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Ghent University
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
Trauma and Fiction:
Fairy-tale Motifs in Judy Budnitz’ If I Told You Once and
Jane Yolen’s Briar Rose.
Supervisor:
Dr. Philippe Codde
Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the
requirements for the degree of “Master in de
Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels”
by Ellen Claeys
May 2009
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my thesis supervisor Dr. Philippe Codde for helping me with this
thesis and providing instructive comments and evaluation. Furthermore, I wish to thank my
cousin Tine and my friends for their support during the course of writing this thesis, and my
youth group VKSJ Kriko for the much needed distraction. Special thanks are also due to my
parents for allowing me to obtain a university degree and supporting me along the way.
1
Table of contents
1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 4
2 The Holocaust, Trauma and Fairy tales ........................................................................ 6
2.1 Trauma theory ................................................................................................................ 6
2.1.1 Trauma ...................................................................................................................... 6
2.1.2 Second and third generation trauma ........................................................................ 11
2.1.3 The healing process ................................................................................................. 14
2.1.3.1 Acting-out ......................................................................................................... 14
2.1.3.2 Working-through .............................................................................................. 15
2.1.3.3 Testimony ......................................................................................................... 17
2.1.3.4 The impact on the empathic listener ................................................................ 19
2.1.3.5 Witnessing ........................................................................................................ 20
2.2 Writing about the Holocaust and Trauma ................................................................. 21
2.3 Fairy tales ...................................................................................................................... 23
2.3.1 Fairy tales and trauma ............................................................................................. 23
2.3.2 Origins, meaning and motifs of the fairy tale .......................................................... 26
3 Analyses ............................................................................................................................. 33
3.1 If I Told You Once by Judy Budnitz ........................................................................... 33
3.1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 33
3.1.2 Testimony and fairy tales ........................................................................................ 34
2
3.1.2.1 Ilana ................................................................................................................. 34
3.1.2.2 Sashie ............................................................................................................... 39
3.1.2.3 Mara ................................................................................................................. 42
3.1.2.4 Naomie ............................................................................................................. 44
3.1.3 Fairy tales and myths ............................................................................................... 45
3.1.3.1 Main fairy tales used ........................................................................................ 45
3.1.3.2 Other fairy tales ............................................................................................... 47
3.1.3.3 Myths ................................................................................................................ 48
3.1.4 Major fairy-tale motifs ............................................................................................ 49
3.1.4.1 The helper ......................................................................................................... 49
3.1.4.2 The unpromising heroine ................................................................................. 50
3.1.4.3 Abandonment/elopement .................................................................................. 51
3.1.4.4 Magic ................................................................................................................ 51
3.1.4.5 Deception ......................................................................................................... 54
3.1.4.6 The accompaniments of childbirth ................................................................... 55
3.1.4.7 Other fairy-tale motifs ...................................................................................... 56
3.2 Briar Rose by Jane Yolen ............................................................................................. 57
3.2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 57
3.2.2 Testimony ................................................................................................................ 58
3.2.2.1 Gemma ............................................................................................................. 58
3.2.2.2 Josef Potocki .................................................................................................... 60
3.2.3 The empathic listener Rebecca ................................................................................ 61
3
3.2.4 Fairy tales ................................................................................................................ 64
3.2.5 Major fairy-tale motifs ............................................................................................ 70
3.2.5.1 The helper ......................................................................................................... 70
3.2.5.2 The unpromising heroine ................................................................................. 72
3.2.5.3 Deception ......................................................................................................... 73
3.2.5.4 Other fairy-tale motifs ...................................................................................... 73
3.2.6 Inheritance ............................................................................................................... 73
4 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 75
Works Cited .......................................................................................................................... 78
4
“Great literature of all ages has borrowed from fairy-tale motifs and often exhibited an
imaginativeness not unlike that of the fairy tale” (Lüthi qtd. in Huang 1).
1 Introduction
This thesis will investigate the fairy tale motifs in two novels by two female Jewish
American writers, namely Judy Budnitz‟ If I Told You Once and Jane Yolen‟s Briar Rose.
These two novels bulge with fairy-tale elements while dealing with the Holocaust.
Consequently, I will study the link between fairy tales and trauma on the one hand and
between fairy tales and the representation of the Holocaust on the other. To this day, the
Holocaust remains a part of our lives and of common memory. Although it affects us in a
different way than those who lived during that period, it still finds its way into our daily lives
and into much of our art. This is particularly the case for the second and third generation of
Jewish American writers, who still feel the need to write about the Holocaust, focussing also
on its after-effects.
In the first part of this work, I will discuss fairy tales, the Holocaust and the trauma
inflicted on its survivors. First, I will consider modern trauma theory. I will establish what
trauma is, what its after-effects are and I will give an overview of psychoanalysis‟ most
important findings, discussing work by Caruth, Freud, Laub and Langer, amongst others. I
will discuss the healing processes and testimonies. This overview is needed to set the basis for
my analyses in the second part of this work. Secondly, I will show the link between trauma
and postmodern art, that is the postmodern writing of some Jewish American writers. I will
explain the difficulties involved in representing trauma. Thirdly, I will delve deeper into the
nature and origins of fairy tales and identify some major fairy-tale motifs. Moreover, I will
show the link between trauma and the possibility of using fairy tales to work it through.
5
The second part of this thesis is a thorough analysis of If I Told You Once and Briar
Rose, which will focus mainly on trauma and the fairy tale motifs present in these two novels.
Both novels use fairy tales in both different and similar ways and I will conduct a thorough
research into their specific uses of fairy tales. In Briar Rose only one specific fairy tale is
used, both by the victim testifying about her holocaust experiences and by Yolen who tries to
bring across this story of the victim‟s and her granddaughter‟s attempt to reconstruct what has
happened. In If I Told You Once Judy Budnitz uses a full series of fairy tales, three of which
are Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard and Cinderella. Several characters in the novel make
use of fairy-tale elements in telling their stories; I will inquire into all of these uses and I will
explain why this author makes such a frequent use of them in her novel.
6
2 The Holocaust, Trauma and Fairy tales
2.1 Trauma theory
2.1.1 Trauma
First of all, what is trauma? The original meaning of the Greek word „trauma‟ is
„wound‟, meaning “an injury inflicted on a body” (Caruth, Unclaimed Experience 3).
Nowadays we use this word in the sense of a wound “inflicted upon the mind” (3). Caruth
states that “in its most general definition, trauma describes an overwhelming experience of
sudden or catastrophic events in which the response to the event occurs in the often delayed,
uncontrolled repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena” (11). So,
over the years the meaning of trauma has changed from a physical wound to mental wounds,
inflicted on a person after a certain event that one cannot cope with. Although the subject was
more widely researched since the second part of the twentieth century (after the Vietnam
War), the basis of modern psychiatry as we know it now was laid by such physicians as Pierre
Janet and Sigmund Freud at the end of the nineteenth century
Pierre Janet, a French psychiatrist, was one of the first to research traumatic memories.
Even before Freud, who is considered to be the founder of psychoanalysis1, he researched
“the effects of traumatic memories on consciousness” (van der Kolk and van der Hart 159).
Janet makes a clear distinction between ordinary or “narrative memory” and “traumatic
memory”. He explains ordinary memory as “the automatic integration of new information
without much conscious attention to what is happening” (160). Experiences that look very
familiar to us and that do not seem out of the ordinary are automatically taken in and stored in
our brain. Very frightening events we are not very familiar with, on the other hand, are not;
1 According to Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner‟s English Dictionary, this is the treatment of someone who
has mental problems by asking them about their feelings and their past in order to try to discover what may be
causing their condition.
7
they develop into „traumatic memories.‟ According to van der Kolk and van der Hart, Janet
says that these traumatic memories are “remembered with particular vividness or resist
integration” (160). Thus, these memories of a traumatising event are not stored in the brain
like ordinary memories that can be retrieved at any time; instead they pop up, unasked-for and
unwanted, at any given moment in time. Moreover, Janet claims that “in contrast to narrative
memory, which is a social act, traumatic memory is inflexible and invariable” (163). What
Janet alludes to with the expression „a social act‟ is that a person can retell his or her narrative
memory in any way he or she wants to, for example, by withholding one particular part of the
memory while telling it to one person, and withholding another part while telling it to another.
With traumatic memories no parts can ever be withheld; they always come up in exactly the
same way, and thus they are invariable and inflexible. Although a traumatic memory can
come up at any time Janet also upholds that there are certain circumstances that can trigger
memory; it is conjured up under certain conditions, especially in situations that resemble the
first traumatic event (163). At that moment one cannot prevent these traumatic memories
from surfacing.
2Freud‟s psychoanalytical research started with an interest in hysterical women. In his
work „The Aetiology of Hysteria‟ he tried to explain what caused hysteria. He believed that
child abuse was the cause of it. Here he came up with the first version of his theory that
constituted the basis of modern psychiatry. He states that at one time during their infancy
these women have been abused; though at that moment they did not know this is a sexual
experience. A second event in their lives that does not have a sexual meaning brings back the
memory of the first experience, thus causing hysteria. The second event, which triggers the
2 Taken from: Codde, Philippe. "Postmemory and Postmodern: Third Generation Jewish American Trauma
Narratives." Contemporary American Literature. Course taught at Ghent University, Ghent. 2007-2008.
8
memory of the first, also causes the meaning of the first event to change. The period in
between these two events, Freud calls “latency.” Later on, he slightly changes the theory,
claiming that hysteria was caused by the repression of sexual desires, which only came out in
dreams. After World War I, many soldiers came back home showing the same symptoms as
these hysteric women. They kept reliving the war, had nightmares and a „death drive.‟ Their
condition was called „war neurosis‟ or „shell shock‟. So, as van der Kolk and van der Hart
explain “after the First World War, psychoanalysis was faced with the dual challenge of
explaining men‟s infinite capacity for self-destruction, and the reality of war neuroses” (166).
Since now soldiers too seemed to present the same symptoms as hysteric women, Freud had
to abandon his former theory and create a new model. This is the model of the train accident:
At the moment of a traumatic accident, the mind is incapable of dealing with the horror, so it
blocks it out. Only later, the memory can come back at a moment of reduced conscience. It
can, for example, show itself in dreams, but also in behaviour (Codde “Postmemory”). With
behaviour, Freud means off course the „death drive‟ these soldiers had, repeatedly seeking out
the danger they had escaped during the war. According to van der Kolk and van der Hart,
Janet and Freud both agreed that “the crucial factor that determines the repetition of trauma is
the presence of mute, unsymbolized, and unintegrated experiences” (167). Like Janet, Freud
too claims that the traumatic event returns against the victim‟s will (Caruth “Introduction” 6).
However he does not speak of certain triggering events that might cause the event to surface,
since they often occur in dreams. In these dreams the event pops up unchanged; they repeat
the traumatic event in precisely the same way it happened. These traumatic dreams are
invariable in their content; like the traumatic memories Janet researched. Freud also sees a
paradox in these traumatic dreams: the memories of the event come up unwanted with this
accurate vividness in dreams, but when a victim wants to remember what happened, he or she
cannot access the memory. So, along with these nightmares there exists some sort of “amnesia
9
for the past” (Caruth “Introduction” 152). One cannot remember the traumatic event in a
normal manner. As Janet says, the memory of the event is not narrative memory, and
therefore the victim cannot remember what happened to him. It can only come up in traumatic
dreams and in repetitive, unconscious behaviour, which Freud calls „traumatic neurosis‟, “the
unwitting reenactment of an event that one cannot simply leave behind” (Caruth 2).
After Vietnam, psychiatrists recognized a pattern in all of these symptoms (the
nightmares, the unconscious repetitive behaviour…) and they dubbed it PTSD, Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder. In „Trauma and Experience: Introduction‟, Cathy Caruth gives the
following definition of PTSD:
The definition of PTSD, generally agreed upon is that there is a response,
sometimes delayed, to an overwhelming event or events, which takes place in
the form of repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviors
stemming from the event, along with numbing that may have begun during or
after the experience, and possibly also increased arousal to (and avoidance of)
stimuli recalling the event (4).
It includes “the symptoms of what has previously been called shell shock, combat stress,
delayed stress syndrome, and traumatic neurosis, and referred to responses to both human and
natural catastrophes” (Caruth “Introduction” 3).
Cathy Caruth expands on the theories of Freud, ushering in the epoch of modern
trauma theory. She sticks to Freud‟s model of the train collision, but the difference with Freud
is that Caruth claims that the victim does not register the traumatic event when it happens, the
mind blanks out, but in both Freud‟s and Caruth‟s slightly adapted model the victim walks
away “apparently unharmed.” As she claims “the victim of the crash was never fully
conscious during the accident itself” (Unclaimed Experience 17). Caruth says that “the
10
accident … does not simply represent the violence of a collision but also conveys the impact
of its very incomprehensibility” (6). At the time of the accident the event is never fully
registered and consequently never fully known. What she feels as a paradox of trauma is not
the fact that there is a period of latency in between the traumatic event and the traumatic
symptoms but that the mind does not register what happens. In her own words: “in trauma the
greatest confrontation with reality may also occur as an absolute numbing to it”
(“Introduction” 6). The victim walks away from the event “apparently unharmed” but later on
traumatic symptoms can manifest themselves. These traumatic symptoms consist of a
“possession by the past” (“Introduction” 151), called traumatic recollection. According to
Caruth, “perhaps the most striking feature of traumatic recollection is the fact that it is not a
simple memory ... while the images of traumatic re-enactment remain absolutely accurate and
precise, they are largely inaccessible to conscious recall and control” (151). This possession
by the past is exactly what being traumatised is, according to Caruth; it is being possessed by
a certain image or an event (“Introduction” 5). The traumatising event keeps repeating itself,
against the victim‟s will.
What are the after-effects of trauma that victims may experience in addition to
traumatic recollection? First of all, according to Dori Laub, a Holocaust victim for example
can experience “tragic life events not as mere catastrophes, but as a second Holocaust”
(“Bearing witness” 65). They tend to overreact to certain events, such as the natural death of a
family member, that are tragic events but not insurmountable. Henry Krystal3 has examined
several victims of trauma and has discovered a number of after-effects these victims suffer
from. According to him, his patients showed such problems as “chronic depression,
masochistic life patterns, chronic anxiety, and psychosomatic disease” (77). Moreover he
found that, over the years, they “have continued to suffer from depression, sleep disturbances,
3 Henry Krystal is a professor of psychiatry and a psychoanalyst. He worked as a psychiatric examiner of claims
for restitution for the German Consul General in Detroit.
11
repetitive dreams, various chronic pain syndromes, and chronic anxiety, as well as
characterological difficulties” (76). In addition to this, their “basic trust” has been destroyed
and some show an inability to talk about their traumatic experiences (77)
To sum up the most important elements for my own analyses in the second part of this
thesis: After the traumatic event, which in this thesis is the Holocaust, the victim, i.e. the
Holocaust survivor, walks away seemingly unharmed. After a period of latency, certain
posttraumatic symptoms can surface. These symptoms can, on the one hand, be a traumatic
recollection of the event, consisting of memories coming up against the victims will in which
the traumatic event is relived repeatedly. On the other hand, trauma can also manifest itself as
repetitive, compulsive behaviour, such as a constant seeking out of danger, which Freud terms
the „death drive‟.
