"Sleeping Beauty" (French: La Belle au bois dormant, or The Beauty Sleeping in the Wood[1][a]; German: Dornröschen, or Little Briar Rose), also titled in English as The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods, is a fairy tale about a princess cursed by an evil fairy to sleep for a hundred years before being awakened by a handsome prince. A good fairy, knowing the princess would be frightened if alone when she wakes, uses her wand to put every living person and animal in the palace and forest asleep, to awaken when the princess does.[6]
The Aarne-Thompson classification system for fairy tales lists Sleeping Beauty as a Type 410: it includes a princess who is magically forced into sleep and later woken, reversing the magic.[12] The fairy tale has been adapted countless times throughout history and retold by modern storytellers across various media.
Origin
Early contributions to the tale include the medieval courtly romance Perceforest (c. 1337–1344).[13] In this tale, a princess named Zellandine falls in love with a man named Troylus. Her father sends him to perform tasks to prove himself worthy of her, and while he is gone, Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep. Troylus finds her, and rapes her in her sleep. They conceive and when their child is born, the child draws from her finger the flax that caused her sleep. She realizes from the ring Troylus left her that he was the father, and Troylus later returns to marry her.[14] Another early literary predecessor is the Provençal versified novel Fraire de Joi e sor de Plaser [ca] (c. 1320–1340).[15][16]
The second part of the Sleeping Beauty tale, in which the princess and her children are almost put to death but instead are hidden, may have been influenced by Genevieve of Brabant.[17] Even earlier influences come from the story of the sleeping Brynhild in the Volsunga saga and the tribulations of saintly female martyrs in early Christian hagiography conventions. Following these early renditions, the tale was first published by Italian poet Giambattista Basile who lived from 1575 to 1632.
The folktale begins with a princess whose parents are told by a wicked fairy that their daughter will die when she pricks her finger on a particular item. In Basile's version, the princess pricks her finger on a piece of flax. In Perrault's and the Grimm Brothers' versions, the item is a spindle. The parents rid the kingdom of these items in the hopes of protecting their daughter, but the prophecy is fulfilled regardless. Instead of dying, as was foretold, the princess falls into a deep sleep. After some time, she is found by a prince and is awakened. In Giambattista Basile's version of Sleeping Beauty, Sun, Moon, and Talia, the sleeping beauty, Talia, falls into a deep sleep after getting a splinter of flax in her finger. She is discovered in her palace by a wandering king, who "carrie[s] her to a bed, where he gather[s] the first fruits of love."[18] He abandons her there after the assault and she later gives birth to twins while still unconscious.[19]
According to Maria Tatar, there are versions of the story that include a second part to the narrative that details the couple's troubles after their union; some folklorists believe the two parts were originally separate tales.[20]
The second part begins after the prince and princess have had children. Through the course of the tale, the princess and her children are introduced in some way to another woman from the prince's life. This other woman is not fond of the prince's new family, and calls a cook to kill the children and serve them for dinner. Instead of obeying, the cook hides the children and serves livestock. Next, the other woman orders the cook to kill the princess. Before this can happen, the other woman's true nature is revealed to the prince and then she is subjected to the very death that she had planned for the princess. The princess, prince, and their children live happily ever after.[21]
In Giambattista Basile's dark version of Sleeping Beauty, Sun, Moon, and Talia, the sleeping beauty is named Talia. By asking wise men and astrologers to predict her future after her birth, her father, who is a great Lord, learns that Talia will be in danger from a splinter of flax. Talia, now grown, sees an old woman spinning outside her window. Intrigued by the sight of the twirling spindle, Talia invites the woman over and takes the distaff from her hand to stretch the flax. Tragically, the splinter of flax gets embedded under her nail, and she is put to sleep. After Talia falls asleep, she is seated on a velvet throne and her father, to forget his misery of what he thinks is her death, closes the doors and abandons the house forever. One day, while a king is walking by, one of his falcons flies into the house. The king knocks, hoping to be let in by someone, but no one answers, and he decides to climb in with a ladder. He finds Talia alive but unconscious, and "…gathers the first fruits of love."[22] Afterwards, he leaves her in bed and goes back to his kingdom. Though Talia is unconscious, she gives birth to twins—one of whom keeps sucking her finger. Talia awakens because the twin has sucked out the flax that got stuck in her finger. When she wakes up, she discovers that she is a mother and has no idea what happened to her. One day, the king decides he wants to go see Talia again. He goes back to the palace to find her awake and a mother to his twins. He informs her of who he is, what has happened, and they end up bonding. After a few days, the king has to leave to go back to his realm but promises Talia that he will return to take her to his kingdom.
