Imaginary Worlds - Extreme Makeover: Fairy Godmother Edition

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Who wouldn’t want a fairy godmother to solve our problems with the flick of a magic wand? We know that’s not a healthy fantasy and yet, fairy godmothers aren’t going away. In fact, they’ve been proliferating in contemporary fantasy novels and reinterpretations of Cinderella. But they don’t look or act like you might expect. I talk with Butler University lecturer Jeana Jorgensen and PhD student Abigail Fine about the origin of fairy godmothers and why they’re ripe for reimagining. And I talk with author Gail Caron Levine about her groundbreaking novel Ella Enchanted, which broke the mold on fairy tales. Featuring readings from Aliza Pearl. Jeana Jorgensen's latest book is Fairy Tales 101: An Accessible Introduction to Fairy Tales. In this episode we discussed Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron and Kissing the Witch by Emma Donahue. Other contemporary novels with fairy godmother-type characters include Geekerella by Ashley Poston, Shadows on The Moon by Zoe Marriott, Ash by Malinda Lo, Ash & Bramble by Sarah Prineas, and Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella by Megan Morrison. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's it like to trade crypto on Kraken? Let's say I'm in a state-of-the-art gym surrounded by powerful-looking machines. Do I head straight for the squat rack? I could, but this gym has options, like trainers, fitness pros, spotters to back me up. That's crypto on Kraken. Powerful crypto tools backed by 24-7 support and multi-layered security. Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Non-investment advice.

Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See Kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body. Hey, it stinks down here. Why do armpits get all of the attention? We're down here all day with no odor protection. Wait, what's that? Mmm, vanilla and shea.

That's Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. Vous écoutez Imaginary Worlds, une émission sur la façon dont nous le créons et pourquoi nous suspendons notre incredulité. Je suis Eric Molenski. Okay, so those of you who subscribe to the show's newsletter know that I'm learning French or I'm trying to learn French.

I had to look up some of those words. To help me learn, I've been watching American movies in French with English subtitles. And I thought it'd be fun to watch the Disney cartoons that take place in France in French, like the Aristocats, which I actually think is kind of a better movie in French. Beauty and the Beast is great in French. I also watch Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Now, I saw Sleeping Beauty when I was studying animation a long time ago. And back then, I was only focusing on the animation. This time, I was struck by the story.

The film has been criticized for having a passive protagonist. But I realized that Sleeping Beauty or Briar Rose or Aurora is not really the protagonist. She doesn't have a lot of dialogue or screen time. For much of the movie, she's either a baby or she's asleep. The real protagonists are her fairy godmothers, Meriwether, Flora, and Fauna. They temporarily suspend their powers to protect this girl. At first, it's a tactical choice. They know that Maleficent would never imagine them doing something so good as a self-sacrifice for somebody they barely know.

But they grow to love Aurora, and that love makes them more human. In fact, the story becomes a proxy war between the good fairies and Maleficent. In the final battle, the prince has no dialogue. The fairies just hand him weapons and tell him what to do. They're kind of badass. Gail Carson Levine wrote Ella Enchanted,

which is one of her many novels that reimagine fairy tales with a modern perspective. And she agrees. Because in fairy tales, very often, the main characters are pawns. They just move where the story wants them to go. And all the agency belongs to the magical creatures and sometimes the villains. I came away with a newfound respect for fairy godmothers. And I started to wonder, have we not given them enough respect? I mean, why don't we put them in the same category as other mentor characters like Gandalf, Dumbledore, or Yoda?

And where did this archetype of the fairy godmother come from? To answer that, we need to stick with our French theme and go back to France in the late 17th century. Jenna Jorgensen teaches fairy tales and folklore at Butler University. There was a vogue in the court of Louis XIV during his reign for writing fairy tales. Intellectual, educated people would write fairy tales and present them to one another at salons, along with poetry, music, and so on.

