Women Writing Wonder

This anthology of literary fairy tales from Great Britain, France, and Germany from the nineteenth century is an excellent sample of the variety of ways in which under-recognized women writers adapted the fairy-tale form for the purposes of subversion. The scholars behind this project, associated with a Wayne State University Humanities Center working group on the fairy tale, have brought forward the fruits of diligent archival work and translation to showcase women writers who are often neglected when scholars tell the history of the fairy tale. The canonical view is that fairy tales were male-authored or, at the very least, male-filtered after being offered by a female storyteller. As the editors of Women Writing Wonder: An Anthology of Subversive Nineteenth-Century British, French, and German Fairy Tales note in their introduction, this view even inspired the later feminist works of Angela Carter and Anne Sexton. Although more recent fairy-tale scholarship has paid due attention to the conteuses of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, the art of subversion in the fairy tale did not simply stop after this period, but continued well into the nineteenth century.The introduction is very useful in situating this text in the larger body of fairy-tale scholarship. It links to the work of Jennifer Schacker, who connects the works of Mme. d'Aulnoy to nineteenth-century English pantomime; Elizabeth Wanning Harries and Lewis Seifert, who each have written groundbreaking analyses of the conteuses; and Jack Zipes, whose book Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion (Routledge, 1983) provided groundwork for analyses of subversion in fairy tales. These are only a handful of the numerous scholars from whose work this anthology draws, and the editors skillfully recognize and then build upon existing scholarship in their argument about the importance of the women writers whose texts they have chosen to highlight. Because the introduction so cleanly lays out both the history of the literary fairy tale and the history of fairy-tale studies, it merits inclusion in assigned readings for classes on these topics.As for the anthology itself, the primary texts are organized by country, with a section first on France, then Germany, and then Great Britain. Each section contains a smaller introduction with more specific information on the context of the writers, and every text features a short biography of the author. This information greatly benefits the anthology because many of these authors may be unknown to most fairy-tale scholars, let alone the casual reader. Given the complexity of some texts, more in-depth analysis of the texts would be welcome, but as this is an anthology, such analytical endeavors might be better-suited to a more in-depth companion project.All primary French and German texts are translated into English, and the English primary texts are simply edited for punctuation and minor vocabulary issues, with footnotes to aid in comprehension where the language may be outdated. I commend the translations, notably Anne E. Duggan's work on Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis’ “Pamrose, or the Palace and the Cottage,” which successfully retains the character of a text, originally in French, inspired by the conteuses.Many of the texts themselves are quite enjoyable and clearly demonstrate a common women's perspective on the use of the fairy tale to critique society. The editors state that the sort of subversion they see in these texts is broad and multi-faceted, including critiques on feminine passivity, marriage, and even racial relations (time-period limitations are acknowledged appropriately). Genlis’ fairy tale is the perfect romantic story, privileging a working-class pastoral life to royalty; Elisabeth Ebeling's “Black and White” features a noble African prince as hero; and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's “The Invisible Girl” blends her characteristic ghost-story style with a fairy-tale plot. Some of the texts are not as riveting as others, and, as can be the case with literary fairy tales, it may be difficult to hold readers’ attention in some stories. If one intends to teach from this anthology, careful selection of excerpts is recommended.Overall, this volume is an excellent contribution to contemporary fairy-tale scholarship. The contributors appreciate past scholarship but criticize it where necessary and look forward to new possibilities of scholarship presented by the new research surrounding these lesser-known writers. It is certainly an anthology worth having on any fairy-tale scholar's shelf

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