When he arrives back in his kingdom, his wife hears him saying "Talia, Sun, and Moon" in his sleep. She bribes and threatens the king's secretary to tell her what is going on. After the queen learns the truth, she pretends she is the king and writes to Talia asking her to send the twins because he wants to see them. Talia sends her twins to the "king" and the queen tells the cook to kill the twins and make dishes out of them. She wants to feed the king his children; instead, the cook takes the twins to his wife and hides them. He then cooks two lambs and serves them as if they were the twins. Every time the king mentions how good the food is, the queen replies, "Eat, eat, you are eating of your own." Later, the queen invites Talia to the kingdom and is going to burn her alive, but the king appears and finds out what's going on with his children and Talia. He then orders that his wife be burned along with those who betrayed him. Since the cook actually did not obey the queen, the king thanks the cook for saving his children by giving him rewards. The story ends with the king marrying Talia and living happily ever after.[18]
Perrault's narrative
Sleeping Beauty is shown a spindle by the old woman. Sleeping Beauty, by Alexander Zick (1845–1907)
Perrault's narrative is written in two parts, which some folklorists believe were originally separate tales, as they were in the Brothers Grimm's version, and were later joined together by Giambattista Basile and once more by Perrault.[20] According to folklore editors Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek, Perrault's tale is a much more subtle and pared down version than Basile's story in terms of the more immoral details. An example of this is depicted in Perrault's tale by the prince's choice to instigate no physical interaction with the sleeping princess when he discovers her.[9]
At the christening of a king and queen's long-wished-for child, seven good fairies are invited to be the infant Princess's godmothers and give her gifts. The seven fairies attend the banquet at the palace and each is given a golden box containing golden utensils adorned with diamonds and rubies. Soon after, an old fairy enters the palace, overlooked because she has not left her tower in fifty years and everyone believed her to be cursed or dead. Nevertheless, the eighth fairy is seated and given a box of ordinary utensils. When she hears the eighth fairy muttering some threats, the seventh, fearing that the uninvited guest will harm the Princess, hides herself behind some curtains, so she can be the last to give a gift.
Six of the invited fairies offer their gifts of pure beauty, wit, grace, dance, song, and musical talent to the infant Princess. The eighth fairy, who is very angry about not being invited, curses the infant Princess so that she will one day prick her finger on a spindle of a spinning wheel and die. The seventh fairy then offers her gift: an attempt to reverse the evil fairy's curse, but she can only do so partially. Instead of dying, the Princess will fall into a deep sleep for 100 years and be awakened by a king's son ("elle tombera seulement dans un profond sommeil qui durera cent ans, au bout desquels le fils d’un Roi viendra la réveiller").
The King then orders all spinning wheels in the kingdom banned and destroyed in an attempt to avert the eighth fairy's curse on his daughter. Fifteen or sixteen years pass and one day, when the king and queen are away, the Princess wanders through the palace rooms and comes upon an old woman (implied to be the evil fairy in disguise), spinning with her spindle. The Princess, who has never seen a spinning wheel before, asks the old woman if she can try it. The curse is fulfilled when the princess pricks her finger on the spindle and instantly falls into a deep sleep. The old woman cries for help and attempts are made to revive the princess. The king attributes this to fate and has the Princess carried to the finest room in the palace and placed upon a bed of gold and silver embroidered fabric. The seventh fairy arrives in her dragon-drawn chariot. Having great powers of foresight, the fairy sees that the Princess will awaken to distress when she finds herself alone, so the fairy puts everyone in the castle, except the King and Queen, to sleep. The King and Queen kiss their daughter goodbye and leave the castle to ban others from disturbing her, but the good fairy summons a forest of trees, brambles and thorns to spring up around the place, shielding it from the outside world.
A hundred years pass and a prince from another royal family spies the hidden castle during a hunting expedition. His attendants tell him differing stories regarding the castle until an old man recounts his father's words: within the castle lies a very beautiful princess who is doomed to sleep for a hundred years until a king's son comes and awakens her. The prince then braves the tall trees, brambles and thorns which part at his approach, and enters the castle. He passes the sleeping castle folk and comes across the chamber where the Princess lies asleep on the bed. Struck by the radiant beauty before him, he falls on his knees before her. The spell is broken, the princess awakens and bestows upon the prince a look "more tender than a first glance might seem to warrant" (in Perrault's original French tale, the prince does not kiss the princess to wake her up) then converses with the prince for a long time. Meanwhile, the servants of the castle awaken and go about their business. The prince and princess are later married by the chaplain in the castle chapel.
