ONCE UPON A CUR(S)E: Disability and fractured prosthesis in contemporary fairy tale retellings

Julie Sanders suggests that fairy tales are suitable sites for reimagining because they exist in an abstract social and geographic context, yet she highlights a 'detectable counter-movement' which attempts to relocate the stories back into a social context' (Sanders 2015). From Disney, to adaptations that resist "disneyfication", the twenty-first century has seen a desire to subvert the typically passive female characterising and heteronormative happy ending of traditional western fairy tales. Angela Carter states that 'the fairy tale is not usually constructed so as to invite the audience to share a sense of lived experience' (Carter 1990, xi). The world of princesses and beasts is set apart from our own, and yet there is a conscious endeavour to comment on the lived experience of female fairy tale characters in a way that has been historically overlooked. I argue that the same investigation into the lived experience of disability is so far from being engaged with by both academia and wider society, that even texts which self-consciously attempt to bring traditional tales in line with contemporary feminist values ignore ableism as a genre trope that needs updating.

My project outlines a new concept, 'fractured prosthesis', to adequately investigate the alterations, additions and erasures made to disabled characters in contemporary fractured fairy tales. I argue that this analysis is vital in understanding contemporary perceptions of ability and disability. However, I will go beyond this binary to examine the spectrum of disability and the unspoken hierarchy society imposes on these differences. Examining Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue, The Surface Breaks by Louise O'Neill and A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Bridget Kemmerer, my research will argue that the reliance on fractured prosthesis to counter patriarchal tropes of the fairy tale genre results in a fractured form of ableism.

For my creative piece I propose to write a hybrid novel / short story collection framed within a retelling of Rapunzel, foregrounding the lived experience of disabled characters. The main narrative will tell the story of Rapunzel's birth mother, her adopted mother, and the patriarchal world these two different women attempt to conquer in their own ways. Meanwhile, the reader witnesses Rapunzel navigating this same world with an upper limb disability. The short stories will feature as disability-centric fairy tales Rapunzel hears growing up.

My concept, 'fractured prosthesis', builds on the work of David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder. In 'narrative prosthesis' they argue the representation of disability in literature is often a symbolic form of characterisation, or used as a metaphor for other societal issues (Mitchell and Snyder, 2000). Within fairy tale scholarship, Ann Schmiesing furthers this idea with her own term 'editorial prosthesis' (Schmeising, 2014); she describes this as 'a narrative prosthesis introduced, augmented, or commented on by the Grimms' in the seven editions of Kinder und Hausmachen by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm (Schmiesing, 2014). However, neither of these concepts provide an adequate framework to investigate how contemporary fairy tales are using disability in new and often harmful ways.