2.1.2 Second and third generation trauma
The trauma sustained by Holocaust survivors can also influence their children and
grandchildren. They are called the second and third generation survivors. It seems strange to
say that they are traumatised and yet this generation too bears the traumatic after effects of the
Holocaust. As Philippe Codde states in „“Transmitted Holocaust Trauma: a matter of Myth
and Fairy Tales?”‟ these generations suffer from what is called “secondary traumatisation or
inherited… trauma” (1). LaCapra explains that “the intergenerational transmission of trauma
refers to the way those not directly living through an event may nonetheless experience and
manifest its posttraumatic symptoms” (108). Codde identifies three ways by which the next
generation can inherit their parents‟ trauma.4
4 Taken from: Codde, Philippe. "Postmemory and Postmodern: Third Generation Jewish American Trauma
Narratives." Contemporary American Literature. Course taught at Ghent University, Ghent. 2007-2008.
And: Codde, Philippe. "Transmitted Holocaust Trauma: A Matter of Myth and Fairy Tales?". European
Judaism, forthcoming.
12
The first is by listening to the testimony of their parents. As Dominick LaCapra points
out: “the experience of trauma may be vicarious or virtual, that is, undergone in a secondary
fashion by one who was not there or did not go through the traumatising events themselves”
(History in transit 125). By listening to the parents‟ testimony, the children can come to
experience some trauma of their own. LaCapra makes the distinction between „virtual
experience‟ and „vicarious experience.‟ According to him, the former signifies that the
listener virtually experiences what the victim has gone through. The latter is a more extreme
form in that the listener starts to believe that what happened to the victim actually happened to
himself (125). These two forms of experience create a trauma. Especially the „vicarious
experience‟ creates trauma, because the listener, here the child or grandchild of the Holocaust
survivor, thinks all this happened to himself. LaCapra points out that, in any case, when a
witness testifies some of the traumatic content rubs off on the listener through “empathic
unsettlement5,” which he feels is “necessary for a certain form of understanding” (125) Thus,
not only vicarious experience is a requisite to transfer, even when the listener does not
experience that, trauma can be transmitted through the unsettlement one feels listening to his
or her parent‟s testimony, which LaCapra calls empathic unsettlement or virtual experience.
The experience of living in “dysfunctional families” is a second way for the second
generation to get traumatised, according to Codde. Illogical fears, stress, a constant state of
agitation, nightmares and delusion are just a few of the symptoms survivors of the Holocaust
might have. The parents are often unable to adopt normal parental roles; they are supposed to
offer safety and stability to the children, but fail at that. Having survived such a horrific
„event‟ as the holocaust, they have lost their faith in humanity. They are often overprotective
towards their children or just the opposite, incapable of loving, and might have a depression.
For children to grow up in such a family situation is traumatising. As Codde says, they “do
5 The listener is unsettled via the empathy he feels.
13
not inherit their parents‟ traumas as such, but they are re-traumatized by the malfunction of
the parental roles” (2). The children might also get a sense of inferiority, since their
grievances seem so small in comparison to what their parents had to endure. When their
parents do not testify, the children also suffer, since a great mystery is created. The children
do not know anything about their history and therefore might develop an obsession with it.
(Codde “Postmemory”)
Thirdly, Codde observes that certain geneticists believe that traumatic experiences can
change one‟s genetic material, thus passing this changed genetic material on to their children.
The next generation therefore inherits the preceding generation‟s trauma. (Codde 2) This is
however a very controversial view. Therefore I believe the first two ways of transmitting
trauma, namely through testimonies and dysfunctional families, are the most probable.
An expression often used with respect to inherited trauma is „postmemory.‟ LaCapra
defines it as “the acquired memory of those not directly experiencing an event such as the
Holocaust or slavery” (History in transit108). Marianne Hirsh explains this term as an
obsession of the third generation with a past they have not experienced themselves, but by
which they are still haunted (22). The third generation is in a different situation than the
second; for them the past seems more inaccessible than for the second generation, especially
if the survivor does not want to testify. As a result of their parents‟ and grandparents‟ traumas,
they too are troubled by the past, a past that is very difficult for them to get to know.
Therefore they experience the past and their origins as a void. I will later explain the effect of
postmemory on their writing in the chapter „Writing about the Holocaust and Trauma‟.
If I Told You Once by Judy Budnitz, which I will discuss later on in this thesis, is a
good example of the effects of the Holocaust survivor‟s trauma on their children and
grandchildren. It shows four generations of women, each influenced, one might even say
14
traumatised, by the horror experience by the previous generation. Thus they exemplify the
mechanism of inherited trauma.
2.1.3 The healing process
According to Dominick LaCapra there are two possible ways to deal with or, as he
puts it, remember trauma. These are „acting-out‟ and „working-through.‟6 Although LaCapra
insists on the importance of „working-through‟ to overcome one‟s trauma, he has “noted that,
particularly in cases of trauma, acting-out may be necessary and perhaps never fully
overcome” (Representing 205).
2.1.3.1 Acting-out
„Acting-out‟ is a typical pathological reaction, where one keeps reliving the traumatic
event. In some cases, the victim even keeps repeating physically what happened. Thus, for
LaCapra „acting-out‟ is “related to repetition and even the repetition-compulsion.”7 He also
states that “victims of severely traumatizing events may never fully escape possession by, or
recover from, a shattering past, and a response to trauma may well involve “acting-out” (or
emotionally repeating a still-present past) in those directly affected by it” (Representing xii).
In Freud‟s view, „acting-out‟ is a surrogate for remembering the traumatic event (Sandler
329). He claims that these victims act out because they are incapable of rationally
understanding what happened to them; instead they try to understand it physically. Since the
mind was shut off during the events it did not register the danger of the situation. Now these
victims try to feel the danger they could not feel then. Freud also introduces the term „death
drive‟ in his work „Beyond the Pleasure Principle‟, written in 1920; this can be seen as a
6 These two concepts were first introduced by Freud in his article „Remembering, Repeating and Working
Through‟ published in 1914. 7 From: Goldberg, Amos. ""Acting-Out" And "Working-Through" Trauma". 1998.
<http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203646.pdf>.
15
version of „acting-out.‟ Several soldiers returning from the war keep on seeking out death and
anguish. They repeat traumatic scenes and show a disorientation in time. Nowadays the term
„acting-out‟ is commonly used by psychoanalysts, and others, to denote “a whole range of
impulsive, antisocial or dangerous actions” (Sandler 329). The main characteristic of „acting-
out‟ is the fact that it always has „unconscious determinants‟ (329). Van der Kolk and Van der
Hart explain acting out as follows:
“When people are exposed to trauma, that is, a frightening event outside of
ordinary human experience, they experience “speechless terror.” ... The
experience cannot be organized on a linguistic level, and this failure to arrange
the memory in words and symbols leaves it to be organized on a somasensory
or iconic level: as somatic sensations, behavioural re-enactments, nightmares,
and flashbacks” (172).
2.1.3.2 Working-through
„Working-through‟ implies an overcoming of the traumatic after effects. LaCapra sees
this process as a way in which the victim tries to distance oneself from the trauma so as to be
able to “distinguish between past, present and future” (Goldberg 2), things that get mixed up
in the process of „acting-out.‟ LaCapra claims that in traumatic memory the past can be
“uncontrollably relived, it is as if there were no difference between it and the present”
(Writing history 89). Thus, he states that “in memory as an aspect of working through the
past, one is both back there and here at the same time, and one is able to distinguish between
(not dichotomize) the two” (90). In other words, the victim remembers what happened, but
can say to himself it happened back then and not right now. For Freud, the term „working-
through‟ means the work that is needed to overcome the resistance to change that has arisen
out of “the instinctual drives to cling to accustomed patterns of discharge” (Sandler 619).
16
Freud states that an important way of „working-through‟ is „mourning‟ as opposed to
„melancholia,‟ when you are stuck in your sorrow. He saw “melancholia as characteristic of
an arrested process in which the depressed, self-berating, and traumatized self, locked in
compulsive repetition, is possessed by the past” (LaCapra, Writing 66). Mourning, on the
other hand, “brings the possibility of engaging trauma and achieving a reinvestment in, or
recathexis of, life which allows one to begin again” (66). Another possible way to overcome
the trauma and get a clear distinction between the past and the present is by telling a story.
Telling a story gives the victim the opportunity to arrange what happened in a chronological
order, thus breaking the circularity of trauma. This circularity is explained by Dori Laub:
“The traumatic event, although real, took place outside the parameters of
“normal reality”, such as causality, sequence, place and time. The trauma is
thus an event that has no beginning, no ending, no before, no during and no
after. This absence of categories that define it lends it a quality of “otherness,”
a salience, a timelessness and a ubiquity that puts it outside the range of
associatively linked experiences, outside the range of comprehension, of
recounting and of mastery. Trauma survivors live not with memories of the
past, but with an event that could not and did not proceed through its
completion, has no ending, attained no closure, and therefore, as far as its
survivors are concerned, continues into the present and is current in every
respect” (Laub, “Bearing Witness” 69).
So in order to undo this entrapment of the present into the past the victim needs to construct a
narrative. I would like to add to this, that the fairy tale can be a useful device to try and create
a chronological story. As I will show further on in this thesis, the fairy tale has some kind of
set plan. The plots of fairy tales are very similar and consist of specific parts; therefore the
creation of a fairy tale might be a first step towards creating a logical story. I will go deeper
17
into this matter in chapter 2.3. In short, one could say that „acting-out‟ involves an unwished-
for repetition of the traumatic event; it is a surrogate for the remembering of the experience.
„Working-through‟ implies overcoming the traumatic event by „mourning‟ and, as LaCapra
suggests, creating a logical story to be able to arrive at mourning.
2.1.3.3 Testimony
Langer defines testimony as follows:
“Testimony is a form of remembering. The faculty of memory functions in the
present to recall a personal history vexed by traumas that thwart smooth-
flowing chronicles. Simultaneously, however, straining against what we might
call disruptive memory is an effort to reconstruct a semblance of continuity in a
life that began as, and now resumes what we would consider, a normal
existence” (Holocaust Testimonies 2).
So, the victim tries to fit his memories into his present life, trying to create a fluent story so to
be able to lead a normal life that is not constantly interrupted by traumatic, or as Langer calls
it, disruptive memory. The necessity of creating a chronological story is to come to the point
of working-through and mourning. Langer claims that witnesses who testify are not that
concerned with rendering an accurate recollection of the past; they do not care about a
historically correct view. They, on the other hand, feel that it is more important to make sense
of the past (41). Laub explains testimony as “a dialogical process of exploration and
reconciliation of two worlds–the one that was brutally destroyed and the one that is–that are
different and will always remain so” (“An Event” 91). It thus entails an understanding of the
two worlds and two different times. LaCapra explains that traumatic memory involves a
blending of the here and now and the past. He claims that language can “function to provide
some measure of conscious control” (Writing History 90). As such, a testimony, i.e. the
18
creation of a logical story, can offer the grip one needs to distinguish between the past and
present. Cathy Caruth exposes the crisis that lies at the basis of every traumatic narrative.
According to her the question is: “Is the trauma the encounter with death, or the ongoing
experience of having survived it?” (“Trauma” 7). She therefore feels that there is, at the core
of testimonies, “a kind of double telling, the oscillation between a crisis of death and the
correlative crisis of life: between the story of the unbearable nature of an event and the story
of the unbearable nature of its survival” (7).
It is often very hard for the victim to testify and tell his or her story. In his essay
“Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening” Dori Laub explores the subject of
testimony and witnessing by the victims of the Holocaust. He explains that “the fear that fate
will strike again is crucial to the memory of trauma, and to the inability to talk about it” (67).
Testifying and thus trying to pour one‟s experiences into a narrative involves remembering
what the victim is so desperately trying to forget, namely the traumatic event, during which
the mind has closed itself down for self-protection. Laub says that “the act of telling might
itself become severely traumatizing, if the price of speaking is re-living; not relief, but further
retraumatization”( 67).
There is often an aversion in the victim to testifying, not only because of the fear of
retraumatisation and reliving of the event, but because of a certain loss that may occur; Caruth
believes that “the transformation of the trauma into a narrative memory…, may lose both the
precision and the force that characterizes traumatic recall” (“Recapturing” 153). Furthermore,
she claims that another loss may come up too, maybe an even more important loss, namely
“the loss…of the event‟s incomprehensibility” (154). She feels that these losses, and
especially that of the incomprehensibility, form a major dilemma for the survivors in their
decision to testify. A narrative memory lacks the intensity and accuracy of a traumatic
memory. However, she feels that “trauma ... requires integration, both for the sake of
19
testimony and for the sake of cure” (153). The repetitive reenactment of the traumatic event is
“a story that is difficult to tell and hear” (153).Since it is so difficult to tell and hear the victim
cannot find an empathic listener, which is necessary to work through the trauma.
By telling his story the victim becomes a witness for the first time, as Laub says:
“Massive trauma precludes its registration; the observing and recording mechanisms of the
human mind are temporarily knocked out, malfunction” (“Bearing witness” 57). Since the
witness, according to modern trauma theory (cf. Cathy Caruth), does not register the event,
speaking about it is his first experience of actually witnessing it, which can be very painful.
Therefore he needs to know that there is someone to tell the story to, so that what he has to
say is truly heard and that it was truly worth telling.
2.1.3.4 The impact on the empathic listener
As said before, a listener is needed when a victim testifies. Listening to this testimony
can have some consequences for the listener too. In chapter 2.1.2 I have already explained the
impact of testimonies on the children of the Holocaust survivor. People who do not have such
close tie to the survivor may experience the same kind of impact. LaCapra points out that if a
person listens to a testimony some of the traumatic content also rubs off on the listener
through what he calls “empathic unsettlement”, or virtual experience, which is a normal,
healthy response to testimony. “One may imaginatively put oneself in the victim‟s position
while respecting the difference between self and other” (125). He proclaims that this virtual
experience is connected to „empathic unsettlement, which he feels “desirable or even
necessary for a certain form of understanding” (125). For him, empathy is “important in
attempting to understand traumatic events and victims” (Writing 78) and “it involves
affectivity as crucial aspect of understanding” (40). He states that “one perhaps unconsciously
identifies with the victim, becomes a surrogate victim, and lives the event in an imaginary
20
way that, in extreme cases, may lead to confusion about one‟s participation in the actual event
(History 125).This confusion of self and other is called vicarious experience. LaCapra also
calls this „un-checked identification‟ (Writing 28), which is very problematic.
2.1.3.5 Witnessing
To go further into the subject of the victim becoming a witness for the first time when
he testifies, I would like to investigate what Laub calls „an event without a witness.‟ He
claims that the Holocaust was an event that “produced no witnesses” (“An event without a
witness” 80). He states that it was impossible to truly witness the Holocaust, not only because
the Nazis tried to get rid of all the evidence about the Endlösung; the bystanders were not
reliable either, since they were not fully informed or did not want to know about it.
Furthermore, the Jews, the people who were in the middle of it all, were not capable of
witnessing it either because they did not have an overview of the events (Codde
“Postmemory”).