After marrying the Sleeping Beauty in secret, the Prince visits her for four years and she bears him two children, unbeknownst to his mother, who is an ogre. When his father, the King, dies, the Prince ascends the throne and he brings his wife, who is now twenty years old, and their two children - a four-year-old daughter named Morning (Aurore or Dawn in the original French) and a three-year-old son named Day (Jour in the original French) - to his kingdom.
One day, the new King must go to war against his neighbor, Emperor Contalabutte, and leaves his mother to govern the kingdom and look after his family. After her son leaves, the Ogress Queen Mother sends her daughter-in-law to a house secluded in the woods and orders her cook to prepare Morning with Sauce Robert for dinner. The kind-hearted cook substitutes a lamb for the princess, which satisfies the Queen Mother. She then demands Day, but the cook this time substitutes a kid for the prince, which also satisfies the Queen Mother. When the Ogress demands that he serve up the Sleeping Beauty, the latter substitutes a hind prepared with Sauce Robert, satisfying the Ogress, and secretly reuniting the young Queen with her children, who have been hidden by the cook's wife and maid. However, the Queen Mother soon discovers the cook's trick and she prepares a tub in the courtyard filled with vipers and other noxious creatures. The King returns home unexpectedly and the Ogress, her true nature having been exposed, throws herself into the tub and is fully consumed by the creatures. The King, young Queen, and children then live happily ever after.
Brothers Grimm's version
Sleeping Beauty and the palace dwellers under a century-long sleep enchantment (The Sleeping Beauty by Sir Edward Burne-Jones).
The Brothers Grimm included a variant of Sleeping Beauty, Little Briar Rose, in the first volume of Children's and Household Tales (published 1812).[23] Their version ends when the prince arrives to wake Sleeping Beauty (named Rosamund) with a kiss and does not include the part two as found in Basile's and Perrault's versions.[24] The brothers considered rejecting the story on the grounds that it was derived from Perrault's version, but the presence of the Brynhild tale convinced them to include it as an authentically German tale. Their decision was notable because in none of the Teutonic myths, meaning the Poetic and Prose Eddas or Volsunga Saga, are their sleepers awakened with a kiss, a fact Jacob Grimm would have known since he wrote an encyclopedic volume on German mythology. His version is the only known German variant of the tale, and Perrault's influence is almost certain.[25] In the original Brothers Grimm's version, the fairies are instead wise women.[26]
The Brothers Grimm also included, in the first edition of their tales, a fragmentary fairy tale, "The Evil Mother-in-law". This story begins with the heroine, a married mother of two children, and her mother-in-law, who attempts to eat her and the children. The heroine suggests an animal be substituted in the dish, and the story ends with the heroine's worry that she cannot keep her children from crying and getting the mother-in-law's attention. Like many German tales showing French influence, it appeared in no subsequent edition.[27]
He stands—he stoops to gaze—he kneels—he wakes her with a kiss, woodcut by Walter Crane
The princess's name has varied from one adaptation to the other. In Sun, Moon, and Talia, she is named Talia (Sun and Moon being her twin children). She has no name in Perrault's story but her daughter is called "Aurore". The Brothers Grimm named her "Briar Rose" in their first collection.[23] However, some translations of the Grimms' tale give the princess the name "Rosamond". Tchaikovsky's ballet and Disney's version named her Princess Aurora; however, in the Disney version, she is also called "Briar Rose" in her childhood, when she is being raised incognito by the good fairies.[28]
Besides Sun, Moon, and Talia, Basile included another variant of this Aarne-Thompson type, The Young Slave, in his book, The Pentamerone. The Grimms also included a second, more distantly related one titled The Glass Coffin.[29]
Italo Calvino included a variant in Italian Folktales, Sleeping Beauty and Her Children. In his version, the cause of the princess's sleep is a wish by her mother. As in Pentamerone, the prince rapes her in her sleep and her children are born. Calvino retains the element that the woman who tries to kill the children is the king's mother, not his wife, but adds that she does not want to eat them herself, and instead serves them to the king. His version came from Calabria, but he noted that all Italian versions closely followed Basile's.[30][31]
The hostility of the king's mother to his new bride is repeated in the fairy tale The Six Swans,[33] and also features in The Twelve Wild Ducks, where the mother is modified to be the king's stepmother. However, these tales omit the attempted cannibalism.