That's really where we see the figure of the fairy godmother emerging. The term fairy tale comes from a writer known as Madame Donois. I assume they called her Madame Donois because her full name is actually very long. Madame Donois came up with the term contefé, or fairy tales. She was part of a group of women in these writing salons, and their stories had... Fairy godmothers all over the place. Lots of fairies these writing salons, and their stories had... traditions across the world, you wouldn't necessarily have a fairy. You might have a sorceress or an ogre or someone else fulfilling the same structural role in the story. So really, we can blame this one on France. Years ago, I did an episode called Don't Mess with the Fairies, which focused on fairies in British and Irish culture. Those fairies were not into helping people, quite the opposite. But in the fairy tales that Madame Dunois and her

colleagues were writing... They had a lot of fairies and fairy godmothers within their tales, and these fairies were very powerful women. And so in a way, they acted as stand-ins for the female writers who were creating this literary fairy tale genre. writers who were creating this literary fairy tale genre. That is Abigail Fine. She is a PhD student. Jenna recommended that we get in touch with her because Abigail is writing her dissertation on fairy godmothers. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject.

Abigail says these writers were not only using fairy godmothers as stand-ins for themselves, they were part of a larger culture war. There is this big thing happening in France at the time called the battle between the ancients and moderns. Mostly men in this era were saying, like, we can never exceed or excel the ancient literature. And women were saying, yes, we can. They're the moderns. And they're saying we can do this because there are very few women represented in classical ancient literature. And women were saying, yes, we can. They're the moderns. And they're saying, we can do this because there are very few women represented in classical ancient literature. They did have a male writer on their side, Charles Perrault. He was one of the few men who were doing literary fairy tales in this milieu at the time.

If his name sounds familiar, it's because Charles Perrault wrote the definitive version of Cinderella. And like many folktales, Cinderella had been told in different ways, in different cultures around the world for a long time. But Perrault set the template that we know today. And his story had a fairy godmother. Madame Dunois and other female writers like Catherine Bernard were just as popular as Perrault, but his stories prevailed over time. He had the advantage of being a male writer, and he was well-established in the royal court. The women had more scandalous lives. They were

definitely being more socially transgressive by participating in written literature and so on. And Jenna says in terms of his stories, they were also very compact. Like, Perrault's stories are, like, short. And a lot of the tales by the female contemporaries, like Donois and Bernard and so on, they're long, they're convoluted, complex, like, tons of, like, very eloquent description, a bit of, like, sarcasm and snark here and there.

They don't have morals at the end. They don't all have happy endings. So stylistically, they're quite different as well well but then in terms of the fairy godmother is he still the one though that gets the credit i don't know that anyone like thinks about this often enough to say who gets the credit like in the general public um i mean yeah like don juan perot were basically writing at the same time for the most part and And she has fairy godmothers and he has fairy godmothers. So it's just kind of a contemporaneous thing that everybody was, it was in the air. Everybody was writing it at the time.

These writers were also drawing on something else in the air. Today, we understand the concept of a godmother in terms of religious education or extended family. of religious education or extended family. But in 17th century France, especially in high society, the fairy godmother was reflecting a very specific role for older women. For social advancement, you needed a godmother or a patroness or a patron or someone who could help you navigate the social world as an up and coming young person. And that role ended up merging with that of the fairy and in some cases, witch and midwife. Like there was this whole sense of female figures who had some kind of power, sometimes otherworldly, sometimes medicinal. And it just kind of got all rolled into one thing such that fairies became someone that you would look up to and ask for help. Abigail says this is the same role that male mentors typically play in the hero's journey.

Like in Perrault's version of Cinderella. Cinderella, when the fairy godmother shows up, is so distraught that she can barely speak. And of course, in France at this time, conversation is a big part of how you show that you are civilized, civilité. The fairy godmother really guides Cinderella along. It's not, she does just give her things, but she sort of makes Cinderella think, like, what could we use for Coachman? Oh, let me go get these lizards. And then the first time that Cinderella really strongly uses her voice is when she is advocating for getting her ball gown. Here's the actress Elisa Pearl reading from The Perot Tale. The fairy then said to Cinderella, well, you see here an equipage fit

to go to the ball with. Are you not pleased with it? Oh yes, she cried, but must I go in these nasty rags? Her godmother then touched her with her wand, and at the same instant, her clothes turned into cloth of gold and silver, all beset with jewels. This done, she gave her a pair of glass slippers, the prettiest in the whole world. The whole thing you can read as sort of the fairy godmother guiding her towards thinking for herself, towards creative problem solving, and towards being able to use her voice. Jenna thinks that that's gotten lost in translation today. thinks that that's gotten lost in translation today. I feel like some of the invisibility of fairy godmothers as mentor figures might be due to how American and Western culture in general doesn't have a lot of use for older women. They're just kind of set aside, disregarded a little bit. So yeah, I do think that the fairy godmother could be an older mentor role. And again, like in 17th century France,