While it is hard to create a narrative of the trauma experienced, sometimes the only
thing that kept the survivors alive during the Holocaust was the imperative to tell. In “An
Event without a Witness” Laub states that “the survivors did not only need to survive so that
they could tell their story; they also needed to tell their story in order to survive” (78). What
he means is that, the Holocaust survivors wanted to survive so that they could tell their story,
which is seen as a victory over the Nazis who wanted to „silence‟ them. But what is now even
more necessary is that they can tell their story and be heard, in order to survive right now. If
these victims do not testify they will break down because of their traumatic memories and
„acting-out.‟
21
2.2 Writing about the Holocaust and Trauma
To fully understand history, and specifically the Holocaust, we should not only rely on
history books. Testimonies by survivors can also be very interesting for trying to understand
what happened back then, and even literature can be helpful. LaCapra agrees that “truth
claims8 are necessary but not sufficient conditions of historiography” (Writing 2). Naturally it
is important to be conversant with documents on the subject, but LaCapra points out that not
only evidence can hold truth claims:
“One might argue that narratives in fiction may also involve truth claims on a
structural or general level by providing insight into phenomena such as slavery
or the Holocaust, by offering a reading of a process or period, or by giving at
least a plausible “feel” for experience and emotion which may be difficult to
arrive at through restricted documentary methods” (13).
In that respect, Hayden White proclaims, however, that history consists of different views,
opinions and stories, that one never gets a “real” truth. Moreover, he emphasises that narrative
accounts of the past do not only consist of truth claims but also of poetic and rhetorical
elements (LaCapra, Writing 17). At the time of the events, these were meaningless; by
pouring them into a story, one gives a meaning to them. When they occurred, these events
were just events without a specific link to other events, later one tries to give meaning to
them, for example by seeing or constructing certain links between these events. Consequently,
by creating a narrative about the past that consist of truth claims, one always adds one‟s own
views and opinions. Langer states that memoirs of survivors also use certain literary
conventions such as “chronology, description, characterization, dialogue and ... the invention
of a narrative voice” (41). He adds: “This voice seeks to impose on apparently chaotic
8 Making referential statements on the basis of evidence. (LaCapra, Writing 1)
22
episodes a perceived sequence, whether or not that sequence was perceived in an identical
way during the period that is being rescued from oblivion by memory and language” (41).
LaCapra owns to the fact that testimonies are not very trustworthy if one solely wishes to
derive facts from them, since testimonies are not always reliable. However, he claims that
they can be very useful nevertheless: “They provide something other than purely documentary
knowledge. Testimonies are significant in the attempt to understand experience and its
aftermath, including the role of memory and its lapses, in coming to terms with−or denying
and repressing−the past (Writing 86-87).
In short, one can conclude, that the combination of facts, testimonies and literature can
give the most accurate view on history. Literature and testimonies can give a unique view on
how people lived through the event. Literature also consists of truth claims, but next to that it
consists out of literary characteristics that are used to try to create a logical story. Therefore,
even though one can never really know the exact past, one can still approach it cognitively
and emotionally.
LaCapra makes the distinction between writing trauma and writing about trauma.
Writing about trauma is an aspect of historiography that, LaCapra feels, is “related to the
project of reconstructing the past as objectively as possible” (Writing186). Writing trauma
involves, according to LaCapra, “processes of acting-out, working over, and to some extent
working through in analyzing and “giving voice” to the past” (186). He calls this “traumatic
and post)traumatic writing” (186). Both novels I am going to discuss are instances of writing
trauma, since the traumatic events fully determine and affect their representation. Though not
having direct family ties to the Holocaust, both writers may be seen as suffering from
postmemory too, taking into consideration their Eastern European and Jewish heritage.
Literature is often used to express trauma, or can even be useful to explain certain
aspects of psychoanalytic study. Caruth points out that Freud, for example, used literature to
23
describe traumatic experience. She feels that the reason for that is that “literature, like
psychoanalysis, is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing”
(Unclaimed Experience 3). Moreover, “it is at the specific point at which knowing and not
knowing intersect that the language of literature and the psychoanalytic theory of traumatic
experience precisely meet” (3). Literature and trauma perfectly come together in
postmodernism. This movement uses techniques that are very close to trauma symptoms, such
as repetition, different perspectives (which one can compare to the different personalities a
trauma patient can adopt), several lacunae, confusion, open endings and a disrupted
chronology. The third generation of Jewish American writers often uses these techniques in
its fiction. One can find, amongst others, different perspectives, unreliable narrators, alternate
forms of representation, and the predominant motif of the quest (Codde “Postmemory”). The
characteristic I would like to focus on in this thesis, however, is the use of fairy tales and
myths in their writing, and especially the use of fairy tales. The third generation‟s obsession
with a past they can never really know, explains their frequent use of fairy-tale and
mythological motifs. Unsuccessful in recreating the past, they turn to myths and fairy tales in
order to find an explanation about their origins.
2.3 Fairy tales
2.3.1 Fairy tales and trauma
At first sight, the two notions of „fairy tale‟ and „trauma‟ seem irreconcilable. The
fairy tale is commonly seen as a story about wonderful things that occur in a marvellous
world where fairies, gnomes and witches roam about. Trauma, on the other hand, does not
seem to be present in these fairy tales. Generally, it is associated with horrible experiences.
Fairy tales and the Holocaust seem to be an even more improbable match; how can something
so cruel and terrifying be related to something so magical, people wonder. Even so, fairy tales
24
are often used in writing about trauma and the Holocaust. In fact, the second and third
generations of Jewish American authors often use fairy tale elements in their novels about the
Holocaust and other traumas, as is instanced by the work of Judy Budnitz and Jane Yolen.
Furthermore, fairy tales can be particularly useful in dealing with trauma. Verena
Kast, a psychologist and psychotherapist, researched the therapeutic effects and uses of fairy
tales and came to some interesting conclusions. She claims that not only our family and
friends play an important role in our lives; stories are also important to us. She points out that
every person has a particular favourite story, one that holds a special significance for us, and
with which we can identify (7). She remarks the following:
“De verhalen die ons ooit hebben geboeid of nog steeds in hun ban houden,
vertellen iets over onszelf, over onze verlangens, onze wensen, over menselijke
attitudes waarmee we ons graag zouden willen identificeren en over de figuren
die wij zelf graag zouden willen zijn. Bij nadere beschouwing blijken die
verhalen iets te zeggen over onze eigen problemen, die, in plaats van in ons,
duidelijk naar voren komen in andere personages, en al dan niet door hen
worden opgelost”(7).9
Thus, everybody has certain fairy tales that have intrigued him or her. The reason for this is
that a person can identify with them and that these tales bring up certain problems or feelings
this person deals with in daily life. It can be very reassuring to see the fairy-tale hero solving a
problem one faces in daily life too; it can give hope.
According to Verena Kast, fairy tales talk to us in symbols and images, just as myths
and dreams do. These symbols serve as a way to represent emotions, among other things,
9 “The stories that have once fascinated us or still hold us spellbound, tell something about ourselves, about our
longings, our desires, about human attitudes we would like to identify with and about the characters we would
like to be. Upon closer consideration, these stories turn out to tell something about our own problems that,
instead of in ourselves, clearly emerge in other characters, and that may or may not be solved by them.” (my
translation)
25
which cannot be expressed in any other way (9). This applies not only to our reading of our
favourite fairy tale but also to the writing and creation of a fairy tale:
“Daar komt bij dat het schrijven van sprookjes op zichzelf al een
therapeutische waarde heeft. Wanneer we een sprookje schrijven geven we
onze fantasie niet alleen vrij baan, maar we geven haar tegelijk vorm. Onze
wensen en angsten nemen zo een veel duidelijker gedaante aan dan wij in een
alledaags gesprek misschien zouden toelaten” (Kast 60).10
Thus, fairy tales can be very important and useful in dealing with one‟s emotions, and with
deeper sentiments that one is afraid to express in a regular conversation. In addition, fairy
tales can put terrifying images in another perspective by putting it in an environment that is
less emotionally charged with fear (Kast 63). In this respect, testifying about the Holocaust
through the form of a fairy tale can make it easier for the victim to tell his or her story. The
horrific events he or she might have seen, can become less terrifying, because of the creation
of a fairy tale world. Most modern psychologists see the fairy tale as “a way in which the
tellers express their deepest emotions” (Huang 9). For example, Freud, whom I discussed
earlier, examined fairy tales and stated that it can help patients to understand their fears and
their subconscious. Moreover, he discovered that fairy tale elements very often appeared in
his patient‟s dreams (Huang 9).
To conclude, fairy tales can be very helpful in dealing with trauma. Fairy tales tell
something about our feelings, about our problems and help us to understand and deal with
these. Moreover, fairy tales can help us to deal with horrible images.
10
“In addition, the writing of fairy tales has in itself a therapeutic value. When we compose a fairy tale, we let
loose our fantasy, but at the same time we shape it. This way, our desires and fears assume a much clearer shape
than we would allow them to in an everyday conversation.” (my translation)
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2.3.2 Origins, meaning and motifs of the fairy tale
Fairy tales tell our lives. (Yolen 238)
In order to obtain a clear insight into the use of fairy-tale motifs in the two Jewish
American trauma narratives by Budnitz and Yolen, I feel it is necessary to delve deeper into
the nature of fairy tales. First, I will examine the origins and the history of the fairy tale, and
then I will examine its meaning and characteristics. Furthermore, I will give a brief listing of
fairy tale motifs.
Nowadays, we see fairy tales as tales of wonder about weird and wonderful creatures
such as witches, fairies and frogs that turn into handsome princes. Present-day fairy tales are
commonly told to little children. These tales are clean stories suitable for the little ones. They
are full of magic, wonder and most importantly a happy end. One could say that our view on
fairy tales is mostly shaped by the Walt Disney studios that converted the classic fairy tales
into blockbuster movies. Jack Zipes states in his essay „Recent Trends in the Contemporary
American Fairy Tale‟ that “if we look at the Walt Disney industry and the vast distribution of
bowdlerized and sanitized versions of fairy tales by Perrault, the Grimms, Bechstein, Collodi,
and other classical authors, it is apparent that they have been incorporated into the Western
culture industry mainly to amuse children and adults alike” (2). That is to say, in this day and
age fairy tales have been converted into mere fun stories with a high entertainment value.
However, the origins of the fairy tale reveal a completely different purpose and audience. As
Huang says, “We often describe something that is ideal and beautiful as “a fairy tale.” But
fairy tales are far from innocent and pretty” (55). As she explains, fairy tales did not use to be
the pretty, innocent stories we know today. For example, at first the fairy tale of Little Red
Riding Hood did not have a happy end at all. In the original tale written by Perrault, Little Red
Riding Hood and her grandmother stayed inside the wolf‟s belly (Kast 20). Only later, when
27
the Grimm‟s started to collect and write down various fairy tales, did this tale get a different
ending.
The fairy tale emerged from the oral tradition. During the Middle Ages it became
necessary to “adapt a certain kind of oral storytelling, called the wonder tale to standards of
literacy and make it acceptable for diffusion in the public sphere” (Zipes Oxford Companion
xvi). That public sphere did not consist of young children as is now the case, but of “the
aristocracy, the clergy and middle classes” (Zipes xvi). Fairy tales were not regarded as
“proper reading material for children” (xxv). Children were supposed to read more
educational material. Jack Zipes claims that there is one important characteristic of the oral
tradition that passed onto the literary tradition of the fairy tale: “If there is one „constant‟ in
the structure and theme of the wonder tale that was also passed on to the literary fairy tale, it
is transformation – to be sure, miraculous transformation. Everybody and everything can be
transformed in a wonder tale” (xvii). In the wonder tale, this transformation consisted of a
change in social status (xvii) in the modern fairy tale this transformation is more of a magical
kind, such as the frog turning into a handsome prince. In the nineteenth century a lot of fairy
tales were censored and altered to suit the young reading public, among those the fairy tales
of the brother‟s Grimm, which are probably the best-known these days.
What exactly are fairy tales? What do they mean and how do they reflect our lives?
Fairy tales are not just ordinary tales; that is to say, these tales tell something more about us as
individuals and about mankind in general. They can have very different meanings to each
person who reads them. As Huang says: “For children, fairy tales stand for magic, wish
fulfillment, and happy endings. For some educators, fairy tales contain elements of cruelty,
sexism, and racism, which, some say, are inappropriate for children to read about” (5), and
“modern psychologists view the fairy tale as a way in which the story tellers express their
deepest emotion” (9). As is made clear here, each individual reads something else in fairy
28
tales. What might be a way of expressing and dealing with their feelings for one person, may
be a simple story about magical things for another. Fairy tales reflect our lives; as said before,
many believe fairy tales actually express our deepest emotions and Jane Yolen believes that
“our stories reflect the human condition, and none more so than the folk tales that have been
an inheritance from our great-great-ever-so-many-great-grandparents back to the beginning of
time”(238).
One of the main characteristics of the fairy tale is the “technique of not naming the
hero and heroine” (Huang 58). Either the names are never mentioned or the protagonists are
given generic names referring to one of their characteristics, a garment for instance. Examples
of this are Little Red Riding Hood, Briar Rose and Snow White. By giving these protagonists
a generic name, they get a more universal nature which makes them much easier for the
reader to identify with. For example, a person may feel like Briar Rose in that she also feels as
if her life is on hold until she finds her Prince Charming coming to kiss her awake.
Most fairy tales have a set plan. In his work The Morphology of the Folk Tale,
Vladimir Propp studied the plotlines of many fairy tales. The plots of all fairy tales are very
similar: the fairy tale often starts with the protagonists being given some sort of task or
assignment or they are banished or abandoned. After which they set out on a journey either to
complete their given task or to get back home. On this journey they meet with different
characters, mostly individuals or weird creatures, who give them advice or gifts, often with
magical powers. These help the protagonist on his or her way. Then there is often a temporary
setback and the protagonist has to use the gifts he or she has received. The end of this journey
very often involves a marriage or the acquirement of wealth (Zipes xvii). Of course not all
fairy tales follow this pattern to the detail as some will differ in one way or another from this
basic pattern, but in general one can assume that this is the most common fairy tale pattern.
As Jack Zipes states in The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, this fixed pattern “enables
29
teller and listeners to recognize, store, remember, and reproduce the stories and to change
them to fit their experiences and desires due to the easily identifiable characters who are
associated with particular assignments and settings” (xvii).
The general characteristics of the fairy tale explain why these stories are the same in
so many different countries and why they appeal to so many different people.
Fairy tales can be split up in several significant parts, called motifs. There are two
different ways of defining motifs. First there is Propp, who looks at the fairy tale in a
structural manner: “In his Morphology of the Folktale, Propp attempts to analyze fairy tales
structurally. He suggests that fairy tales can be compared by their „simplest narrative unit‟
(12) which is a motif. Each motif is identified „according to the functions of its dramatis
personae‟ (20)” (Huang 7). This simplest narrative unit can, for example, be the following:
Little Red Riding Hood‟s mother sends her to her grandmother, and she departs. Propp
believes that “although the actors and motivation behind these tales are variable, „the dispatch
and the departure on a quest are constants‟” (qtd. in Huang 7). So, as stated before, Propp
believes each fairy tale adheres to a fixed pattern.
