Favourite fairytale?

I was a child who was often ‘away with the fairies’ –the very first book I remember reading was a Little Golden Book(in French) of three fairytales–Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast and Toads and Diamonds. Stories about once upon a time in a kingdom far far away were guaranteed to hook me in. Partly that was because my family situation was melodramatically turbulent, hothousy, and confusing, arising out of a wild and difficult past continuing on into the present (one day I’ll have to write a book about my family!) I loved disappearing into those countries of the Otherworld in the middle of family dramas. It was a real escape. But it was also more than that–it gave me insights into real people and real situations that otherwise I might not have coped with.

(If you’re interested in reading more about that aspect of my childhood, have a look at my site, at the Essays section, the essay that’s headlined ‘Away with the Fairies.)
As I grew older, I never lost my taste for fairytale, myth and legend, and as a writer, it’s at the deepest wellsprings of my art. Perrault’s tales, probably because I got to know them in my maternal tongue of French, have stayed the longest with me, but I also loved Grimm, Andersen, and more. I have lots of fairytales now on the shelves and told many of them not only to my own children, but to children in creative writing workshops (including Aboriginal children, in the 4-year workshops I ran for the Anawain Enrichment Project, here in Armidale). And the old stories still pack a huge punch, with children of all backgrounds, because they are both an escape and an illumination. Because they approach so many difficult, even hideous, things laterally, children can cope with them much better than the full-on realistic depictions of such things which I think are far too confrontational and which back you into a corner from which you cannot flee–all well and good if you’re a settled, safe child in a good, loving and sensible family, but not if you are in any emotional trouble. But quite apart from any ‘therapeutic’ value they might have, fairytales in themselves are fabulous things, able to be interpreted and used in so many different ways, with a lightness of touch that belies the often profound things they deal with..
It got me to thinking then, what was my own favourite fairytale? I think every child who knows fairytales has at least one that speaks most directly and closely to them, and that keeps popping up in their life and way of thinking. Mine’s Beauty and the Beast–from as far back as I can remember it’s given me a great thrill. Unlike Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (which are stories I greatly like, too, but don’t have quite the same strong feeling about, though I based two books on each of those), Beautydoesn’t wait around for someone to help her. She takes on the difficult task her father has had forced on him, because she loves him and because she’s brave. She deals with the Beast as a beast, but also with pity and eventually tenderness. There is something deeply languid and beautiful about their time together, even if it’s scary. And at the end, her breaking of the spell of the Beast is extraordinary. The story has everything–a brave yet feminine heroine, a hero with a terrible burden and a terrible secret and an atmosphere of eroticism, danger, magic and suspense…And unlike most literary fairytales (this one was written by the aristocratic Madame Leprince de Beaumont, one of Perrault’s disciples), it has a genuine core of real passion which links it with the older, folk-derived fairytales, and has ensured its survival when most other literary fairytale confections(except for Andersen’s) have fallen by the wayside..
Why did I respond to it? For all those reasons, but also because I was a shy, secretive child who had secret dreams of being a great adventurer, not in a ‘masculine’ sort of way (can’t stand those ‘kick-ass’ heroines of some modermn pop fantasy movies!) but in a way in which passion and danger might be linked..
So take a moment to think. What was the fairytale you most responded to as a child, and why? And does it still resonate with you today?