Black Swan, White Raven Quotes

“Though now we think of fairy tales as stories intended for very young children, this is a relatively modern idea. In the oral tradition, magical stories were enjoyed by listeners young and old alike, while literary fairy tales (including most of the tales that are best known today) were published primarily for adult readers until the 19th century.”
― Terri Windling, Black Swan, White Raven

“The French fairy tale writers were so popular and prolific that when their stories were eventually collected in the 18th century, they filled forty–one volumes of a massive publication called the Cabinet des Fées. Charles Perrault is the French fairy tale writer whom history has singled out for attention, but the majority of tales in the Cabinet des Fées were penned by women writers who ran and attended the leading salons: Marie–Catherine d’Aulnoy, Henriette Julie de Murat, Marie–Jeanne L'Héritier, and numerous others. These were educated women with an unusual degree of social and artistic independence, and within their use of the fairy tale form one can find distinctly subversive, even feminist subtext.”
― Terri Windling, Black Swan, White Raven

“Fairy tales for adult readers remained popular throughout Europe well into the 19th century — particularly in Germany, where the Brothers Grimm published their massive collection of German fairy tales (revised and edited to reflect the Brothers’ patriotic and patriarchal ideals), providing inpiration for novelists, poets, and playrights among the German Romantics. Recently, fairy tale scholars have re–discovered the enormous body of work produced by women writers associated with the German Romantics: Grisela von Arnim, Sophie Tieck Bernhardi, Karoline von Günderrode, Julie Berger, and Sophie Albrecht, to name just a few.”
― Terri Windling, Black Swan, White Raven

“Ah—now you think I have been lying to you, that this is only a story. It has a king in it. And while a story with Death might be true, a story with a king in it is always a fairy tale. But remember, this comes from a time when kings were as common as corn. Plant a field and you got corn. Plant a kingdom and you got a king. It is that simple.”
― Jane Yolen, Black Swan, White Raven

“In England in the 19th century, advances in printing methods, combined with the rise of a prosperous middle class, engendered a booming new industry of books published just for children. Casting about for cheap story material, English publishers laid hands on the subtle, sensual adult fairy tales of the Continental tradition and revised them into simpler stories instilled with Victorian values. Although these simplified versions retained much of the violence of the older stories, elements of sexuality and moral complexity were carefully scrubbed away — along with the fiesty heroines who appeared everywhere in the older tales, tamed now into models of Victorian propiety and passivity. In the 20th century, the Walt Disney Studios watered down the tales further still in popular animated films like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, continuing the trend of turning active heroines into powerless damsels in distress. Walt Disney considered even the Victorian versions of the tales too dark for 20th century audiences. "It's just that people now don't want fairy stories the way they were written," Disney commented. "They were too rough." ”
― Terri Windling, Black Swan, White Raven

“The men in the nearby village fear us, thinking we are witches. Women who live without men—especially old women who grow herbs, heal the sick, and befriend wild animals—are always suspect.”
― Pat Murphy, Black Swan, White Raven

“The soldier fought at Ulm. He fought near Vienna. He fought at Austerlitz. In each battle the Emperor was victorious, and Gaspard himself distinguished for courage and loyalty. The shells exploded around him, and men died screaming, and the soldier fought beside his dead comrades with a fury he had not known he possessed. He became someone else, charging across the Austrian battlefield, thrusting his bayonet into the bodies of the enemy. He did not know himself. Afterward, he sat alone beside his campfire and shook his head to clear it, and felt his blood still surging in his veins, exhilarating as drink. His blood, and theirs. The greater the victory, the greater the surging power, as if he had taken into himself the life of those he had slain. He was only a little surprised to discover how much he loved war.”
― Ellen Datlow, Black Swan, White Raven