A second definition of the motif is given by Max Lüthi. He defines motif as
“the smallest element of a narrative which has the intensity to persist in
tradition. A motif can be a single unit or a motif cluster. A simple fairy tale
may be a single motif by itself. A longer tale can consist of several motifs that
compose a motif cluster. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish a main motif
or core motif, which in German is called a Hauptmotiv or Kernmotiv,
secondary motifs (Nebenmotive) and filler or peripheral motifs (Füll-
Randmotive)” (qtd. in Huang 2).
30
Lüthi focuses more on the content of the fairy tale to define its motifs than does Propp. Stith
Thompson defines motifs in quite the same way as Lüthi does. In this thesis I will mainly
focus on the motifs as defined by Lüthi and Thompson. In his work Motif-Index of Folk-
Literature Thompson identifies many fairy-tale motifs, of which I will enumerate and
construe only the most common and well-known and the ones present in If I Told You Once
and Briar Rose. He has identified about a thousand fairy-tale motifs, but I feel that only the
most important ones, those which Huang also uses in her work, bear on the two novels
discussed here.
The first fairy-tale motif is that of the helper. As said before, the most common pattern
of a fairy tale consists of the hero‟s depart and the encounter with several characters that may
give the protagonist advice. These characters are called helpers. According to Huang, they
often have magical powers and can be either good or evil and can appear in many forms (15).
However, Huang claims that “the fairy-tale heroes, as well as persons in general, often have
little control over their fate” (24). Frequently, the protagonist does not follow the advice or
accept the help that is offered to him by these helpers, which Huang claims is typically
human. Thus the heroes make various detours before finally completing their task or attaining
their goal (24), which is their fate.
A second motif is that of the unpromising hero or heroine. The pretty princess or the
handsome prince is not always the protagonist of the fairy tale. An unpromising hero or
heroine might fulfil that role as well. As Huang suggests, they are often ill-treated by their
family or friends, or they are the joke of the town. Though unfortunate at the beginning of the
story, they often triumph in the end (43). Very often these unpromising heroes and heroines
are “either the only child or the youngest and most stupid child in their families” (Huang 17).
Furthermore, there is the motif of abandonment and elopement. As Huang explains,
most families in fairy tales are not the perfect and ideal family; by contrast they often have
31
problems. She claims that “these family problems, including child abuse, child abandonment,
and incest, to name but a few, are recurrent incidents in fairy tales” (55). Take for example the
evil stepmothers in both Snow White and Cinderella or the demanding and abusive father in
The Little Matchstick Girl. These problems can result in the abandonment or the elopement of
the child or children. As Huang says, it is so that “in most fairy tales, an adolescent boy or girl
is the hero or heroine” (64). They are either abandoned by their parents, as in Snow White and
Hansel and Gretel or afraid to go home, as in The Little Matchstick Girl. Also Lüthi claims
that what is common in fairy tales is that “the fairy-tale heroes, unlike their counterparts in the
local legends, are usually isolated. ...They are separated from their familiar surroundings”
(Huang 17).
Another motif that can be identified is magic. This is probably the best-known fairy-
tale motif. According to Huang, magic is
“one characteristic that distinguishes the fairy tale from other literary genres. In
fairy tales, there are magic figures: a cannibalistic giant, a friendly dwarf, a
wicked witch. There are magic objects: a bird that lays golden eggs, magic
water that can restore one‟s life, a cloak that can make whoever wears it
invisible. Magic power dominates many fairy tales: a handsome prince is
transformed into a frog by an evil power, a cat can be omniscient, a magic kiss
from a prince can disenchant a beautiful princess who has slept for one
hundred years. These magic events appear repeatedly in the fairy tale” (83).
The magic motif can consist of different components such as enchantment, changing of size,
certain magic manifestations as a way of punishment and magical power (Thompson 346, 47).
Moreover, magic can appear in the form of magic invisibility and magic transformation. With
respect to magic transformation, Huang states that “the worlds of human being and animal are
not far apart” (83). In many fairy tales, animals play an important role. These animals can talk
32
and act like human beings. According to Huang, this presence of talking animals stems from
folk imagination, namely Animism11
(84). In line with this it seems normal that animals can
act and talk like people.
A fifth motif is the deception motif. The hero or heroine of the fairy tale is not always
the most virtuous and honest person. Often the protagonist uses deception to get what he
longs for. Huang states that the origins of this motif lie in the stories common people told. She
claims that these storytellers often lacked education and regularly inserted elements found in
their daily lives, their interaction with other uneducated people, in the stories they told (97).
So, because these lower classes quite often had to deal with hustlers and cheaters, they used
these elements in their stories.
I would also like to mention the motif of the journey, that of the rape, the marriage, the
advice and the accompaniments of childbirth. These are all motifs that can be found in fairy
tales and in the novels I will examine.
11
A religion according to which natural objects, animals, and plants are believed to have souls. (Longman
Dictionary of English Language and Culture, 2002)
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3 Analyses
This part will investigate how Judy Budnitz and Jane Yolen have incorporated fairy
tales into their novels about trauma and the Holocaust. I will identify the fairy tales used and
examine how and why the characters in these two novels make use of fairy-tale elements.
Furthermore, I will examine how these two authors try to represent trauma by using fairy tales
and, in Judy Budnitz‟ case, also myths. This generation of Jewish American authors often
uses fairy tales and myths either to create a past they do not know or to dress up a painful past
they cannot acknowledge. As I will prove in my analyses, Judy Budnitz and Jane Yolen use
fairy tales mainly for this second purpose.
3.1 If I Told You Once by Judy Budnitz
3.1.1 Introduction
Judy Budnitz‟ novel If I Told You Once perfectly exemplifies the mechanism of
inherited trauma. The trauma of the first generation, namely Ilana, is transmitted onto the
other generations. Budnitz has depicted a family of women, each of whose acts are influenced
by the previous generations. Naomie, in particular, is a tragic example of this because she
almost literally relives Ilana‟s past (Codde 15). In addition to the inheritance of violent
characteristics all women also frequently use fairy tales or other stories to cover up the painful
reality of things.
As Codde states, Budnitz uses fairy tales “in both traditional and innovate ways” (17).
She uses well-known fairy tales in a new and original way, while in fact also returning to the
origins of the fairy tale, namely as being tales of horror and suffering (17).Moreover, Budnitz
also uses myths in her novel, which I will examine only briefly.
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3.1.2 Testimony and fairy tales
Four generations of women, four testimonies; all make use of fairy-tale elements to
tell their life story. Ilana‟s account probably bears the most obvious resemblance to a fairy
tale and uses most fairy-tale elements, since she is the character with the most traumatic past.
Sashie and Mara experienced a happier childhood, but the influence of Ilana‟s trauma, the loss
of their brothers and growing up in what can be called a dysfunctional family has traumatised
them too, although to a lesser extent. Inheriting the trauma of their parents, Sashie and later
on Mara suffer from what they call inherited trauma or secondary traumatisation. Just like
their mother or grandmother they cannot talk about their experiences without inventing stories
to dress up the most painful parts in their lives. Naomie is the one who makes up the least
stories. However, her life story parallels with Ilana‟s.
These testimonies are not always very reliable and accurate. As Langer says, victims
that testify are not always preoccupied with the accurate recollection of the past, but rather
with making sense of it (41). Ilana‟s testimony is especially illustrative of this; she has, for
example, an unusually long pregnancy (Codde “Postmemory”).
3.1.2.1 Ilana
Ilana is the first of the four generations of women to tell her story. Her testimony
about her life makes the most use of fairy tales. Even more so than the others, her story seems
to consist of magical and fairy-tale like elements.
The novel starts with Ilana telling the story of her life to her great-granddaughter
Naomie. She talks about the place where she grew up and it is clear that there is a lot of
superstition there, such as the superstition relating to giving birth and newborn children which
I will discuss later. Furthermore, these people maintain a strong belief in magical things. The
inhabitants of her native village believe, for example, that there are “evil spirits in the wind”
35
(2), or that there are wolves that walk “on their hind legs like men” (5), or even that Ari,
Ilana‟s brother, has “a tail like an ox rolled up inside his trouser (8). The villagers also believe
a great deal in myths and legends. An example of this is the story of two newlyweds that was
often told. They are believed to have grown together to form “a single broad, monstrous
figure” (5) as a result of constantly sitting side by side during the long and hard winter.
Growing up in such a village might explain why Ilana‟s testimony is constantly turned into a
fairy tale. She has grown up believing these legends and magic to be true, thus for her the
magical aspect of her story do not seem so strange.
When Ilana tells how one day in the woods she met a bandit, this story immediately
reminds us of the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. Wearing a hood, the young girl is sent by
her mother on an errand in the woods where she meets the bandit, who can be seen as the wolf
in this story.
The rest of Ilana‟s story more or less follows the same pattern as a fairy tale: the
protagonist departs on a journey, along which she meets several characters, both good and
bad. There are setbacks, but eventually the journey ends happily. Ilana decides to leave the
house where she grew up and runs away in the middle of the night. This story even starts with
the phrase “Once upon a time” (24), the well-known words that initiate most fairy tales. After
wandering through the woods for a couple of days she arrives at a little house in the woods. A
little cabin in the woods is a common element in fairy tales, such as in Hansel and Gretel,
where the two children stumble upon the witch‟s gingerbread house in the woods. The old
woman living in this small house is called Baba. In Eastern European tales, Baba Yaga is a
witch-like character who kidnaps small children and lives in a house on chicken feet and flies
in the air on a mortar or a bucket12
. According to Codde, the Baba in Ilana‟s tale is based on
this Baba Yaga character (8). She does not exactly kidnap small children but she does hold
12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga
36
the girl Anya captive. After walking for a whole night to see Baba to get an abortion, her feet
were frostbitten. Anya fell sick and Baba took care of her for all this time. But in fact she used
her as a prostitute to provide „sexual services‟ to the men in her village. The old woman also
resembles a witch in that she busies herself with making ointments and tonics for the
villagers. This invokes images of witches brewing all sorts of potions in their large cooking
pots. The next extract about Baba even directly reproduces the typical characteristics of the
Baba Yaga figure:
“There were whispers that she was a witch: some swore they had seen her
flying through the air in a bucket; others insisted her house could raise itself up
and walk on chicken legs” (30).
Ilana stays for a couple of years with this old woman until Baba is killed by the men of the
village. Ilana continues her journey until she is discovered by soldiers and is raped by an
officer. She again moves on and eventually ends up working for a woman. This passage
reminds us yet again of a common fairy tale, namely that of Bluebeard. Instead of using a
man in the role of Bluebeard, Budnitz reverses the roles and puts a woman, Ilana‟s mistress,
in the role of Bluebeard. After having saved her mistress‟s ninth husband, Ilana once more
sets out on her journey. The next character she meets is her lover Shmuel. After a few detours,
Ilana and her newly found lover arrive in America, “a place, far away and across an ocean,
where people stayed young forever and there was room to breathe and everything was hopeful
and new and run by machines” (65). In a normal fairy tale this would be the end; they would
live happily ever after, but this is not the case in Ilana‟s testimony. This part of Ilana‟s life
story can, however, still be seen as a fairy tale from beginning to end.
Why does Ilana tell her life story in the form of a fairy tale and why does she draw
upon so many fairy tales? For one, Ilana‟s testimony is one about trauma. She has clearly
suffered a lot in her life and has a difficult time dealing with what she experienced when she
37
was young and lived in Eastern Europe. As Codde argues Ilana‟s testimony is “a testimonial
account of trauma that uses fairy tales to dress up its painful content” (“Transmitted
Holocaust Trauma” 7). As previously mentioned in this thesis, Verena Kast explains that fairy
tales are very useful in that they can put terrifying images and events in a setting that is less
charged with fear (63).Thus, for Ilana telling fairy tales is a way of working through her past
and bringing across her life story without being crushed by the traumatic events of the past.
For example, she uses the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood to tell the story of her rape.
From what she tells Naomi about this experience, it would seem that she escaped from the
bandit unharmed, that nothing really happened. One gets the idea that it was just a scare. As
Codde says, this is exactly “what you would tell to your own great-grandchild” (8). She was,
in fact, most probably raped by the bandit. There are several indicators in her story to prove
this interpretation of this anecdote. First of all, after telling her mother what happened to her,
Ilana‟s mother goes out to kill13
the bandit. Secondly, Ilana „imagines‟ that she herself is
pregnant. Thirdly, she leaves the house to end up with Baba, who is conveniently “specialised
in clandestine abortions” (Codde 8). As Codde suggests, the time she stays there with Baba
can be seen as the time that she needs to recover from the abortion and to pay her for the
abortion (8).
Ilana also makes up a fairy-tale like creature, Anya, who she supposedly meets while
staying with Baba. Ilana describes her as a real person, but certain fairy-tale characteristics are
ascribed to her. Baba, for example, has deceived the men of the village by leading them to
believe that Anya is some sort of fairy creature that will “shrivel up and turn to dust” if they
touch her (36). Ilana too is impressed by Anya; she was “a girl as [she] has never seen before”
(34). She has beautiful red and gold hair and “the softest, whitest flesh” (34), features that
remind us of fairies. Codde argues that Ilana has created this fairy like character as “a
13
She does not kill the bandit herself, but uses the scent glands of a wolf to trick a wolf into killing the bandit.
38
doppelganger who is capable of bearing that which she cannot cope with, a stronger alter ego
who does not suffer from her humiliating treatment by men, while Ilana is fully in denial
about her rape” (9). She cannot deal with what happened to her; therefore she invents a
character that is strong enough to deal with it. Telling her life story by way of fairy tales is a
means of expressing and dealing with her feelings.
A second explanation for Ilana‟s use of fairy tales is the fact that fairy tales used to be
tales of horror. Fairy tales included a lot of elements of daily life, which in those days
included child abandonment and abuse. Therefore it does not seem illogical that Ilana often
speaks in term of fairy tales. In this respect, Budnitz goes back to the origins of the fairy tale.
Thirdly, Codde claims that Ilana‟s way of testifying is “not an illogical attempt to bear
witness to trauma, as she would otherwise, with a more explicit account, find no empathic
listener at all” (12). He proves this claim with the example of the woman who survived the
camps and comes to live in the same building as Ilana and her family. She constantly talks
about what is happening in Europe; she speaks of “a world that has gone awry” (Budnitz
111). She does not use fairy tales to dress it up, but speaks out clearly about these horrors.
That is why, Codde claims, “her American audience refuses to listen to her” (12). After a
while, she does not have any empathic listeners left. The Americans refuse to believe that
what this woman and other refugees say is true; they deny that these things are really
happening in Europe:
“Our neighbors, and even Eli and Wolf, said: They must be mad, these people,
seasick and frightened, spewing nightmares and visions. These stories cannot
be true, they are fairy tales told to frighten children” (109).
According to Codde, the Americans used the same measures as Ilana did, namely dealing with
what happened as a fairy tale, in order to protect themselves from “the aftereffects of trauma”
(12).
39
3.1.2.2 Sashie
Sashie too, like her mother, uses fairy tales in her account. Even her own mother
claims that “from an early age she liked to play at make-believe, at creating worlds of her own
to live in” (107). Ilana mentions: “She sat in her room calling herself a princess in a tower, a
queen on a throne. And even when she was not playing, she tended to invent her own version
of events around her, twisting the truth to her liking” (107). As an adult, Sashie still does this
as a means of denying what is really happening. Just as Ilana can only testify by means of
fairy tales to avoid the traumatic periods of her past; Sashie needs to invent her own world or
reality to be able to cope with her traumas.
