Invited to join the conversation on fairy tales on Life Matters on Friday with Jack Zipes, eminent fairy tale researcher and Kate Forsyth, author of one of my favourite books, The Wild Girl, I was challenged to name by favourite Australian fairy tales by a Glen Iris Primary parent who had listened to the conversation on my return to school. Life Matters
Of the classics I choose Cinderella, fascinated by the way inanimate objects such as
pumpkins turn into golden coaches and the importance of finding some-one with
the 'right fit' for a relationship (if only by the tangible and symbolic search
via glass slipper).
My
Australian choice is a small book of which there is only one known copy in the
State Library, Victoria: Rosalie's Reward; or the fairy treasure. It has
some of the elements of the Cinderella fairy tale: an impoverished child
abandoned (through financial necessity) by her mother, a Prince who rescues her
and a group of fairies who do the work of the traditional single fairy
Godmother.
Rosalie’s
Reward begins with a poetic description of Ballaarat that evokes both
mood and time. The house stands in ‘gloomy silence’ and the sounds of mining
are sprinkled throughout the text. ‘ Shrill whistle heard so clearly in the
silence that called the miners to midnight toil.’ Fairy tale motifs are changed to
reflect the Goldfield's society and include: being in limbo - Rosalie is left
by her mother who has to earn money by being a governess; familiar character
motifs - the hero (Rosalie who pours water on the tangled dying garden, saving
the fairies and zephyrs), the handsome prince (an old Scottish Miner, about to
die, is an non-magical rescuer aided by the fairies); and a very socially
appropriate hero’s reward. In this Australian fairy tale, the palace is a
mansion in Toorak, a wealthy suburb of Melbourne.
The fairies in Rosalie's
Reward live in the rundown flower garden of a cottage near
the Ballaraat goldfields and have an energetic discussion on whether
they should reward Rosalie's kindness with beauty or gold. Unsurprisingly in a
town created by the Gold Rush it is gold. The ' rescuing prince' appears
it is in the form of an old (and rich) miner who fortunately arrives hours
before his death to bestow a golden future in Melbourne on her. We leave the
story content that Rosalie lives 'happily ever after', 'set up for life' by her
Prince, a woman in control of her own financial future.
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