Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship Read Online Free PDF Page B

eco-critical theory. 27 In his study on theories of reproduction in the early modern period, Gelis argues that immersion in the natural world was perceived as essential for the woman seeking pregnancy: “A young wife worried at the non-appearance of children after several years of marriage might well repair to sacred trees, blessed springs, or old and venerated stones... It was only primordial elements like stones, trees, water and wind...that could put an end to a stubborn infertility which was seen as opposed to the very nature of womankind.” 28 That the queens in these tales so routinely seek an outdoor sanctuary confirms this need for a separate and more sympathetic space than the one provided by the king’s court.
    The sexualized import of the sleeping female figure in fairy tales has also been widely discussed, most prominently in relation to the variants of the familiar “Sleeping Beauty” tale type. From Basile’s “The Sun, Moon, and Talia,” to Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty,” to Robert Coover’s postmodern novella,  Briar Rose,  the association with the sleeping heroine and pregnancy is made in both subtle and blatantly disturbing ways. 29 In his analysis of “Sleeping Beauty,” Bruno Bettleheim argues that the sleeping state provides the necessary quiescence as the female prepares for the active demands of pregnancy and motherhood. 30 However, the Sleeping Beauty tale type also involves the active—sometimes violently so—participation of the male in sexual union, whereas in most pregnancy-wish tales the king is conspicuously absent.
    Straparola’s “Biancabella and the Snake” may be one exception that offers a surrogate male participant. A powerful ruler wants a child, but “God had not granted” his wish, so “one day as his wife went walking to amuse herself in one of the gardens, she became very tired and sat down at the foot of the tree, where she fell asleep. While she dozed sweetly, a little grass snake crawled to her side and slipped in beneath her clothes without her ever feeling a thing. Then it entered her vagina and carefully made its way into her womb, where it rested quietly.” 31 From the Bible to Emily Dickinson to Freud, the phallic imagery of the snake has become axiomatic, though Straparola’s narrow fellow in the grass is more gentle and feminized than threateningly virile. Indeed, many early modern depictions of the snake, particularly the serpent in the Edenic garden, were feminine. 32 The sleeping queen’s passivity, however, is important in that the nature of a woman’s contribution to the act of conception and the formation of the fetus was a point of debate in early modern reproductive discourse about aberrant births, which we will explore in the next chapter.
    Thus, in the tales that begin with a royal couple’s pregnancy wish, the king quickly disappears from this phase of the narrative while the queen is left to resolve the crisis; she seeks an alternative space in a feminized natural world, and in her sleeping state her body is vulnerable to forces beyond herself. Those larger forces are invariably female, for the most significant contribution to the queen’s fertility crisis comes from the female fairy world. Holly Tucker discusses the pivotal role played by fairies in tales that involve pregnancy and argues, as Marina Warner and others have, for a connection between literary fairies and early modern midwives: “Fairies do more than attend the birth scene; they also orchestrate every state of reproduction. They predict conception and, if angry, cast spells of infertility. They determine the circumstances and outcome of pregnancy by providing—or withholding—aid to the mother-to-be... Early modern tales consistently make clear the shared genealogy of fairies and midwives.” 33 The next chapter will explore how the fairy world’s resolution of the queen’s infertility leads to critical and controversial royal pregnancies and confinements, but here