Ritual in Fairytales

“The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. All other wars are subsumed in

it.” —Diane di Prima

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The more I try to understand why things feel especially broken these days, the more it feels connected to the death of the humanities. The economy prioritizes STEM, English degrees amount to increasingly little, and art is not an accessible, sustainable way to build a life. But storytelling has been vital to survival since the dawn of humanity, and as creatures who seek meaning, humans will always try to make some sense of what it means to be alive. In many ways, folktales teach us how to access our imaginations by helping us understand how people have connected to the natural world, understood their dreams, and navigated catastrophic loss for centuries. Because stories give us maps to our collective unconscious, they teach us not to be afraid of the dark. 

With this in mind, I wonder if the world feels as scary as it does because the work of the imagination has been outsourced to forces in search of money, followers, and control. If people aren’t taught to seek or make their own stories, they will be easily swayed by more nefarious sources of narrative, like propaganda, conspiracies, or religious institutions that feed off fear and ignorance. If we saw it as a priority to collect and contemplate a wide variety of stories, people would likely notice a pattern that repeats in cultures all over the world: that nothing good comes without a struggle, few things are what they appear to be, and that faith and patience are rewarded with time. 

Without this knowledge, people seek easy answers and solutions, but I think most would agree an afterlife where nothing happens would be horribly boring, and hardship often provides us with bittersweet gifts that make life all the richer. Because of how often storytelling is corrupted, the power of something like a fairytale is reduced to fairly passive saving graces, like a magic word, a tear, or true love’s kiss. But even these climactic moments are often the hard-earned aftermath of years of toil, unfathomable suffering, and dark nights of the soul. But are those struggles obstacles on the path to salvation, or the secret heart of the stories’ power? The more I explore folklore, the more certain I feel that the truest magic is the work we do. 

The most powerful, enduring heroines are often imprisoned by parents, banished by their communities, or forced to walk through vast forests with little to no security, if not a combination of cruel fates. In fact, fairytales are full of workers, often provided with impossible tasks. 

In the folktale “The Wild Swans,” (famously adapted by Hans Christian Andersen) the princess Elisa is only able to save her transmogrified brothers if she can weave painful nettles into a shirt for each without making a peep. Folk witch Baba Yaga threatens to eat Vasalisa if she can’t accomplish a lengthy list of chores to perfection. The classic Arabian folktale collection One Thousand and One Nights is named after the amount of time the maiden Scheherazade must tell all of its stories to escape death at the hands of a bored, bloodthirsty king. In each story, the work seems impossible, yet its heroines always find a way out of the woods. Are they saved by circumstance, or is it their dedication to their work that saves them?

In “The Wild Swans,” after countless dangers threaten Elisa’s high-stakes mission, she manages to save her whole family by maintaining a steadfast, faithful commitment to the task in front of her. Instead of despairing at the cruelty of Baba Yaga’s assignments, Vasalisa is able to escape the woods by feeding the magic doll her dying mother told her to trust. Scheherazade’s quick wit and clever long-term planning not only keeps her alive, but forms the backbone of Middle Eastern folklore, turning a terrifying experience into a transcendent source of meaning.

In each of these stories, women are not doomed by labor, but entrusted with the responsibility that eventually leads them to understand their power and agency. While we may be encouraged to read happy endings as fantasy, classic stories could just as easily be symbols of the rewards that lie on the other side of dedicated, continuous work. A weaver repeatedly moves a needle through a loom, and one day there’s a finished tapestry in front of her. Scheherazade keeps telling her stories, and one day, she’s free.

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Sarah Fonder is a writer and editor with a passion for arts criticism, media literacy, and human interest stories. You can find her work in a wide range of publications including The Dieline, PRINT, Core77, Design Observer, The Decider, and BUST.