The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [140]
The second stage shows the little girl growing up, endowed with all the `light' gifts laid on her at her christening - while her parents do all they can to protect her by ordering that every needle in the kingdom shall be destroyed. But eventually the day arrives when the heroine is about to enter on her adult state. She wanders into a remote and overlooked corner of her father's castle, where she discovers a mysterious old woman at a spinning wheel. Blind to the danger she is running, she asks to try the wheel. The dark prophecy is borne out, the heroine pricks her finger and swoons into unconsciousness. The rest of the castle's inhabitants follow suit, and a hedge of impenetrable thorns springs up to seal them off from the outside world. We are thus presented with one of the most haunting images in storytelling of the state of living death: the flow of life frozen in suspension.
The third stage does not unfold until decades later. Many would-be heroes have tried to penetrate to the enchanted castle without success. Only when the right moment and the perfect hero arrives can the liberation take place. At last a prince from another land chances to pass the castle, makes his way effortlessly through the hedge of thorns, finds the Princess in her remote prison and wakes her with a kiss. The whole community of the castle - from servants, guards and animals up to the king and queen - stirs back into life. The Prince and the Princess he has `won back from the dead' are married.
Sleeping Beauty is based on the type of plot we may call `Rebirth'. A hero or heroine falls under a dark spell which eventually traps them in some wintry state, akin to living death: physical or spiritual imprisonment, sleep, sickness or some other form of enchantment. For a long time they languish in this frozen condition. Then a miraculous act of redemption takes place, focused on a particular figure who helps to liberate the hero or heroine from imprisonment. From the depths of darkness they are brought up into glorious light.
Another familiar version of this theme is Snow White. Again a king and queen have a baby daughter. Again, shortly after her birth, a terrible shadow falls over her when the little Princess's loving mother dies, and is replaced by the vain and heartless stepmother, the chief dark figure of the story. Her overriding obsession is to get rid of Snow White, as the challenge to her own supremacy as the chief feminine figure in the kingdom, and she orders that Snow White should be taken out into the forest and killed. Only in the nick of time is the heroine given a partial reprieve, when the huntsman who has been ordered to kill her merely abandons her.
The second stage begins when she finds her way to the mysterious cottage inhabited by the seven dwarfs, who spend their days digging out treasure from caves deep in the mountains, and here Snow White settles down happily to a new life as `little mother' to the dwarfs. But eventually the dark shadow from the outer world again falls over her, when the wicked stepmother discovers Snow White's remote place of concealment and comes three times in disguise to offer her poisoned gifts. Each time in trusting ignorance Snow White succumbs to the temptation (like Sleeping Beauty, her naivety and limited awareness make her an unwitting party to her downfall), and each time she sinks into the state of living death. On the first two occasions the dwarfs are able to bring her back to life, but on the third - when Snow White chokes on the poisoned apple - their powers are no longer sufficient to save her. They assume she is dead, and place her on a mountaintop in a glass coffin.
Just as in Sleeping Beauty, the third and final stage of the story takes place only when many years have elapsed, when a prince arrives from a far-off land, sees the heroine in her state of suspended animation and falls in love with her. He orders that she should be taken down the mountain. As she is carried down,