As a young child, Sashie seemed to be convinced that her hair was really blonde;
although it in fact was dark. Her mother Ilana remarks upon this fact: “It was something I
could not understand, the way she refused to see the truth that was right in front of her eyes,
how she lied to herself without knowing she did” (108). This statement is very remarkable,
since Ilana herself is doing the same thing. She too makes up stories (by using well-known
fairy tales) to dress up the truth. Both women reproach each other for inventing things and not
facing reality without seeing that they are actually doing the same.
As Codde points out in his essay, Sashie makes up a fairy tale in response to her
brothers‟ letters asking about the camp survivor (13). She does not find it in her heart to tell
them that the woman actually has killed herself; thus she invents a story saying that “ it had
turned out her missing husband was not dead at all, he had reappeared and taken her away
with him to a house in the countryside” (126). Moreover, she makes up a fairy tale about her
father as well. She tells her brothers that he just has a cold, while in fact he has died. Thinking
others cannot cope with reality either, she invents a story for them too.
A very well-known fairy tale appears in Sashie‟s account, namely Cinderella. She
dreams about it “night after night” (133). In that dream she is Cinderella, or at least the actress
40
that is to play the role of Cinderella. Her two brothers play the part of the stepsisters and her
mother is the evil stepmother. However, her fairy tale does not follow the normal pattern of
the Cinderella fairy tale. Sashie knows she is Cinderella, but no one believes her because she
is completely covered in dust. She tries to sweep up the dust, but it refuses to behave and gets
stuck to her skin as well. Then the fairy godmother appears, but at this point Sashie mixes up
stories. The fairy godmother is in fact Glinda, the good witch of the North, a character in the
film The Wizard of Oz14
. But before Sashie recognises her, she is taken away by dwarves,
also known as Munchkins in that same film. At the end, her fairy tale dream changes into
something horrible. The fairy tale turns into a World War II scene, where soldiers are falling
from the sky. Meanwhile she tries to put her foot in the slipper, which she fails to do; and cuts
off parts of her foot. This fairy tale dream is a typical example of the fact that a fairy tale can
express one‟s deepest emotions, the ones that the person cannot express in a normal
conversation. Sashie mentions that Cinderella is her favourite fairy tale. Henceforth, she uses
her favourite tale, the one with which she can identify most, to unconsciously express her
deepest feelings. The fact that she believes that she is Cinderella and has golden hair,
although she is covered in dust which she cannot remove, points both to her wish and
inability to be like the film stars, of whom she has posters in her room and points to her
delusion her hair is blond. Moreover, it shows that she has a strong wish to be a regular
American girl; something she expresses several times, and demonstrates her conviction and
hope that she belongs to a family with a high social status. The fact that this fairy tale turns
sour bears reference to the trauma that pops up unwillingly. She cuts off her foot to fit in the
slipper, but even then it does not fit. This may represent her fear that she will never be the
Cinderella she wants to be. The dead soldiers and her dead brothers may allude to the
14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_of_the_North
41
traumatising fear she has that her brothers will die while fighting in World War II. Yet again,
Budnitz hereby turns to the origins of the fairy tale.
Furthermore, there is another very clear instance in the novel of Sashie‟s inability to
face reality, when she invents a story for herself to explain her husband‟s „disappearance.‟ As
Codde says, she develops an obsession with cleanliness in order to avoid the painful truth of
her failing marriage (13). Her husband Joe has supposedly been taken away by the cleaning
firm that comes every night to clean the streets and disposes of everything that does not
belong there. However, this seems very unrealistic. Codde states that the real truth about Joe‟s
disappearance surfaces indirectly in a nightmare Sashie has about the butcher she saw in
Anya‟s tenement building, where she „met‟ Joe (14). Codde notes what Anya said earlier in
the novel about the butcher: “If they are disagreeable, I have a special arrangement with the
butcher downstairs” (155), and connects this to Sashie‟s nightmare (14). Later on, Ilana even
confesses what they had done (Codde 14). One can therefore conclude that Sashie and Ilana
had Joe murdered. However, Sashie cannot face that truth and she lets herself believe he was
taken away by the garbage men.
Moreover, there is another instance of Sashie creating a story. When she
discovers Ilana‟s identification documents and Fabergé egg in Ilana‟s room, she immediately
imagines her mother‟s „true‟ past. The egg is proof for her that her mother comes from a very
wealthy family. Her parent‟s identification documents show Sashie that they are brother and
sister and explain, at least according to Sashie, why Ilana always used fairy tales to talk about
her past: “I had found out the truth, her royal family, her incestuous desires. No wonder she
wanted to disguise it all in fairy tales and magic” (247). Later on, she even discovers a
painting of Ilana dressed in wealthy clothes, which only makes her more firm in her belief.
Based on a couple of objects from the past, she creates her own story as she would like it to
be. This is typical of the children of parents who do not testify. As Codde says, not talking
42
about the past creates a big mystery; this second generation has no contact with their family
history and therefore they develop an obsession with the past. He explains that they inherit a
transmitted loss: a sense of absence that is turned into a loss via the parents (“Postmemory”).
What Sashie is trying to do is to fill this void she feels by creating her own story about the
past. She tries to reconstruct the past. This is also typical of the challenge with which the third
generation is faced. The third generation has to deal with a past they do not know. There are
large voids in their past and consequently they are obsessed with trying to get to know their
past and ancestry. They will never know the exact truth about their past, since they have to
rely on mostly documents.
Sashie is a person that cannot cope with the reality of things and therefore she makes
up stories or fairy tales. In the same way as her mother Ilana needs fairy tales in order to be
able to tell her life story and to dress up traumatic experiences, Sashie uses make believe to
avoid the harsh reality. She reproaches her mother for constantly telling these fairy tales and
refuses to see or is incapable of seeing the truth that lies behind these stories. However, she
herself is not able to see that she is doing exactly the same thing as her mother.
3.1.2.3 Mara
Mara, Sashie‟s daughter, is the third generation to use fairy tales in her account. She,
for example, uses a combination of two well-known fairy tales when she talks about her
brother‟s drug addiction, namely The Pied Piper of Hamelin and Jack and the Beanstalk. Her
brother has a drug addiction and sneaks away at night to take drugs. However, when Mara
talks of her brother and what happened during those nights when they were young, there is no
mention of a drug addiction at all. Instead she has created a story based on fairy tales to cover
up the reality. In this story her brother and other children are enticed by the music of the ice
cream vendor (Codde 14). Almost every night she sees her brother sneaking out, claiming he
43
hears music, which she apparently cannot hear. This part of her story is reminiscent of The
Pied Piper of Hamelin. When they arrive at their destiny they all climb up a ladder to an ice
cream truck floating in the sky, just as Jack climbed the beanstalk. As Codde remarks, they
“literally get high” (14). Mara cannot cope with the fact that her beloved brother has a drug
addiction and refuses to face the truth; therefore she makes up a fairy tale and denies reality.
In addition, Mara cannot handle the fact that her brother, for whom she has an
unhealthy love, has a fiancée, Chloe. As Codde says, she becomes jealous of her and
eventually sets her on fire, believing she is “an evil mixture of woman and water snake” (14).
She has convinced herself that Chloe is a magical sea creature:
“You see, I understood who she was. I had found her out. She was one of those
dark sea creatures who lure men to their deaths for sport, like the mermaids
that call out to sailors in the moonlight and then drag them to the ocean floor
trapped in their long scaly hair; like the sirens with their irresistible
yammering” (216).
She feels she has to save her brother and therefore kill Chloe. The interesting part is that in
both cases where she invents a story, she puts the blame on somebody else. Jonathan is
always the one who is enticed and she makes it seem like he has no control over his actions;
that he cannot willingly reach a decision. He is lured away unwillingly by the enchanting
music of the ice cream truck and later on he is lured by Chloe, who Mara compares to a Siren
that lures men with enchanting singing. Mara is so blinded by her love for Jonathan that she
uses fairy-tale elements to dress up the painful truth about her brother.
Moreover, Mara invents stories about Jonathan for Naomie, Chloe‟s daughter. She
shows her postcards send by Jonathan from the cities he supposedly visited; one time telling
her he is a sailor, the next time a doctor. When Naomie later looks at those cards, she
discovers that nothing is written on them. Mara feels she has to protect Naomie from the
44
reality that her father does not even know she exists by inventing a much less painful story.
So, she makes up stories to protect not only herself but also others from the truth.
3.1.2.4 Naomie
Naomie, Chloe‟s daughter, is the last generation to give her account. At first it seems
as though Naomie is the only one who does not invent stories and fairy tales to talk about her
life. But at the end we find out that she too is an unreliable narrator and that we cannot be sure
that she is telling the absolute truth. As the youngest generation, she is bombarded with the
stories and fairy tales of the previous generations, each of which claims that Naomie should
not listen to the make-believe stories of the others and also believes that what they can teach
her is best.
Naomie‟s account begins with a description of the dreams she has been having. In
those dreams she sees what Ilana, Sashie and Mara have told her. She dreams of “a ladder that
reaches from the ground to the stars, with children climbing up and down and the smell of
burnt sugar” (251), of “men raining from the sky and crumpling to the ground, cursing their
commanders and the war and the manufacturers of their faulty parachutes” (252), and of “a
ship at sea, ..., of a black-haired man whose shoulders are so broad he cannot fit through the
doorway” (252). This shows that she is influenced by the stories and fairy tales that the others
have told her.
The person with the greatest influence on Naomie is Ilana. She tells her life story to
warn Naomie and to make sure that she does not grow up to be like Ilana, Sashie and Mara.
However, Naomie‟s life seems to turn into the fairy tale of Ilana‟s life. As Codde says, this is
“perhaps the most outspoken and painful instance of determinism by heredity, as Naomie‟s
strikingly parallels that of her great-grandmother, Ilana” (15). Codde points out that Naomie
too gets pregnant and that “she sets out to an abortion clinic, with a glass globe that has snow
45
inside descending on a forest and a little house” (15). This reminds us of Ilana setting out to
Baba‟s house in the woods, with her Fabergé egg (Codde 15). When Naomie talks about this,
we start to doubt whether she is telling the truth or making up a story. She tells her boyfriend
that she has not had an abortion and that she has just gotten her period; so she was not
pregnant after all. Like her great-grandmother, Codde points out, “she is incapable of dealing
with the reality of her abortion” (15). Moreover, according to Codde, on her way back from
the abortion clinic Naomie sees a couple of figures such as the three old women, a woman
who has cut off her foot and a man that is shot for drugs, that remind the reader of the people
Ilana met in her life (15). Furthermore, some small references point to the fact that Naomie
has not escaped her heritage and grows up to be just like Ilana. For example, “My hair keeps
making this funny sound when I shake it, I say” (292) reminds us of Ilana‟s hair that at one
point was full of tiny bells.
3.1.3 Fairy tales and myths
3.1.3.1 Main fairy tales used
Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Bluebeard are the main fairy tales used in
Budnitz‟ novel.
The story of Little Red Riding Hood appears several times in the novel. Not only in
Ilana‟s testimony, but also in Mara and Naomie‟s. It is only in Ilana‟s story that this tale takes
up a large part; in Mara and Naomie‟s testimonies only a quick reference is made to this fairy
tale: “Seeing Nomie at her knee I had wanted to say: What great eyes you have, grandmother,
what big teeth” (241). And:“When I was small she made me a cape and a hood all in red, and
I wore it for years whenever I went outside; and she told me a story about a girl who wore a
hood made of a wolf‟s hide” (253). These references in Mara and Naomie‟s accounts show
the influence of Ilana‟s testimony on the next generation. Little Red Riding Hood is “a type of
46
warning fairy tale” (Zipes, Oxford Companion 302). Ilana tells this story over and over not
only in an attempt to overcome her trauma but also to warn her offspring. However, only
Naomie realises that her great-grandmother tried to warn her. Unfortunately, she realised it
too late, only after she experienced the same events as her great-grandmother.
A second fairy tale is Cinderella. It is not so odd that Sashie dreams of this fairy tale,
as this is her favourite fairy tale; the one with which she can identify most. Even as a child she
had always dreamed of being a princess in a fairy-tale world. She is a woman that loves
luxury and feels a strong need to be seen as a real American woman, not as a poor girl from
the Old Country. She attaches great importance to outward appearances, as she is obsessed
with looking good and keeping a clean house. The Cinderella fairy tale is a typical from „rags
to riches‟ story. As Jack Zipes explains, “if one aim of the story is to illustrate the ascent from
low to high status, then Cinderella must meet a man in that social milieu who will free her
from her miserable circumstances” (Oxford Companion 97). This is exactly what happens;
she marries and when her husband gets a promotion, they move into a better apartment in a
nicer neighbourhood, thus ascending the social ladder. Furthermore, Zipes maintains that
“marriage represents an effort to gain independence from the previous generation and to
create a new family” (97), which is the one thing in which Sashie fails, as she takes her
mother with her to her new home. Thus, this fairy tale represents exactly what she dreams
about happening in her own life. Unfortunately, in real life the fairy tale she hoped for does
not turn out the way she wanted: her husband is unfaithful to her and eventually she
„disposes‟ of him. The fitting of the slippers that goes completely wrong in Sashie‟s dream is
illustrative of this failure in real life to live up to the fairy tale. Just as the stepsisters in the
fairy tale Sashie has to mutilate her foot so that it fits into the slipper and she fails the shoe-
test which would identify her as Cinderella.
47
The Bluebeard fairy tale is a tale of the dangers of marriage and the curiosity of
women (Zipes, Oxford Companion 56). Budnitz cleverly reverses roles and turns the
Bluebeard character into a woman. This fairy tale parallels the events in Budnitz‟ novels. The
fairy tale shows a strong, violent woman and men that die. The novel also shows four strong
and violent women; moreover most men in Budnitz‟ novel „disappear‟. First, the bandit is
killed by Ilana‟s mother, then Ari is kidnapped, later on Shmuel and Ilana‟s two sons die,
Sashie‟s husband is „killed‟ by Ilana and Sashie, and lastly Mara‟s brother Jonathan
disappears. Thus, this fairy tale mirrors what happens to the women and men in the novel.
Instead of warning about women‟s curiosity, it warns about men‟s the infidelity, which occurs
later in the novel when Joe is unfaithful to Sashie.
3.1.3.2 Other fairy tales
There are also some brief references to other fairy tales or well-known fairy-tale
expressions. First of all, when talking about how she discovered Baba‟s house in the woods,
Ilana uses the expression “like a granted wish” (29), which is an obvious reference to fairy
tales, where wishes are often granted.
Furthermore, the scene where the village men are encircling Baba‟s house, anxiously
waiting to see Anya reminds us of the tale Three Little Pigs. The phrases “they circled,
scratching at the walls, pounding at the door, wailing and chewing their lips” (39) and “They
were running, circling, howling at the moon” (39) remind us of the wolf encircling the pigs‟
houses threatening to blow them down.
Moreover, Ilana keeps the Fabergé egg, which she received from the bandit in the
woods under her mattress. This is an obvious parallel to The Princess and the Pea, in which a
pea is kept under twenty mattresses and featherbeds in order to establish who is a real
princess.
