fairies

[marycatelli]

Was reading an illustrated Sleeping Beauty in which the fairy godmothers were the winged, fluttery Victorian flower fairy type.

sigh.

At which point my muse started to suggest that it was juvenile fairies.  They would grow up and in due course lose their wings and give up this fairy godmothering business.

Perhaps the wings are even toys for children.

Amazing how ideas can pop up without a story to go with them.

Comments

[ext-1641287.livejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Where ARE these despicable cutesy-poo fairies? I mean, what stories are they in? Authorities as great as Tolkien and Andrew Lang join in condemning them, but I can't think of real instances.

J. M. Barrie's Tinker Belle looks the part, but is a murderous little flake of jealousy, more like the fairy that bites the heroine's hand in "Labyrinth."

George MacDonald has some that look the part, too, in "The Carasoyn," but they steal babies repeatedly, and only avoid coming to a bad end because MacDonald was a Universalist who insists everyone is redeemable.

L. Frank Baum's fairies are maybe a little saccharine, but they look like Greek nymphs, not bug-people. Anyway, we are occasionally told that all Oz natives are fairies, and most of them look like regular people, just maybe a little short.

E. Nesbit's Psammead sure isn't it.

Disney's three fairy godmothers of "Sleeping Beauty" come close, but only sometimes look the part, and both Flora and Merriweather seem to me to have too much spunk. The three are, in fact, the protagonists, moving the prince and princess around (in the kindliest possible way) as pawns. And the other fairy in the story is Malificent...

Have I not read the right wrong books? Or did all the really cutesy-poo fairies vanish down the memory hole a couple of generations ago? (Or three. I've been reading fairy tales a long time.)

Earl Wajenberg

[marycatelli]

Part of it is that the stories perished with their times. The only one I remember is Cicely Mary Barker

[ext-1641287.livejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

I see. Weeded out by natural selection, as it were.

I do like the idea that the wings are toys for infant/larval fairies. Maybe using magic caps and riding on yarrow stalks are for adolescents, until they learn to flit like a grownup, or are able to buy their first sky-running horse.

[marycatelli]

Wings are training wheels!