Briar Rose’s journey to a grim reality : examining trauma in retellings of ‘Sleeping Beauty’

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the link between trauma and children’s literature. Even though the juxtaposition of these two notions seems to be irreconcilable, fiction is often used to treat and narrate traumatic aspects. Although fairy tales are often mistaken as innocent tales about a marvellous world, they are brimming with darkness. In several retellings—such as Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose (1992) and Robert Coover’s Briar Rose (1996)—this darkness becomes the main focus of the narrative, and everything else is put aside. This dissertation thus illustrates how these two novels use fairy tale elements and images, as well as stylistic techniques, to portray the trauma experienced in the Holocaust—due to haunting images of torture and mass slaughter—and that by victims of sexual assault. As discussed in Chapter One, children’s literature and the variations of ‘Sleeping Beauty’, give space for numerous retellings that fit with the mentality and the lifestyle of the people of that time. The reader is provided with powerful retellings that deal with contemporary issues and bring back some of the horror and darkness that the tales originally contained. Chapter Two focuses on the link between trauma and fiction, and shows how literature uses stylistic devices that mimic the symptoms and effects of trauma. The crux of this dissertation lays in Chapters Three and Four since they analyse how the original tales serve as metaphors and allegories for the traumatic events in Yolen’s and Coover’s novels. Whilst challenging the readers’ expectations, the symbols in these retellings help transmit and unveil repressed traumatic events that reflect reality. This dissertation then concludes with a comparative analysis showing how and to what extent these retellings draw from the traditional tales in the portrayal of this theme.