The Thorns of Trauma: Torture, Aftermath, and Healing in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Literature

Jeana Jorgensen

doi:10.3390/h10010047

Abstract

While classical fairy tales do not portray much depth of suffering, many contemporary fairy-tale retellings explore trauma and its aftermath in great detail. This article analyzes depictions of trauma in fairy tales, utilizing as a primary case study the “Beauty and the Beast” retelling A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, arguing that this text provides a scientifically accurate representation of trauma and its aftermath, thereby articulating the real in fairy tales. Further, this article classifies that work as not simply a “dark” fairy tale (a contentious term that invites rethinking) but rather as fairy-tale torture porn, in a nod to the horror genre that foregrounds torture, surveillance, and the disruption of bodily boundaries and safety. However, the text’s optimistic account of healing is uniquely relevant in a time of widespread trauma due to a global pandemic, thereby demonstrating that fairy tales remain germane in contemporary contexts.

Highlights

Aurora is being both physically and emotionally tortured, suffering at the hands of someone she cares about but whom she has irreparably damaged by removing his free will. Later, when he is disenchanted, he accuses her of “punishing yourself, and using me to do it” (p. 362). The elements of both physical and emotional torture, the lack of safety, and the visceral depiction of pain all combine to make Princess of Thorns not merely a “dark” or bitter fairy tale, but one which qualifies as fairy-tale torture porn
When Feyre is initially imprisoned and tortured Under the Mountain, this is traumatic; when she is afterwards confined to Tamlin’s estate, this only exacerbates her trauma, trapping her in the same state as before and preventing her from healing. Her entrapment parallels the feeling of being trapped in the past that registers for many real-life trauma victims, calling to mind other fairy-tale intertexts such as “Sleeping Beauty”
As the main character in a retold fairy tale, Feyre has magic at her disposal, and metaphor and storytelling. She likens her own life to a fairy tale, focusing on captured maidens who are freed

Summary

Introduction

Thorns of Trauma: Torture, Aftermath, and Healing in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Literature. Going to war and surviving sexual assault are not the only traumatizing experiences in the world, though veterans and domestic abuse and rape survivors are heavily studied, as Van der Kolk notes in the case studies of his book The Body Keeps the Score that informed his approach to trauma in recent decades. As far back as the classical roots of the fairy-tale genre (Rowe 1989) makes a strong case that Philomela, raped by her brotherin-law in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, uses weaving as a way to tell her story, since he cut out her tongue and she can no longer speak (1989) This is congruent with contemporary understandings of how trauma can literally rob us of the ability to speak, given that it can disable parts of the brain during flashbacks, such as Broca’s area, that govern language Before analyzing my main case study, we shall follow the trail of breadcrumbs to linger over recent fairy-tale retellings that depict trauma, especially those texts that are explicitly traumatic, verging on if not outright representing torture

Tales Exploring Trauma: “Dark” Tales Both Old and New

A Court of Thorns and Roses as Fairy-Tale Torture Porn

Conclusions