Don't Bet on the Prince

Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England

Jack Zipes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136789533
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Jack Zipes has put together the first comprehensive anthology of feminist fairy tales and essays to appear since the women's movement gained momentum in the 1960's. He has selected works by such gifted writers as Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Tanith Lee, Jay Williams, Jane Yolen, Anne Sexton, Olga Broumas and Joanna Russ-all of whom, whether they consider themselves feminists or not, have written innovative stories which seek to break the classical tradition of fairy tales. The accompanying critical essays, by Marcia Lieberman, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar and Karen Rowe, discuss how fairy tales play an important role in early socialization, influencing the manner in which children perceive the world and their place in it even before they begin to read.

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II Feminist Fairy Tales for Old (and Young) Readers

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10 The Green Woman

Meghan B. Collins

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April had been chill and stormy this year, so on the first day that truly felt like spring I was happy to go outdoors in the gentle sunshine to work in my garden. After a long winter under my low, dark roof, it lightened me to see young leaves arching in airy layers overhead. I often paused in my digging to look up through them to the newborn blue sky beyond.

I was shaking soil from a clump of roots before tossing it into the barrow when the geese began to scurry about their pen with a din of honking. Geese are much better watchdogs than my old shaggy True, who now only raised his head with good-natured interest to look toward the road. If ever the villagers come to get me, the geese might warn me in time to run away into the forest. Still, old True is ferocious against rats and mice, and I would not dare to keep a cat. You never know what small thing might be brought against you later.

Now I heard the sound of wheels creaking toward my gate. I stood up to look, shading my eyes with my trowel. Whoever it was could only be coming here, for this was the end of the road.

My house is set in a clearing in the woods. There is enough open space to give sunlight for the garden, but the forest crowds in close, right to the fence that keeps deer from eating my herbs. Thus, trees hid the carriage from view until it was almost beside my front gate.

When I saw it was a closed carriage drawn by two fine roans, my heart gave a horrid lurch within me, for I knew of only one such in all the countryside, and it belonged to the Governor. In that first moment, I thought surely he was sending some men after me. I picked up the front of my skirt and half-turned to run before I noticed the shadowy head of a woman behind the carriage windows.

The equipage tilted to a halt, with one wheel in a rut. A driver in Kendal green livery jumped from the box to open the carriage door. A brightly colored figure within furled herself up like a morning glory to fit through the narrow doorframe.

When she had stepped forth onto the roadside, I recognized her from certain descriptions of Parson Wicker to be the Governor’s lady. The coachman opened the gate for her, then leaned upon the gatepost with a frank and impudent interest to watch Milady stroll toward me, herself gazing about curiously.

I tossed my trowel into the barrow and brushed dirt from my fingers as best I could. I wondered what could be bringing me such a visitor. Few from the village dare approach my house by daylight. They don’t want anyone to know they come to me, those dropsical old folk who creep up my path in the gloaming to be dosed with foxglove, or the young girls who come seeking a charm to make someone love them.

Now and again, someone will knock on my door in the night to fetch me to the village. The midwife there is skilled, but the one thing beyond her is a breech birth. At such times she sends for me, for I have the art of turning the baby within the womb, which I learned from my mother.

Whatever their distress, though, the sun is well down before any of these good folk slip from behind the trees toward my house. The sawyer would come by day if he wished, for he fears neither God nor the devil, but as it happens, the moonlight shines down on most of his visits. The sawyer — well, the sawyer has a sickly wife. He is a big man, and his eyes are a very clear dark blue, and that is all I care to say about that.

Parson Wicker is sure enough of his soul’s safety to visit me by daylight. Many an afternoon he sits by the hour at my table, drinking cider and talking to me as I work. I am sure he tells his parishioners that he seeks to cure my own wretched soul by his visits. Perhaps he thinks so himself. I know better.

