Happy birthday, Charles Perrault! · 4:55am Jan 13th, 2016
Sorry I've been out of it. This probably will continue until I've got the current writing project taped shut.
Charles What Who Now?
Charles Perrault, the author of the original Mother Goose Tales. You've still got about 5 minutes to see the Google doodle.
While he didn't invent Cinderella, he's responsible for her glass slippers. Supposedly, the first MS of Mother Goose Stories had Cendrillon's slippers as "pantoufle en vair" (fur slippers) and a misprint made them "pantoufles en verre" (glass slippers). The problem is that Snopes.com says this flat out isn't true, but he definitely did the glass slippers first. Anyhoo, he gave us most of Disney Princess Cinderella.*
Perrault is also the first person who made Puss male and gave him a set of boots. Not sure why he was so big on footwear).
A few cool things about Perrault's Tales, though: they weren't meant for children. No, really: fairy tales were mostly stories for adults, and his were no exception. It was aimed for the very dangerously clique-ish and chic court of Louis XIV (the Sun King). I teach Children's Literature and every time I do, I ask my students what the moral of Cinderella is. They usually say something like "if you're a good person, good things will happen" or "virtue triumphs," or whatever. Then I say, "well, it isn't always that. Rossini's version doesn't even have any magic in it, and the moral is "don't pick gold or beauty when you pick a wife: pick innocence and goodness" (which presumably makes you a good royal). And here's Perrault's, or at least one of them:
C'est sans doute un grand avantage,
D'avoir de l'esprit, du courage,
De la naissance, de bons sens,
Et d'autres semblable talens,
Qu'on recoit du Ciel en partage;
Mais vous aurez beau les avoir,
Pour vostre avancement ce seront choses vaines;
Si vous n'aves, pour les faire valoir,
Ou des parrain ou de marrains.
Rough translation: It's nice to have wit and courage and good birth and good sense, and a lot of other God-given gifts; but they are not getting you anywhere in life if you don't have good godparents. In other words, the moral is "it ain't what you know, but who you know."
Anyway, here's to Charles Perrault, and now for some pictures.
I am a sucker for Gustave Dore. Every time I see an illustration and think, "oh, man, that's perfect," it's often by Dore.
If the shoe fits, wear it.
All the better to eat you with, my dear.
BTW, Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood just gets eaten. Full stop. No huntsman, no rescuer, she just gets eaten. The moral is, "young ladies should beware of wolves, especially the nice, well spoken ones who don't look like wolves." It's the opposite of the oldest version of the tale, in which the wolf is a werewolf and the kid uses her wits and gets away.
Beware of cats wearing boots.
True story: I was in Amsterdam once and was looking at the boats on the canal. One of them was probably a rescue or a cat shelter, with a lot of cats eating on the flat decks. The name of the boat was Poezenboot. I just looked it up. It IS a cat rescue!
I'll let you look up the two opera Cinderellas for yourself if you're interested. I love the French one by Massenet, because you don't get to see it very often, and because it has four, count 'em, four, big roles for female voice: Cendrillon (soprano), the Fairy Godmother (coloratura soprano--super high with lots of wobbly bits), the wicked stepmother (contralto), and Prince Charming (mezzo-soprano). Yes, Prince Charming is sung by a woman. I've seen the Italian one a lot more--it's by Rossini, and the wicked stepmother is replaced by a pompous stepfather, there's no fairy godmother but a court philosopher instead, and the Prince exchanges clothes with his valet Dandini, so Cinderella falls in love with him before she knows who he really is. Didn't Ever After do that, too--the fairy godmother was really Leonardo da Vinci or something?
I'll leave it at that, or, like Cinderella, my coach is going to turn back into a pumpkin.
*Except for the singing mice. That's all on Walt. I can't stand his ailurophobia.
Yeah, Walt Disney was pretty harsh on cats, wasn't he?
In any case, very cool rundown of a man known far more for his work than his name. Thank you for bringing yesterdays Google graphic to further light.