Questions & Consternations on Sleeping Beauty

Reflections on the Most Common Commentaries on the Grimm's Version of Briar Rose

(photo from Briar Rose & The Indigenous Memory of Mother Europe in Edmonton on Dec 22nd. Photo taken by Michelle Christine).

A few weeks ago, on social media and on Substack, I shared the story of Briar Rose and asked people to share their consternations about the story.

We’ve gathered the responses together in this piece with our responses hoping to enthrone and deepen the mystery of these questions rather than resolving them with an answer. We do have opinions and we do delve into these in our live events but, there’s also something important, up front, about admiring the questions themselves.

The most important seed we can plant is this: your ancestors, if they had this story in the saddlebags of their cultural memory, saw this story as worthy enough to keep telling. Why? That’s the question.

Kakisimow Iskwew shares some of her thoughts in the video below.

We invite you to set that aside for a moment and consider that they knew what they were doing in crafting this story.

My commentary is indented below.

We welcome any further wonderings you have in the comments below.

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What’s up with The Frog in the Bathtub?:

Why does it seem to show up in her bathtub? The first thing to say is that her bath is likely actually a pond, a pool or some body of water nearby, not an actual, clawfoot bathtub. In the Grimms version it says, “”a frog crept out of the water onto the ground” and so she’s outside here. Which is a clue about what’s going on. She’s had to leave the castle in order to find fertility and it’s worth wondering why that might be. And why does the frog come when she’s bathing of all times?

What’s up with the Frog bestowing or announcing a child?

Every detail in these stories matters a great deal. There’s nothing random in these folk tales. If there’s an animal that’s named it’s that particular animal for a reason. They’re not interchangeable. If a plant is named, there’s an important reason why it’s that plant of all the plants that could appear. One off the tragedies in the modern world is that these details are being forgotten or changed. People remember there was a flower and, forgetting it was a rose, they might replace it with tulips because that’s a flower the love. But these details are all significant. Every story is a seed of the entire culture but every image in the story is a seed of the whole story. Stories are fractal in that way. Each detail is connected to the others. Stories are self-referencing in that way.

Gold Plates: In the Substack chat someone wrote, “Why does the King value eating on the 12 golden plates such that he disrespects one of the 13 wise women by not inviting her? What was so special about the plates? Why not change the plates rather than leave one out? Why not get a 13th gold plate made? It’s as if they thought, what could possibly go wrong…?”

This is a fabulous wondering. Why does gold matter more than these old women? That would seem to sum up modern society nicely. And, if he’s a King, we can assume he’s got a fair amount of gold, so why not melt some of it down and make a gold plate. He had nine months to do it, after all? And, isn’t this celebration being done, in part, to court the favour of these thirteen wise women and get their blessings? Why not put in more effort? Ah… But is it that he values the gold plates more than respect? Is it that he’s lazy and simply doesn’t want to get another gold plate? Is that the formulation? Perhaps it would have been a greater insult to them to offer them plates made of clay. And is it possible that it must be the gold plates for some good, important reason? Is it possible that gold, in these folktales, might mean something other than opulence and wealth?

The Blessings: What about the blessings? One comment we received at a live event was that, “These gifts remove her autonomy and reinforce how we see women via patriarchy.” Another online pointed out, “The three most repeated attributes of Briar Rose - she is beautiful, small and well-behaved.”

And here we have the motherlode. Perhaps more than any other grievance levelled towards this story, we have this. And, given the times, of course. We live in a modern society that programs women 24/7 with insane beauty standards. Many women alive today and many in the past have grown up with notions of being ‘well behaved’ which were deeply constricting (including wearing literally constricting corsets). But it’s worth pausing here: this story was not created in this century. Or the last. The first written version of it was in the 1300’s and the story is likely far, far older than that. This story, when you come to understand its deeper layers, was crafted by a people not beset with the modern insanities around beauty but rather by cultures who were still in love with the goddess. Is it possible that beauty meant something very different to them and that it is important for humans? Is it possible that ‘well-behaved’ might mean something more the ‘morally restrictive’ or being dominated by and needing to fall in line with some patriarchal authority? What if these gifts don’t remove her autonomy but are an expression of recognition of who she is and the assurance of her kinship?

