Feminist Fairy Tales

by Barbara G. Walker

  There were a great many hermaphrodites to be separated before he should be discovered, so Sky Father worked fast. In his haste, he tore apart the males and females carelessly. A little piece of flesh that belonged to each female was pulled out from between her legs and left sticking awkwardly to the lower belly of each male. The humans later determined that this was the reason for the periodic bleeding of the female in memory of her loss, and for the fact that each male’s extra piece of flesh is controlled not by himself, but by its former owner, the female body.

  Sky Father told the male human beings that they were now created in his image, because he had taken female bodies out of them. Their Golden Age was over. He told them that he was a jealous god, and they must worship no other gods before him. He demanded servitude, hard work, and perpetual praise. He insisted that all sacrifices on all altars must be dedicated to him alone. He wanted abject obedience in all things, and threatened the disobedient with terrible punishments, preparing an underground realm of torture where they would suffer agonies forever. Most of all he commanded the males never to mourn for their lost female halves and to never show the slightest hint of femaleness anymore.

  When the Great Mother returned to Earth, She was infuriated at the newly wretched condition of her favorites, the red-blooded species. She cursed Sky Father up, down, and sideways. All the deities witnessed his public disgrace. This did no good; it only added to his hatred of the Great Mother and all other deities who might remember his shame. He vowed that someday he would get rid of them all and reign in the heavens alone.

  Meanwhile, the humans and other animals remained irresistibly compelled to seek reunion of their male and female parts, cruelly torn asunder. The two sexes continued to desire coupling, to restore the male’s appendage to its proper female place, and to taste again a few moments of the bliss that they used to enjoy always. None of Sky Father’s threats or punishments could prevent this. The humans—if not the animals—could be made to feel guilty about it, and to despise themselves for their natural desires, but even they couldn’t be made to stop coupling. Much later, in a place called Rome, they even gave it the name of religion, which means “re-linking.”

  Men tried to assuage their guilt by assuring themselves that they, made in the image of their own creative god, were superior creatures to women. Women remained unconvinced, because they knew who really controlled the piece of flesh that men thought essential to their manliness. Still, as Sky Father enforced new rules, the women were increasingly oppressed by their former other halves.

  The Great Mother took pity on the women. She reasoned that if the men were going to be jealous like their god, they might as well have something to be really jealous of. She gave females exclusive right to the enviable powers of birthgiving and nurture. Men could only watch, generation after generation, while women brought forth new life out of their bodies and formed with each new life the closest bonds known to human experience. The men tried everything they could think of to control this awesome magic, but they never quite understood how it was done.

  Sometimes, groups of men decided to seize control of the other end of the life cycle, death. Their inner selves reasoned that if they couldn’t create life, at least they could destroy it, and that felt like power. Quite a few of them eventually came to spend their whole lives in the pursuit of that kind of power, and even to think it an honorable way to live.

  Thus the world staggered on into the age of Sky Father, with the formerly compatible sexes more and more at odds. In their pain and rage, many humans listened to Sky Father’s admonitions against the Great Mother and other deities, adopting the bloody sacrificial customs that he required of them, sometimes even killing one or more of their own kind to win his goodwill. He often promised that when this was done, he would lift the burdens of sin and punishment; but somehow he never did.

  The Great Mother was distressed by this new world. Like any mother, she said of the humans that they were going through a phase. “They are endowed with the capacity of reason,” she explained, “and sooner or later they will abandon Sky Father because he is unreasonable.” She expected that eventually, if they didn’t destroy themselves in the meantime, humans would mature in attitude and purge themselves of their hatred and destructiveness.

  Meanwhile, she continued to speak to the ones who were ready to hear her, to inspire them to create, to hope, and to love. Although Sky Father did his best to diabolize her, many humans went on seeking her. They gave her thousands of different names, including Nature, Earth, Mother of Gods, Queen of Heaven, Lady Luck, Fairy Queen. She was never quite forgotten.

