Fairy Tales and Greek Myths

We're all familiar, of course, with the basic fairy tales. Most of us are probably far more accustomed to the Disney versions, which while they preserve something of the story, sometimes miss a bit of the meat and all of the horror -- you'll never see a Disney movie about The Maiden Without Hands. Thankfully, I have a copy of The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, Translated by Jack Zipes (Bantam, 1992), from which to refresh your memories of the important bits for the purposes of this post.

I'd like to start with an excerpt from the fairy tale of Brier Rose AKA Sleeping Beauty.

[...] the queen gave birth to a girl who was so beautiful that the king was overjoyed and decided to hold a great feast. Not only did he invite his relatives, friends, and acquaintances, but also the wise women, in the hope that they would be generous and kind to his daughter. There were thirteen wise women in his kingdom, but he had only twelve golden plates from which they could eat. Therefore, one of them had to remain home.

[...] When eleven of them had offered their gifts, the thirteenth suddenly entered the hall. She wanted to get revenge for not having been invited, and without greeting anyone or looking around, she cried out with a loud voice, "In her fifteenth year the princess shall prick herself with a spindle and fall down dead!"

And maybe we should throw in an excerpt from Snow White as well? Just to make it interesting. Same edition.

She had a magic mirror and often she stood in front of it, looked at herself, and said:
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
who in this realm is the fairest of all?"
Then the mirror would answer:
"You, my queen, are the fairest of all."
That reply would make her content, for she knew the mirror always told the truth.

I wouldn't actually recommend to anyone that they sit down to read the Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm all at once. Ever. The redundancy is incredible, and it gets really tiresome well before you hit the half-way point. The Grimm's Fairy Tales are best read in small doses, with some space in between. I was assigned to read it for an English class once and made the mistake of reading it all at the last minute, and while I like having the book sitting on my shelf, I doubt I'll ever pick it up for leisure. So what made me pick it up now? Not only pick it up, but start quoting passages to you, gentle readers? Greek Mythology, of course.

While researching the Trojan War, I found a number of references to The Judgment of Paris, one within Apollodorus's The Libraries -- a fairly excellent catalog of myths and stories about the Olympian gods and demigods. It was an annotated translation, and I read this within the notes:

The story ran that all the gods and goddesses, except Strife, were invited to attend the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and that Strife, out of spite at being overlooked, threw among the wedding guests a golden apple inscribed with the words, “Let the fair one take it,” or “The apple for the fair.” Three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, contended for this prize of beauty, and Zeus referred the disputants to the judgment of Paris.

We know that Rome did a lot to spread the influence of the original Greek Myths and heroes, and we also know that Rome's influence reached all the way from Africa in the south to Britain in the North, and certainly the Germanic tribes absorbed a good deal of Roman culture. But until this moment, looking at the Judgment of Paris and reflecting on the fairy tales collected by the brothers Grimm, it never occurred to me how much of it stuck.

At this point, Strife has become the thirteenth fairy, and Paris, poor Paris, the Magic Mirror on the wall. Unfortunately, Paris doesn't possess the impartiality of the mirror. He can be bribed, and the goddesses (I'm sure Hercules would tell us that Hera is the definitive evil step-mother) go about taking advantage of that weakness at once.

I wonder if the Brothers Grimm, educated men that they were, realized the parallels of what they were recording?

***Originally posted on GeekaChicas.com, January 7, 2010.

The Character of Paris [Ovid]

Paris always has such a dumb hat.
© Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons

I haven't talked about him a lot, because I haven't written about him. His story was always supposed to be Helen's sequel, maybe even an independent companion novel. But Paris doesn't hold the same fascination for me that Theseus does, or even Menelaus. His story has been done so many times, and no matter how hard people try -- and it is clear that we have tried VERY hard -- there isn't really any way to make Paris into a real hero. The gods don't allow him to be one. They don't even let him become a proper anti-hero! I've never understood what Helen saw in him (that is not to say he is not brave and valiant in her defense, as far as he's allowed by Aphrodite), and to me, that's maybe the more fascinating and telling element. How bad was Helen's life with Menelaus that she thought running off with Paris and starting a war would be an improvement?

But I do love Ovid's writing of Paris in the Heroides. I know I've talked about it a little bit before, but those exercises of rhetoric are by far the most fascinating illustration of Paris' character that I've come across. He is bold and confident and unafraid. He's determined and conniving. There is absolutely nothing fickle about his desire for Helen. He wants her, and he's willing to employ every dirty trick in the book to get her. However idiotic he might be later, in Ovid's letters, Paris charms me. I can believe, reading his letter to Helen, that she was fighting against someone with an overpowering charisma-- and that she had no real defense against such a man's seduction, especially if her relationship to Menelaus was less than great.

Paris says:

My passion for you I have brought; I did not find it here. It is that which was the cause of so long a voyage, for neither gloomy storm has driven me hither, nor a wandering course; [...] It is you I come for – you, whom golden Venus has promised for my bed; you were my heart’s desire before you were known to me. I beheld your features with my soul ere I saw them with my eyes; rumour, that told me of you, was the first to deal my wound.

and then he boasts!

And as I long for you, so women have longed for me; alone, you can possess the object of many women’s prayers! And not only have the daughters of princes and chieftains sought me, but even the nymphs have felt for me the cares of love.

Paris, Paris, Paris. You sure are full of yourself. And he's so unapologetic about it! I think that's what I like the most -- how he honestly believes that he is doing nothing wrong in seducing another man's wife. He has absolutely no shame, and that's even more well illustrated when he talks about her abduction by Theseus (emphasis mine).