As we know, the priests of Rome are not allowed to marry. I have sometimes thought it is because they must stay empty in their own lives to keep space within for all the human woe they carry away from the confessional. But Parson Wicker is no priest, and when the weight of all he knows about the villagers grows too heavy for his heart, he brings it to me because he knows it is perfectly safe to do so.

Yes, he has told me much that he should not, that spry little pink-cheeked man. I keep silent, and often find it useful in my work to know more about the village of Starwater than the busiest gossip in it, though I seldom cross the green myself.

What chagrin would have filled the breast of this fine young lady who now approached me if she knew how much I had heard about her! Her great mansion with its gardens and lake, her extravagance in the purchase of table porcelain, her quarrels with her handsome sulky husband.

She was wearing a long cloak of soft blue wool like a jay’s wing, lined in darker blue. The hood had fallen back from her head. She was so fair that it was hard to see her brows, or where her broad forehead left off and the fine pale hair began.

The path was not very long, yet she seemed to take a long time to reach me, like a boat’s sail you see from afar that looms toward you slowly. When she came closer, I could see a strangeness and strength to the beauty of her face. For all she was so soft and fair, you would hesitate to cross her will.

I made her a curtsy and said, ‘Madam Governor, how do you do.’

She inclined her head, accepting without question that I knew who she was. I suppose she was used to being recognized by all. She spoke no greeting in reply, but said at once, ‘I have business with you, Miss. May we go into your house?’

She did not wait for me to answer, but walked straight past me toward the open doorway. My house is such a little gray weathered box; most peculiar it seemed to watch her elegant figure disappear inside, like a doll-lady on a foreign clock.

I followed her inside and gave her the chair to sit on while I took a bench facing her. She settled down with a little shake of her shoulders, as a bird settles its feathers, and gazed calmly about the room for a few moments before speaking. My notice was caught by the delicate shoes she was wearing, of softest pewter-gray leather, as fine as glove leather, with shoe roses at the instep and scarlet heels. I drew my clogs under the bench and pulled my eyes away.

Sunshine coming through the open door cast a bright square on the floor planks, and dust motes quivered in the falling rays like a veil of light. Tiny points of light twinkled from the shelves of crocks and jars; otherwise the room was shadowy and cool, with a tang in the air from bunches of dried plants hanging among the rafters.

A long silence fell while the lady scrutinized my face and uncovered head.

‘They say,’ she remarked in a clear, almost joyful tone of accusation, ‘that witches have red hair.’

I sat quietly, looking at her. Then I shrugged. ‘They say,’ I answered, repeating her emphasis, ‘that looking at the new moon in a mirror will drive you mad — but it isn’t so.’

She considered this for a moment with her lips pursed, and then countered, ‘Well, but I have heard you can read and write!’

‘As my mother taught me before she died, Madam. We must be able to read the herbals, and write labels for our mixtures, you see. And I write down new things that I learn, so as not to forget them myself, and to pass on that knowledge to my own daughter when I have one. Many men know how to read — there is no witchcraft in it just because a woman can.’

‘Then what do you call yourself if not a witch?’ she asked slyly.

‘I call myself a green woman, Milady. If anything is wrong with you that plants can cure, I may be able to help you, for that has been my life study.’ I paused and searched her face, trying to read her thought. ‘Are you ailing? Tell me about it.’

She looked down into her lap and sat twisting the wedding band on her white finger.

‘I have heard that if a woman is with child and does not want to be, you are able to — well, you know — make an end to it.’ She shot me a keen glance from under her fair lashes and looked down again. I frowned, thinking hard.

It is true they come to me sometimes, young girls half crazy with fear, or exhausted young wives with a child in the cradle and one on the floor, and three or four in sizes up from there. How they weep, poor souls, with their heads in my lap. How they have waited and prayed, looking by night and by day for signs that do not come!

They have no fear of me then, no, no. Most gratefully they take the Contessa’s powder. But afterward, when their bodies and hearts are light once more, they draw off from me with strange looks. The devil must be in it, they think, that I can in this manner turn aside from them the hand of God.

