Revisionism
is the thing today. Old myths are being redone, so much it has become a
veritable industry in writing. Scores of books change the emphasis of a fairy tale to explore territory, give
a character in a long-cherished story a better chance, and hint at a different
moral or a different set of values than what the tale originally intended. (Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is one of the best.) Over
the last four years or so I've published quite a few tales like these. The
first one, though, dealt with a story by Hans Christian Anderson, one I think I
first read in fourth or fifth grade, very familiar, "The Princess and the
Pea."
It
is the story of a king who wanted to find a suitable bride for his son. The
bride must be pure and delicate, as princess brides were expected to be in
those days—though if you wanted to bring heirs to the throne into this world,
it would seem to me that you would want a strong, well-built, sturdy and
healthy woman as your daughter-in-law, not someone who was delicate. At any
rate, the king came up with a way to test the constitution of the girls who
were candidates to marry his son. He piled up a whole stack of mattresses and
put a single pea at the bottom of the stack. If the princess did not feel the
very small dried pea under the many layers of padding, she was not the delicate
sort of wife he wanted to bring into the royal family.
 |
| Scene from Once Upon a Mattress |
The
myth, as I said, was popular. I read it in grade school. The musical, Once Upon a Mattress, is in itself a
revisionist version of the old fairy tale. When I saw the call for revisionist
fairy tales, I got the idea that the princess and pea would be a good idea—especially
after I noted an article that dealt with the sexual innuendos in it: the princess complains that something kept
poking her all night long, that it was hard, that she was black and blue from
it . . . well, you get the idea. But the press that made the call of submission
published mainly horror, so it had to have a horrific side to it as well.
In
my version of the story, the princess is slated to marry a prince of a kingdom
located in strategic area of her father's kingdom. She journeys there only to
be left standing in a storm with high winds and pouring rain. Providentially, a
gust of wind shatters the castle gate and the princess is able to get in. The Marquis
who owns the castle pleads ignorance, but Eyoline does believe him. She is wise
and politick and orders her army to begin
"training exercises" in the castle and also to inspect its
fortifications. If the Marquis murders her, he is doomed. She hopes to get Alexis,
whom the Marquis exiled, and who is raising a revolt in the countryside (and
whom she also loves), to come to the castle, marry her, and be reconciled to his
father. As ceremony requires, she will sleep in the virgin's bed one night to
be eligible to marry.
 |
| Princess Eyoline |
It
is a tall bed, stretching almost to the rafters of the bedroom. Like the bed in
the original fairy tale, it piles mattress on mattress. But Princess Eyoline
can't sleep. Alexis appears. He has sneaked into the castle and hidden in
rafters. He warns her that his father has hired a sorcerer—the father of the
girl he had originally meant Alexis to marry—to cast a spell on the bed. They disembark,
search for charms or talisman, but only find a pea. Eyoline, in her amusement,
pops it in her mouth.
She
suddenly feels possessed by evil. Animal urges to kill, drink blood, and
destroy grip her. A hand, however grips her by the throat, closes off her nose, and begins to shake her
violently. It is Alexis. He shakes her until she coughs up the pea. It is
cursed. It is designed so she cannot sleep in the bed. Because she must in fact
"sleep" there, the pea would have stopped her from qualifying as a
suitable bride for Prince Alexis.
When
Eyoline was possessed by the evil of the pea she had swallowed, she received a
vision. She takes soldiers and a priest and find the Marquis, the girl he
wanted to his son to marry, and the girl's father, practicing black mass:
Three startled faces looked back at
them. The Marquis and an older man, both dressed in black; and Morenda, who was
lying naked on the altar, the pit around her navel filled with wine, three chunks
of bread balanced in the hair of her pubic mound. Black candles blazed. A
crucifix hung upside-down over Morenda’s naked body.
She has them detained. Not your sugar-coated princess by a long shot, she throws the three plotters in the dungeon to await execution and then goes back to bed. As instructed, Alexis climbs into bed with her again. Since he has seen her naked, and since they are to be married tomorrow, and since she needs to relax to go to sleep, she yields her virginity to him. Alexis leaves and the princess settles down to a deep sleep. She will have a great deal to do when the sun comes up.
Father Grim's Storybook is still in print and available. Lots of great myths to look into.
For a modern tales that revises the myth of Orpheus, read my newest book, Le Cafe de la Mort. Coffee to die for an much more.
For more stories that make great reading for Halloween, check out my Writer's Page.
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