Perrault's Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault

First published:Histoires: Ou, Contes du temps passé, avec des moralités, 1697; commonly known in French as Contes des fées or Contes de ma mère l’oye (translated as Histories: Or, Tales of Past Times, 1729; also known as Tales of Mother Goose or Perrault’s Fairy Tales)

Subjects: Animals, family, gender roles, and love and romance

Type of work: Short fiction

Recommended Ages: 10-13

Form and Content

Perrault’s Fairy Tales consists of eight short stories, modeled on French folktales, with morals appended to each. Five of the tales are almost universally familiar to English readers: “Sleeping Beauty” (“La Belle au bois dormant”), “Little Red Riding Hood” (“Le Petit chaperon rouge”), “Puss in Boots” (“Le Maître Chat: Ou, Le Chat botté”), “Cinderella” (“Cendrillon: Ou, La petite pantoufle de verre”), and “Tom Thumb,” sometimes called “Hop o’ My Thumb” (“Le Petit Poucet”). The others, “Blue Beard” (“La Barbe bleue”), “The Fairies” (“Les Fées”), and “Riquet with the Tuft” (“Riquet à la houppe”), are not as widely known in English.

Although scholars debate the actual portion of folk material in Charles Perrault’s collection, the stories generally resemble folktales in their brevity and matter-of-fact reporting of events. The action begins immediately, following the formulaic “once upon a time” (“il était un fois”) in all the tales except “Puss in Boots.” As with folktales, the stories emphasize action and dialogue, making them well suited for oral presentation. Although often called “fairy tales,” only four of the eight—“Sleeping Beauty,” “Cinderella,” “The Fairies,” and “Riquet with the Tuft”—feature fairies as characters.

While all the tales are widely read, not all have achieved equal popularity. In particular, readers have often found “Blue Beard” disturbing. A young woman is married by her family to a grotesque but wealthy man with a blue beard. When his bride disobeys his command not to enter a certain storeroom in his castle, she discovers several bodies—those of his previous wives, whom he has murdered for similarly disobeying him. She survives only because her brothers arrive at the moment that Blue Beard is about to kill her.

As the inclusion of morals suggests, the tales deal with ethical issues. Good is always rewarded, and evil is always punished. Modern readers, however, often miss the satire that is often present. For example, the good daughter in “The Fairies” shows kindness to a fairy and is rewarded with magically produced precious stones; a prince soon falls in love with her, but only after he notices her jewels. The morals themselves are more obviously sardonic. One of the morals to “Blue Beard” remarks that such cruelty as Blue Beard shows could no longer occur, since modern men know better than to expect the impossible of women; whether the impossibility is for women not to be curious or for them to obey men slavishly is unclear.

Critical Context

Although some men composed the popular fairy novellas, they were mostly the work of women. Originally, just like Perrault’s Fairy Tales, the works of the fairy writers were meant to be read aloud or told from memory like folktales. Stock situations, such as that of a beautiful maiden being forced to marry against her will, were elaborated upon and interwoven with other elements to produce stories that took an hour or more in the telling. Many of these narratives were eventually published, either individually or in collections. Judging from those that were published, storytellers would often compliment their friends or comment on recent events through oblique references within the story; in addition to such commentary, the authors primarily strove for wit, satire, playfulness, and graceful language. The most famous and successful of these adult fairy writers was Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy. Her Contes de Fées (1690) and Les Fées à la mode (1695), translated together as Fairy Tales by the Countess d’Aulnoy (1856), are still widely read in French and are occasionally retold for children in English. The best known of these tales in English are “The White Cat” (“La Chatte blanche”) and “The Yellow Dwarf” (“Le Nain jaune”), both of which were popular in the nineteenth century.

Charles Perrault, as a moralist, drew upon such works as Aulnoy’s vehicles for philosophical examinations of human behavior and thought. Another influence on him was an older contemporary, Jean de La Fontaine, whose fables, written between 1668 and 1695, were similarly intended both to appeal to young readers and to offer insight to older ones. Perrault adapted La Fontaine’s simplicity of language and brevity of plot for his new genre, the fairy (or nursery) tale. Later writers took up Perrault’s ethical fairy stories, including moralist and educator Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, now most remembered for her children’s version of Suzanne-Gabrielle de Villeneuve’s 1737 adult fairy romance “Beauty and the Beast,” (“La Belle et la Bête”).