  And that is why there are two separate sexes of humans who continually try to rejoin each other and yet have so much difficulty ironing out their differences that each generation produces barely half of them who succeed. Nonhuman animals have made somewhat better adjustments to the situation, either by keeping the sexes apart most of the time or by instinctively mating for life and making the best of it. Humans want to join their other halves and live happily ever after, but they sometimes frustrate their own true desires and die unsatisfied.

  That’s why they are forever telling each other stories about true love that overcomes all obstacles and joins two persons together as one. They keep trying for the only heaven that’s known to be attainable.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Generations of readers have loved Hans Christian Andersen’s little mermaid, who sits to this day on a rock in the Copenhagen harbor in the form of a statue by Edvard Eriksen. Nevertheless, as a child I was too distressed by her sufferings to enjoy her company. I thought she shouldn’t have to sacrifice her own bodily comfort for the sake of love. Love should not hurt. Perhaps it was a masculine idea that women must endure pain in order to be worthy of love. But what was the prince enduring? He got it for free.

  Therefore, the littlest mermaid here is given a more caring and sympathetic prince, and then relief of her pain. Her healer-wizard, Sklepio, is based on the old god of medicine, Asklepios to the Greeks, Aesculapius to the Romans. His own princess runs away to wed a commoner, not the usual course for fairy tale princesses, who were generally supposed to be rooted, like flowers, in the hothouse life of fantasy and privilege without any opportunity to make their own choices.

  The mermaid went down into the abyss…

  Once upon a time there was a mermaid known as Littlest, because she was the youngest and smallest of her sisters. She was small-boned and dainty, and quick and agile enough to slip out from the edges of the nets that the fishermen threw. She would pick up sharp pieces of coral rock and cut open the nets to release the dolphins, turtles, and fish. The fishermen would curse and scream, while she laughed at their discomfiture, flirted her tail at them, and swam away. Littlest lived in the coral palace of her father, the sea king, who had been left a widower several years before when his queen was accidentally skewered by a nearsighted harpoonist. After that, the sea king avoided all contact with the terrestrials and their ships. He advised his daughters not to sing to sailors, sit combing their hair on exposed rocks, or play in the wakes of galleons.

  Nevertheless, the littlest mermaid often flouted her father’s advice because she enjoyed teasing the terrestrials. She would swim close enough to a ship to allow the sailors to catch tiny glimpses of her. On dark nights she would sing them sweet songs just barely audible above the whisper of the waves. She liked to cut anchor ropes and plug up tillers with seaweed. On one occasion she was even bold enough to rise up under a swimming sailor and yank his pantaloons down around his ankles.

  The littlest mermaid also loved to play with the seals and dolphins, who were always ready for a game of somersault tag or chase-me. The sea king often deplored her frivolity and her choice of friends (“Those animals!” he would snort) and sometimes predicted that she would come to no good. But he made no serious effort to restrain her. Her elder sisters tried to interest her in useful crafts like pearl-stringing and coral-carving. Her attention soon wandered from these seden
tary pursuits, and she was off again, with a twitch of her tail, to play belly-up with the sea otters.

  One stormy evening the littlest mermaid was out riding the giant waves when she saw a ship in distress. Its masts were broken, its sails torn and dragging over the side. It was heeled over, drifting helplessly broadside-on to the seas, nearly swamped by every wave that broke over its decks. A few mariners, washed overboard, were struggling feebly in the plunging waters.

  The mermaid came closer and saw the ship tilt down by the bow and begin to sink. At that moment she was bumped by a floating body. She turned and saw a richly dressed young man, unconscious, beginning to slip underwater for a final, fatal descent. The mermaid held him up and looked into his face, which she thought the handsomest face she had ever seen.

  All night the mermaid struggled to hold the young man’s head above water while she dragged his dead weight toward the distant shore. At dawn she managed to dump him on a beach, then she returned exhausted to the cushioning waters. As she swam slowly home, her tail muscles aching with exertion, she was haunted by the memory of the young man’s face. She realized that she must be in love with him.

