Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Forgotten Founding Mothers of the Fairy Tale and the Stories That They Spun

Fabulous French fairy tales and the equally dramatic life stories of their authors shine in this fascinating book by novelist Harrington (In Circling Flight). The seven women featured all lived and wrote in 1690s France during the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV. These highly educated women were members of salons, discussion groups that were their only venue for sharing social commentary on the status of women—but only in ways that would not explicitly run afoul of the laws prohibiting criticism of the crown or the patriarchy. Telling and writing fairy tales became a coded way to offer such commentaries surreptitiously, Harrington says. Each chapter of the book showcases one salon member, via an informative biography and several of her fairy tales translated into English. Many of the fairy tales are precursors to works that would later appear in collections by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm without attribution to the women who thought them up.