According to Maria Tatar, the Sleeping Beauty tale has been disparaged by modern-day feminists who consider the protagonist to have no agency and find her passivity to be offensive; some feminists have even argued for people to stop telling the story altogether.[35]
Disney has received criticism for depicting both Cinderella and the Sleeping Beauty princess as "naïve and malleable" characters.[36]Time Out dismissed the princess as a "delicate" and "vapid" character.[37] Sonia Saraiya of Jezebel echoed this sentiment, criticizing the princess for lacking "interesting qualities", where she also ranked her as Disney's least feminist princess.[38] Similarly, Bustle also ranked the princess as the least feminist Disney Princess, with author Chelsea Mize expounding, "Aurora literally sleeps for like three quarters of the movie… Aurora just straight-up has no agency, and really isn't doing much in the way of feminine progress."[39] Leigh Butler of Tor.com went on to defend the character writing, "Aurora’s cipher-ness in Sleeping Beauty would be infuriating if she were the only female character in it, but the presence of the Fairies and Maleficent allow her to be what she is without it being a subconscious statement on what all women are."[40] Similarly, Refinery29 ranked Princess Aurora the fourth most feminist Disney Princess because, "Her aunts have essentially raised her in a place where women run the game."[41] Despite being featured prominently in Disney merchandise, "Aurora has become an oft-forgotten princess", and her popularity pales in comparison to those of Cinderella and Snow White.[42]
An example of the cosmic interpretation of the tale given by the nineteenth century solar mythologist school[43] appears in John Fiske's Myths and Myth-Makers: “It is perhaps less obvious that winter should be so frequently symbolized as a thorn or sharp instrument... Sigurd is slain by a thorn, and Balder by a sharp sprig of mistletoe; and in the myth of the Sleeping Beauty, the earth-goddess sinks into her long winter sleep when pricked by the point of the spindle. In her cosmic palace, all is locked in icy repose, naught thriving save the ivy which defies the cold, until the kiss of the golden-haired sun-god reawakens life and activity.”[44]
Media
"Sleeping Beauty" has been popular for many fairytale fantasy retellings. Some examples are listed below:
In film and television
La Belle au bois dormant (1908), directed by Lucien Nonguet and Albert Capellani
A 1986 episode of Brummkreisel had Kunibert (Hans-Joachim Leschnitz) demanding that he and his friends Achim (Joachim Kaps), Hops and Mops enact the story of Sleeping Beauty. Achim first compromises by incorporating Sleeping Beauty into his lesson about days of the week, and then finally he allows Kunibert to have his way; Hops played the princess, Kunibert played the prince, Mops played the wicked fairy and Achim played the brambles.
Sleeping Beauty (1987), a direct-to-television musical film directed by David Irving.[60]
Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child (1995), episode Sleeping Beauty, the classic story is told with a Hispanic cast, when Rosita is cast into a long sleep by Evelina, and later awakened by Prince Luis.[66]
The Legend of Sleeping Beauty (La leggenda della bella addormentata) (1998), an Italian television series of 26 episodes, distributed by Mondo tv.
The Triplets (Les tres bessones/Las tres mellizas) (1997–2003), catalan animated series, season 1 episode 19.
Sleeping Beauty (2011), directed by Julia Leigh and starring Emily Browning, about a young girl who takes a sleeping potion and lets men have their way with her to earn extra money.[70]
Avengers Grimm (2015) portrays an adult Sleeping Beauty with superpowers.
Sleeping Beauty is a main character of the "Neverafter" season of the tabletop role-playing game show Dimension 20. She is played by Siobhan Thompson. In this adaptation, she goes by the name Rosamund du Prix (2022–2023).
Awakening Sleeping Beauty (2025), an upcoming horror re-telling of the story set in The Twisted Childhood Universe, directed by Louisa Warren and starring Lora Hristova, Robbie Taylor and Charlotte Coleman as Princess Thalia, the Prince and Queen Primrose, respectively, along with Lila Lasso, Leah Glater, Sophie Rankin, Judy Tcherniak and Danielle Scott.
The Sleeping Beauty (1919), a poem by Mary Carolyn Davies about a failed hero who did not waken the princess, but died in the enchanted briars surrounding her palace.[79]
The Sleeping Beauty (1920), a retelling of the fairy tale by Charles Evans, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham.[80]
Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty) (1971), a poem by Anne Sexton in her collection Transformations (1971), in which she re-envisions sixteen of the Grimm's Fairy Tales.[81]
The Sleeping Beauty Quartet (1983–2015), four erotic novels written by Anne Rice under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure, set in a medieval fantasy world and loosely based on the fairy tale.[82]
Sleeping Beauty: The One Who Took the Really Long Nap (2018), a novel by Wendy Mass and the second book in the Twice Upon a Time series features a princess named Rose who pricks her finger and falls asleep for 100 years.[90]
The Sleepless Beauty (2019), a novel by Rajesh Talwar setting the story in a small kingdom in the Himalayas.[91]
Lava Red Feather Blue (2021), a novel by Molly Ringle involving a male/male twist on the Sleeping Beauty story.
