IMAGINARY FOLKLORE, PART 1

Blue Flowers

The old woman had warned the girl to only pick the pink flowers, but she thought the blue ones were the prettiest she had ever seen.

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Imaginary Folklore is an ongoing project in which I pair singular images with ambiguous captions that play with recurring themes from fairy/folk tales. 

The project is inspired by The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg, a book that I have loved ever since a teacher based a writing lesson around it in elementary school. 

Blue Flowers (above) examines the theme of the forbidden fruit. You know how it goes, the protagonist can achieve their goal if only they don't open the red door or touch the golden cup (or what have you). It seems so easy, but in the moment, that red door or golden cup is just TOO TEMPTING, and they screw everything up! Silly protagonists. 

Just like any good trope, this one comes in many variations and overlaps with other motifs (curiosity and disobedience to name a couple). So often it is literally fruit that one must not eat. I mean, it does originate with a certain biblical lady eating a certain piece of fruit given to her by a certain reptile. 

My favorite example of this variation is much more recent, however...

In Pan's Labyrinth (written and directed by Guillermo Del Torro, 2006), Ofelia is charged with three tasks (another big thing in Fairy Tale land), one of which is to retrieve an ornate dagger from the lair of The Pale Man. She is warned that she would see a bountiful feast, but must not eat anything. Seriously Ofelia, DON'T. EAT. ANYTHING. That Pale Man is a nasty child-eater and is not messing around! Does she listen, though? Even when her fairy guides are telling her to stop? Like I said, silly protagonists. You can watch (or re-watch for the two hundredth time) that scene here. 

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Other times it is a space that cannot be looked in upon, such as a room in the case of one of my favorite tales, Bluebeard by Charles Perrault...

Bluebeard, his wife, and the keys in a 19th-century illustration by Gustave Doré

...Or a basket, like in the Czech tale, The Wood Maiden. This variable crosses over into the theme of curiosity, and more specifically, female curiosity. This is a whole other conversation, but to touch on it quickly, Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in Women Who Run With the Wolves, "Psychological thinkers, from Frued to Bettelheim, have interpreted episodes such as those found in the Bluebeard tale as psychological punishment for women's sexual curiosity. Women's curiosity was given a negative connotation, whereas men were called investigative. Women were called nosy, whereas men were called inquiring. In reality, the trivialization of women's curiosity so that it seems like nothing more than irksome snooping denies women's insight, hunches, intuitions. It denies all her senses. It attempts to attack her fundamental power." (page 52)

So put that in your pipe and smoke it...unless it's a forbidden pipe, then put it down and walk away. 

Whichever form it takes, though, the "fruit" in fairy tales always wins. The silly protagonist always falls prey to their greed or hunger or (god forbid) curiosity and then everything is ruined. What's the moral then? If a wizened old woman in the woods or a man with goat parts tells you not to touch something...DON'T TOUCH IT!