Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Bed: Modernism's Fairy Tales by Ann Martin

Abstract

MLR, I03.2, 2oo8 525 Red Riding Hood and the Wolf inBed: Modernism's Fairy Tales. By ANN MARTIN. Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press. 2oo6. ix+ I99 PP. ?32. ISBN 978-o-8020-go86-7. The malleability of the fairy tale is, today, an almost taken-for-granted assumption in academic circles. So, for Ann Martin to suggest thatcertainmodernist writers re fashion thebetter-known European fairy tales (she focuses specifically on versions of 'Sleeping Beauty', 'SnowWhite', 'Cinderella', 'LittleRed Riding Hood', 'Beauty and theBeast', and 'The Fisherman and hisWife' popularized by theGrimms, Perrault, and de Beaumont (p. i6)) is a less than novel argument. Were this the underlying thesis ofMartin's book, itcould simply be tossed on the pile marked 'unoriginal' in the increasing gamut of fairy-tale scholarship. However, from the outset Martin is concerned with elaborating the dichotomy in early twentieth-century responses to the fairy tale. The premiss upon which her argument rests is that thedominant conception of childhood isone ofnostalgic recon struction foran inevitably lost time (hereMartin needs tobe precise that this isnot the Romantic view of childhood but a perversion thereof). This is then connected with a popular view of 'folk' culture as representative of amore primitive yet 'authentic' stage of development. In stark contrast to this, Martin suggests thather three representatives ofmoder nism-James Joyce,Virginia Woolf, and the often-neglected Djuna Barnes-utilize the fairy tale as an aperture throughwhich the chaotic experiences ofmodernity can be renegotiated. ForMartin, the fairytale isa dynamic narrative: at one level itcan be viewed as ameans to propagate themores of a given society, at another itsadaptabi litycan be seen as interrogatingquestions of social and cultural significance. It is this dynamism, Martin argues, which accounts for the fairytale's appeal to thesewriters. Integral toher concept of dynamism is the sheer number of literary fairy tales that Martin states are available forconsumption at the turnof thecentury.As each author encodes many variations, the ensuing profusion undermines notions of authority and fixityofmeaning. Juxtaposing versions of 'Sleeping Beauty' enables Clarissa Dalloway to explore thepotentialities of her own identity; thedifferentversions of 'Cinderella' which Joyce inflects inUlysses suggest a range of available plot structures and charac terizations; for Matthew O'Connor inNightwood 'Little Red Riding Hood' provides a narrative which suggests the transformative possibilities of deception and disguise. Martin argues that thesewriters use the fairy tale not to prescribe social identities but rather to represent a subject who takes advantage of 'unscripted interventions' (P. 125) to explore the experience ofmodernity and capitalist consumer culture. Yet an appreciation of Martin's adroit argument must be temperedwith a reserva tion: her theoretical position isdependent upon the identification and interpretation of variation and, while from the outset she states she will limitherself to a few fairy tales, thisnarrow scope is a severe constraint and, potentially, could be read as point ing to the possible cultural pre-eminence of particular versions of these tales.None the less, over the course of the book Martin makes a convincing argument for the alignment of the fairy talewith the experience ofmodernity in theworks of these authors. Reading the fairy tale as offering 'interpretative possibilities' (p. i i6) (a position that is,arguably, not exclusive to thisgenre) allows thesemodernist writers to free the tales of their links to amythic past, instead deploying them as narratives of exploration in amodern, consumer age. BIRMINGHAMCITY UNIVERSITY SARAH WOOD ...