Uninvited 13th: Why didn’t the other 12 wise women insist on the 13th coming?

Of course, the story says nothing about this. Perhaps they did and she refused and changed her mind later. Perhaps they orchestrated the entire pantomime in advance. Maybe this happened every generation and was an important local ritual that had to be done for life to continue.

Gift of the 13th: Someone wondered brilliantly, “It made me wonder what the gift of the 13th wise woman would have been had she been invited.”

This wondering is so brilliant. What a thought. Someone comes with a curse and this woman had the capacity to step back and wonder, “I wonder what she had wanted to bring? What might she have brought had she been invited?” Wouldn’t it be a fine thing to on the receiving end of this kind of generous spirit on our worst days where we aren’t behaving as beautifully as we could have. It takes great spiritual largesse to assume and seek out the good intention beneath the bad behaviour. Caroline Casey often speaks about the power of looking at the ugly things of the world and asking ourselves, “What did you want to be before you became this?” That is a question with immense power in it because it assumes a deeper beauty in everything in this world. Ah… And there’s that word beauty again. The poet Mary Oliver once wrote, “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” So, she shows up, it would seem, with a curse. But was it a curse? Or was it, in fact, her gift given in a different way? Whose to say that she didn’t end up giving the blessing she brought anyway?

Burning Spindles: Why did the king not teach Rose about the story of the spindle instead of burning them all? Why not just teach her about how to use spindles safely rather than trying to ‘keep her safe? How could he be so naive and arrogant to think that burning 'all' the spindles would solve it? How did the people spin after they were all burned? Weren’t they an important tool for the people? How could the king put the importance of his daughter above the well being of all of the other people?”

It seems like an immense over-reaction for the father to burn all the spindles in the kingdom. First of all, can we blame him? Could we respect the king if he did nothing to protect his daughter? Can we blame him for being seized by fear after such a curse from such a powerful being? But, more deeply, what if this piece of the story belongs? What if this is important for the king to do? What if it had to happen?

"Can you replace the word "daughter" with "son," and recognize the oddness of it? I think it likely that fathers generally would not want to keep their sons "young forever."

No, but mothers often do. In rites of passage in many traditional cultures, it's the men who come to take away the boy from his mother and she has a job in that moment, which is to weep and try to stop it from happening. And, if all goes well, she fails. But, in that moment, the boy, maybe for the first time in his life, sees how much his mother loves him. Her grief belongs. It's not supposed to run the show but it belongs. She's losing her little boy. When he comes back, he won't be her little boy anymore.

“Why the difference with daughters? Could it be the unspoken, unacknowledged, but very real dangers to girls and women in the form of sexual violence and violation?

I imagine that is a part of it. What father wants his daughter to be subjected to the things that her childhood, temporarily, shields her from? When she grows up and marries, in many cultures in Europe, it means she leaves home and her protection forever.

Absence on the 15th Birthday: One person wrote, “The bit that niggles at me is - the king and queen were not there for Briar Rose’s 15 birthday.”

This one is so baffling. You would think that, of all the days in Briar Rose’s life that the king and queen would make sure they were there would be this day. If you were the parent, you’d make sure your child was surrounded by everyone you trusted with the doors locked and safe as could be. You would never, ever be away let alone let them be alone. But the king and queen, both, did. They left. How could they? To make it more perplexing, how could it be that the king went from, “Burn every spindle!” in order to protect his daughter to seeming so blase on the clutch day? But here are some things to consider: What if the parents both needed to be away on that day? What if they weren’t in charge of that day? What if their being away was the biggest gift they could give to Briar Rose?

Another wrote, also referencing the Perrault version of this story: “The absence of a protective masculine energy is prominent. The male shows up at the last second, twice. It speaks to me of the orphaning of the Abrahamic god who banishes and disowns his creation/children, then comes in at the last second to be the hero. There is more tangled in a briar patch of thoughts and feelings, but what/who ISN'T in the story seems glaring to me.”