And so Theseus rightly felt love’s flame, for he was acquaint with all your charms, and you seemed fit spoil for the great hero to steal away, [...] His stealing you away, I commend; my marvel is that he ever gave you back. So fine a spoil should have been kept with constancy. Sooner would this head have left my bloody neck that you have been dragged from marriage-chamber of mine. One like you, would ever these hands of mine be willing to let go? One like you, would I, alive, allow to leave my embrace? If you must needs have been rendered up, I should first at least have taken some pledge from you; my love for you would not have been wholly for naught. Either your virgin flower I should have plucked, or taken what could be stolen without hurt to your virgin state.

"His stealing you away, I commend; my marvel is that he ever gave you back." Paris' admissions are kind of alarming, if you ask me. But he is SO confident that she will love him, is meant to love him and can't resist him, he holds nothing back. Not even a confession that if he had been Theseus, he would have raped her, if need be. (And I'm not going to touch the fact that he talks about her like she's furniture-- that wouldn't have been odd to Helen, just as it was totally natural for Ovid.)

Even his bribes are presented in such a matter of fact way that it's obvious he doesn't think he's bribing her so much as stating the facts. The FACTS are that Troy is far wealthier, and she will be showered in riches and kept in splendor. The FACTS are that he can offer her a better life than she'll ever have in Sparta, which is nothing in comparison to his homeland. The FACTS are that Menelaus doesn't deserve her.

I regret my being a guest, when before my eyes that rustic lays his arms about your neck. I burst with anger and envy – for why should I not tell everything? – when he lays his mantle over your limbs to keep you warm. But when you openly give him tender kisses, I take up my goblet and hold it before my eyes; when he holds you closely pressed, I let my gaze fall, and the dull food grows big within my unwilling mouth.

His recklessness, his boldness in addressing her so honestly and so brutally, is what's so appealing. He is SO in love with her that he can't help himself, that he has no fear at all. Here is the bad boy, the anti-hero we're denied. He's completely arrogant, and committed to making the most of the opportunity he's been given (with Menelaus away in Crete) by any means necessary. Sure, he'd prefer her willing, but from the tenor of this letter, it's clear that he won't let her willingness really get in his way if she gives him even the smallest of openings.

Paris is a villain. A stalker, obsessed with his prey. And he will not stop, because he sees encouragement in every polite smile she gives him. He will not stop because the gods have given Helen to him, and in that certainty, there is nothing she can say that will dissuade him from what he perceives as the truth, the facts. She will love him, eventually. Aphrodite herself promised it.

Reading Ovid, I can believe that Helen never had a chance.

On Apollodorus's The Library and Fairy Tales

So I'm reading  The Libraries by Apollodorus, as the Epitome deals with the Trojan war, and those events which lead up to it, and I came across this in the notes:

The story ran that all the gods and goddesses, except Strife, were invited to attend the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and that Strife, out of spite at being overlooked, threw among the wedding guests a golden apple inscribed with the words, “Let the fair one take it,” or “The apple for the fair.” Three goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, contended for this prize of beauty, and Zeus referred the disputants to the judgment of Paris.

And all of a sudden, I had an ah HA! moment.

Are we looking at the origin of the evil fairy of folklore? The same fairy who becomes Malificent in Disney's version of Sleeping Beauty? The fairy, who overlooked, curses the baby, rather than blessing it? (Something about 12 golden plates, and 13 fairies, wasn't it? It's been a long time since I read my complete Grimm's fairy tales.) And the origin of the evil step-mother we all know from Snow White, with Paris playing the roll of the magic mirror? This does seem to capture interesting elements from both, and I think I can confidently say that these stories pre-date the Germanic folklore which is the source for so much of the old fairy tales.

I knew the story, but I had never seen it put exactly in those terms. Now that I have, I find it difficult to believe it ISN'T the story which resulted in those other interpretations. Very interesting.

The Heroides

For those of you following my journey through Trojan myth, or with any kind of passing interest, I highly recommend you check out Ovid's The Heroides. You don't even have to read the whole of it-- each letter is labeled with the writer and the intended recipient. There are three which I've focused on, personally, in regard to Helen and Paris, V, XVI, and XVII. (There are a couple more dealing with different characters from the war--Achilles, Agamemnon, and children of these--but I'm running short on time to read all this stuff, so I haven't looked at them yet.)

The fifth letter is written by Oenone to Paris. Oenone, according to Ovid, is Paris's first wife. She was a nymph, and he left her behind in Troy to go after Helen. She appears to have written this letter after his return, when he brings Helen with him to replace her as his wife. Oenone is understandably pretty upset about all of this. She was Paris's wife, after all, before he was recognized as one of Priam's sons, and was just some poor shepherd in the woods. She warns him that Helen is going to bring his ruin, and that as an adulteress, he can't trust her. I can only imagine that Paris ignores all of this. It's unclear to me whether Oenone is kept on as a second, lesser wife of Paris's, or whether she's cast out. I don't know if she's living in the palace with them or not--I think I'll have to read through it again. But until I had read this, I wasn't aware that Paris had been previously married, and that element will be an excellent and interesting thing to explore, certainly, as I write.

The sixteenth and seventeenth letters, are part of what is referred to as the double letters. These were letters paired with their responses. The first is from Paris to Helen, begging her to consider his suit for her hand, and his love, and the second is Helen's response. Paris tells Helen the story of the three goddesses, Hera/Juno, Athena/Minerva and Aphrodite/Venus, who appear to him after Hermes/Mercury drops him the golden prize and orders him under Zeus/Jupiter's command to settle the issue of who is the fairest. Each of the goddesses offers Paris a prize if he chooses them. Aphrodite offers him Helen, and that's when his obsession with her is born. It's also the source for the enmity Hera and Athena have for Troy in The Iliad. They seek Troy's destruction because Paris chose Aphrodite over them.