The Magic Circle has quite a lot in common with
Zel—the two books were written, or at least published,
within a few years of each other, so it seems that Napoli was in a particular
frame of mind when she wrote them. The Magic Circle is a retelling
of “Hansel and Gretel”, and the first two thirds of the novel
are given over to the story of the woman who becomes the witch of the
fairy tale. The woman is known as Ugly One. Ugly One, the mother of a
young daughter, is a gifted midwife, who gives into the urgings of a greedy
neighbour and commits herself to become a sorceress, a great healer. To
do so involves a pact with devils. Ugly One believes she can outwit and
control the devils, keeping herself and her daughter safe—and she
does, until one day her vanity and pride get the better of her. She breaks
the magic circle that keeps her safe from the devils, and is transformed
into a witch. According to the lore around these things, the novel distinguishes
between a sorceress, who can control the demons who give her her power,
and a witch, who is controlled by the demons. The key thing the demons
do in The Magic Circle is command the witch to eat young children…
Napoli’s interpretation of “Hansel and Gretel” has Ugly
One retreat to the safety of the depths of the woods. She spends her days
controlling by sheer force of will the witch nature imposed upon here,
and in keeping the demons away from her home. When Hansel and Gretel appear,
lost in the woods and abandoned by their parents, Ugly One’s dual
nature is put to the test—her humanity, her motherhood, struggles
agonisingly with her witch nature. For a time, she cares for the children
and it seems the mother is winning—until a demon makes its way into
her house in the form of a spider—which Ugly One eats in an attempt
to destroy it, but instead she merely internalises it—and the demands
to eat the children take hold.
I’m sorry to spoil the ending of this short novel for you—it’s
a terrific book, and there’s much about it I haven’t been
able to address today, so you will still find a lot to enjoy in it. In
the usual version of "Hansel and Gretel", the witch is overpowered
physically and intellectually by clever, brave Gretel, who, as you will
remember, tricks the witch into testing out the heat of the oven prepared
for cooking Hans, and pushes her in to her death. Here, instead of Gretel
tricking the witch, Ugly One tricks the demon inside her into thinking
she’s being tricked by the child, and consigns herself to the flames
of death and redemption—the mother winning out over the witch in
the end. It’s an incredibly powerful and surprising conclusion—all
the more so because it’s told in the first person by Ugly One herself—and
the battle between Ugly One’s dual nature is breathtakingly realised.
And so from villains to heroes—or, in fairy tale parlance, heroines.
I said earlier that it would be difficult to imagine a contemporary fairy
tale retelling that has not been influenced in some way by feminism, and
I do believe that this is true. That is not to say, however, that this
necessarily means that all the retellings automatically feature a modern
girl—which usually means spirited, independent, and taken to the
wearing of trousers—in the heroine’s role. It is common, of
course, that the heroine of modern retellings is “feisty”,
and she’s also frequently transgressive in her version of femininity—the
heroine of Robin McKinley’s Spindle’s End, a retelling
of “The Sleeping Beauty”, for example, becomes apprenticed
to a smith in the village in which she is raised, not knowing she is in
fact Crown Princess. This is not at all untypical of contemporary retellings,
the assumption being, I suppose, that young women—the primary audience
for this sort of book—do not want to read about some simpering,
ineffectual, pathetically dependent creature. Having said that, one of
the great interests to me of the novel The Goose Girl by Shannon
Hale is that her heroine, Crown Princess Anidori-Kiladra, is not a feisty,
modern young thing, but a diffident and inarticulate young woman, totally
cowed by her impressive mother the Queen, who has what Ani calls the gift
of people-speaking, and easily overthrown by her scheming lady-in-waiting,
as per the plot of the original tale from the Brothers Grimm. This happens
when the princess and her lady-in-waiting are traveling to another country
where the princess is to marry that country’s prince.
The Goose Girl had me intrigued, because right up until the very
final chapters, Ani, as she is known, does not miraculously gain confidence,
or a silver tongue to convince that she is the true princess—indeed,
the reader wonders how Ani is going to succeed in exposing the treacherous
lady-in-waiting who has taken her rightful place, for apart from a band
of loyal friends, she seems almost entirely without the sorts of qualities
we expect of a modern heroine. Ani does succeed of course—she has
truth and the love of a good man on her side —who also happens to
be the prince and thus, conveniently, the man she’s supposed to
marry anyway—but Ani also has her own capabilities and a strength
of character that may not reveal itself in the ways we expect of a contemporary
heroine, but allows her to triumph all the same. Strike one for the not-so-feisty
girls!
©Judith Ridge 2005