Anuja Shukla

 

Most of us grow up not oblivious of traditional folklore and fairy tales, which play an important role in largely shaping our ideals and values. A massive chunk of these stories deals with the stories of locked away princess protagonists, described to be exceptionally beautiful and who spend their life in distress only to be relieved by marriage at the end of the story. She would recounted to be blessed with virtues like kindness, subservience, a passive trophy to be won by a warrior prince, whereas the female antagonist would be an outspoken self-reliant woman of actions; someone who can defy fate and snatch her fancies from it, and is definitely unattractive. 

 

This book is an attempt to break such stereotypes and it contains retold versions of three such stories from three different cultures,

“The Mermaid”- which is a retold version of an Irish folktale, ‘Lady of Gollerus’, “The Singing Princess”, that of the Spanish folktale ‘The Ugly Princess’, and “The Tree-Top Girl”, a version of the Romanian folktale called ‘Wild-Rose’, taken from Andrew Lang’s collection, ‘Crimson Fairy book’. Although the names of these places aren't directly mentioned, the story contains little motifs- like the native language of a particular nation, or some important part of its ethnography, that hint at the regions.

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The meta-narrative or the story of ‘Nell’ is loosely based on the American journalist 'Nellie Bly', and her contribution to an asylum, as well as her journey around the world in 72 days. The story is structured in a fashion where Nell as a fearless woman goes to rescue her brother.