Modern vs. Period Fairy Tale Retelling

Graphic by Peg Ihinger

Folk tales and fairy stories have been around for as long as people have. Specific details don’t always stay the same—there are over 300 versions of the story we mostly know as “Cinderella.” Some use a ring as identification, rather than a shoe; in others she attends the prince’s ball three nights in a row instead of once, but the bones of the story remain recognizable. Writers can do a lot of different things with those sorts of story-bones, so it’s understandable that people still rewrite and update fairy tales. The movie “Pretty Woman” is a modern retelling that recasts the prince as a wealthy man and the Cinderella character as a prostitute/escort; Elle Enchanted retells the canonical fairy tale as a fairy’s thoughtless christening gift gone wrong; The Coachman Rat follows the viewpoint of the rat who accidentally retains human intelligence and speech after having been Cinderella’s coachman; Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister tells the story from the point of view of one of the stepsisters; Tanith Lee’s short story “When the Clock Strikes” turns the fairy tale into a horror story of revenge, and that barely scratches the surface.

But for every successful retelling, updating, revision, or reimagining, there’s another that misses the mark completely. Using a fairy tale as the basis for a novel is not a guarantee of success. It’s not even a guarantee that the novel will be as good as the fairy tale. Whether it works depends on what the writer does with it, and there are more pitfalls to navigate than one might think.

Probably the first one has to do with where the writer is starting. It makes a huge difference whether one begins with wanting to expand on a favorite fairytale, like the many straightforward novel-length retellings of Cinderella, or whether one begins intending to reimagine a fairy tale plotline in the modern world. In the first instance, the writer will probably keep most of the fairy tale recognizable, including characters, plot, and historical setting. The finished novel may expand on things like the characters’ motivations, or center an actual historical event such as one of the bride-shows at which Russian or Byzantine emperors chose their empress, or choose a different viewpoint, but the story will be fundamentally the same.

Reimagining the fairy tale, on the other hand, often focuses on the themes and archetypes of the original story, rather than the events. This might mean downplaying some elements of the tale to better fit it into a realistic modern setting—instead of a prince, Cinderella is paired with a man who is high-status because of his wealth or fame; instead of a fairy godmother and a magical transformation, Cinderella gets a six-week course at a finishing school; etc. The story is recognizably the same, but details have been updated. On the other hand, reimagining may mean ignoring plot as well as period. A modern story in which Cinderella is the youngest sister of a poor family, who transforms into a fiery revolutionary when her siblings are mistreated, and who ends up hunted by the FBI after blowing up a major gala is barely recognizable as the story that inspired it.

It’s easy to go too far when trying to update a fairy tale. A realistically in-period rewrite of Cinderella can get away with making her father an alcoholic instead of absent/dead, but having her invent AA meetings and talk therapy in order to have said alcoholic father recover in time for her wedding to the prince is such an obvious imposition of modern culture on both the medieval/Renaissance period and the fairy-tale milieu itself that it breaks the suspension of disbelief for a lot of readers (me included). A modern retelling of Snow White where she runs away from her wealthy upbringing to become a union organizer for the dwarves works fine; the same premise doesn’t work if she’s a princess in a time when unions didn’t exist, let alone organizers, and serfs were a thing. A realistic modern retelling, on the other hand, has to invent a small, wealthy, imaginary country ruled by a monarchy if it wants to get away with a literal prince or princess as a central figure in the story, instead of going with a celebrity or child of wealth.

A few books, such as Peg Kerr’s The Wild Swans, manage to have it both ways by using two story threads—one a historical retelling, one a modern-day (or nearly) one. Some modern retellings work by making the magical/monarchical elements part of a “hidden world” that operates either in secret alongside the real one, or on a completely different, magical-supernatural plane that’s only accessible under specific conditions.

Humor is another way of making incompatible elements work together—if you’re writing an obvious parody, you can get away with all sorts of improbabilities, as long as they’re funny. Parody, in fact, is often even funnier if the medieval king is sending Prince Charming off to handle negotiations with the newly unionized palace guard, or Cinderella wants to be part of the rock band that’s opening the ball (rather than dancing at it). If it’s funny enough, people may not even notice that the Federal Aviation Administration hasn’t started investigating either Jack’s enormously tall beanstalk or the giant floating castle interfering with airplane routes (though actually, I think it would be funnier to have an FAA inspector running around trying to put all these improbabilities into bureaucratic language that won’t get him/her thrown in the loony bin).

Telling “the other side of the story”—i.e. changing the focus from Cinderella to someone else (the godmother, stepmother, prince, even the coachman)—can let the writer put in all sorts of stuff that was “left out” of the “official” (original well-known) version, whether we’re talking modern-day or period setting. It still doesn’t justify having someone invent Alcoholics Anonymous in 1648, though (there are limits). You can even present “the real story” while keeping the canonical main character, if said main character is grumpy about how their story was romanticized or cleaned up in the official version.

Ultimately, the real test is whether the story the writer wants to tell works well with the bits the writer is pulling from the original fairy tale. The musical “Annie” can be looked at as a Cinderella rags-to-riches story without the romance, in which the child protagonist is adopted by the wealthy tycoon instead of marrying him. Lots of the plot beats fit—the stepmother/orphanage manager who tries to prevent the connection, the search for the missing protagonist, etc. What the author chooses to leave out—the romance—is as important as what they chose to keep.