Marcia Lane
Chapter 3 – Out of Space, Out of Time
“The fairy tale conquers time by ignoring it.”
from Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales by Max Lüthi. Indiana UP, 1976
The first way in which the language of fairy tales differs from that of other folktales, of myths or legends, and of common speech (that is to say, speech that exists for the purpose of conveying information), is how it deals with time and place. Simply put, the traditional openings of fairy tales all work to inform the reader/listener that the story is not about the here and now. "Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away," " In a place, neither near nor far, and a time, neither now nor then," "Once there was and was not," "Long, long ago, when stones were soft," all these classic openings set a tone for the story that follows. They constitute both a disclaimer (don't worry about these things, they are not of your time and place) and an enabler (anything is possible because the events that follow are not bound by the laws of the real world that we know). So, the first thing that language tells us about fairy tales is that they happen within an inner landscape. They belong to a place that is far removed from the plebeian concerns of reality, the physical world, and yet that is familiar to everyone. The stories happen, quite literally, in the country of the mind and of the heart.
“The fairy tale conquers time by ignoring it.”
Have you ever stopped in the middle of a fairy tale, and asked a child, "And what do you think happened next?" Nine times out of ten, the listener will come up with a completely appropriate scenario. It might be outrageous or even directly counter to the rules of our physical world, but nevertheless it will agree with the possibilities of the story. The child has internalized the rules of this other world and can create a logical step in the sequence. Once we decide to go "long ago and far away," we can accept all the consequences of that decision. Animals can talk (if we say they can), shoes are magically able to leap buildings, a drink of water can change you into a beast, the hedgehog is a prince in disguise. This is not to imply that anything can happen. As teacher and storyteller Hughes Moir notes, every event, ordinary and extraordinary, "must conform to, and contribute to building, a fragile imaginary world that is temporarily believable." All this is possible, even expected because we are in no-time, no-space.
So, one of the first clues that fairy tales have to offer of their meanings is any mention of time. There are magic and symbolic combinations: three days and three nights, one week, seven years, twelve moons (the use of the moon's cycle as a temporal indicator is frequently used to indicate the female nature of one aspect of the story), quick as a wink-all are significant cultural markers. They may link to seasonal images for some listeners, the number twelve indicating the months of the year. For some they may evoke menstrual cycle or migratory patterns. In some cultures, the celebrations of certain rites of passage go on for a week. However, as Max Lüthi notes, "Narrow and rigid interpretations cannot be ascribed to a dynamic story .... One must guard against the desire to interpret every single feature, every thorn and every fly" (Once Upon a Time, 33).
In fairy tales, the latter far outnumber the former.
The no-space element is often invoked to give the listener the sense that the events of the story happened just out of range. "In a town just over the northern hills" may have given peasant listeners the feeling that strange things could happen outside of the protected walls and meadows of their valley. In some stories the message seems to be, "Stay here! Here you are safe. Out there, demons abound!" On the other hand, some stories say, "You must journey in order to become more than you are!" In fairy tales, the latter far outnumber the former. Fairy tales acknowledge that true growth demands a kind of travel-not necessarily in geographical terms, but travel in psychic distance-in order to become a wiser, more capable human. (Even this concept, however, has layered implications. Classic fairy tales delineate between male and female "journeys." Men physically leave their homes; women often journey within, or in a kind of magic terrain. But more about that in a later chapter.)
This time-space displacement happens (and here is another traditional phrase) in the blink of an eye. It is usually the first or second sentence in any story and is so well known and accepted as a convention that the listener never requires a reminder that the story is otherworldly. Even when place is not indicated, the geography of the story, which might have been familiar to a listener in the eleventh century, is certainly strange to a modern listener. This is one of the ways in which the meaning of the story has changed over time. Perhaps some fairy tales were originally told with a highly cautionary tone, as in "this happened just over that hill." That aspect of the story must certainly be softened by the centuries that the story has traveled. Perhaps if we were to say, "Once upon a time, in a suburb just past the interstate, ... " the story would have a similar resonance for a modern listener. On the other hand, the nature of distance has changed, too. So, in effect, to translate an opening that read, "In a village far over the northern mountains," the modem equivalent might be (as in the Star Wars movies) "Once, in a galaxy far away."
That aspect of the story must certainly be softened by the centuries that the story has traveled.
The stories do, of course, have real geography. Tales from Norway may have many of the same themes as those from Italy, but they "feel" colder! Apart from obvious references to weather or terrain, there is an implicit understanding of the effect that these factors have on travel or work, or on the need for shelter from the elements. But, overall, fairy tales are easily "moveable" - they are not tied to one town or country, like legends, but are allowed to be of their own place.
