Sleeping Beauty - Myth Themes

Myth Themes

Some folklorists have analyzed Sleeping Beauty as indicating the replacement of the lunar year (with its thirteen months, symbolically depicted by the full thirteen fairies) by the solar year (which has twelve, symbolically the invited fairies). This, however, founders on the issue that only in the Grimms' tale is the wicked fairy the thirteenth fairy; in Perrault's, she is the eighth. The basic elements of the story can also be interpreted as a nature allegory: the Princess represents Nature, the Wicked Fairy is Winter, who puts the Court to sleep with pricks of frost until the Prince (Spring) cuts away the brambles with his sword (a sunbeam) to allow the sun to awaken sleeping Nature.

Among familiar themes and elements in Perrault's tale:

  • the Wished-for Child Further information: Saint Anne and Rapunzel
  • the Accursed Gift Further information: Nessus and Deianira
  • the Inevitable Fate
  • the Spinner Further information: Moirai and Norn
  • the Heroic Quest
  • the Ogre Stepmother
  • the Salvation through a Redemptor. Slumber as metaphor for sleeping death as though by sin
  • the Substituted Victim Further information: Isaac, Jesus, Zeus, Cronos and Iphigeneia
See also: Weaving (mythology)

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