I know that sounds like tired feminist drivel, but there also happens to be some truth to it, as the Church found it convenient to simply rename many holidays and figures from myth in order to make conversion more palatable to the masses. It only follows that folktales would have undergone similar conversions. Ms. Valente's retelling of stories from the perspective of the women involved is nothing more than a continuation of the ongoing process of a story's evolution.
A Guide To Folktales In Fragile Dialects is a collection of poems and short fiction that gathers stories from cultures around the world and adapts them so the story is not just seen through a woman's eyes, but also reflects her needs and desires as a person. What if Cinderella didn't have any intention of marrying Prince Charming, but only wanted a chance to go to a ball? Was Rapunzel really in need of rescue? What about all the rest of the fair flowers we've read about waiting for a knight in shining armour or its equivalent? Maybe they didn't really want to be rescued.
In this collection, the poem "Glass, Blood, and Ash" tells the Cinderella tale from the perspective of a young woman who doesn't particularly want a Prince Charming. "I never wanted it,” she says. "I just wanted to look like you for one night. It should be you hoisted up like a sack of wheat...You will like it - they will put emeralds in your hair and a thin gold crown on your head." She mounts argument after argument in order to convince her sister she is the one who should be marrying the Prince and not her. All she has to do is fit in the shoe and the Prince won't know the difference.
How much vengeance might she be enacting with this gift? There is the matter of ensuring the foot fits, after all. "The doves, their claws still dusty with kitchen-ash / brought me a knife hammered out of a diamond / It is so thin / that a whisper will shatter it / but so sharp / that the flesh cleaves / believes itself whole / Give me your toe..." Here dear sister, hold out your foot and I'll whittle it down to size so you fit into the glass slipper; then you can be princess. Isn't that a kind, sisterly, thought? Well of course it is, for as Cinderella says -"Give me your toe / I'm the gentle one, remember?"
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