It is always exciting to read a story that promises a
surprising turn to the famous stories like Cinderella, Beauty and the
Beast or Little Red Riding Hood? The comical, magically realistic,
surrealist, postmodern, or psychological twists and turns always make the
stories interesting for the reader. New tales with new forms can be created by
rewriting these or any other popular tales. Most of the readers are aware of the
famous fairy tales such as Cinderella, Snow White, Thumbelina,
Little Red Riding Hood, Beauty, and the Beast, etc. (Literary
Terms). These stories, along with many other famous stories have been re-told
numerous times. For example, Cinderella has been retold by Merissa Meyer
as Cinder, The Little Mermaid has been retold by
Octavia Cade, titled The Mussel Eater, by Jim C. Hines and the
story of Little Red Riding Hood has been retold by Jim C. Hines as Red
Hood’s Revenge and by Robert Paul Weston as Dust City,
etc.
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A fairy tale (also known as a wonder tale or magic
tale) has been defined as a story, which features fantastic and magical
creatures and settings. It has characters like goblins, dragons, witches,
wizards, and not necessarily fairies (Literary Terms). Fairy tales were passed
down from one storyteller to another storyteller before they were recorded in
written form. Jack Zipes in his book Why Fairy Tales Stick discusses
the idea that the condition of a fairy tale is relative and its stability over
the years is determined culturally and biologically in a historical
evolutionary process. He also believes that fairy tales are attractive because
they are stories of survival with hope.
The term of rewriting fairy tales has not been defined
in precision (Malafantis and Ntoulia). The reason behind it is the presence of
unlimited possibilities and frames with which the writer can retell a
particular story. Malafantis and Ntoulia have discussed in their paper the
narrative techniques which can be utilized in rewriting fairy tales. There are
multiple other ways in which a story, particularly a fairy tale, can be retold.
The first and foremost technique is the change of perspective. Most of the
tales have been written using a third-person narrator. The writer can retell
the story through the perspective of a first-person narrator. The second
technique is the change of time frame. The classical era of a fairy tale can be
changed into a new and modern era. The writer can bring postmodern elements to
a story to make it completely different. Change of relations is the third
technique provided by Malafantis and Ntoulia. The writer can create reversed
roles in a story. He or she can also bring other relations into a story that
are not there in the original one. Another technique is changing the
characteristics of the protagonists. The space frame of a story can also be
changed. The natural frame, cultural frame, and socio-economic frame can be
altered, transformed, or reformed by the writer. The writer, rewriting a fairy
tale, can also change the literary genre of the story altogether.
Rewriting fairy tales has been a trend for quite some
years. According to Betsy Cornwell, retellings are the oldest kind of
storytelling that exists. She argues that technically first stories are
original but the second one is always retelling. In her opinion, retelling
fairy tales has never gone out of style. In one of her articles, Writing
Fairy Tale: Retelling that Stands Out by Betsy Cornwell, she has also
shared some tips for making a retelling stand out. She has suggested that the
writer rewriting a fairy tale should “unearth the deeper themes”, pull the plot
apart, “avoid generic settings”, focus on the main character, not worry about
originality and let his voice lead (Cornwell). There are numerous examples of
modern fairy tales for targeting different audiences such as Entwined, Tiger’s
Curse, Sisters Red, Toads and Diamonds, and many
others. So far, there is no particular strategy or technique for re-writing
fairy tales (Kendall).
In an online article, Alyson writes that retold
versions of fairy tales give a fresh feeling. It provides a chance of
humanizing the characters instead of considering them as only icons. (Alyson).
According to Maria Tatar, fairy tales have a discrete flatness (Heckel). By
“flatness” it is meant that the world of fairy tales is an abstract world in
which everything happens by chance. In its truest form, a fairy tale is a story
that does not require any explanation and accepts any kind of logic, except its
own. Jack Heckel has described it as a “narrative dreamland”. In fairy tales,
the when, where, and why are left to the imagination of readers, which provides
a gap in its narration, giving writers to rewrite it again and again with a new
perspective. Thus, there are multiple ways of retelling fairy tales that a
writer can use. The writers can also incorporate different social and cultural
philosophies in their versions of fairy tales.
This article is written by Saba Alam, one of the contributors at the School of Literature.