  A few weeks later she saw him again, standing at the rail of a splendid ship flying the royal ensign from its masthead. He was alive, well, and even more richly dressed than before. He looked so beautiful that the sight of him seemed to squeeze her heart. She hung around the ship until she heard someone speak his name, which was Prince Aquam. The littlest mermaid decided then and there that she would never rest peacefully again until she could be Princess Aquam.

  When she told her father, he was outraged. “I told you nothing good would come of fooling around with terrestrials,” he growled. “If you had the brains of an oyster, Littlest, you’d know that mermaids can’t marry footed earth-crawlers. Do you want to spend the rest of your days humping around on your belly on dry land, like a walrus?”

  “Maybe I can be footed too,” the mermaid suggested. “They say the sea witch can make feet for mermaids.”

  “Bah! Backstairs babble,” said the sea king. “Forget all this nonsense and grow up, girl. The sea witch is dangerous, and I forbid you to go anywhere near her.”

  So, of course, the littlest mermaid immediately planned a visit to the sea witch, who lived in one of the deepest abysses. Hiring a couple of lanternfish to show her the way, the mermaid went down into the abyss, where the pressure made her ears ring. She found the sea witch cooking her dinner in a cauldron set atop a bubbling hot-gas vent over a volcano. The sea witch was huge, wrinkled, blue-black, and crowned with sharp spines.

  “What do you want, girl?” asked the witch, clashing her long fangs in a menacing way.

  “I want to have a pair of feet like the terrestrials,” the mermaid answered timidly. She was more frightened of the witch than she cared to show, for she remembered certain whispered servants’ tales about deep-sea witches who ate human flesh.

  “Hah! Your great-great-great-aunt once came to me for the same reason,” the witch said. “She had some stupid obsession about a terrestrial boy, of all things. I told her it would come to no good, and I was right. What’s your reason?”

  “Well, I…”

  “Never mind, I know. It’s the same idiot notion all over again, isn’t it? You think you’re in love. I’ll never understand the charm of those silly crippled earth-crawlers. And here you are, wanting to be like them. Well, it’s no sand in my craw if you want to make yourself into a lame duck. I can give you feet, but there’s one great drawback.”

  “What is it?” the mermaid asked.

  “You have to pay with pain. Every time you take a step on these new feet, it will feel like you’re walking on the points of knives.”

  “I don’t care,” said the littlest mermaid. “I want to be Princess Aquam. After I marry the prince, I can have myself carried around in a golden litter with curtains of silk.”

  “All right,” sighed the witch. “It’s your choice. Come on into my cave.”

  For the next few days Littlest underwent a series of magical operations, some of them extremely uncomfortable. In the end, her shining muscular tail was replaced by a pair of slim white legs and delicate feet so tender that she could hardly bear to touch them to the rocks.

  “Now, the last thing is to remove your gills and make you an air-breather,” said the witch. “That will have to be done on the beach. And you can’t swim that far anymore. Arnold, my shark, will tow you.”

  The mermaid shuddered slightly. Like all mermaids, she feared sharks and didn’t like to trust even a tame one. She had seen Arnold, a monstrous thirty-five-foot great white with sandpaper skin and a formidable mouthful of teeth. Still, having no other option, she plucked up her courage and allowed herself to be hitched onto Arnold’s dorsal fin, while he weaved restlessly back and forth in the mindless, threatening manner of sharks.

  “You’re sure he knows what to do?” Littlest asked nervously.

  “Of course he knows,” the witch snapped. “The only thing you need to worry about is not to let him go into a feeding frenzy; I can’t answer for his behavior then. Your eyes are much better than his, so just steer him away if you happen to see any clouds of blood in the water. As soon as you get to the beach, take the two pills I’ve given you and lie down. You’ll sleep for a while, and when you wake up you’ll look just like any other earth-crawler, more’s the pity.”