This reaction is understandable. Where is the father when his children are in danger? Why isn’t he there. But it’s worth pausing and reconsidering the premise of the question: is danger bad? Is adversity something we should banish? Might it be that there is a time in the life of a child where danger should properly appear? Could there be some other meaning to the absence of the father (and mother) than this being a hangover from Abrahamic religion? It’s worth considering that this is not a scribal interpolation brought on by the Catholic Church but, rather, one of the most beautiful vestiges of the old story.

Old Woman In Tower: The old woman is behind a locked door. In a tower!

What a strange image. How long has she been there? Does she live there? How has Briar Rose never met her? If we read this literally, there’s something unnerving about it all. But, what if, at one level, she is in that room always and never leaves and that’s a good thing? And what if, at another level, that room is only used at specified times? What if this is a room that she is solely in charge of, not the king? What if it’s her rusty key and not the king’s?

The Bed: The woman in the tower and how the bed was right there.

How convenient as a plot device that there’s a bed for her to fall on as she swoons. It seems little mattress ex-machina. But, and this won’t mean much to you right now, what if this room is a sort of hostel or mansion in its own right? What if the bed is a central detail to the function and purpose of that room? What if the bed has something central to say about what this story is really all about?

Passive Damsel In Distress: One comment we got was, “In her sleeping state, she is endlessly beautiful, passive and completely submissive, embodying the expectations of her gender.” Another Substack comment was: “Sleeping beauty is under a spell of disempowerment.”

At one level, this makes sense. The princess seems to be a pawn here in the story with no agency at all. You can’t be much more passive than when you’re unconscious. But let’s take these one at a time. “She’s endlessly beautiful.” This is raised as an expectation of her gender (i.e. women are supposed to be endlessly beautiful). And, mercy, isn’t that true of modern society. We see it everywhere. Hollywood actresses hit a certain age and the roles dry up entirely. Women feel themselves growing more and more invisible as they get older and, the eyes of modern society, ‘their beauty fades’. And yet, Briar Rose is endlessly beautiful. That’s her nature. And could it be that there is nothing disempowering in this for women? After all, Briar Rose stays young and beautiful while the rest of the world grows old and dies. She is “passive and completely submissive”. Again, this is lifted up as a bad thing. But it’s worth wondering, what if nothing is wrong here? What if her sleeping is a needed and important thing at this moment in her story? Could the critique of her passivity be not a critique of mainstream culture but actually the voice of the mainstream modern culture, itself, critiquing the story? And then there’s the notion that, in her sleeping, she is “embodying the expectations of her gender.” Again, given the history of the West, this is an understandable place to come from but what if this has nothing to do with the expectations of her gender but her rights and responsibilities as a woman? And finally, the sense that she’s “under a spell of disempowerment.” But what if it’s just the opposite and that this is her stepping into her power? What if this is a kind of ending of a spell for her? What if her sleeping is actually what life needs to continue? That’s a thought worth thinking.

Kingdom Wide Sleep: One of my favourite comments was, “Why did everyone have to fall asleep (and the unfairness for the attendants and servants - they didn’t choose!!! What about their families outside of the castle???)”

Again, where’s the agency? Is this yet another moment of the common people suffering due to the games of the elite? The king makes a bad call and now the entire kingdom suffers? First all their spindles are burned and now this? But consider the possibility that their falling asleep is what allows life to continue and that their falling asleep might be one of the central teachings in this story. It’s worthy of noticing the prejudice against sleep. That sleep is unconsciousness, passivity and submission and that these things are bad and disempowering.

Penetrating The Hedge: Another comment: “The impenetrable hedge that is around the castle - that word “penetrate”, that the castle couldn’t be pierced. Something shocked me about that word, some kind of violence/defense being acknowledged. Serves those fuckers right - the cheek of them, thinking they can save the princess! phallus or ‘piercing’ images carried through - spindle, thorns, moving through the hedge. The princes all trying to get through the thorny bushes - why? Like hungry wolves looking for their prey or princess. And dying the decaying in the bushes.”