my sense is that the actual godmother or the social patroness, she would have done that. She would have had a very important advisory role for any younger women under her care. There's another reason why the fairy godmother doesn't quite get that level of cultural respect. A lot of people have argued that she helps the protagonists too much. Gail Carson Levine thinks that made sense in the 17th century. Imagine you're not in high society, you don't have access to a patroness, and then you read fairy tales like Cinderella. They reflect a time when people didn't have a whole lot of agency. And so when you have a problem that you can't figure out, like you're starving,

that you can't figure out how to solve, the fairy sweeps in. But today, wishing for a fairy godmother might send the wrong message. And when you wish upon a star, you don't do the work. When you give the characters agency, things start to happen. Abigail says the fairy godmother has gotten swept up in a backlash against damsel in distress stories. The fairy godmother becomes an extension of that. If she's not waiting for the prince to rescue her, then she's just sitting around waiting for a fairy godmother and she does nothing and she doesn't lift a finger

to help herself. That hasn't stopped people from telling stories about fairy godmothers. In fact, there have been a lot of retellings of Cinderella and other classic tales in recent years

which take into account this criticism. In fact, they've given the fairy godmother her own magic makeover. This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection, free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda.

It's made with pH-balancing minerals and crafted with skin-conditioning oils. So whether you're going for a run of people, when you say fairy godmother, the first thing they might think of is the character from the 1950 Disney animated film Cinderella. And for good reason. Abigail says there weren't a lot of depictions of fairy godmothers in movies before then. sort of solidifies as this elderly woman who is kindly, maybe a little bit absent-minded and nonsense-languagy, bippity-boppity-boo. What in the world did I do with that magic wand? I was sure I... Magic wand? That's strange. I always... Why, then you must be...

Your fairy godmother? Of course. And that's how the character stayed in the popular imagination for decades. One of the first major reinterpretations came in 1997 with the novel Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. It's a reimagining of Cinderella, now called Ella. And when she was a kid, Gail loved fairy tales like Cinderella. You know, I was a romantic even then. The prince picked this schlub of a girl out of nowhere and loved her. She didn't do anything

to earn that love. And I didn't see how a prince would love me unless he could discern something that nobody else could see. So I was very drawn to them for, I think now, looking back for that reason. Yeah. I mean, that's where the fairy godmother comes in as well, because it's sort of like, okay, well, the prince can't see the inner you, but let's just fix up a few things that will allow the prince to get past his class snobbery to see you. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's, you know, I was eight years old. What prince, you know, it wasn't. So I loved them. I loved them.

Jump ahead several decades. She's starting her career writing children's books. And she decides to go back and look at those fairy tales she loved as a kid. What she found was weird. You know, like the prince in Snow White falls in love with Snow White when he thinks she's dead. But that opens up a world of narrative possibilities. I love fooling around with the illogic in fairy tales. And when she reread Cinderella for the first time as an adult?

I didn't understand why she's so kind and sweet to that stepfamily that's nothing but mean to her. You know, I couldn't imagine her as anything but saccharine and false. So I needed some reason that I could like her. So in her novel Ella Enchanted, a fairy named Lucinda shows up and casts a spell on Ella when she's a baby to make her compliant. Lucinda's intentions are good. Ella's a fussy baby and she's trying to help Ella's mother. But after Ella's mother dies, the spell of obedience becomes a curse, because anyone can tell Ella what to do. This is from the 2004 film version with Anne Hathaway.

Ella is trying to get through a school lesson. Just admit you're stupid and don't know what you're talking about. I'm stupid and I don't know what I'm talking about. Ella? In conclusion... Hold your tongue, Ella. Ella! But if Lucinda's spell is the cause of Ella's problems,

Gail needed to create another fairy godmother to help her. That's how she came up with the character of Mandy. Unlike Lucinda, Mandy doesn't just suddenly appear out of nowhere. She is actually the family cook who had been keeping her fairy powers a secret until Ella really needed her. Ella has no help. Once her mother dies, there's nobody. So Mandy can be in her corner. And Lucinda is so crazy that she couldn't be the fairy godmother. She couldn't be the support. And I wanted her to have somebody.

