Outfoxing Fear: Folktales from Around the World Edited by Kathleen Ragan
Reviewed by Irina Reyn
2.10.07
The book begins with an indispensable introduction by Jack Zipes, German professor and arguably our most famous contemporary scholar of the folktale. Zipes illuminates the relevance and endurance of folktales, as well as their palliative or instructional qualities. “Each time a tale is retold, no matter how old it may be, it is retold to address the present, to provide advice, to illustrate an example, or to assuage one’s fear,” he writes. However, unlike happily-ever-after stories, the lessons in these international folktales are not handed to us in an obvious or heavy-handed way; as Zipes implies, they are meant to be extracted by the imaginative work and personal experience the reader brings to the story.
It is impossible to compare the folktales collected in these pages, because they are all so marvelously unique. Some tales pit creatures against one another in a contest of physical versus mental strength, others portray an unintelligent hero who escapes destruction by pure chance, while still others seem to offer no lessons at all. Fear operates differently in each story. In “The Boy Who Went in Search of Fear” (Germany), for example, a prince’s bravery is a result of his ignorance; he triumphs in every dangerous challenge because he doesn’t know how to be afraid. The Ukrainian tale, “The Lion Who Drowned in a Well,” on the other hand, is a story of literal outfoxing, where a fox tricks a lion into a well by telling him that his reflection is a rival for control of the forest.
The more intriguing folk tales are ones that handle fear obliquely. In “Girl Learns to Write By Practising [sic] on Frozen Pond,” (Icelandic-Canadian) a first-person narrator discovers her “first school” in the etching of her father’s name on a frozen-over lake with a stick. The danger of her endeavor informs this coming of age story but here, it is not handled explicitly. Similarly, the narrator of the African-American tale, “De White Man’s Prayer” pretends he is white because he is convinced that God only heeds the prayer of the white man. Here, too, the fear is implicit; if a man must pray in disguise, his life must be permeated by fear.
In “Magic to Overcome Anxiety: Turtledove Cannot Change Its Nature: What Turtledove Says,” (Dahomean People, Benin), a Turtledove requests a magic charm to help overcome her fear of humans. What she discovers, though, is that the charm simply doesn’t work. The story ends with the Turtledove’s heartbreaking song, “Fear is killing me/little by little.” In an even darker story, “There is Nothing Anywhere (That We Fear)” (Akan-Ashanti People, Ghana), a bird taunts two leopard children before murdering their parents, telling them, “Now you see you will not get any more meat to eat.”
Outfoxing Fear includes some dominant female characters. Readers who appreciated The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination by Susan Gubar and Sandra Gilbert will enjoy Ragan’s interest in strong women. In the Irish tale “The Cakes of Oatmeal and Blood,” a young man announces that he will marry the girl who can fetch him his stick from the haunted graveyard. Surprisingly, the girl not only returns triumphant from this rather tasteless task but snags herself an even better groom in the process. In “The Story of the King and the Four Girls” (Punjab, India), a girl who manages to outwit the king becomes not only his wife but also a “confidential adviser in all his affairs, public as well as private.”
Ragan’s choices of stories are so nuanced and unerring, that it is surprising to find that her own contribution to the conversation of fear is neither as substantive nor as satisfying as Zipes’ introduction. She divides the tales according to her own groupings, such as “Building Stories,” “Serious Laughter,” and “The Nature of Fear.” Each section begins with her thoughts on fear and Ragan applies the situations in the fairy tales to her life as a mother, a writer and traveler. Whether Ragan is helping her daughter brave a first day of school in France, finding herself befuddled in a Tokyo language class, or simply coping with the world post 9/11, she finds guidance and comfort in the rereading of folktales. “After September 11, 2001, I watched my children build stories. I watched them solve and not solve and resolve their fear, and I wondered with regret where my own stories had gone.” Because Ragan’s personal reflections aren’t as absorbing as those of a scholar like Zipes, the collection may have been stronger if Ragan let the folktales speak for themselves.
We extract meaning from folktales’ simple plots and archetypal characters because they highlight universal emotions. Ragan’s Outfoxing Fear is a crucial addition to our bookshelf of folktales. While the stories do not necessarily help us overcome our fear, they help bring us together at a time when the world seems fractured. Despite our ideological divisions, we can all be transfixed by demons, princesses and witches. We can all be enchanted by oral narratives.