The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood

Summary

The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood opens with a king and queen who long for a child and at last have a daughter. Seven fairies are invited to the christening and given golden table cases, but an old fairy, forgotten because she has not left her tower in fifty years, arrives without one and feels slighted. After six fairies give the princess beauty, wit, grace, dancing, song and music, the old fairy decrees that she will pierce her hand with a spindle and die. A young fairy who has hidden behind the hangings speaks last: she cannot undo the curse, but the princess will only sleep for a hundred years until a king's son wakes her. The king forbids all spindles, yet at fifteen or sixteen the princess finds an old woman spinning in a tower room, pricks her hand and falls into a swoon that water, slapping and Hungary-water cannot break. The good fairy arrives in a dragon chariot and puts the whole household to sleep, from governesses to the cooks, the horses and the little spaniel Mopsey, and a thick wood springs up round the palace. A hundred years later a prince of another royal family hears an old countryman's tale, and the trees part for him. He walks through courts of snoring guards to the gilded chamber; the princess wakes and greets him, they talk for four hours, sup in the hall of mirrors and are married that night. The second half is less familiar. The prince keeps the marriage secret for two years, during which two children are born, Aurora and Day, because his mother is of the race of ogres. When he becomes king and goes to war, the queen mother sends his wife and children to a country house and orders her clerk of the kitchen to serve each of them to her in turn. He hides them and serves a lamb, a kid and a hind instead. Discovering the trick, the ogress prepares a tub of vipers and toads for them all, but the king rides in unexpectedly and she throws herself into it. A verse moral closes the tale. Perrault published it in the Mercure galant in 1696 and in his Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697.

Top Lessons

• Words that soften a curse

  The young fairy cannot undo the old fairy's curse, but by speaking last she changes death into sleep. Perrault shows that even when harm cannot be prevented, a wise and kind word can limit it. Her foresight in hiding behind the hangings is part of her kindness.

• A slight and its consequences

  The whole story begins with a missing golden case at a feast. The king means no insult, but the old fairy feels slighted and takes revenge. The tale invites children to think both about giving honor to guests and about how wrong it is to answer a small slight with great harm.

• A servant's quiet courage

  In the second half, the clerk of the kitchen risks his life three times to save the queen and her children. He cannot fight the ogress queen, but he can hide those she means to harm and cook an animal in their place. He is the true rescuer until the king returns.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The princess's collapse after the spindle prick is described with the period's first aid for a swoon: water thrown in her face, her stays unlaced, the palms of her hands slapped and her temples rubbed with Hungary-water, a rosemary-based spirit used as a restorative. Her enchanted sleep keeps her color and soft breathing, which convinces the household she is not dead. The tale is a source for later talk of prolonged or enchanted sleep, but it is a fairy enchantment, not a clinical picture.

• The spindle and the sleeping palace

  Attempts to revive the swooning princess with water, unlacing, slapping her palms and Hungary-water, then the observation that she still breathes softly.