Mandy can't take on Lucinda. Otherwise, the story would be a battle of the fairies and Ella wouldn't be an active protagonist. That's why I made up the idea of small magic and big magic. And actually, it's something I love because there are obviously unseen consequences of every act. Mandy uses it to make her cooking better and to make healing soup. And the fairies make these trifles that do little magical things that are charming, but they don't step in and right the ship or end a drought.

That's the example that Mandy uses. We don't do big magic. Lucinda's the only one. It's too dangerous. Here's Elisa Pearl reading from the book. What's dangerous about ending a storm? Maybe nothing. Maybe something.

Use your imagination. I thought, the grass needs rain. The crops need rain. More, Mandy said. Maybe a bandit was gonna rob someone and he isn't doing it because of the weather. That's right. Or maybe I'd start a drought and then I'd have to fix that because I started it. And then maybe the rain I sent would knock down a branch and smash in the roof of a house and I'd have to fix that too. That wouldn't be your fault. The owner should have built a stronger roof.

Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe I'd cause a flood and people would be killed. That's the problem with big magic. I only do little magic. Good cooking, my curing soup, my tonic. When Lucinda cast the spell on me, was that big magic? Of course it was, the numbskull. Mandy scoured a pot so hard that it clattered and banged against the copper sink. Tell me how to break the spell. Please, Mandy. I don't know how. I only know it

can be done. A lot of modern interpretations have gone even further in exploring whether fairy godmothers are careless with their powers. In Disney's 2014 live-action film Maleficent, the three fairies from Sleeping Beauty are depicted as selfish and incompetent. You're cheating! I saw that! We're starting again. Suit yourself, greedy bloated goat! Maleficent ends up blurring the lines between witch and fairy.

I know who you are. Do you? You're my fairy godmother. In some versions, the fairy godmother is the actual villain, like in Shrek 2. If you remember, I helped you with your happily ever after. And I can take it away just as easily. Is that what you want? Is it? No.

Good boy. Jenna Jorgensen likes stories about evil fairy godmothers. Yeah, the first thing that interests me is that the fairy godmother gets enough of a backstory and a personality to be a villain in the first place that she gets to have a a vendetta or a goal or something like that that again we don't see that in traditional fairy tales as often they just kind of show up test the protagonist to offer magical aid or maybe punish the antagonist they're being selfish and terrible and then they go on their way. So the fact that we're getting an insight into the psychology of a character that's very rarely explored, I find that really interesting.

In contemporary literature, there have been a lot of dark fairy godmothers. Like in the novel Cinderella is Dead by Cailin Bayron. To explain why this character is so unique, I have to give away a major spoiler. So if you don't want to know what it is, skip ahead a few minutes. The novel takes place 200 years after Cinderella's death. The kingdom has become a dystopian world, kind of like The Handmaid's Tale. The character of Amina seems to be playing the role of fairy godmother to our heroine, Sophia.

In fact, Amina claims that she was Cinderella's fairy godmother years earlier. Now she's helping Sophia confront the king to convince him to change the laws so Sophia can marry a woman instead of a man. Here's Abigail. So the protagonist is working with the fairy godmother to try to take down the king. And then in the end, you find out that the fairy godmother is in fact the king's biological mother and is working with him against the protagonist. And this whole thing has been a setup. And I find that really fascinating because it's this idea that the fairy godmother engendered the patriarchy,

like quite literally is the mother of this patriarchal society. Traditionally, the fairy godmother uses her powers to make the heroine into the wife of the king and the mother of the royal line, assuming that's what she wants and that will make her happy. The fairy godmother can either be this really feminist icon who's helping another woman, who's helping somebody out of an abusive situation, or you could read her as somebody who is taking a woman and putting her back into a very heteronormative,

patriarchal household structure. In this selection from the book, Sophia and a character named Constance, who is a descendant of one of Cinderella's stepsisters, confront the king together. His name is King Manford. To their surprise, Amina shows up. The king waltzes over and plants a kiss on the top of Amina's head. Oh, mother, you never were a very good liar. Mother?

No, it can't be true. You've been working with him the entire time, Constance says. I didn't have to do much, Amina says. You were already planning to come back to Lyle. I just gave you a little push. She turns to Manford. I must admit, the things you said to me when you came to visit stung a little. He puts his hand over his heart. My temper got the better of me. I'm sorry about that mother, truly. He doesn't sound sorry at all, but he smiles at her like he adores her, and my stomach turns over.

