The Fairy Tale Fiction of Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie: Selections from "Five Old Friends" and "Bluebeard's Keys and Other Stories"

by Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, Heidi Anne Heiner (Editor)

FAIRY tales have long been an important part of the world's history and literature, especially for women whose voices have often been trivialized, ignored or made anonymous. Old wives' tales, fairy tales, and folklore-whatever terms are chosen-are part of our earliest literature and have often provided the medium for women's voices, for women's stories. Like the women of the French Salons who used traditional stories to create and recreate tales that both inspired and criticized their world and its expectations, women writers have long been recording and rewriting fairy tales for their own generations. The practice continues up to current times and will easily continue on past our own generations into a distant future. One such author from the Victorian era was Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie, the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray. Ritchie rewrote nine fairy tales into short stories and novellas, exploring and reinterpreting the tales for the audience of her time. She wasn't the first to do so--and certainly not the last--but she firmly belongs in this literary legacy, one in which she has all too often been overlooked. Edited with a new introduction by Heidi Anne Heiner, this volume includes Anne Thackeray Ritchie's nine short stories and novellas from Five Old Friends and Bluebeard's Keys and Other "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Jack the Giant-killer," "Bluebeard's Keys," "Riquet á la Houppe," "Jack and the Bean-stalk," and "The White Cat." Additional materials include Ritchie's introduction to The Fairy Tales of Madame D'Aulnoy and "Bluebeard's Ghost" by William Makepeace Thackeray, Ritchie's father. Heidi Anne Heiner is the creator and keeper of one of the world's top folklore websites at SurLaLuneFairyTales.com.

Genres: Fairy Tales, Classics

434 pages, Paperback

First published August 11, 2009

About the author

Anne Isabella, Lady Ritchie, née Thackeray, was an English writer. She was the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray. She was the author of several novels which were highly regarded in their time, and a central figure in the late Victorian literary scene. She is perhaps best remembered today as the custodian of her father's literary legacy, and for her short fiction placing traditional fairy tale narratives in a Victorian milieu.

Anne Isabella Thackeray was born in London, the eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray and his wife Isabella Gethin Shawe (1816–1893). She had two younger sisters: Jane, born in 1839, who died at eight months, and Harriet Marian (1840–1875), who married Leslie Stephen in 1869. Anne, whose father called her "Anny", spent her childhood in France and England.

She married her cousin Richmond Ritchie, seventeen years her junior, in 1877. The couple had two children, Hester and Billy.

She was the step-aunt of Virginia Woolf who penned an obituary for her in the Times Literary Supplement. She is believed to be the inspiration for the character of Mrs. Hilbery in Woolf's Night and Day.

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Preface to this review: I have done work for the Surlalunefairytales website run by Heidi Anne Heiner. I also read her blog.

Anne Isabella Thackeray Ritchie was the daugther of that Thackeray. Her writing style has a more moderate sense of wit than her father's mixed with a J=Jane Austen. Ritchie isn't quite the polished writer that Austen was; she lacks Austen ability to say a thousand things with four words, but she is similar.

Ritchie is not a feminist, at least not according to the modern defination of the word, but like Austen her subject matter is more of manners and drawing rooms, focusing more on women and thier place in society.

In this collection Heiner presents the fairy tale based fiction of Ritchie. These tales are, for the most part, come from source material by the French salon writers, but Ritchie stamps her recraftings with an Englishness.

Today, there is a vogue for retold fairy tales that includes writers such as Robin McKinley, Cameron Dokey, Ellen Datlow, and Terri Windling. Ritchie predates these writers. Her fairy tale fiction takes the stories of Cinderella, Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood, and others and tranplants them to the England or Italy of her day. Therefore, Jack confronts not a giant or an orge, but a greedy landowner; Little Red Riding Hood's wolf is not a furry beast, but a suitor who might be after her fortune.

Ritchie's theme is that fairy tales exist in everyday life; there is a Cinderella, a Beauty, a Beast and so on that can be found in cities and villages. Look around, she seems to be saying, using as her narrator an unmarried woman who comments on society and marriage while telling the stories of her neighbors. This theme makes for very charming, Auestenesqe stories. Ritchie's version of "Cinderella" is one of the more charming versions of the popular story, and Ritchie, it seems, was one of those people who couldn't understand why the prince couldn't recognize Cinderella and had to rely on a shoe. (Was the prince nearsighted? Blind? Overwhelmed by her cleavage? Was he gay and it didn't matter?) The story is also a look at the predatory mother hunting down a son-in-law worthy of her babies.

Ritchie's "Sleeping Beauty" doesn't focus on an actual magical sleep, but on being cut off from people and society.

It's true that there are some stories that are boring. "Jack the Giant Killer" and "Riquet a la Hoppe" [Riquet with the Tuft:] are not very interesting.

There is, however, one story that stands out and makes up for the lacking ones. This story is "Bluebeard's Keys". I have always had mixed feelings about "Bluebeard". Here's a man who kills his wives and keeps thier bloody bodies in his basement. But who's the guility party? His wives for not controlling thier curiousity, even though he tempts them worse than the snake tempted Eve. The other reason why the heroine lives is because she prays, and then she learned her lesson.

But killing the wives, not that bad.

Really?

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Ritchie felt the same way to a degree. Her "Bluebeard" focuses on the the trust that should exist between a married couple, a two way street. Her characaterization of the heroine, Fanny, is more gentle and layered than other stories. In this tale, the marriage of the times is examined. There is no beheading, the scandel is something far more real and socially revelent. It is one of the best versions of the story, tied with Angela Carter's "Bloody Chamber".

Heiner includes Ritchie's introduction to D'Aulony's tales as well as Thackeray's "Bluebeard's Ghost", allowing the reader to see both father and daughter's version of the story.

[Verity Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm very fond of fairy-tale retellings, so I had high hopes when I stumbled upon this book. But I'm not quite so fond of "modernized" fairy tales, and that's what this collection turned out to be...except that "modern," in this case, means "Victorian" (the author is the daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair) And while some of the adaptations turned out to be quite clever, others were plagued by Victorian longwindedness and wrapped up too much in social concerns that have not aged well. I suspect I would have enjoyed this book more if I had read it a bit at a time instead of trying to trudge on from cover to cover. I'm giving this 3.5 stars.