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Comment
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KathieRose
Unregistered User
(6/3/05 10:33 am)
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WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Would anyone who was at the WisCon panel on the Evil Stepmother care to fill us in on the content and discussion? Helen? I was SO looking forward to meeting Heidi to THANK YOU in person for the Sur la Lune site and disappointed that she had to cancel-- and then the panel was on Monday late morning and I had to miss it anyway because I was leaving early morning to make the long drive back. It was one of the panels I most wanted to hear and would love to hear what transpired-- assume many folks here would be interested as well.
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Heather
KT
Registered User
(6/5/05 3:27 pm)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Sorry my notes are so sketchy-- I think I started writing late! These are the comments that intrigued me-- for reading suggestions, see the end.
Panelists: Helen Pilinovsky, Delia Sherman, Merrie Haskell, Catherynne Valente, Ellen Klages
Stories with stepmothers are about power in the family, often dealing with who's going to control the family's resources. (and the "mother-in-law" is the stepmother figure for grown-ups with the same issue: whose estate is it?)
Stories with stepmothers start with a wound-- the mother is gone, whether through death (traditional) or divorce (modern).
Another view: you have to get rid of the mother to have either a) fun, or b) trouble. (and if neither, how interesting a story is it?) Or, as in Little Red Riding Hood, the mother sends the daughter away so the adventure can begin.
Wicked vs evil stepmothers-- wicked stepmothers are driven by circumstance (especially poverty) to persecute the heroine (Hansel & Gretel, Cinderella); evil stepmothers want to kill them (Snow White, The Juniper Tree, the ogre mother-in-law in Sleeping Beauty).
Someone asked whether there were wicked stepfathers in classical fairy tales. "Noooo," said the panel.
Some tradition of supportive stepsisters: Katie Crackernuts
I was also interested in the extent to which the panelists' writing had been informed by their own experiences as stepmothers and stepdaughters (much of it negative). As "blended families" are more and more common, I wonder whether the "evil stepmother" character will evolve?
Suggestions for further reading:
Maureen McHugh's essay on her website about being a stepmother:
my.en.com/~mcq/stepmother.html
Merrie Haskell, "Huntswoman" in Strange Horizons: www.strangehorizons.com/2...an-f.shtml
Madwoman in the Attic, by Gilbert & Gubar, for a deconstruction of Snow White
Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples," in Datlow & Windling Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 8th ed (and a Tanith Lee story in the same collection, but I didn't get the title)
"Tenth Kingdom" miniseries on DVD-- quest for the mother
(I wish I could remember the author & name of the contemporary retelling also discussed where the stepmother is trying to protect the stepdaughter from the pedophile father-- help?!)
Heather
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(6/15/05 12:19 am)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
My apologies for taking so long to spot this! I just posted a WisCon
report over on Endicott which mentions the Evil Stepmother panel
(but Heather did a *wonderful* job of going over it in detail, so
I won't repost it here). You can find that WisCon report, if you
are so inclined over at the Endicott Site under Mythic
Arts Gatherings
P.S. - Heather, do you mean Pat Murphy's "The True Story"?
I remember that coming up ... you can find it on p. 278 of Black
Swan, White Raven ...
Edited by: Helen J Pilinovsky at: 6/15/05 12:47 am
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janeyolen
Registered User
(6/15/05 4:41 am)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Of course there are wicked stepfather stories. It will take a bit to come up with titles. They are certainy not as popular. But folktales replicate te human condition. So. . .
Jane
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(6/15/05 10:56 am)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
That was actually what we found so curious ... the majority of the "Evil Father" tales fell into the category of the "unnatural father" (i.e., Donkeyskin, The Maiden With No Hands) but we were hard-put to think of any specific step-father stories. One panelist hypothesized that this might have been due to the prevelance of death in childbirth amongst women, and thus, the frequency of second, third, or fourth marriages for men ... (I think that Darnton talks about something similar in the Great Cat Massacre, but I'm too exhausted to go and look it up.)
If you come across any step-father stories, please, post the titles! I'd like to see what the signifiers of the step-father might be, very much ....
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midori
snyder
Registered User
(6/15/05 11:22 am)
ezSupporter
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
I have been pondering this one too...the most I can think of are
surrogate fathers...for instance the servant in Iron John, The Cannibal
father (and there is a mother too) in a Zulu tale, "Umkxakaza-wakogingqwayo"
(in Calloway's Nursery
Tales, Traditions and Histories of the Zulus. Iron John's
surrogate father is there to assist the hero on his rite of passage...on
the other hand, the Cannibal father appears benign, his ultimate
aim to fatten the heroine until she's nice and tasty.
will have to give this more thought
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(6/15/05 11:50 am)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Quote:
One panelist hypothesized that this might have been due to the prevelance of death in childbirth amongst women, and thus, the frequency of second, third, or fourth marriages for men.
