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Perrault's Sleeping Beauty In The Wood

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The well-known Disney fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty, is about a young princess who was cursed by an evil fairy, named Maleficent (Zipes, np). On her sixteenth birthday, Aurora would prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. Luckily, a good fairy was able to soften the curse and instead of dying, Aurora would fall into a deep sleep, only to be awoken by true love’s kiss and live happily ever after. This fairy tale might seem adoring and kid-friendly, but it was derived from a very horrifying story, in which the princess was woken up by the prince raping her, instead of a loving peck on the lips. The brothers Grimm based their version of Sleeping Beauty off of Perrault’s “Sleeping Beauty in the Wood”. It did not just start there, though. “Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” is actually based on Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia”. Both stories include rape, but there are …show more content…

Instead of having the sleeping beauty being woken up with a kiss, Basile had a different, more horrifying idea with the prince raping her (FCIT, np). Perrault did not have such a horrible way for the princess to wake up, so it is understandable that the brothers Grimm would pick his version to base the well-known Disney movie on. Basile’s version of Sleeping Beauty is the most horrifying one. Perrault’s version shows that he saw all the horrifying aspects of Basile’s version and watered them down a little bit, but also incorporated some of his beliefs into it, like the prince’s mother being an ogress. In both fairy tales, Basile and Perrault include cannibalism in it. This is particularly frightening in Basile’s case because he had the prince’s wife attempt to feed Talia and her two kids, who he loved, to him (Ashliman, np). Perrault had the ogress mother think she was eating the prince’s wife and children as well, but it is less horrifying because she is not fully human (Ashliman,

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