Princess Belle-Étoile (Fairy tale)

Author: Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy

Time Period: 1501 CE–1700 CE

Country or Culture: France

Genre: Fairy Tale

PLOT SUMMARY

In Europe, in an indeterminate time, a princess falls on hard times. Widowed with three young daughters, she decides to raise her children humbly, opening an inn to earn an income. One day, a poor old woman arrives at the inn and requests a big meal. The princess and her daughters, Roussette, Brunette, and Blondine, serve the woman. After having eaten, the penniless old woman reveals that she is a fairy and promises to grant the first wishes that the daughters make without thinking of her.

When a king and his entourage come to the inn several months later, the three daughters each make impulsive wishes. Roussette wishes to marry the royal admiral, Brunette wishes to marry the king’s brother, and Blondine wishes to marry the king. Blondine also wishes to bear her new husband three children who will have stars on their foreheads and whose hair will fall in golden curls and drop precious stones. Their first wishes come true with a triple marriage at the inn that night.

At the king’s palace, the king’s mother, while outwardly calm, is furious at her son’s apparently poor choice of a wife. She allies with Roussette, who is bitterly jealous at the lower status of her admiral husband. Before Blondine and Brunette give birth, the king and his brother head to war. Brunette dies giving birth to her son. Blondine has triplets, two boys and a girl, just as she had wished. Roussette approaches the king’s mother and proposes that they exchange Blondine’s children for three puppies and kill all four children. The king’s mother agrees and charges her servant Feintise to carry out the plot. Feintise does not kill the four babies but puts them out to sea in a small boat during a major storm. Believing she gave birth to dogs, Blondine moves back to her mother.

At sea, a pirate picks up the babies. He and his wife, Corsine, raise them as their own. The precious stones gained from combing the hair of Blondine’s children allow them to live well. Blondine’s daughter is named Belle-Étoile (Beautiful Star), and her brothers are named Petit-Soleil (Little Sun) and Heureux (Cheerful); Brunette’s son is called Chéri (Beloved).

As teenagers, the four children learn they are adopted. They sail off to find their parents. Belle-Étoile and Chéri deny their mutual love, still believing they are siblings. The fairy guides their boat to their father’s city. He welcomes and houses them without recognizing them. However, the king’s mother suspects the truth. Feintise confesses her failure to kill the children fifteen years earlier and promises to destroy the four young people.

Feintise places three subsequent wishes in Princess Belle-Étoile’s heart. First, she makes Belle-Étoile desire dancing water, which gives its drinker long-lasting beauty but is extremely dangerous to obtain. Chéri, wanting to impress Belle-Étoile, fetches the water. He nearly dies in the attempt but succeeds after the fairy, disguised as a dove, summons forest animals to dig a tunnel for him to the source of the dancing water. Next, Feintise induces Belle-Étoile to want a singing apple capable of bestowing special powers on its owner. Chéri succeeds in finding the singing apple, as the fairy, again as dove, advises him to don a suit of mirrors to chase away the dragon that guards this treasure. Finally, Cheri tries to bring Belle-Étoile a little green bird that can answer all questions, but he fails in this quest after he is immobilized inside the bird’s perching rock, as are his cousins Heureux and Petit-Soleil. Belle-Étoile, aided by the dove-fairy and disguised as a man, captures the green bird and frees the others.

They return to the palace just as the king is preparing to remarry. Roussette sends someone to fetch Blondine and her three dogs, all four on leashes. The little green bird reveals the truth about the four youngsters and Feintise’s treachery. The king reconciles with Blondine, gently dismissing his intended new bride. His mother is locked up in a tower. Roussette, Feintise, and the dogs are thrown into a dungeon, where they die. Princess Belle-Étoile and Prince Chéri marry. Blondine’s mother reveals her royal status, pleasing the king.

SIGNIFICANCE

In 1698, French noblewoman Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy published the tale of Princess Belle-Étoile in her anthology Contes nouveaux ou les fées à la mode (New tales or fashionable fairies). D’Aulnoy based her fairy tale upon an older Italian source, “Ancilotto, King of Provino,” which was published by Italian fairy-tale collector Giovanni Francesco Straparola in his 1550 anthology Le piacevoli notti (The Facetious Nights by Straparola, 1901). From this Italian source, different versions spread to many European countries. “Princess Belle-Étoile” has significant additions by d’Aulnoy. The most accessible, full translation of d’Aulnoy’s version of “Princess Belle-Étoile” was written by Anne Macdonell and Elizabeth Lee for their 1892 anthology The Fairy Tales of Madame D’Aulnoy, which is the source for this synopsis.

“Princess Belle-Étoile” is significant for two key reasons. First, it presents greatly empowered women for its time. Second, it critiques absolutist feudal monarchy. Princess Belle-Étoile and her royal grandmother show remarkable resilience and autonomy. When her grandmother loses her position as princess for unknown reasons, she rescues herself and her three daughters by leveraging her talent as a cook and opening up an inn. This represents a remarkable choice for a female character in a seventeenth-century French fairy tale. It may have been influenced by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s own fall from grace. Of noble birth, d’Aulnoy removed herself for some time from aristocratic French society after her husband, Baron d’Aulnoy, was falsely accused of treason in 1669. When her husband was acquitted, the couple separated. After returning to Paris, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy supported herself by writing.

The unfortunate princess is d’Aulnoy’s own addition to her Italian source material. Princess Belle-Étoile herself, disguised as a man, is the heroine who saves her brothers and cousin from the trap of the little bird. She is more thoughtful than her counterpart in the Italian source. Her romance with Prince Chéri is also d’Aulnoy’s creation. In all their endeavors, the good characters are aided by the fairy. She is welcomed as an old woman at the inn and is the second powerful female character d’Aulnoy creatively incorporates into the tale.

As d’Aulnoy witnessed the intrigues at the court of French king Louis XIV firsthand, her social criticism of absolutist monarchy is well grounded. When Roussette, Brunette, and Blondine marry, their mother, a former princess, refuses to go to the palace with them. She tells the king that, as she already knows of the turmoil of court life, she prefers to continue to live simply at the inn. Even the pirate who adopts the four children is shown to be a kind and generous father figure, especially in contrast to the wicked and scheming queen mother, who is motivated only by her impression that Blondine is of low rank.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

D’Aulnoy, Marie Catherine. “Princess Belle-Etoile.” The Fairy Tales of Madame D’Aulnoy. Trans. Anne Macdonell and Elizabeth Lee. London: Lawrence, 1892. Print.

DeGraff, Amy Vanderlyn. The Tower and the Well: A Psychological Interpretation of the Fairy Tales of Madame D’Aulnoy. Birmingham: Summa, 1984. Print.

Hannon, Patricia. “A Politics of Disguise: Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy’s ‘Belle-Etoile’ and the Narrative Structure of Ambivalence.” Anxious Power. Ed. Carol Singley and Susan Sweeney. Albany: State U of New York P, 1993. 73–90. Print.

Seifert, Lewis. Fairy Tales, Sexuality and Gender in France, 1690–1715: Nostalgic Utopias. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Print.

Straparola, Giovanni Francesco. “Ancilotto, King of Provino.” The Facetious Nights by Straparola. Trans. W. G. Waters. London: Society of Bibliophiles, 1901. Print.