Female Development and Fairy Tale Transformations in Frances Browne’s Granny’s Wonderful Chair, and its Tales of Fairy Times (1856)

Abstract

Focusing on the changing publishing trends in children’s Irish and British fiction in the mid-nineteenth century, this essay examines Frances Browne’s popular fairy-tale collection, Granny’s Wonderful Chair, and its Tales of Fairy Times (1856), as part of a wider turn towards fantasy and fairy tale in the period. For Browne and others, the appeal of the genre lies in its ability to both entertain children, as well as instruct them in moral and social principles. As this essay aims to demonstrate, however, Browne’s text forges a significant challenge to conventional gendered patterns of social behaviour for women and imagines alternative life pathways for its young female readership as part of its didactic function. By focusing on the girl protagonist of the collection’s frame story, and her journey of maturation and acculturation, this essay finally reads Browne’s text not only for its transgressive subtext on gender conventions, but also for its implied critique of the power hierarchies that uphold the patriarchal order at the heart of these gendered social principles.