#Mme d'Aulnoy

[pimpantes]

L’Oiseau Bleu, Mme d’Aulnoy, illustrations  Lola Anglada,   éditions  Hachette 1912/1930

The Blue Bird by Mme d’Aulnoy, illustration by Lola  Anglada  

[thewhitehairedwitchgirl]

So I've been reading fairy tales and apparently the concept of "it's okay to be attracted to this barely pubescent girl because she's actually 200 years old and magic!" was not invented by creepy anime

[measuredoutinyears]

13, 16, 19 💕

thank you!! 🥰

13. What's your love language?

acts of service :))

16. What's something not-deep you're scared of?

i wish i could be original but, spiders

19. Do you have any books you've loved recently?

oh so last week i read some fairytales from the 18th century by Mme d'Aulnoy and there's one that i keep thinking about. it's called "Belle Belle ou le chevalier fortuné" and it was really, really cool. basically it's about that girl who's better than her sisters and she becomes a knight to save her family. the whole tale plays with variations around repeated patterns and it's a nice read.

[monannee2016etc]

[thebowlercapfairy]

Illustration by Elizabeth MacKinstry for Mme. La Comtesse D'Aulnoy's "The White Cat and other Old French Fairy Tales"

https://weheartit.com/entry/337007828

[aethersea]

This is an excellent essay and I have only one tiny, almost irrelevant aside: While Charles Perrault was the salon writer whose works have most survived to this day, and while he was definitely a big deal in his time, one of, if not the most successful writer of the salons was Mme Catherine d’Aulnoy. She was a prolific author who wrote in several genres, including travel novels (super popular at the time) and fairy tales (even more popular at the time). Her works were read widely in France, and translated to English (and probably other European languages) almost immediately after publication.

d’Aulnoy wrote in a flowery, elegant, ostentatious style, and her stories celebrated education, intelligence, and wit in its female protagonists. In this she was very like all salon writers – even Perrault is allegedly quite feminist for his time, though he was on the more conservative side of salon culture.1 Perrault, however, did not go in for this florid, ostentatious, detailed style in fairy tales. I don’t know how many other writers of the time shared his more laconic style in their fairy tales, but I do know that critics of the time spoke loudly and often about how Perrault’s more sparse, simplistic of writing was the “true” way to write fairy tales. All this detailed, wordy, overtly intellectual stuff that the salonnnieres were writing wasn’t the “proper” style for fairy tales.

Before you ask, yes, this is absolutely about gender. It might have been about other stuff too, but it was absolutely, to a large degree, about gender.

d’Aulnoy’s work, and that of her many learned female contemporaries, faded out of the popular consciousness. Perrault’s did not. This wasn’t really coincidence. Nowadays the people who know d'Aulnoy's work are mostly fairy tale scholars or people who read Andrew Lang's Books of Fairies.

(It can be a little hard to wade through these old salon stories, sometimes, because the writing is so different from what we're used to, and the literary conventions of the time were way different from today's. A lot of the morals and assumptions are enough to make you wince, too, but tbh it’s no worse than any of Perrault’s stuff, and often much better. If you're interested, you can find a lot of d'Aulnoy's work on SurLaLune. I'm partial to "The Green Serpent," myself – I like the kingdom of magic talking pagodas that just show up with absolutely no context.)

1 I only really buy this because his time was one of increasing legal shittiness toward women – France was enacting a lot of laws to restrict women's rights and stuff. By modern standards, Charles Perrault is a horrible little man and I am filled with great rage if I read too many of his stories in a row.

Forbidden Fruit (Le Fruit Défendu) by Auguste Toulmouche, 1865, illustrating how young women have always rebelled against having their access to knowledge policed.

Nineteenth-century French and British families kept a close eye on the literature allowed to pass into the hands of unmarried girls (married women were not automatically exempt, either). While Toulmouche’s painting garnered great acclaim for its aesthetic charms when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1865, a contemporary male art critic’s sour aside summed up the prevailing attitude to independent female minds:

“I do not approve of these silly girls; instead of searching forbidden pages for the knowledge that they lack, they would do better to leave tomorrow’s lover the pleasure of instructing them in the matters of which they are ignorant.” Paul Mantz quoted in Women Readers in French Painting 1870-1890 by Kathryn J. Brown.

No comment.

[wolfsnape]

Je tiens à dire que ça fait des semaines que je me dis que mon sujet de recherche de master ne servirait pas à grand chose dans ma vie et LÀ une pote me dit que les combats des femmes à l'époque moderne est à l'Agreg et une AUTRE me propose de faire un atelier sur Paris sur les contes et l'invisibilisation des autrices DONT MME D'AULNOY

Je suis SI CONTENTE 😭😭😭😭❤️

[from-books-with-love]

[…] que craignez-vous ? — Que vous ne m'aimiez pas assez.

Mme d’Aulnoy, Gracieuse et Percinet.

[pimpantes]

L’Oiseau Bleu, Mme d’Aulnoy, illustrations  Lola Anglada,   éditions  Hachette 1912/1930

The Blue Bird by Mme d’Aulnoy, illustration by Lola  Anglada  

[pimpantes]

L’Oiseau Bleu, Mme d’Aulnoy, illustrations  Lola Anglada,   éditions  Hachette 1912/1930

The Blue Bird by Mme d’Aulnoy, illustration by Lola  Anglada  

[pimpantes]

L’Oiseau Bleu, Mme d’Aulnoy, illustrations  Lola Anglada,   éditions  Hachette 1912/1930

The Blue Bird by Mme d’Aulnoy, illustration by Lola  Anglada  

[pimpantes]

L’Oiseau Bleu, Mme d’Aulnoy, illustrations  Lola Anglada,   éditions  Hachette 1912/1930

The Blue Bird by Mme d’Aulnoy, illustration by Lola  Anglada  

[pimpantes]

L’Oiseau Bleu, Mme d’Aulnoy, illustrations  Lola Anglada,   éditions  Hachette 1912/1930

The Blue Bird by Mme d’Aulnoy, illustration by Lola  Anglada  

[pimpantes]

L’Oiseau Bleu, Mme d’Aulnoy, illustrations  Lola Anglada,   éditions  Hachette 1912/1930

The Blue Bird by Mme d’Aulnoy, illustration by Lola  Anglada  

[pimpantes]

L’Oiseau Bleu, Mme d’Aulnoy, illustrations  Lola Anglada,   éditions  Hachette 1912/1930

The Blue Bird by Mme d’Aulnoy, illustration by Lola  Anglada  

[pimpantes]

L’Oiseau Bleu, Mme d’Aulnoy, illustrations  Lola Anglada,   éditions  Hachette 1912/1930

The Blue Bird by Mme d’Aulnoy, illustration by Lola  Anglada