  She slapped Arnold on the tail and off he went. They swam for many miles. Arnold paused occasionally to snap up a small fish or two, but fortunately the mermaid spotted no clouds of blood in the water. She released the shark ten yards from the shore and walked through the surf to the beach, astonished by the knifelike pains in her feet and the weak, clumsy movements of her legs. She felt crippled indeed.

  Exhausted, tense, and hurting, she lay down under a palm tree and took the witch’s pills, which plunged her into a dreamless sleep. When she awoke, her nose was breathing air and her skin felt unpleasantly sticky, salty, sandy, and for the first time in her life, dry.

  She got up and turned toward the town, where she knew the prince’s palace was located. She found walking so painful that she frequently had to sit down by the roadside. While she was sitting, a horse and wagon came by with a fat man on the driver’s seat.

  “May I ride to town in your wagon?” the mermaid called. “My feet hurt and I can’t walk very well.”

  The man halted his horse and looked at her. “You’ve got more wrong with you than sore feet, little lady,” he snickered. “Do you often go around stark naked in broad daylight on the public roads? Are you simpleminded or what?”

  “I don’t own any clothes,” the mermaid said. “But I’m going to be a princess soon, and then I’ll be dressed even better than you. I’m going to Prince Aquam’s palace. Will you take me there?”

  The fat man laughed. “Well, you’re crazier than a coot, but an original, that’s for sure. Climb on up here, little lady, and we’ll see how far we go.”

  She climbed up on the wagon, wincing as she did so, and sat beside the driver. He immediately slipped his hand between her thighs and pinched her, asking in suggestive tones, “How are you going to pay for the ride, little lady?”

  “I have no money now,” she said, wriggling uncomfortably, “but I’ll pay you well after I become a princess.”

  “I’d rather have the payment now,” he leered, “and I don’t mean money. Just lie down there in the back of the wagon and spread your legs, and we’ll call it square.”

  “No, I won’t,” said the mermaid, finally catching his drift. “I am to be the bride of the prince, and I don’t want any attentions from an ugly ruffian like you. Let go of me.”

  “Oh, yes?” snarled the driver, clutching her more tightly. “Suppose we just make it an order, hey? What are you going to do about it?”

  “This,” said the mermaid, plucking the buggy whip from its socket and ramming its butt into his stomach. Though her new legs were weak, her arms and shoulders wer
e immensely strong from a lifetime of swimming. Her blow was powerful enough to tumble the man from his seat onto the ground. The mermaid then reversed her grip on the whip and snapped it over the rump of the horse, which sprang into a startled gallop. The wagon vanished down the road in a cloud of dust, leaving the driver shouting curses and dancing up and down in a fury.

  The mermaid realized that her nakedness provoked unpleasant reactions from male terrestrials, so she stopped the wagon by a clump of broad-leaved bushes and contrived herself a garment of intertwined leaves. Then she drove the wagon sedately into the town and up to the palace gates. She told the guard, “I have come to see the prince.”

  The guard’s eyes bulged as he looked her over.

  “What name shall I give, milady?” he asked with heavy irony.

  “Just tell him his rescuer is here.”

  The guard was somewhat intimidated by her bizarre appearance and her authoritative manner. Behind his hand he whispered to the assistant gatekeeper, “I don’t know, maybe she’s a fairy. Better not take a chance. Go tell the prince.” The fellow ran off, and the mermaid waited calmly.

  After a while, a pageboy appeared with the message that the leaf-clad woman was to be conducted to the audience chamber. There she found the prince sitting on a ruby-studded throne, nibbling boiled shrimps and picking his teeth with a golden toothpick. He looked her over lazily.

  “What do you mean by saying you’re my rescuer?” he asked.

  “More than one moon’s cycle ago, you were in a shipwreck,” she said. “I kept you from drowning and brought you to the shore.”

  Prince Aquam’s eyes widened. “It’s true that my ship sank,” he said. “Everyone said it was a miracle that carried me so many miles to the shore. I remember nothing of it. You’re a frail young woman; how could you possibly swim so far out to sea?”