Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Fairy tale retellings are always popular. Fairy tales are some of the first stories we learn as children. As well as being entertaining, they are instructive. Don’t stray from the path. Don’t trust wolves, or men. Fill your pockets with stones, not breadcrumbs. If you’re going to steal some herbs for your pregnant wife, be careful which garden you choose.
These lessons, and the stories that taught them, stay with us, and we’re always looking for – as the great Angela Carter put it – “new wine in old bottles”. We want the stories we remember told from a new perspective. We want to hear new voices telling old tales.
When retold, fairy tales are often updated to reflect modern morals. The Grimms took out Rapunzel’s pregnancy but left in the blinding of the prince because violence is totally fine but teenage pregnancy is not. Today, writers use Rapunzel’s tale to talk of oppression, Stockholm Syndrome, and feisty females who won’t give up in the pursuit of knowledge or curiosity.
One tale that is ripe for updating is that of Sleeping Beauty: a sleeping princess who fell foul of a curse and now waits for a prince to kiss her and wake her up. Let’s talk about lack of agency. Let’s talk about outdated gender roles. Let’s talk about lack of consent and how “true love’s first kiss” doesn’t ring true when they can barely have known each other or, in some versions, haven’t even met before the princess fell asleep. There is a lot to unpack here.
In this episode, we talk to Georgia Leighton, whose new novel Spellbound tackles this much-loved but innately problematic fairy tale.
Georgia Leighton is a Senior Marketing Manager in publishing. Before working in publishing, she completed an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, receiving a distinction.
Georgia lives in London with her family and many books. Her debut adult novel, Spellbound, is a reimagining of the classic fairy tale Sleeping Beauty.