Malice (2021), a novel by Heather Walter told by the Maleficent character's (Alyce's) POV and involving a woman/woman love story. [92]
Misrule (2022), a novel by Heather Walter and sequel to Malice. [93]
Immortality, a poem by Lisel Mueller in her Pulitzer Prize winning book "Alive Together"
The Sleeping Beauty (1992), song on album Clouds by the Swedish band Tiamat.
Sleeping Beauty Wakes (2008), an album by the American musical trio GrooveLily.[95]
There Was A Princess Long Ago, a common nursery rhyme or singing game typically sung stood in a circle with actions, retells the story of Sleeping Beauty in a summarised song.[96]
Sleeping Beauty The Musical (2019), a two act musical with book and lyrics by Ian Curran and music by Simon Hanson and Peter Vint.[97]
Hex (2021) is a musical with book by Tanya Ronder, music by Jim Fortune and lyrics by Rufus Norris that opened at the Royal National Theatre in December 2021.
SINoALICE (2017) is a mobile gacha game which features Sleeping Beauty as one of the main player characters. She has her own dark story-line which follows her unending desire to sleep, and crosses over with the other fairy-tale characters featured in the game.
Video game series Dark Parables adapted the tale as the plot of its first game, Curse of Briar Rose (2010).
In art
Perrault's La Belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty), illustration by Gustave Doré
Sleeping Beauty by Jenny Harbour
Book cover for a Dutch interpretation of the story by Johann Georg van Caspel
^Literally, 'the beauty[,] in the wood[,] sleeping', where the present participle "sleeping" (dormant) refers to the beauty, not to the wood.[2] In modern French, the title would be rendered as "La Belle dormant au bois". The positioning of present participles after their complements was frequent in Old French[3] but is nowadays considered archaic (although it is still used in a number of set phrases such as chemin faisant and tambour battant), and the title has been misinterpreted as meaning "the beauty in the sleeping wood" as a result.[4] It is also dormant and not dormante because present participles have been invariable in French since a decision of 3 June 1679 of the Académie Française (of which Charles Perrault was a member).[5]
^F. P. Terzuolo (1864). Études sur le Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française (in French). p. 62. [...] exactement comme on dit : La Belle au bois dormant, ce qui ne veut pas dire la belle au bois qui dort, mais la belle qui dort au bois [...]
^ abHallett, Martin; Karasek, Barbara, eds. (2009). Folk & Fairy Tales (4 ed.). Broadview Press. pp. 63–67. ISBN978-1-55111-898-7.
^Bottigheimer, Ruth. (2008). "Before Contes du temps passe (1697): Charles Perrault's Griselidis, Souhaits and Peau". The Romantic Review, Volume 99, Number 3. pp. 175–189.
^Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 137–138.
^Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 97. ISBN0-520-03537-2.
^Jack Zipes, The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, p 648, ISBN0-393-97636-X.
^Camarena, Julio. Cuentos tradicionales de León. Vol. I. Tradiciones orales leonesas, 3. Madrid: Seminario Menéndez Pidal, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; [León]: Diputación Provincial de León, 1991. p. 415.
^Harry Velten, "The Influences of Charles Perrault's Contes de ma Mère L'oie on German Folklore", p 961, Jack Zipes, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ISBN0-393-97636-X
^Harry Velten, "The Influences of Charles Perrault's Contes de ma Mère L'oie on German Folklore", p 962, Jack Zipes, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ISBN0-393-97636-X
^Beck, Walter (1971-03-26), Dornröschen (Family, Fantasy), Juliane Korén, Vera Oelschlegel, Helmut Schreiber, Deutsche Film (DEFA), retrieved 2023-12-24
^Bass, Jules; Rankin, Arthur Jr. (1973-01-21), Sleeping Beauty, Festival of Family Classics, retrieved 2022-06-28
^Vorlícek, Václav (1978-03-01), Jak se budí princezny (Adventure, Comedy, Family), Deutsche Film (DEFA), Filmové studio Barrandov, retrieved 2022-06-28