One of the heaviest accusations laid at the feet of this story is that it’s about sexual transgression from men against women. And, given the times we’re in where at least half of the women seem to either suffer from rape or have to fend of an attempt, this makes a lot of sense. The world is full of hungry men whose hunger causes them to act badly. And, of course, rape has been used as a tool of war for a long time now. This story seems to be condoning sexual assault. She’s sleeping he kisses or, in other versions, has sex with her, and, when she wakes us, she ‘looks upon him kindly’. Could there be a worse message to give young women? Without giving it away, what if this story was, far from teaching women to ‘take it and smile’ was a story about, in part, teaching me about importance of consent in courtship? What if this story was about exactly the opposite of what we’re told it is about?

Why did the other princes fail? Why did this Prince get through?: “The prince makes me curious - how come him? Why could he get through where others could not?”

For a hundred years, princes have tried, and failed. Why? I think this is left oblique intentionally to have young men (and older men) wonder about how to not end up like one of those princes.

Swaggering Princes: To me, right now, there is something unsettling and almost too easy about the way it is resolved. That simply the young man who wants love and fortune and tells himself to not be afraid will get it... like the lies our culture tells us about "you can be whatever you want to be, if you only work hard enough for it" or that "love is there if you dare to seek it." I imagine them to be also equally entitled and daring… Maybe, I am expecting more tension and conflict... and something harder earned and this is a tale inviting surrender and softening... upending expectations and offering love to any and all who seek it…

It's worth noting that other versions have more of the backstory of the prince where some of that adversity appears but yes - there's a deep cultural bias that the only good things come through adversity. we suspect it if it's too easy. somehow we haven't 'earned it'. I suspect there's some hung over religious guilt we all carry around this.

Men Dying In Hedge: “The image of men dying trapped in a thorny bush is very disturbing.”

It is disturbing and I think it’s designed to disturb. It’s intended to burn itself into the retina of our minds.

What’s so special about this Prince? Why does he get in?

Again, I think the story is designed to have us ask exactly that kind of a question. Under what conditions does the hedge open? This one image, of the hedge bursting into flower and opening up, could be the basis of many, many weeks around the fire that all young men should be blessed with.

The Kiss: In some versions, he just sits and looks upon her. In some he kisses. In some, he sleeps with her while she’s unconscious.

There seems to be no possible way to justify this kind of behaviour. A prince walks into a castle where everyone is asleep, finds a beautiful woman and kisses her? What? And she wakes up and looks upon him kindly? Is this how we’re programming our young men? “She’ll like it”? If we’re looking for text-book transgression, here it is. But, if that were the meaning of this story, do you think grandmothers would have sat their grandsons and granddaughters on their knees and insisted they listen to it? Is this a story from a traumatized people? We don’t think so. We think this is a story that carries inside of it, the memory of an alive and well people and that it carries some of the indigenous memory of those times and places. And so, what if this message was an empowering one not a disempowering one? But how could that be? That’s the mystery of it.

Waking Up After 100 Years: “It was not the kiss that woke her up. In subsequent tellings of the story the prince is given the credit for breaking the spell… but in this one the 100 years were over. The 100 years were up, was the prince necessary? Was he fated to be there?”

Now there’s a mystery worth pondering. Would she have woken up anyway? Was he needed? Was the kiss needed? Are men needed? Would it have been more empowering if she simply woke herself up?

Love At First Sight and Quick Marriage: “And it jumps to the wedding awful fast.”

Is this the kind of message we want to give to young people? “Meet someone, trauma-bond and then get hitched!” What could go wrong? Of course, many of us have lived the answer to that question out. Plenty can and does go wrong. We live in a culture addicted to a toxic version of romance and girls are trained from a young age to want to be rescued by a handsome prince and give a ‘fairy tale’ wedding as the ultimate reward. But this is one of the deepest misunderstandings about fairy tales - the ‘love at first sight’ thing. It’s not about the romance between a young man and a young woman. There’s something much vaster going on here.