That's one hypothesis, but according to research I did on maternal mortality in Renaissance England, the rate of death in childbirth wasn't really that high, or at least not higher than all the other ways you could die in the era before antibiotics and good hygiene. It was something like 1% per birth, so averaged out over a woman's lifetime (and here the article-writer) did some interesting stuff with average numbers of children, it would be 6-7%, and that in fact, men were more likely to die early, and there were huge clots of widows running around England at the time. On the other hand, fear of death in childbirth was rampant, so that might influence some of the stories. I don't know how England compares to France and Italy during the same period, though.
It's my understanding that maternal mortality shot up in the late 18th and 19th centuries, in part due to population density exploding and thus the rise of disease, but in part also due to the rise of the medical profession, as doctors tended far more often than midwives to go to deliver babies straight from, oh, the morgue, without washing their hands, and thus giving women puerpal fever, thanks very much. Also, I think, though I may be wrong, that doctors were much bigger on having women lie on their backs, which makes labor more protracted for obvious reasons. Anyway, that was also the time during which the Grimms started changing mothers to stepmothers in some of the tales (though by no means all).
Edited by: Veronica Schanoes at: 6/15/05 11:51 am
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(6/15/05 1:02 pm)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
>>That was actually what we found so curious ... the majority of the "Evil Father" tales fell into the category of the "unnatural father" (i.e., Donkeyskin, The Maiden With No Hands) but we were hard-put to think of any specific step-father stories. One panelist hypothesized that this might have been due to the prevelance of death in childbirth amongst women, and thus, the frequency of second, third, or fourth marriages for men<<
Also, a way of establishing an "evil" parent within the household (Cinderella, Snow White), while writing out the disturbing aspect of "Oh, but no parent would do THAT!":
The story step-parent lacks the natural urge to protect and sees the kids from a cold, selfish viewpoint, to set the surmountable odds in motion, right on the characters' doorstep--
Eg. the stepmother in Hansel & Gretel perfectly willing to "sacrifice" the kids for their own economy, while the natural father, for more realistic contrast, says "Oh, but we couldn't!"
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(6/15/05 1:22 pm)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
True, though I do believe that H&G was one of the stories in which the evil stepmother was originally an evil mother before the Grimms got the Bowdlerization on.
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Crceres
Registered User
(6/15/05 9:46 pm)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
I think it was Tanith Lee who wrote a short retelling of Cinderella, named the Reason to not go to the Ball, or something like that.
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janeyolen
Registered User
(6/16/05 3:44 am)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Perhaps a father is SUPPOSED to be distant, but the mother is SUPPOSED to be nurturing. So an unnatural (and therefore more interesting) situation for a story would be a bad mother. Ie a stepmother. Whereas a cold, hard, discipling father is expected.
How can a father be unnatural? By expecting to sexually own the child? But a stepfather is not a blood relative, which (in ancient terms anyway) would remove the onus. (And in some modern stories, see Woody Allen.)
But lots of wicked/evil/unnatural husbands ie demon lovers/Mr. Fox stories.
As you can see, I am just wheel-spinning and thinking on my feet. Er, butt!
Jane
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Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(6/16/05 7:47 am)
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Aside: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Aside to KathieRose,
I missed being there. It sounds like I missed a wonderful panel and conference. I was too sick that week to travel and had to stay home, mostly in bed. On the bright side, the best thing about being homebound for a while was the extra time I had to add many more full text books to SurLaLune.
Heidi
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evil
little pixie
Registered User
(6/16/05 10:09 am)
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re: evil stepfathers
What about wicked uncles who abandon their nieces or nephews so they can take over the kingdom they're supposed to be regent for? I can't remember any specific tales, but I know I've run across this plot line a few times.
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(6/16/05 4:07 pm)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
>>Perhaps a father is SUPPOSED to be distant, but the mother is SUPPOSED to be nurturing. So an unnatural (and therefore more interesting) situation for a story would be a bad mother. Ie a stepmother. Whereas a cold, hard, discipling father is expected.