All this time, I thought her hesitancy was because she was ashamed, fearful. But it was a lie. Like the Cinderella story. Like the ball. Like everything. Amina turns to her son. Your impatience nearly ruined everything. Showing up like that. I told you I'd deliver her to you, but you didn't want to wait. And that's not the only book that challenges traditional norms. Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue is a collection of 13 interlocking fairy tales, starting with Cinderella. And once again, in order to explain

what's groundbreaking about the story, I have to give away a big spoiler. So you can skip ahead a little bit if you don't want to know anything. This version of the fairy godmother is good, like the original tale. At first, she follows all the traditional rules. The fairy godmother sends her to three balls, which is more customary for early Cinderella's what happens. And after the last one, the prince is proposing to the protagonist and she's like, what am I doing? I don't want to be with the prince. I've realized actually who I love is this woman that's been helping me. And she runs out and the fairy godmother is like, oh, what are you doing here?

You've got your prince, right? You've got what you want. And she's like, no, no, I want you. I had got the story all wrong. How could I not have noticed? She was beautiful. I must have dropped all my words in the bushes. I reached out. I could hear surprise on her breath. What about the shoe? she asked. It was digging into my heel, I told her. What about the prince? she asked. He'll find someone to fit, if he looks long enough. What about me? she asked, very low. I'm old enough to be your mother.

You're not my mother, I said. I'm old enough to be your mother. You're not my mother, I said. I'm old enough to know that. I threw the other shoe into the brambles where it hung, glinting. So then she took me home. Or I took her home. Or we were both somehow taken to the closest thing. Even if writers stick with the classic version of Cinderella, where she gets her conventional ending, the fairy godmother doesn't have to be conventional. In contemporary

novels, there have been fairy godmother type characters who are male, queer coded, or transgender. And in the live action Disney remake of Cinderella from 2021, the fairy godmother, or the Fab G, is played by Billy Porter. Let's not ruin this incredibly magical moment with reason. Do you want to go to that ball and meet a bunch of rich people who will change your life? Yes, I was just crying and singing about it like two minutes ago. Okay, so that would be an affirmative? Yes. I can't hear you? Yes. Like you mean it? Yes. Then go, you shall, when you wish upon a star. At a certain point, after all these recontextualized versions of Fairy Godmothers, I began to wonder, do we even need this character anymore?

Is she just too problematic to keep in her original version? Abigail and Jenna think she still works, even without the makeovers. Something that I actually really like about the character is that she doesn't really have a motivation for helping Cinderella besides just like seeing somebody who needs some help, which I think is a pretty interesting and almost revolutionary idea that you can just help somebody for helping them, for the sake of helping them. And particularly when it is a female-female health relationship.

One of the reasons why fairy tales sometimes get dinged as overly patriarchal is that they show a lot of competition between women. Then the godmother figure, she is one of cooperation and warmth and mentorship and guidance. Without realizing it, Gail found herself in that position just by writing Ella Enchanted. In a way, I was a fairy godmother for one girl who did all the work. I got a letter from a young woman who wrote to me and told me that

at the time she read Ella, she was diagnosed with Tourette's. She decided to use Ella and consider the Tourette's her curse. She worked so hard that people can't tell she has Tourette's. And I thought that this girl would have done something else. But I was really happy to be the medium for that. That was handy at the time. And what an achievement. It's really great. So it's great to know that I've had an effect. To me, the story of the fairy godmother is not just the story of a mentor, but also a guardian, a caregiver, somebody who understands that anyone can become part of your family if they really care about you. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening.

Special thanks to Abigail Fine, Jenna Jorgensen, Gail Carson Levine, and Aliza Pearl, who do the readings. I put a list of all the books we mentioned and ones we didn't in the show notes. If you liked this episode, you should check out my 2021 episode, This Ain't No Fairy Tale, which was about the Brothers Grimm. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. The best way to support the show is to donate on Patreon. At different levels,

you get either free Imaginary World stickers, a mug, a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox, which has the full-length interviews of every guest in every episode. You can also get access to an ad-free version through Patreon, or you can buy an ad-free version through Patreon, or you can

buy an ad-free subscription on Apple Podcasts. You can subscribe to the show's newsletter at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.