Where did the wise women go?:

They vanished! They come to the celebration and then they vanish for the rest of the story. Were they being tokenized? Were they being used as a rubber stamp on the proceedings? The answer to this is, actually, in the story if you know how to look. They didn’t go anywhere in the story. They’re an omnipresent fixture not only in the story but in the lived out lives of your ancestors who saw this story as important enough to pass on.

The Oppressive Masculine: “I came to learn that Sleeping Beauty is about the societal forces at work attempting to keep the young girl a maiden, never to grow into womanhood. This is the story of an overpowering masculine force, the king/father, trying to keep his daughter a little girl forever… Spinning wheels in fairy tales represent fate, and he is determined to change his daughter’s fate.” - Symbolism in Sleeping Beauty By H. R. Conklin

Remember, this story was told by grandmothers to their children. Also, it’s a woman, the 13th, who condemns the girl to die. Her father does everything in his power to save her. Also, it’s worth questioning if it’s inevitable that a girl becomes a woman. Is this a story about her destiny being thwarted or being assured? And, if it’s a story about the overpowering masculine, then why is he overpowered by circumstance? And why does it end so well for her? And can we blame any father for wanting to keep his daughter young forever?

“Through understanding the symbolism in fairy tales, my favorite childhood fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, is saved.” - Symbolism in Sleeping Beauty By H. R. Conklin

There’s a lot of truth in this commentary. If you don’t understand the symbolism in the story, if you read it literally, then it’s a terrible story. But if you do, the story is ‘saved’. But, I would offer another perspective on this: the story is just fine without us. Through understanding the symbolism in fairy tales, it is we who are saved. The story didn’t need saving.

“The “happily ever after” has nothing to do with the marriage between two humans, but a marriage of the mind of a complete and whole woman, in spite of her father trying to keep her young forever.” - Symbolism in Sleeping Beauty By H. R. Conklin

This sums up most of what Kakisimow Iskwew and I have found in researching this story. It’s mostly people writing Jungian, psychological approaches to the story. That everything in the story is about the inner world. But mythology predates psychology. These stories were not written by psychologists. They were written by animists who understood the world to be alive. Mythology was the language they spoke and understood fluently.

“In the end, Sleeping Beauty is very much awake and prevalent in modern society. From advertising to the arts, she is here to stay, refusing to sleep away the 21st century. Do you think she will survive her suspended animation into the next century?”- Heidi Anne Heiner, Sleeping Beauties

So, awake is good and asleep is bad? Is this the formulation? Being ‘here’ and ‘refusing to stay away’ is a good thing? Being in the constant glare of the spotlight is what we should want then? If she’s in suspended animation then she won’t survive? Perhaps it’s worth considering this. It’s not that she’s refusing to sleep these days. It might be that she’s no longer allowed to sleep. And I wonder, do we think that she or the world will survive without her sleeping? Might it be that the vitality of the world hinges on her sleeping.

“But Briar Rose didn’t develop much as a character!”

First - character development is a modern idea. Character development is hinged on notions of progress: that where we are is not good enough, that there’s something wrong with our nature and a little personal growth will fix that. From this lens, we get the revisionist versions of fairy tales, all written by people seized by the understanding that there’s something wrong with the stories and that they, being born into modern times, have a much more adroit, conscious and enlightened view of the world than their indigenous ancestors who would, of course, be grateful for their revisions of the story. I want to underline this: so many of the revisions are written by people who have little to no understanding of what the story is about. The revisions are written by literate people reading the story literally. These revisions are written by people in the grip of ‘personal development’: the notion that any growth we have comes from within from our own efforts. But this story was crafted by oral cultures with no Tony Robbins’, Brene Brown or Elizabeth Gilbert in sight. There were no webinars, no weekend empowerment workshops. These stories were written by animists who saw the world as alive. That’s your clue here as to what’s going on.

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