Pentamerone

I’m still here, I’m just hard to see.

Pentamerone (the?) by Giambattista Basile, is probably the most racist and sexist fairy tale book I’ve read. You tack a ‘recently’ on there, because my memories of certain books has faded, but at the very least Pentamerone could give them a run for their money, especially in the ‘sexist’ category.

The “meta” plot (if you will) is that there’s a pretty white princess, and she almost rescues a prince, then takes a nap before finishing. While she’s resting, an ugly black slave comes, completes the ritual, rescues the prince, and gets to marry him. The sleeping princess wakes to find what’s happened, and then sets a curse on the black slave (who is apparently a “slave” even though she’s now a princess?), which makes her want to hear stories, especially from the white princess. Trying to fulfill her wishes, the prince calls all these story tellers to visit, and then we switch to story-mode and get to hear all their tales. While most of the stories were not racist, that was mostly because they dealt only with white European characters, and when a non-white character would be introduced or mentioned, holy hell this book went way out of it’s way to degrade them; mocking, poor language, insults…the whole nine yards.

There was one story, this collection’s version the bear-by-day-prince-by-night story, except he wasn’t a bear. He wasn’t even a monster. He was a “black Slave.” At first mention a “handsome” one, then at second mention an ugly one. And after she lit the candle and figured out he was white, the princess spent half the remaining story lamenting how horrid his black-form was, how awful and accursed, yet how fine and heavenly his lily-white skin was; oh woe that he must shed his white skin for black.

I’m going to stop there because even writing all that is damaging my soul. The last story the tellers tell– I must assume it’s the Original White Princess’ tale, although there’s not actually any connecting text between the stories to make it clear who was telling what– is that awful Three Citrons one, which I have yet to see told in a non-racist way, although the best one could hope for beyond that is classist, to be honest. And the Black Slave/Princess gets unnerved by hearing a story similar to her own, and the prince figures out what was going on and they push her off a cliff or something. I don’t know, I was so happy to be near the end, I didn’t retain much of what was going on.

So that was the racism; fairly typical for it’s era, if a bit heavy handed and insistent and REALLY OBVIOUS about it. Not to mention nasty as fuck. But what about the sexism?

Well, that was a more complicated situation, and it took me most of the book to figure out why it felt just so really, really, unusually awful. See, most of the women start out strong. They try to change their class, are given the choice of who to marry, make independent decisions, solve all the puzzles, and so forth. So I was really confused why I would find tales about such women to be horridly offensive.

And then, somewhere in the middle I realized that the answer was really obvious. Every strong woman who tried to do something for herself got punished for it. Her impossible requisites for a husband landed her a monster. Her secret affair with the prince landed her nearly killed by her step-sisters. Her curiosity loses her the (horribly black) man of her dreams. I know that this is a fairly typical motif in fairy tales, but every time these switched from ‘strong woman’ to ‘foolish female’ mode felt like a punch to the gut.

Actually, the disconnect makes me think that these stories might have been altered as they were transliterated or translated, because if they’d been around a while in the “WOMAN BAD” versions, all the corners would have softened, you know? And given the eras of fairy-tale social obsessions, that would make sense if a ham-handed author “fixed” things for the “modern” reader. So I wouldn’t mind checking out a different translation, or a different book of tales from ….uh…Venice?, but I wouldn’t read the whole book like I did with this one if my theory turned out to be wrong.

Some other notes about the book: Every story began with a spoilery paragraph which explained what the moral of the story would be, and how awful the woman was in it. I didn’t notice it at first, and then I started just skipping the damn things. The stories all ended with a rhyming couplet that simplified the moral. I don’t think I read any of those at all.

There was the version of Sleeping Beauty where two twins “magically appeared in the castle, we know not how” after the prince visited her, and then when she sought out the prince later, his “stepmother” was very angry to learn that he had a lover (and two beautiful children whom he treated as his own). So that means exactly what it says, of course.

There was another story where the “stepmother” is again infuriated by a lover, but this one was raped by a king–oh god. That story. The king was a bad king, so a sorceress usurped his throne, so in revenge he started killing all the women of the area he was exiled to. But one woman was so pretty he …I don’t recall if it said he “married” her or not, but it was something like that. Anyway, he tries to bury her alive, but that doesn’t work (a bird saves her?), so he blocks her up in a tower over the kitchen instead to die there. She is kept alive by her trusty bird and has a son. At the bird’s advice, she lowers the son into the kitchen, and he gets to be the king’s page, the “stepmother” tries to get rid of the son, but eventually that backfires and she dies, the mother is rescued or rediscovered or whatever, the Sorceress (who is unspecifically evil, but probably doesn’t go ’round raping and killing for funsies) is disposed of, and the king regains his throne. The murdering, raping king who was originally overthrown for being bad at his job.

There were some really f’ed-up things in this book. I would not recommend you read it. Unless you already hate anyone who isn’t a white man. Or can find a version that is more…better.