A Return to the Fairy Tale

by Kristina Curkovic

Once upon a time we all read fairy tales, those ancient stories that represent lessons and beliefs, dreams and wishes; we became familiar with the ancient motifs that are used over and over in stories, so that we instinctively know how a story "should" go. A.S. Byatt, whose previous works include Possession and Angels and Insects, attempts to recreate some of those stories for a modern audience through five short fairy tales that are both contemporary and other­worldly in The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye.

The first four tales are part of the latter category, filled with old women in dark forests, palaces and princesses, magic spells and dragons. Yet, while the tales are often flights of fancy, each has a touch of the academic rhetoric and self­reflection color the text and its characters. In "The Story of the Eldest Princess," the title character starts off on her trek to save her kingdom and considers the fate of the adventuring eldest princes and princesses in fairy tales. "She thought she would not like to waste seven years of her brief life as a statue or prisoner if it could be avoided." And so the princess spends the rest of the story carefully making choices based on what she knows of fairy tales.

Such self­reflexivity is refreshing, although not necessarily inventive recent "politically correct" fairy tales also recreated the idea of the fairy tale in a funny, flippant way. However, Byatt's heroes and heroines are mostly humorless, dealing with their situations very level­headedly and seriously, where passion and humor would have filled in the predictable, empty spots.

On the other hand, Byatt's tales are beautifully constructed with pretty images and delicate, feminine language. In describing a magical moment in the most fairy­like of the tales, "The Glass Coffin," Byatt's little tailor uses a magic key to open a coffin, and "as the key slipped into the keyhole and melted, as it seemed into the glass body of the casket ... in a very orderly way, and with a strange bell­tinkling, the coffin broke into a collection of long icicle splinters, that range and vanished as they touched the earth." The book is filled with such descriptive and lyrical language, creating a true feeling of lands of little beings and magical happenings.

The entire book is a successful adventure back into the traditional realm of the fairy tale, aside from occasional missteps in certain stories. "Dragon's Breath" is the book's darkest tale, and its unusual construction and less­than­happy ending contrast with those of the others in the book. This story was written, however, for a specific audience at a charity event for the war in Bosnia, where fairy tales are hard­pressed for happy endings and genies flee for unbroken bottles. "Gode's Story" has a touch of the ancient in it, and is a curious look into another dark world of undying love and lost dreams. While Byatt's tendency is toward a reconstruction of the fairy tale, most of her success lies not in ingenuity, but in, like all fairy tales, a basically good story.

We find just that in the final tale, which is the basis of the book's title and is the book's finest creative piece. It is the modern-day story of Dr. Gillian Perholt, an English narratologist who has recently separated from her husband. In Turkey during a conference, Gillian comes across a beautiful glass bottle, called a nightingale's eye, and upon washing it a djinn a male genie appears and grants Gillian the customary three wishes. Byatt demonstrates her skill,as she did in her Booker Prize­winning Possession, in overlapping narratives and tying them together coherently and creatively. The djinn's amazingly told story becomes important in Gillian's careful choice of wishes, along with stories from Gillian's own past and, like the Eldest Princess, her vast and knowledge of stories. "Djinn" follows Gillian through her three choices and her unique relationship with the djinn, who himself is a fascinating, and very sexual character, a product of Byatt's descriptive ability and her own background in stories and storytellin.

One of the factors that makes The Djinn such a unique collection of fairy tales is Byatt's ability to reflect back on the fairy tale while creating the fairy tale itself. While it may dilute some of the magic of the unknown, the self­reflexive nature of these stories creates a new and successful way of looking at an ancient and popular art form. MR

This article was published in the 21 January 1998 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 16, Number 6).
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