48
Even more well-known fairy-tale expressions appear in the novel such as in “He came
up behind me, saying: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who‟s the fairest one of all? Not you, that‟s
for sure” (192; from Snow White), and “And like Ilana she kept her hair dyed its once-upon-a-
time original color: a fiery orange with yellow streaks like false gold” (267).Other well-
known fairy-tale expressions include: “It was like looking into a fairy-tale mirror that gave me
back my youth” (119), and: “It was like an enchanted city, so quiet, utterly asleep” (277).
Also the story of Hansel and Gretel appears in the novel when Mara wonders how
Naomie can find her way through the clutter of furniture in the apartment: “Perhaps she left a
trail behind her, the breakfast crumbs dribbling from her dress” (274).
All these references to fairy tales and well-known fairy-tale expressions emphasise the
influence fairy tales have on the lives of these four women. Fairy tales are incorporated into
their daily lives more so than into the lives of ordinary people.
3.1.3.3 Myths
Next to fairy tales there are also some myths that appear in If I Told You Once; these
are used in the same way as the fairy tales. The most prominent use of myths in the novel is in
Ilana‟s description of the three old women living in her village. According to Codde, these
represent “the three spinning goddesses of Fate, the Greek Moirai” (12). These goddesses
decide about life and death, when they cut a person‟s thread of life, that person dies. These
three old women also have prophetic abilities and foretell the coming of horrible things,
namely the Holocaust and the destruction and annihilation of their village. However, no one
of the villagers wants to listen to what they have to say. As Ilana grows older, she sees these
three women haunting her to a greater extent. At the end of her life, she sees them almost
constantly, foreboding her approaching death.
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A second reference to mythology appears when Ilana describes how she ran away
from home. She describes her mother as some kind of Medusa figure, a Gorgon with hair
made of snakes that can turn people who look her in the eyes into stone.
Moreover, the myth of Ariadne‟s thread also appears in this novel: “I wondered if she
unrolled a ball of yarn as she went in, to help her on the way back” (274).
3.1.4 Major fairy-tale motifs
The typical fairy-tale motifs are to be found in Ilana‟s account in particular. Her
account has the form and pattern of a fairy tale. However, the testimonies of the other
generations also show some of these motifs.
3.1.4.1 The helper
As in fairy tales, Ilana meets different characters during her journey, both good and
bad characters that may be seen as helpers. They may or may not give advice. In Ilana‟s fairy
tale the helpers do not exactly give her advice, but these encounters help her move forward on
her journey. One of the most important is Baba, the first character she meets. Baba helps Ilana
by performing an abortion (although this is not explicitly mentioned, we can assume she did
so) and also provides her with shelter. The second important helper is Shmuel; he helps Ilana
to proceed on her journey. First, she travels along with his theatre troupe and later on, she is
able to travel to America thanks to him.
The three old women in Ilana‟s village can also be seen as helpers. They can see into
the future and warn the villagers of what is about to come. They foretell the annihilation of
their village:
“There came a time when they began to speak ... about a darkness rising up, a
dark tide turning and coming to wash over us. Of atrocities beyond our
comprehension, bodies piled up high as haystacks, ... But we ignored them, we
50
told ourselves the darkness they spoke of was merely the next nightfall. ...
They‟re mad, we said. Don‟t listen, we told each other” (16).
The villagers, including Ilana, however, refuse to listen to them and this eventually results in
the total annihilation of the village. This ignoring of the advice given by the helpers is a
common motif in fairy tales. According to Huang, when the helpers in fairy tales are human
(as they can also be animals), they “are often old or odd-looking” (35). So are these three
women, as Ilana describes them as following: “Their faces were indistinct with age, their
features had run together like melted wax; no eyebrows, nose flattened and ridgeless, earlobes
stretched long” (15).
3.1.4.2 The unpromising heroine
In fairy tales the hero or heroine is not always the handsome prince or the beautiful
princess; it is often an ordinary, clumsy boy or girl. Ilana is merely an ordinary girl, nothing
special. She is not especially beautiful or smart. She is just one the many children her parents
have. What is also typical in fairy tales is that the heroes and heroines are very often young
boys and girls. Similarly, Ilana‟s fairy tale and journey start when she is a young girl and
finish when she arrives in the new country, while she is still young.
What is interesting about Sashie and Mara is that although they are adults, they still
feel like little girls. It is as though they have trouble growing up. Mara, for example, says: “I
did not like to look at myself in the mirror. I had become so tall, my face was a stranger‟s, and
I had a red rash on my hands and arms from working. In my thoughts, I pictured myself as a
child still” (210). Both have a difficult time facing reality, acknowledging that they are adults
and living their own adult lives. They still see themselves as young children, the young
heroines in a fairy-tale world, where everything is wonderful and comforting. Ilana too seems
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to cling to her childhood in a way: she still wears her hair in the same way she used to and
even dyes her hair to keep the original colour.
3.1.4.3 Abandonment/elopement
Ilana‟s fairy tale does not exactly start off with the motif of abandonment; technically
she runs away. She herself has decided to leave her family. In fairy tales abandonment or
running away is connected to an unhappy family situation, Ilana‟s elopement is chiefly
connected to one particular event, her brother‟s „abduction‟. He is taken away against his will
by soldiers on a recruiting mission. While chasing these soldiers, her mother goes into labour
before the eyes of the entire village. As this is seen as bringing bad luck, all subsequent
trouble is blamed on Ilana‟s mother, which leads to an unhappy situation for Ilana and her
family. This leads to Ilana‟s decision to leave home: “When all these things happened I knew
it was time to leave” (23).
As Propp says, the departure on a quest is a constant in almost every fairy tale, and
Ilana‟s fairy tale also starts with a departure. As it is typical for the hero or heroine of a fairy
tale to be separated from his or her family and surroundings (Huang 17), Ilana leaves her
family and her village behind to wander off alone towards a new life.
3.1.4.4 Magic
The best-known and most important motif of the fairy tale is also very prominent in If
I Told You Once. The novel is bursting with magical elements that are set against a realistic
background. Magic and realism become intertwined and it is sometimes difficult to make a
distinction between what is real and what is not. As said before, Ilana grows up in a village
that very much believes in magic and legends. The villagers believe in spirits in the winds and
magical creatures that live in the woods or only come out at night. Just as in fairy tales the
woods are a very magical place. In fairy tales the woods are often populated by fairies,
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wicked witches and big, bad wolves. Similarly the woods around Ilana‟s village are full of
magical creatures. Her mother, for example, was supposedly possessed by a forest spirit or
dybbuk, which saw her wandering about in the woods. Moreover, there are harpies flying in
the sky; creatures with “the bodies of hawks and the heads of women” or “the faces of the
dead” (Budnitz 66). It is a world where “trees walk on human legs, houses walk on chicken
feet, villages and oceans disappear without a trace” (Budnitz 115).
The Fabergé egg, which Ilana carries with her on her journey and which she keeps
under her mattress in later life, also seems to have a magical countenance. In this egg, Ilana
sees a magical world, a “miniature magical city” (Budnitz 79), which is a little different every
time she looks into it. Both Sashie and Naomie have looked into it too to discover a “cunning
little diorama inside” (Budnitz 246). Throughout the novel the reader gets the idea that the
diorama in the egg is something wonderful; a little village with real, living creatures; a little
fairy-tale world, as it were. However, at the end both the reader and Naomie discover that
there is only “a curved mirror” (Budnitz 294) inside. In fact, there is no little village inside at
all. The egg reflects the thoughts, dreams and hopes of the person looking in it. For Ilana, it
showed her future, the new country she was going to. For Naomie, it shows her past and her
ancestry; she sees her great-grandmother and Ilana‟s mother and father, she also sees Ilana‟s
brothers and sons. One could say that the egg provides a way of looking into one‟s soul.
Furthermore, Ilana‟s brother Ari is portrayed as a kind of magical creature. He is
extremely strong and big. He has so much power he accidently kills animals while in fact he
only wants to hug them and play with them. Later on, he evolves into a type of Sasquatch
figure, an ape-like figure living in the woods. He roams around in the woods eating raw meat
and even human meat (that of the officer that raped Ilana). This characterisation ensues from
the story that he was born as a goblin child who was traded in for a human child. This feeds
the presumption that he was not traded in and in fact is a goblin.
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The magic elements particularly appear in Ilana‟s account. These cause the reader to
be confused and to wonder which parts of Ilana‟s testimony are real and which are not. Since
Ilana has grown up in a surrounding where many people believe in magic, this belief has
influenced a lot of her stories. She is a very unreliable narrator and the reader cannot be
certain if these magical things happened or not. Was there really a Bluebeard woman who
killed several husbands? Was there a girl that was so beautiful she mesmerised every man in
the village?
Magic does not only appear in Ilana‟s testimony; later in life she is also seen by some
as a magical creature. For example, Mara‟s friends claim that Ilana is a witch: “She eats little
children. She drinks their blood” (194; like Baba Yaga). Or when Mara states that “she knew
things without needing to be told” (189), as if she is some sort of mind reader. Moreover,
Ilana claims to see Shmuel after his death. She says he visits her at night from the other side.
As she grows old, the magical creatures from her old life in Eastern-Europe, those she fled
from, come to haunt her. Her mind deteriorates more and more and she becomes confused in
time, she mixes the old world and the new world she lives in and she sees aspects of her old
life penetrate into her new life in America. For instance, she sees the old women from her old
village chasing after her – as Codde says, representing the three Moira, foreshadowing Ilana‟s
death− and harpies flying through the sky. Exactly this confusion of the past and present is
what trauma is about (La Capra Writing history 89).
Because of all these magical elements, some might call Budnitz‟ work magic realism.
However, Judy Budnitz herself does not feel that this is a magic realism novel. Codde
explains magic realism as the presence of a very realistic setting where a number of magical
events occur, which cannot be explained rationally (“Postmemory”). He too claims that the
novel is not one of magic realism since the magical events can be explained: “the magical
events are always invented by the characters, ... prompted by the inability to revisit the site of
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trauma” (16). Thus, the magic appears in the unreliable accounts of the four generations, there
is no proof that these events really occurred and this magic can be explained as a
manifestation resulting from their trauma
3.1.4.5 Deception
The fairy-tale hero or heroine is not always an honest person; often he or she uses
deception to attain his or her goals. In Ilana‟s account, the motif of deception also appears as a
way of attaining her goal of going to America. Her husband-to-be Shmuel wants Ilana to go
with him and his sister to America, but when he finds out she does not have any identification
papers, he suggests she goes with him in his sister‟s place. So, on the boat towards America
and in the immigration centre on Ellis Island they pose as brother and sister. Later on, while
living in America, they have to take on a new disguise, namely that of a married couple. Since
their identification papers show that they are siblings, they cannot be legally married.
However, towards their neighbours and friends they have to uphold that they are a married
couple in order to protect their children from being exposed as illegitimate children. Ilana and
Shmuel deceived not only the authorities and their neighbours and friends, but also Shmuel‟s
sister. Although Shmuel reassured Ilana that it was all right for her to go instead of his sister,
Shmuel deceived his parents and sister by stealing her identification papers.
This is not the only example of deception; Ilana, together with Anya, tricked Joe into
falling in love with and marrying her daughter Sashie. It was no coincidence that Joe
practically choked on a fish bone; it was perfectly orchestrated by Anya and Ilana. The
deception, which Ilana first used only to be happy in a new country, is now also used to make
her daughter happy.
All four generations have the ability to deceive, none of them ever tell the whole truth,
not even to their own family members.
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3.1.4.6 The accompaniments of childbirth
In fairy tales, childbirth is often accompanied by magic or magical creatures. Briar
Rose‟s christening was for instance accompanied by fairies, who were invited as
godmothers15
. Childbirth is a motif that recurs a couple of times throughout the novel and
here too it is always accompanied by some sort of superstition and magic. Ilana‟s mother and
the other women of her generation uphold a certain superstition about childbirth: it can never
be accompanied by a man. There is a firm belief that a man witnessing a woman giving birth
is bad luck, as Ilana explains: “Men were forbidden to witness it, they were bad luck; they
were kept out of the birthing room, often out of the house altogether” (2). But when Ilana was
born her father was in the room; he even delivered the baby. Normally, this should be seen as
a bad omen, but luckily her own mother said that she was “a lucky child, twice blessed and
twice stubborn, destined to make [her] own way in the world” (3). Keep in mind that this last
part is an omen of what her future will bring; namely her elopement and her immigration to
America. Her brother Ari‟s birth is also surrounded by superstition, but one of a different
kind. This time there is no man nearby, but Ari is believed to be “a changeling, a goblin
child” (6). All the women keep away from him in fear of becoming infertile. He is believed to
be the child of forest imps and is supposed to be abandoned in the woods so that “in the night
the forest imps could take the child underground to his rightful home” (6). Later on, when her
mother is pregnant again, she gives birth in front of the entire village:
“For a single man to witness a birth was bad luck; for all the village men to
witness it was such a bad omen that all the ensuing trouble that later befell the
village was heaped on my mother; everyone said she was to blame for all that
happened after and the village women never spoke to her again” (22).
15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty
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The whole village is so superstitious that everything bad that happens is blamed on her
mother. Ilana, being the product of her environment is much influenced by that. She too
believes that men in the birthing room are bad luck and claims that Sashie‟s child will be
cursed and “bring evil luck down on us all” (168).
The magic and superstition surrounding childbirth in this novel are rooted in the deep
superstition and belief of these people in this small village in general. Just as in other aspects
of their daily lives, childbirth too is intertwined with magic.
3.1.4.7 Other fairy-tale motifs
Firstly, the journey is a motif that very clearly appears in Ilana‟s testimony and is
echoed in Naomie‟s account. Both leave on a journey as young girls. Ilana‟s journey is
towards a new country, Naomie‟s is towards the abortion clinic.
The motif of rape does not seem like one that might appear in a fairy tale. However, it
can be found in some fairy tales. In the early versions of Sleeping Beauty, for example, the
prince rapes her instead of kissing her back to life (Zipes, Oxford Companion 476). In Ilana‟s
tale there are two rapes; the first, however, is not explicitly mentioned, but is disguised as a
fairy tale. The second is mentioned in Ilana‟s testimony. The fact that only the second rape is
described as a sexual experience −and thus as a real rape− echoes trauma theory (Codde
“Postmemory”). Codde states that the first time she was raped, she „missed‟ it; only with
revisiting it, it dawns on her it was a sexual experience (“Postmemory”).
Most fairy tales end with a marriage; take for example Cinderella and Snow White.
Ilana‟s fairy tale does not end with a real marriage. However, they pretend to be a married
couple towards their neighbours and friends.
The motif of advice runs throughout the entire novel and not particularly in Ilana‟s
account. Both Sashie and Mara vie with each other for Naomie‟s attention. Each of them
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wants to give her advice and feels that they are the only one holding the truth. Both constantly
tell Naomie not to listen to the others and to believe what she is saying. There is a constant
struggle to mould Naomie to their own image. The only one that does not force herself upon
Naomie is Ilana and she is the only one Naomie actually listens to. Her testimony towards
Naomie can be seen as a big warning or advice that can guide Naomie on her journey through
life. Unfortunately, Naomie realises this too late; she has already relived Ilana‟s past.