Has one of these women now, I thought, been tormenting herself in the night with fears of hellfire? Gone to the Governor, perhaps, and complained of me, so that he has sent his lady here to entrap me with questions?

I took a deep breath and ventured, ‘I am wondering why such rumors would interest you, Madam Governor, a married lady like yourself, with no children of your own, I believe?’

That is just it,’ she replied. Three years now we have been wed, and still no children. I was thinking, you see, that since you know how to make an end, you must know how to make a beginning, too.’ She turned up her palms in an expressive gesture of appeal.

‘Ah, that is another trouble entirely,’ I said, thinking of a certain almost empty jar on the upper shelf. ‘I am afraid I cannot help you there.’

At these words, her fair softness congealed at once into a substance much harder and colder. Her lips set in a line, and the pupils of her eyes were tiny blank points in circles of gray ice.

‘If I were in your place, I should think very carefully before refusing,’ she said. She leaned forward in her chair and added almost in a whisper, ‘It has been a long, long time since we have had a witch’s trial in these parts.’

A hush fell between us now that almost had a thickness to it. It was like the moment when you drop a stone down a well and wait for the sound of its striking.

To make a life,’ I mused. ‘As I told you, that is another thing, much harder than the other. Suppose I do try to help you and nothing comes of it?’

‘A long, long time,’ she repeated. ‘Since your grandmother’s day, if I recall correctly.’

I showed my teeth at her in a grin or a snarl, she could take her choice. ‘You use strong persuasions, Madam. I hope your rewards are equally weighty!’

‘Oh yes, I will pay in gold,’ she assured me, her voice becoming lighter, almost eager, as she felt sure her will had pierced through to me.

‘All right,’ I said slowly. I went on to question her at some length about her health and habits, to get a better idea of what might be amiss. At last I added, ‘You will have to give me some time to make up the medicine. A week, say. Shall I bring it to you, or will you come back here?

‘I will come back here, I think. It would be as well for my husband not to know of this.’

I nodded. A memory came to mind of the one time I had seen the Governor. He was walking into the inn, but paused on the steps to turn around at someone’s call. He was a handsome fellow, though just inclining to stoutness. The glistening salt-white of his shirt and his suit of fine black serge well became his pale complexion and glinting dark eyes. (I also recalled Parson Wicker’s complaint that the church might install a new pew each year with the money the Governor spent on linen alone.) A certain droop of the Governor’s mouth and the lackadaisical manner of his turn spoke of a constitution perhaps not altogether virile.

‘Just a moment,’ I said as Milady rose to leave. ‘There is something I want you to take with you.’

I went to the shelves, took down a jar, and began to spoon some of its contents into a small packet for her.

‘Starting from today, try to have your husband take some of this each day. Make it up into a tea for him, a spoonful to the cup.’

She laughed shortly. ‘It would be quite a trick to make my husband drink anything but ale. Yes, one would have to be a magician, I think.’

‘Put it in a toddy, then, with rum and honey, and give it to him for a bedtime drink. It will work just as well that way.’

‘Yes, that he would take. What is the stuff?’ she looked curiously at the jar I was restoppering.

‘Oh, sarsaparilla and other things. It is a tonic.’

‘And might I take it too?’

I smiled. ‘No, just your husband. It is in my mind that the press of office might be fatiguing the Governor. This will build up his manly vigor.’

A curious half-smile crossed her face and was gone. I could not guess its meaning.

‘You do look pale,’ I observed. ‘Perhaps your blood is thin. Take some molasses every day to strengthen yourself. I will have your other medicine ready when you come back.’

She took the packet without further question and began to saunter toward the door. ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Feminist Fairy Tales for Young (and Old) Readers
• Part II Feminist Fairy Tales for Old (and Young) Readers
• Part III Feminist Literary Criticism
• Bibliography