island with a prince that she’s in love with only to bicker with him endlessly, return to her parents, and marry someone who does not please her at all. In another tale, when Prince Charming is threatened in an attempt to get him to marry the ugly stepsister of his beloved he flies into a rage calling her a “little monster,” and she retorts by calling him a “stupid kinglet” and dismisses his magic frog chariot as “swampish.” Needless to say, her fairy tales were intended for other adults in her literary salon and were not appropriate for children, as were those of Perrault.


One of the foremost differences between traditional fairy tales and those of Mme d’Aulnoy is, perhaps not surprisingly, its portrayal of women. Though she was of very high rank and lead an important literary salon in Paris, she was still a woman, and had to deal with all the restrictions that this implied. She was married at a very young age to somewhat of an alcoholic libertine thirty years her senior, and instead of quietly acquiescing to her fate, she tried to have him killed – not once, but twice! Her fairy tale heroines are very driven, active, and intelligent. They are also often the strongest characters in the tales, sometimes juxtaposed against somewhat inactive, weak-willed men.


Mme d’Aulnoy’s tales provide endless amusement with many instances of very well-written intellectual satire and irony. I recommend her fairy tales to anyone who enjoys this type of writing, and also to anyone who enjoys general fairy-tale amusement.


Here are some links to sites on Mme d’Aulnoy:
Short Biography (Grolier Online - DLC log-in required)
Other French Fairy Tales (NetTrekker - DLC log-in required)
D'Aulnoy's French Tales
D'Aulnoy's Tales in Translation

Lindsey Aakre
French and Spanish Student Mentor

Posted by Lindsey at May 18, 2006 05:10 PM in Foreign Language.