3.2 Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
3.2.1 Introduction
Jane Yolen‟s novel Briar Rose recounts the story of a young woman trying to discover
her grandmother‟s true past. Yolen uses the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty as “a point of reference
for a haunting Holocaust mystery” (Stone). She uses the fairy-tale motif on different levels.
She explains that her novel uses this motif “as both a thematic underpinning and as
transitional material” (qtd. in Stone). Moreover, she adds that “some would say the book itself
is a fairy tale in that it uses fairy tale logic and has a fairy tale at the core since no women
have actually escaped from Chelmno” (qtd. in Stone). Thus, the fairy-tale motif appears on
three different levels. Firstly, the fairy tale is used a theme: the novel is about a girl receiving
the kiss of life, as Briar Rose did from her prince. Secondly, Yolen uses the fairy-tale motif as
transitional material to bring across to the readers a story about the Holocaust. Moreover,
Gemma uses the tale to communicate her life story to her three granddaughters. Thirdly, the
novel seems to follow the fairy-tale pattern − it has a fairy-tale ending− and it is based on a
fairy tale.
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3.2.2 Testimony
3.2.2.1 Gemma
Gemma‟s testimony about her life is a rather peculiar one. She does not exactly tell her
life story, but instead she repeatedly tells the story of Sleeping Beauty. At first, it seems that
she is only telling the well-known fairy tale as entertainment for her three granddaughters.
However, from chapter three onwards the reader discovers that there is more to this fairy tale.
Several elements which seem out of the ordinary, creep their way into the original fairy tale;
elements that remind the reader of occurrences other than fairy tales. Gemma, for example,
describes the bad fairy as a fairy dressed “in black with big black boots and silver eagles on
her hat” (19). Strange elements such as these show that this fairy tale has an underlying
content, namely Gemma‟s traumatic past as a victim of the Holocaust. Gemma constantly
seeks an opportunity to tell the fairy tale and finds the perfect listeners in her three
granddaughters who think that Gemma is merely telling them a nice, entertaining story.
However, Gemma has found an audience willing to listen to the tales of her traumatic past. It
is only when the three girls are adults that Rebecca discovers the real reason for Gemma‟s
storytelling when Gemma claims “I am Briar Rose” (17). From this statement Rebecca
derives that there could be something more to this fairy tale, that it might actually be related
to Gemma‟s past: “It‟s like the story is ... like a metaphor ...” (13). Gemma has never told
much about her past, everything about it is uncertain. Not even her own daughter knows about
her past or even knows her real name. As previously mentioned, it is typical of many
Holocaust survivors not to reveal any of the details of their horrible past. The next generation
often suffers from this great mystery and from the lack of information about the origins of this
generation. At first glance, this does not seem to be the case for Gemma‟s daughter and
granddaughters. In contrast to the family portrayed in Judy Budnitz‟ novel, the first
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generation‟s trauma does not seem to have influenced the next generations. It is rather odd
that Gemma‟s own daughter did not wonder about her past or want to know her mother‟s real
name. The three granddaughters also do not seem to be occupied with Gemma‟s past. It is
only when Gemma claims to be Briar Rose that Rebecca feels that this might have something
to do with her grandmother‟s unknown past. The others just think Gemma is crazy. It is only
after Gemma‟s death that Rebecca becomes determined to find out about her grandmother‟s
past. She is then overcome by the obsession of the third generation with its past and origins. It
is like a spell which she has to break.
Why does Gemma testify using a fairy tale? As Kertzer says: “Because the
grandmother‟s memories are obliterated by the gas, when she is revived; she has no memory
of her past except for a fairy tale in which she, a princess in a castle, is the only one kissed
awake” (252). Thus, one of the reasons for Gemma testifying using this fairy tale is that she
has no clear memory of what happened to her due to the gas poisoning. Since her situation
closely resembles that of Briar Rose, that is „falling asleep‟ and being kissed awake, it is
obvious why she has remembered precisely this fairy tale. A second reason is linked to trauma
theory, as Elizabeth Baer proposes. Because Gemma is suffering from PTSD, which, as
already noted, involves repeated behaviour and thoughts amongst other actions (Caruth
“Trauma and Experience” 4), she “repeatedly, obsessively tells her granddaughters this one
fairy tale” (Baer 149). Thus, according to Baer, Yolen‟s “use of fairy tale motifs, in the case
of the Holocaust survivor herself, serves to underscore the trauma she has experienced” (149).
As Baer remarks, Ilana “casts herself in disguise, displaced, as Sleeping Beauty” (149).
Gemma puts herself into a fairy-tale world, which is an environment less emotionally charged
with fear (Kast 63). Displacing herself into the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale helps Gemma to
cope with her trauma. It dresses up her painful past. I believe that telling a fairy tale is also the
first step towards creating a chronological story, which Gemma needs in order to come to the
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point of working through her trauma. The fairy tale has a set pattern, which can help to put the
circularity of trauma in a linear order.
As opposed to Josef Potocki, who also testifies about Gemma‟s past and his own,
Gemma clearly has not yet dealt with her trauma. She has not yet reached the point of
working through her past as she still tells her story as a fairy tale. Potocki, on the other hand,
has been able to come to this point, as his testimony is a clear, chronological story.
3.2.2.2 Josef Potocki
Josef Potocki, the partisan that saved Gemma, testifies both about Gemma‟s and about
his own traumatic past. According to Baer “the fairy tale motifs are more muted in this
section of the novel, appropriately, given the teller whose trauma has been dealt with in other
ways” (149). Potocki has been able to come to a chronological narrative, hereby breaking the
circularity of his trauma. He has arrived at the point of working through this trauma. In
contrast to Gemma, Potocki‟s testimony about their joint past is a clear chronological story
that deals with the facts as they were. At least, that is what the reader is led to believe. Potocki
does not cover up traumatic passages by using fairy tales nor does he create a fairy-tale world.
His story reveals that which Gemma concealed in fairy tales. Thanks to his testimony
Rebecca finally finds out the truth about Gemma‟s past. However, at one point, both Rebecca
and the reader are warned that Potocki, like Gemma, might be an unreliable narrator. As
Potocki says: “I am, by my own admission, a playwright and a liar. You have given me all the
clues, you know: the ring, the town, the camp− even your grandmother‟s last name. [...] I
could be making all this up. Yet another fairy tale” (229). Although Potocki immediately
reassures Rebecca and the reader that he is in fact telling the truth, the seed of doubt has been
planted into the reader‟s mind. It shows that one can never truly know the past: it is what
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people make of it. It is this uncertainty regarding the truth about the past with which the third
generation is faced. I will discuss this uncertainty at a later stage in this thesis.
In his testimony, Potocki reveals why Gemma has used the fairy tale of Sleeping
Beauty to tell about her past. We even discover that he is the prince that kisses her awake. He
revives her by giving her “mouth to mouth resuscitation after she is pulled from the pit” (Baer
148).
The peculiar thing about Josef Potocki‟s testimony is that he tells it by using a third
person narrative. He tells the story of his traumatic past “with a practiced economy, as if he
were only a storyteller and not one of the main characters” (Yolen 159). It seems that he has
been able to maintain a certain distance from it. He does not constantly relive the trauma and
can turn it into a chronological story.
3.2.3 The empathic listener Rebecca
As already stated, a victim that testifies needs an empathic listener, which Gemma has
found in her three granddaughters, particularly in Rebecca, the youngest of the three. The
presence of an empathic listener, in this case Rebecca, allows the victim to work through his
or her trauma and become a witness for the first time (Laub, “Truth” 70). Rebecca, therefore,
plays a very important role because testifying is a mutual process between the witness and the
listener. Rebecca is the blank screen on which “the event comes to be inscribed for the first
time” (Laub, “Bearing Witness” 57). Baer suggests that Rebecca is “constructed as a
doppelganger to her grandmother” (149). She claims that Rebecca is “a kind of Sleeping
Beauty too” in that “not only ... their names [are] very similar, but they both have curly red
hair and share temperamental similarities” (148). Moreover, Rebecca too is eventually „kissed
awake‟ after having been asleep for all her life.
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Being Gemma‟s double, Rebecca is, according to Baer, “the literal partner bringing the story
to birth” (149). She continues: “Starting only with the fairy tale from her childhood and a box
of old photos and documents, she fills the “blank screen” with the real tale of her
grandmother‟s gassing and rescue” (149). Although she has functioned as an empathic
listener to her grandmother‟s testimony, the blank screen has not been inscribed completely,
since her grandmother‟s testimony had the appearance of a fairy tale and nothing really was
revealed about Gemma‟s past. “Additionally, of course, such a search for her grandmother‟s
identity is also a search for her own identity” (Baer 149). By listening to Potocki‟s testimony,
Rebecca can fill the blank screen with Gemma‟s real past. In order to be aware of her own
identity she needs to first be aware her past.
Rebecca‟s quest for Gemma‟s true past is prototypical of what faces the third
generation. For this generation the past seems inaccessible; it can only rely on the versions of
the past given to them by those who have experienced it and also on documents about the past
(Codde “Postmemory”). Therefore the third generation has developed an obsession with
getting to know one‟s past and origins and often embarks on a quest to find out more about
their origins (Codde “Postmemory”). The quest is a typical feature in the literature of third
generation Jewish American authors. Take for example Jonathan Safran Foer‟s Everything is
Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which both are in some way “stories of
detection” (Codde “Postmemory”). Rebecca, too, seeks the truth behind Gemma‟s
exclamation “I am Briar Rose” (17). She can only rely on Gemma‟s version of the fairy tale
Sleeping Beauty and a few documents she found in a wooden box that Gemma kept in her
room at the nursing home. At the beginning of her search she comes across many elements
which might suggest that Gemma was in fact Briar Rose, or at least a princess. For instance,
the family discovers a wooden box “with a carved rose and a briar on top” (Yolen 27).
Secondly, she stumbles upon some documents where Gemma used the name Gitl Rose
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Mandlestein as her “true and correct name” (Yolen 62). On these papers she also discovers
Gemma‟s nickname was Ksiȩ źniczka, which means princess. All these discoveries lead
Rebecca to increasingly believe that Gemma really was a princess. Rebecca later finds out
that Ksiȩ źniczka was just a nickname which Gemma was given because of her attitude
towards others and because she was so beautiful “like something out of a fairy book” (Yolen
84).
The novel shows that the full truth can never be known. This is a situation that is very
typical for the third generation. They can only try to construct the past by relying on what
they have, namely documents and testimonies. Rebecca has two different versions of the past,
namely Gemma‟s fairy tale and Josef Potocki‟s testimony. However, she cannot be sure about
the truth in each of them. This is what Rebecca realises in the end: ““I found what I was
looking for,” Becca answered. “She found more,” Magda said. “And less,” Becca said.”
(232). She realises that although she has found out a lot about her grandmother‟s past, she still
does not know everything about it: “For the first time she realized that she did not really know
how Eve became Gitl, or if Gitl had been her grandmother‟s real name. And she realized, too,
that she knew only that her grandfather‟s name had been Aron Mandlestein and that he had
been a medical student.” (232-233). Thus, one cannot ever discover the real truth about the
past. As Magda says: “Truth is never tidy. Only in fairy tales.” (234). There are always
different aspects of the truth and one can never really know all of them.
Having found out more about Gemma‟s past and her secrets, Rebecca is not sure if she
really wants to know it. She wonders whether it was better not to know her grandmother‟s
horrible past and whether she should tell her relatives this terrible story or keep them
dangling. The difference knowing and not knowing your past is compared by Magda to Briar
Rose‟s situation: ““Let sleeping princesses lie?” Magda laughed. “We are all sleeping
princesses some time. But it is better to be fully awake, don‟t you think?”” (234). Thus not
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knowing the past is compared to the sleeping princess of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. This
is what Rebecca has been all her life: it is as if she was asleep for most her life, because she
knew nothing about her grandmother‟s past and her origins and thus also did not know her
own identity. Having unearthed this past, it is as if she has been kissed awake. She is now
more aware of her origins and has subsequently discovered her own identity.
3.2.4 Fairy tales
In contrast to Judy Budnitz, Jane Yolen only incorporates one fairy tale into her novel.
Jane Yolen‟s novel revolves around the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. Gemma, the
grandmother, tells this story almost constantly to her three granddaughters. The novel‟s
chapters alternate between the past when Gemma tells the story to the three girls, and the
present-day story about Rebecca‟s search for Gemma‟s past and the real origins of Gemma‟s
fairy tale. The chapters about the past depict Gemma who tells the story of Sleeping Beauty to
her granddaughters on several occasions when they are growing up. At first, it seems like she
is telling the ordinary and well-known fairy tale. However, later on we discover the fairy tale
varies in several ways. The variations are related to Gemma‟s real past. For example, as
previously mentioned, Gemma describes the bad fairy in a way that reminds the reader of
soldiers, namely as wearing “big black boots” (19). Furthermore, in her depiction of the briary
hedge that starts to grow around the castle, Gemma compares it to barbs. This is a second
reference that refers to the Holocaust, namely to the barbed wired around the camps. These
deviations from the story are very minor in the beginning, but the further Gemma gets into
telling the story, the more striking these variations become. According to Baer, the variation
that perhaps stands out most is the fact that “Gemma omits the spindle from the story” (147).
Instead, she ascribes Briar Rose‟s sleep to a mist (Baer 147): “A mist. A great mist. It covered
the entire kingdom” (Yolen 43). The fact that a mist puts Briar Rose to sleep and not the
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spinning wheel, clearly results from Gemma‟s past experiences. As a young girl, she was
taken to Chelmno, an extermination camp. There the Nazis gassed people in vans by diverting
the exhaust pipe into the van itself. Later on in the story, a minor, but significant slip occurs in
Gemma‟s telling of the fairy tale: ““A hundred years, a thousand years,” Gemma said. “It
doesn‟t matter. Dead is dead.” “But they weren‟t dead,” Sylvia reminded her. “Just
sleeping.”” (68). This shows Gemma is actually talking about her own traumatic past, instead
of talking about the fairy-tale princess Briar Rose. Yet again, Gemma‟s traumatic past
shimmers through the fairy tale. The further Gemma goes into the fairy tale, the scarier it
seems to become. As the prince comes nearer to the thorn bush around the castle, “all the
bones of the many princes who had been there before him rose up from the thorn bush
singing” (Yolen 97). They sing a song that has nothing to do with the fairy tale, but more so
with the harsh reality of the Holocaust.
At one point while telling the story Gemma makes a remark that reminds the reader of
Dori Laub‟s statement about testimony: Gemma explains to her granddaughter Sylvia that
“the future is when people talk about the past. So if the prince knows all their past lives and
tells all the people who are still to come, then the princes live again and into the future.”
(111). Now, what kept some Holocaust survivors alive was „the imperative to tell‟, the
necessity they felt to stay alive to be able to tell others what happened so that no one would
forget; so that the Holocaust would not be forgotten or ignored (Laub, “Truth and Testimony”
63). Moreover, Gemma‟s statement explains why she is telling her story and why others feel
the need to talk about what happened and about dead relatives or friends. This can also be
linked to what Dina Wardi calls „memorial candles‟, where children of survivors become
memorial candles for those relatives who did not survive. For example, they are given the
same name, so that the dead relative is remembered or even substituted, and lives on in a way
(Wardi).
