Questions, Intuitions, Revisions: Telling and Re-Telling Stories About Ourselves in the World A College Seminar Course at Bryn Mawr College

Friends, colleagues--
Welcome to Week Two of Questions, Intutions, Revisions...

when be turning our attention from telling and listening to our individual stories of learning...

to looking at a range of what may? may not? be more archetypal--universal?--tales. Tell us what thoughts arose, as you were reading

• the well-known folk stories recorded by the Brothers Grimm in 19th century Germany, "Little Briar Rose" and "Cinderella";
• a contemporary account of a much earlier Chinese version, "Yeh-Shen," and
• the 1970's American revisions (what she calls "Transformations") of those well-known stories, by Anne Sexton.

There are sure to be lots of stories generated by the intersection of all these stories....

and we are very much looking forward to hearing them--

Anne and Paul

There was a piece in the new "Currents" section of the Philadelphia Inquirer last Sunday (9/7/03) which seemed quite a propos to where we're at just now (or rather: where we may be heading....)

Entitled "New Realities/New Storytelling," the article mused about the increasing acceptance of "the fractured story" form, and suggested that maybe

"the old forms of storytelling are worn out, and artists and audience are looking for something new....Perhaps 9/11 taught us that we weren't writing the story of our lives--someone else was and, in this one, we're not the heroes. We may be telling stories differently now because we've lost the story we thought we were telling...."

What do you think?

Anne

This Cinderella is a much livelier character than the one Disney gives us. She's good and pious and pure, of course, but not to the point of being a sap. She asks for what she wants: when she wants help with sorting lentils, she calls for her friends the birds. When she wants a beautiful dress, she asks for it. She makes the choice to leave the ball ("...and then she wanted to go home."), rather than doing so because she's told to. And, at the end of the story, she puts the slipper on herself, rather than the prince slipping it onto her foot (a small thing, but I liked it).

In the Grimm story, I like the fact that the mother is a continuing presence. The dead or absent mother seems to be such a mainstay of fairy tales, and, at least in the Disney versions, once the mother is gone, she's forgotten. But our Cinderella is constant. She continues to grieve for her mother. This seems like a stronger element of her piety and virtue than just putting up with a lot of guff from her step-sisters and step-mother. So she deserves her happy ending.

Maybe I'm caught up in the Wonderful World of Disney, but I did not remember feet being mutilated in Cinderella from when I was little. I would think that something like that would stand out in my head because I'm positive that Cinderella was read to me as a child.

Also, I was a little confused about what happened at the end of Sexton's Briar-Rose. I'm not sure whether she was implying that Briar-Rose had been sexually abused or if she was speaking personally about the subject or if she was making a blanket statement about it. Maybe someone else understood that.

The other conversation was of course Grimm/Disney/Sexton, how and why the stories changed. What struck me (of course subject to correction/modification by others) is the idea that the stories are intended to appeal to kids, and so reflect what kids are interested in prior to what they're taught. And that Disney took out all the yucky stuff in Grimm, and that Sexton put it back in.

The other thread was the idea that kids are attracted to "cute, fluffy" things but , maybe as per the end of our conversation, to bloody, nasty things as well (boys more than girls?). So maybe Disney is an impoverished experience for kids, relative to either Grimm or Sexton?

Which circles me back to 11 Sept. I wonder if the shock of that event , the sense of being utterly overhelmed by the unthinkable, might have been less if several generations of us had been reared on Grimm (or Sexton) rather than Disney? Might we have been better able to respond meaningfully to the horror, to act effectively to reduce the likelihood of such events in the future, if we were more familiar from childhood with ALL of what is inside us as humans?

Reporting in from the "other" section (that one w/ "older" women in it...) where a rich conversation also took place this morning....

also beginning w/ thoughts/memories of September 11th and reflections on the stories we have told since to make sense of it...

Then, after we'd worked our way through reactions to/thoughts about the function of those grim/nasty/cynical/sarcastic (assigned) stories...

we turned our attention to the question of what adult fairy tales might look like. All the McBrides shared a sense of "living a fairy tale" (Disney version) in finally coming to Bryn Mawr. So, we asked ourselves: what's the NEXT story, the one that comes after THAT story?

Taking a leaflet from the new Graduate Course on Explorations of Teaching: What, Why, How and Who? (which, in turn, had taken a leaf from a Summer 2002 Institute for K-12 teachers) we shared a range of metaphors describing what it was like, being in the classroom:

• the student is a pearl diver, the teacher the holder of her oxygen tank
• the students are the choir, the teacher their director
• the student is a passenger in a soaring plane, the teacher the pilot
• the student is a quarterback, the other students are on the same team, and the teacher is the umpire ("the one who sees the plays")
• the class is a ballet corps, the teacher the choreographer
• the students are different trees in the same forest, the teacher the sun and rain, providing the nutrients...

So: any chance any of these might be the seeds for a NEW kind of story? A DIFFERENT way of learning/growing/exploring the world together than the sort traced, nearly two hundred years ago, by the Grimms, or thirty years ago by Anne Sexton?

Anne

Now times have changed and I can no longer relate to Disney's version of the story. Today, I enjoy Grimm's Cinderella, which is gory and graphic. For example, Grimm's description the "bloody shoe". Why the change? Perhaps, now that I am more experienced I can better appreciate literature that relates to both happiness as well as pain.

As I said in class (section 10, fondly known as the "older" group)I think the Bros Grimm were aptly named. I know they only collected the folktales from others, but, my gosh, how much violence against women were they putting forth back in those days? Unless you were a fair maiden and good you got bashed or banished. I find the women-bashing distasteful. Sure, I'll just cut off my toes and heels so I can wear that glass slipper and marry you! Oh, and since I'm so mean and "dark of heart" can you get those birds to peck out my eyes too. Also, that theory of being rescued so that one can live happily ever after is clearly outdated. Was Princess Diana living happily-ever-after with her prince, I ask you? I think there should be fairy tales, but I think we need to update them, just like Walt Disney did, only now they can have a female perspective.

I enjoyed Anne Sexton's poems, not so much for the fairy tale satire, (although her cynicism was cool) but more for the seemingly candid glimpses of her life through some very revealing story telling. I felt like I was being made privy to some of the tragic moments of her life. I was inspired to go online and read more about her. I like writing that exposes the writer because it makes me want to know more about what they didn't say. What were the stories behind the poems that Anne wrote? Were they just new spins on old fairy tales or were they keys that opened a new Pandora's Box?

Hummm???

Alicia