How can a father be unnatural? By expecting to sexually own the child? But a stepfather is not a blood relative, which (in ancient terms anyway) would remove the onus.<<
The only "unnatural stepfathers" that spring to mind in literature (if not fairytales) are the self-serving Dickensian stepfathers of David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickelby--Who coldly toss their "idle" sons out into the big bad Victorian-monetary business world without a word or a cent, to become productive and start carrying their load...
Again, as a representative of artificial name-only "test-tube" parenting, and lacking the natural "fatherly" urge to pass on advice, be proud of their offspring's accomplishment, or even welcome the prodigal home in the worst case.
(...But, we went RIGHT for the abuse metaphor, din't we?)
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(6/16/05 4:42 pm)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Er, because that's the dry technical term Victorian folklorists adopted to describe incestuous motivations?
It's a well-established usage ....
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(6/16/05 6:41 pm)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Well, to clarify the example a little closer to fairytales, there's always the King Claudius archetype from "Hamlet"--
Who clearly wasn't thinking of existing family ties to nurture when he married the widow/queen for her looks and profit...
And who, although he doesn't enjoy the nagging interference of having
a son from the previous marriage interrupting his romantic social-climbing
by mooning around about how much more virtuous his real father was,
is, at the beginning of the play, only too happy to rush Hamlet,
ahem, out the door (and out of the immediate picture) with
quickly-concocted busy-work of college, political concerns, and
(heheh) other plans.
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(6/17/05 2:07 am)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Ah, but Claudius manages to fit nicely into the role of the wicked uncle before receiving the additional dollop of villainy granted by his surrogate paternal status! That's a qualifier rarely seen in the tales of stepmothers ....
I hesitate to generalize, but I do feel that in some ways, the situational nature of the fairy tale immensely influences the types of characters we see: as in Western society, fairy tales were largely seen as being "women's territory" from the 17th century or so, many of the scenarios reflect the lives of their tellers (and, specifically, their audiences), in which female relations were paramount. It would be laughable to say that men did not figure in their lives ... but in the context of the dissemination of the fairy tale, they might well have been momentarily excused as priorities.
It's interesting to observe, though, that the same phenomenon arises in cultures where the gender skewed the other way, and perhaps even more strongly then in Western European societies ... many specialists in Russian folklore have argued for a masculine domination of the field (i.e., the occupation of the skoromokh or professional storyteller) without managing to explain the prevalence of femininely-oriented stories or comparatively more dominant female heroes and villains ... I find myself at a loss to think of an Evil Stepfather in Russian tales, either. Hmmmmmm ...
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(6/17/05 2:08 am)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Claudius is certainly an example of a lousy stepfather (though personally,
I think he makes a far better king than Hamlet ever could have--that's
a whole other discussion, though!), but there's nothing in the text
to indicate that he married Gertrude for her looks, and rather than
trying to rush Hamlet out the door, in the first act, he insists
that he stay and not return to Wittenberg. Personally, if I
had been Claudius, I would have rushed that kid into the first grave
I saw, because he is so very annoying.
I used to study Renaissance lit and was subjected to more Hamlet readings and performances than anybody could shake a stick at...
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(6/17/05 8:51 am)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Thinking out loud, I wonder also if there isn't an economic element as well. Women were entirely dependent on their husbands--in many places their property became their husband's, they could not own property independently, nor even, in many places, inherit. That put all their pecuniary interests in their children, passing on to them what they, themselves could not have. In this kind of cold light, the stepchildren were then in the way.
What brought this to mind are the eastern stories where there is fierce competition among many wives of one husband to insure that their children are favored. In Europe, where men could have wives seriatim but not simultaneously, the same kind of psychology might apply.
Best,
Alice
PS to Veronica--I still think that when Mel Gibson played Hamlet, he was rather... attractive.
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(6/17/05 9:27 am)
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Re: WisCon panel-Evil Stepmother
Well, each to her own, Alice! I personally want to see Hamlet stuck through with a dagger within the first act, but I have yet to see a sufficiently...adventurous production!
It's interesting what you say about inheritance--that wasn't the case in England, but I believe it was in Italy. It would be interesting to see if there are any differences among these tales as you move between areas of different inheritance law. In England, at least, widows could and did inherit lotsa cash, and one of the things about widows is that they often controlled not only large sums of money, but businesses, as a guild-member's widow could take over his position and membership in a guild. I don't know, these economic issues are never simply progressive or regressive. Before the reign of Elizabeth, I think it was, about half the apprentices in London were female. Afterwards, not so much. I'm digressing though.
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