In honour of International Book Day, I cannot let this week
go by without speaking of something that shaped my growth: fairytales and happy
endings.
There are three specific fairytales that I’ve been wanting
to include in this list: Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and Sleeping Beauty.
Snow White because it is the first thing I distinctly recall sitting down and
reading as a full story by myself at age six – not a nursery rhyme or
learning-story (those made up of animals, numbers or colours), and not a “grown
up” children’s story being read by my mum or my sister (such as the very same
Snow White being read by my mum or my sister, for instance); this time it had
been myself that had scanned my bookcase, taken out the “grown up” children’s
story book, turned the pages to see which illustrations were more appealing to
me, and climbed into bed to read. I read
it from beginning to end, completely unaware that it was the beginning of my
long years of reading in bed until three or four in the morning, perhaps not
even aware that it was the beginning of a life of solitary creation, yet
absolutely conscious of the joy and satisfaction that the rolling of the
sentences left in my mind and mouth (up ‘til today, I still read moving my lips
every once in a while – maybe it’s the dyslexia acting up, maybe it’s that it
helps me visualize the sentences clearer when I’m in a noisy place, or maybe
it’s just that I absolutely love the feeling of the words and sentences in my
mouth. Whichever the reason, I’ll always
stand up for the people whose lips move as they read, because it’s not a sign
of lesser intellect or meekness, so we should all be left alone and respected
for however we read or write. Yes, I’m
also referring to those of us who ‘talk alone’, the writers and actors who act
up their dialogues in the middle of the street or pub or store – sometimes our
characters climb out through our skin and mouth, nothing wrong with that,
either).
Right, coming back to the subject at hand: Snow White and
how reading that story alone for the first time made me relish in the act of
reading. It was also around that time
that I wrote my first poem, a sad little piece about the death of my
grandfather, a man still in his fifties who left a whole in my heart because
for the first time I’d learned what it was to feel that you’ll never get to know
that person because they’re irreversibly gone – even now the consciousness of
the precariousness of life and the horrible thought of love lost through death
makes me cringe and go mute when the conversation arises, be it in class, in a
philosophical debate, in a café with friends or going up the stairs of my block
of flats with my amazing husband as we talk about Bridget Jones. Put that
intensity of thought inside a five-year-old who knows the world only through
her feelings and what you get is a child that will ultimately find her solace
in a fairytale about a love lost which was revived with a kiss.
That’s reason number one for my ongoing defence of happy
endings: the kiss that will save lives and loves, the ultimate proof that a
person cares so much for another that they will get them back from the
underworld by the most magical and intimate touch that can ever happen between
two people: as the lips meet, the souls connect. If that first soul connection
goes right, then that’s a happy beginning and the two of them can set out to
build their happy ending. The “they lived happily ever after” thing that so
many people seem to hate today, because it gives a “fake notion of reality” or
so they say, should never be withdrawn from people’s hopes and dreams,
especially if they have been through a difficult path, through a rough
situation that has made them become seekers of better things, or even if
they’ve “only” been hurt in love and know they deserve better (for some reason,
the notion nowadays seems to be that love issues are less important than
life-and-death ones, yet I believe that love should be considered just as
important in a person’s life as food, water, shelter and the free choice of
education, religion, culture, etc.). And
yet, there is a very simple thing to understand here, and that is that the
detractors of the “happily ever after” tend to refuse it on the basis of saying
that what will eventually break down the couple’s happiness could be his
infidelity, her neurosis, his violence, her disloyalty, or any mix-and-match of
the above; to that I ask, why has it become so normal to believe that one will
hurt the other so badly? Can’t we believe in ourselves as beings of love and
understanding? Yes, I know, there are plenty of humans who seem to be made up
of pure evil, but that’s a whole other psychological issue to cover at another
time (and those are the very same people that the heroes get rid of in fairytales,
anyways).
Still, in these kinds of tales, the prince and the princess
get their happily ever after because their story is one of search, growth,
understanding, maybe even evolution. In some cases, the princesses have had to
change their way of life in order to learn something and achieve a higher state
of mind, and the princes have had to devote a certain amount of time to search
for their reward, to fight off dragons and ogres and become themselves stronger
and more determined. Both of them become worthy of the other, and both of them
deserve happiness after all the tribulations they’ve had to endure.
Fairytales are not a metaphor of the girl who sits and waits
or the man who uses brute force to achieve something, and they’re not
allegories to blindness to the truth behind the shiny exterior of the prince
and princess, either, but the other way around! They see each other shine
because they have polished themselves enough through their trials, and they’ve
come to the other side ready to find each other, and they will always and
forever deserve that happy ending.
Sure, happily ever after doesn’t mean they won’t hurt when
their parents die (because the prince can only become king when his father
dies, after all), or that they’ll never have rows about money or how to
decorate the house or might even get a few more trials come their way: maybe
they’ll lose their first child, another kingdom might try to invade, they
realise that the kingdom has gone bankrupt, etc.; yet what’ll keep them sane
and returning to happiness will be determined by how they deal with any of
those things together, because one of
the many things that happiness is, it is a choice, so if they choose to remain
loving and supportive, and to keep a positive outlook on life because they’re
together to deal with those new tribulations, they will manage to keep the
happily ever after active through the ups or downs they might experience… Well,
sure, the best thing would be that none of those bad things happen, because
they’re fully deserving of unfaltering happiness, as I’ve previously mentioned,
but in any case and event, what I just described in this paragraph is my answer
to those who say that LIFE
cannot contain a happily ever after for any given person – make of that what
you will.
Yet, before I go, I need to add that I’m not excusing the
over-simplification of fairytales of the sexist interpretations that have been
made over and over by movie studios and toy brands. That’s their mistake, not
the original tale in question. And regarding the original fairytales: yes, some
of them are horrifying and traumatic (hence my inspiration for my paranormal
crime thriller Wideawake being Sleeping Beauty!), but that’s exactly why they
deserve a happy ending, poor souls!
With that in mind, I will speak of Sleeping Beauty, and also
about Beauty and the Beast another time. For now I bid you all farewell and wish
upon you a shower of love!
Sandra Cole ≈ Writer, dreamer, seeker, lover
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