Within the classic stories there are certain places that have become a recognizable part of fairy-tale terrain. If we say, "In a palace ... " or "In a humble house at the end of the village, ... " we have automatically accessed a frame of reference in the listener's mind and experience. Not only do these locales lend a certain mood or tension to the story, but they also serve to reinforce the interior nature of the story. They are not, of course, specific places or cottages! As Lüthi notes, “In how many so-called ‘literary’ fairy tales is a city which the hero enters lovingly described: the narrow streets, the picturesque corners and gables, the murmuring fountains? In the genuine fairy tale, there is nothing of the sort .... The absence of all desire to describe unessential details gives the European fairy tale its clarity and precision" (p. 50).
There has been endless speculation about the meaning of certain fairy-tale places. The cave may be dark, cold, damp, frightening, sheltering, and/or desolate. It is a place of refuge, or a place of abandonment. In Freudian terms, it is the womb. In Jungian terms it is the interior of the psyche, the place where the collective unconscious dwells. It may be a place where the hero goes to gather strength or wisdom from his/her animal or other-gender sides. The cave is, most of all, a mystery, because you cannot tell what is inside until you enter.
Similarly, the forest is, a place of great danger and great promise. Like a cave, one can see only the very beginning of what a forest holds. You must enter it if you wish to pursue your quest. If you think about what a real forest looks like, you can see that this is true. That is, a forest presents itself to the outside eye as a screen. You can only see the outer layer of the forest, like a skin. Entering a forest is really entering into a living being. It has its own biology, heartbeat, circulation-even its own eyes. And that image of the forest as a sentient being is reinforced by much of what happens in the fairy tale. If the character performs some action while in the woods, the forest itself seems to know about it. The witch who lives in the deepest recesses of the forest knows what happens at its edges, because she is part of the forest itself. Cutting or damaging a tree can have consequences as serious as cutting off an arm or leg. The cave is a location, a destination, and a mystery. The forest, while still a mystery, is a creature, an alien, a friend, or a foe, or perhaps even just a bystander, but it is never indifferent.
The other factor in thinking about the nature of the forest or woods is that in daily life we are surrounded by one of the elements which make up a forest. While we are familiar with the substance, the totality is still a mystery to us. "Wood," writes J.C. Cooper, "depicts the wholeness of the primordial state ..." (Fairy Tales: Allegories of the Inner Life, The Aquarian Press, 1983, 84.)
Other significant locations in the terrain of fairy tales are defined in terms of height or depth. The symbolism of going into the earth or up to the highest mountaintop is not obscure. After all, humans (or, at least, those in Western cultures) have, for millennia, looked upward to the gods, and downward to the "dark forces" of the universe. We define divinity as being unreachably high. The conceit that evil (or the unexplainable and frightening) is within the earth, below our feet, may come from ancient explanations of earthquakes and volcanoes, but it is just as easily understood as an expression of inner conflict, suppressed anger, or sexual drives. There is very little science involved here. It is a matter of which psychological theory (or mix of psychological, anthropological, and theological theories) you choose to adopt for a particular story. The "cave-as-womb" may work for one tale; another one might suggest "cave as belly-of-the-beast."
Human beings, perhaps as a function of our curiosity, need to hear the end of a story; we crave closure in the events and relationships of our lives. Similarly, it is vital-particularly when dealing with anything as potent as the fairy realm-to settle one's business with that world before returning to this one. The power of fairy tales lies, at least partly, in the ability they possess to bring us face-to-face with frightening and magical creatures and events. For a child, the possibility that those creatures might spill over into the everyday world is the source of bad dreams and unresolved conflicts. For this reason, and to give a feeling of "roundness" to the story, there must be an act of closure, a spell of binding at the end. Just as "once upon a time" is the incantation that opens the gate to the fairy-tale world, there must be a similar incantation, that closes it.
In many western European stories, the popular ending is "and they lived happily ever after." Others include, "and if they are not dead, then they're there still,'' or "and they feasted for seven days and seven nights. I was there, so I know!" The ending utilized in some Italian stories is ''They had a great feast, and here we are with nothing!" Whatever those words might be, they serve to seal off the story world from the "real" one. It is not only a good, satisfying ending for a storytelling experience, but also a protective device for children who might otherwise find it difficult to detach from the story. The words are like a marker: that world, those people, and places, they are not now. They do not have the power to harm.
Our goal, as tellers, is not to exactly recreate the political world or the geographic location in which the story was originally born (even if it were possible to know), nor to create a "new" interpretation of the story. Our goal is to recognize all the ways in which the geography of story language affects us, the ways in which it affects the listeners, and then to get out of the way of those images!