There is always a next witch: Creative intuition and collaborative female relationships in fairy tales

Abstract

The antagonism that exists between girls/women in fairy tales has been the subject of much discussion over recent decades. Significantly less attention, however, has been paid to the absence of collaborative female relationships in both traditional fairy tales and their retellings. This paper argues that the cognitive sciences, and schema theories in particular, may offer insights as to why these types of relationships receive such scant representation in contemporary re-visioned fairy tales, which commonly continue to replicate the common narrative dynamic of female acrimony. Following a brief overview of schemas and their operation, the paper examines how story schemas and person schemas might intersect in the unconscious of the creative writer to influence the intuitions that accompany story creation and development. Finally, it is suggested that the adoption of new frameworks through which to critically and reflexively interrogate our tacit storytelling knowledge can result in real cognitive change and subsequent advancements in our creative practice. A case study of the writing of ‘Burnt sugar’, a novelette the author produced as part of her ongoing PhD research, is presented as an ‘in practice’ demonstration of the possible effects of schemas upon narrative creation.