Who is your favorite fairy tale princess?

I’m kind of partial the wife in Bluebeard. But not the one who cowered and wept and waited for her brothers to rescue her. The original one, who found out what was up before she married him, then stood up at her wedding feast and exposed him for the serial killer that he was, and was believed and he was punished and she was free of him.

I’m a sucker for fairy tales and, several years ago, I bought a two-volume paperback set of Grimm’s Fairy Tales and read them cover to cover. Grimm’s, as many of you know from watching that very silly movie with Heath Ledger, were actually two brothers: the brothers Grimm. They traveled around Germany recording the tales that the people told. These tales include many that you know – Cinderella, Snow White, Jack the Giant Killer.

But they aren’t always the way that you know them.

Princesses, after being rescued by their handsome princes, face jealous mothers-in-law, who steal their children and daub blood on the crib blankets and children’s clothes, and around the mouth of the sleeping princess. Happily ever after is often not happily or ever-after while the princess faces doubt and ostracism and has to prove her worth, again and again.

And some of the stories aren’t fairy tales – there’s no magic, no princesses, just children getting left in the snow to die, sometimes because they did something bad or didn’t say their prayers; sometimes not.

The editor of the collection I bought was Jack Zipes. And Zipes has written a number of books about fairy tales: Fairy Tales and the Female Imagination, When Dreams Come True, to name just a couple (I know I’ve got more around here but my shelves have been out of order since the apartment flooded in 2017 and I just haven’t gotten around to reorganizing them again since then).

Zipes also collected a bunch of modern fairy tales, written by women about heroes that are women: Don’t Bet on the Prince.

Tales where women take one look at that stupid prince and save themselves.

This collection came out before Disney started trying to empower their princesses.

It’s a lot of fun. Give it a shot.

What’s your favorite fairy tale? Could you rewrite it so that the woman is the hero, instead of she who gets saved?