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Gemma‟s particular use of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty can be explained by the
obvious parallels between Gemma‟s past and the fairy tale. Chelmno, for example, is located
in an old castle. As a camp it is most probably surrounded by barbed wire, which resembles
the thorn bush around Briar Rose‟s castle. Gemma also falls asleep: she lies unconscious in
the pit where she was dumped after she was gassed. Then, after having „fallen asleep‟,
Gemma too is kissed awake: Potocki “gives her mouth to mouth resuscitation after she is
pulled from the pit” (Baer 148). A common feature in some versions of the Sleeping Beauty
story is “the situation of a sleeper who awakens to find a world empty of familiar faces”
(Zipes 476). In the same way, Gemma wakes up, having lost all familiar faces. This is not
only because all her friends and relatives have most probably died in the camps, but also
because all her “memories are obliterated by the gas” (Kertzer 252). Even if some of her
relatives are still alive, she would not recognise them. In contrast to the fairy tale of Sleeping
Beauty, Gemma‟s tale does not end happily. Indeed she is kissed awake, but her true Prince
Charming, Potocki‟s fellow partisan Aron Mandlestein who she eventually marries, dies,
leaving Gemma alone once again.
Jane Yolen uses some other references to fairy tales as well. Potocki‟s account also
refers to the uncertainty of knowing whether a story is real or not by saying: “He never was to
know whether that story was, like all her stories told to him late at night, a fairy tale or real”
(188). At one point in the novel, Jane Yolen even refers to a novel similar to this one.
Rebecca reads the novel Beauty by Robin McKinley, a retelling of the fairy tale of Beauty and
the Beast16
. Rebecca reads this book whenever she feels troubled. This points to what Verena
Kast says about fairy tales, namely that everybody has a favourite fairy tale and that this tale
might be telling something about our own problems (7). The fairy tale characters experience
these problems and may solve them (Kast 7). Seeing these problems solved can be very
16
http://www.robinmckinley.com/books/#beauty
67
reassuring for the person who identifies with them; it can therefore have a therapeutic effect.
Thus, Rebecca clearly finds comfort in the fairy tale of The Beauty and the Beast. However,
she finds comfort in the modern adaptation of this fairy tale, which highlights the importance
of new adaptations of fairy tales, such as Yolen‟s. It shows that even nowadays fairy tales are
significant for readers.
Furthermore, Jane Yolen‟s novel is also a fairy tale in itself. Rebecca‟s story about her
search for Gemma‟s past can be interpreted as a fairy tale: several elements of the story are
related to the fairy-tale realm. For instance, Stan describes Rebecca‟s urge to find out about
her grandmother‟s past as a spell by which she is possessed. By finding out the truth about
Gemma‟s past Rebecca can break this spell: ““It‟s your story, Becca,” he said. “You alone
can break the spell.”” (109). In addition, the Nazis are mentioned in the novel as “a curse that
had been placed upon her [Gemma]” (84). Moreover, Rebecca‟s story has a happy ending, as
most fairy tales do. Rebecca finally gets to kiss her Prince Charming, Stan. She says to him:
“But if you kiss me, I might just start to wake up” (236), comparing herself to Briar Rose. The
novel even ends with a variation of the well-known sentence used in fairy-tale endings:
“We‟ll get to happily ever after eventually” (237). In addition, Rebecca‟s story contains some
well-known fairy-tale motifs such as that of the helper, which I will come back to later.
Elizabeth Baer proposes that “Becca is identified as a kind of Sleeping Beauty too” (148).
Being Gemma‟s doppelganger, her story is also similar to the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. As
said before, Rebecca compares herself to Briar Rose at the end of the story, telling Stan to
kiss her awake. She has been asleep all her life, not knowing Stan is her Prince Charming and
not feeling the sparks and connection between them. Also, not knowing her origins suggests
Rebecca has been asleep all her life. In the end she is awake because she has discovered
Gemma‟s past and subsequently her own identity.
68
In addition, according to Yolen, one could say that her book is a fairy tale as there is a
fairy tale at the basis of it (qtd. in Stone). There are no women that have actually escaped
from Chelmno (Yolen qtd. in Stone), so this whole account of this female Holocaust survivor
is made up; it does not contain any truth. Yolen is very aware of the fact that this story is
merely a fairy tale and in the Author‟s Note she brings the happy ending back to reality, by
stating: “This is a book of fiction. All the characters are made up. Happy-ever-after is a fairy
tale notion, not history. I know of no woman who escaped from Chelmno alive” (241). As
Kertzer says, at first Jane Yolen provides the typical happy ending we are used to in fairy
tales, but then in the Author‟s Note she dismisses this (252). However, we are already warned
of this when Stan says: “It begins Once upon a time. [...] Don‟t count on Happy Ever After.
This is the real world.” (109). Moreover, Kertzer states that “rewriting “Briar Rose” as the
fantastic story of how one woman survives the death camp, Chelmno, Yolen initially tricks us
into feeling superior to conventional fairy tales, and then in the “Author‟s Note” makes us
regret our arrogance” (252). Yolen uses typical fairy-tale techniques and gives us a tale of
hope, only to show us at the end that in reality there was no happy-ever-after for most people.
Furthermore, Kertzer believes that Yolen uses “heroic language,” as is common in fairy tales,
which she also parodies (252). She explains that the fact that Gemma is kissed awake by a
homosexual person− sometimes derogatively called a fairy− shows Yolen‟s ironic distance
from conventional fairy tales (252). Thus, she repudiates the conventional use of fairy tales.
Kertzer states that by adding this Author‟s Note Yolen‟s novel is a “double narrative, one that
simultaneously respects our need for hope and happy endings even as it teaches us a very
different lesson about history” (253).
However, Kenneth Kidd has another opinion of the meaning of Yolen‟s statement in
the Author‟s Note. As he says, “through the fairy tale, people tell stories about challenge and
survival, hardship and hope” (132). He states that a lot of recent adaptations of fairy tales
69
which discuss the Holocaust, for example, claim “both psychological and historical
relevance” (132). This is to say, it is not because these stories did not really happen that they
do not hold some kind of truth. So, one could say that Yolen‟s novel about a survivor of
Chelmno, although it did not actually happen, still holds some significant truth. By making
this statement in the Author‟s Note, Kidd feels that Jane Yolen “can repudiate the happy-ever-
after scenario precisely because we now expect fairy tales to be both not happy –i.e.,
therapeutic rather than conventionally satisfying− and history” (132). He claims that “it‟s as if
Yolen is suggesting that while this particular plot element isn‟t accurate, the novel is still true
to history− that is, to deeper psychological truths” (132). This proposition is underpinned by
Stan‟s statement: ““Stories,” he‟d said, his voice low and almost husky, “we are made up of
stories. And even the ones that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.””
(64). Thus, although a fairy tale does not seem to hold any truth, because it is made up, it can
in fact hold certain truths about history and psychology.
Yolen is known for the fact that “the predictable happy endings that signify male
hegemony and closure are exploded or placed into question” (Zipes 560), which is what she
also does here. The fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty normally ends on a happy note, at least the
Grimm‟s version we know nowadays, which concludes with the prince kissing Briar Rose
awake and both living happily ever after. The tale Gemma tells, however, does not have this
happy ending. Indeed she is kissed awake but her prince dies and she ends up alone with their
child. If you look at Gemma‟s story in another way, one could say that it did end happily for
her in that she has survived the Holocaust and went on to live a new life in America. But yet
again this happy ending is blown up, as Jane Yolen adds in her Author‟s Note that this is just
a fairy tale and not history, reminding us readers that this happy ending happened to no
woman in the Chelmno death camp.
70
Jane Yolen‟s novel is not completely a fairy tale; she has taken elements out of reality
and mixed them with the fairy-tale elements. Thus, fantasy and fact are mixed. Chelmno did
really exist as a camp and really was situated in a castle (Baer 147). Yolen has linked this
camp to the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty. Many were killed in Chelmno, only two men
survived. So, Yolen takes these facts− the death camp did exist and only a few people
survived− and mixes them with the fantasy that one woman also survived: this fantasy
resembles the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. Yolen says that she got the idea to write Briar Rose
when she “was watching the documentary “Shoah”17
in which the concentration camp
Chelmno was described” (Yolen qtd. in Stone). Yolen also uses two facts from the
documentary in her novel. The first is to be found in Potocki‟s testimony. At one point,
Potocki‟s speaks about a “boy of about thirteen shuffling along, feeding the rabbits” (Yolen
202). This boy actually survived Chelmno and “was often seen by the villagers rowing up the
river to get feed for rabbits” (Kertzer 253). A second reference to the documentary is made in
Yolen‟s Author‟s Note as she writes: “There may be good people there. I have never heard
them interviewed” (241). This refers to the interviews Lanzmann carried out with the
inhabitants of Chelmno “about their own role and culpability in the killings” (Baer 146).
Apparently, he “finds little remorse there” (Baer 146).
3.2.5 Major fairy-tale motifs
As Jane Yolen‟s novel follows fairy-tale logic and is based on a fairy tale (Yolen qtd.
in Stone), one can identify several well-known fairy-tale motifs in it.
3.2.5.1 The helper
Several helpers can be identified in the novel. In Rebecca‟s story about her quest Stan
and Magda in particular play this role. Stan had been on a quest for his birthmother several
17
By Claude Lanzmann, completed in 1985.
71
years ago and is therefore the ideal person to give Rebecca advice about how to start her
search for her grandmother‟s past. He helps Rebecca to begin her search, but he does not offer
any help during her quest in Poland. There, he is replaced as a helper by Magda, Rebecca‟s
interpreter and guide in Poland, who is a helper in the most literal sense of the word. Without
her it would be very difficult for Rebecca to find her way around Poland and to be able to
understand the Polish inhabitants. Magda is the prototype of “the helper as companion”
(Huang 26). These helpers accompany the protagonists throughout their journeys, advise
them, and protect them from danger (Huang 26). Magda is with Rebecca throughout her entire
journey and helps her to reach Chelmno and talk to the inhabitants. At one point, Magda even
functions as an empathic listener, as she also listens to Josef Potocki‟s story.
While on her quest Rebecca meets several characters; each of whom in their own way
helps her to move on a bit further in her quest. These characters can be divided into three
groups, which can be compared to “the three ordeals” some “fairy-tale protagonists have to
finish” (Huang 16). The protagonist often has three tasks he or she has to complete. Similarly
Rebecca has to meet three different groups of helpers in order to discover Gemma‟s past. The
first group she meets is the people who lived in the Oswego refugee camp. Thanks to them
she finds out why Gemma was called Ksiȩ źniczka and they confirm that Gemma stayed in
the refugee camp. This is a first step in Rebecca‟s quest. The second group consists of the
people in Chelmno, especially the old woman and the priest. The old woman tells Rebecca
and Magda to visit the priest who reveals that the castle was a Nazi death camp and brings
them into contact with Josef Potocki, who proves to be a key figure in the unravelling of
Gemma‟s past. Josef Potocki is the third helper: he helps Rebecca to put together the final
missing pieces of Gemma‟s story. After having „completed her three tasks‟, i.e. having talked
to all these people, Rebecca feels she has completed her mission and can return home.
72
In Gemma‟s story, told by Josef Potocki, the helpers include the group of partisans
that save Gemma and the group that eventually sends her on her way to America. Potocki, in
particular, can be seen as a helper: he uses mouth to mouth resuscitation to revive her, he
saves her from been killed by the Nazis and he helps her to escape to America.
3.2.5.2 The unpromising heroine
A typical feature of fairy-tale heroes is that they are “either the only child or the
youngest and most stupid child in their families” (Huang 17). Rebecca is of course not the
most stupid child, but she is the youngest. Moreover, she is a bit isolated from the rest of her
family, especially from her two older sisters: “Becca, the youngest, smiled at them both, but
she was not part of their magic circle and never had been” (Yolen 6). The two older sisters,
Shana and Sylvia, share this special connection and are very much alike. Being the youngest
Rebecca has always been left out of their secrets and games. Rebecca is also the only member
of the family that visits Gemma daily and she feels that Gemma is the only one that can really
understand her and that she and Gemma are very much alike. However, when Gemma dies,
Rebecca is „left alone.‟ Furthermore, fairy-tale heroes or heroines are often “separated from
their familiar surroundings” (Huang 17), which is what happens to Rebecca as she leaves for
her trip to Poland.
These two characteristics of the fairy-tale heroine are also applicable to Gemma,
which is not so surprising since Gemma and Rebecca are constructed as doubles or
doppelgangers. We do not know whether Gemma is an only child or not, but Gemma is
completely alone and isolated. She has no family left, or at least she cannot remember having
any family left. Gemma is also isolated from her familiar surroundings: she was taken to
Chelmno and later on she wanders around in the woods. She has been completely uprooted
from her familiar surroundings, both as a result of being taken away by the Nazis and losing
73
all her memories of her former self because of the gassing. She is the extreme case of the
isolated heroine.
3.2.5.3 Deception
The deception motif is particularly present in Gemma‟s case. Not only does she escape
the war using forged identification documents under the name of Eva Potocki but when she
arrives in America, she uses the name Gitl Rose Mandlestein on the documents of the
National Archive. Furthermore, she is known by the names Gemma, Dawna Stein and Dawna
Prinz. This deception was not necessarily deliberate; it probably has more to do with the fact
that she has forgotten her own name after the gassing. As she did not have one particular
name that identified herself, it was easier for her to change names as she liked.
3.2.5.4 Other fairy-tale motifs
The motif of the journey is present in a very clear way. Rebecca leaves on a quest to
find out about her grandmother‟s past. She undertakes this journey because she was asked by
her grandmother. Gemma can therefore been seen as a task giver, a common character in fairy
tales. Just as the fairy-tale heroes and heroines, Rebecca has to complete a task before she can
return home; in her case this is finding out Gemma‟s past as Gemma tells her: “Promise me
you will find the castle. Promise me you will find the prince. Promise me you will find the
maker of the spells.” (16).
3.2.6 Inheritance
Yolen divided her novel into three sections called Home, Castle and Home Again. At
the beginning of the third section she inserted the following quote:
“Perhaps we are born knowing the tales for our grandmothers and all their
ancestral kin continually run in our blood repeating them endlessly, and the
74
shock they give us when we first hear them is not of surprise but of
recognition” (Travers qtd. in Yolen 223).
This quote reminds us of inherited trauma. It suggests that we already know all the tales of
our ancestors as if the history of our ancestral kin runs through our veins. It also suggests that
we inherit all their pasts. This closely resembles inherited trauma, the fact that the next
generation inherits the trauma of the previous generation. It especially refers to the inheritance
of trauma through the mechanism of genes. As already mentioned in this thesis, certain
geneticists believe that traumatic experiences can change one‟s genetic material, hereby
passing this changed genetic material on to one‟s children. The next generation therefore
inherits the preceding generation‟s trauma. So, Yolen plays with this notion that one‟s past
and therefore one‟s trauma is passed on to the next generation. This is connected to the fact
that Rebecca is constructed as Gemma‟s doppelganger. She resembles her grandmother so
much that they almost seem to be the same person, not only in looks but also in temperament.
In addition, this quote refers to the concept of Postmemory −typical of the third generation−,
where one has an obsession with a past one has never actually experienced, but by which one
is still haunted (Hirsh), such as Rebecca is haunted by her grandmother‟s past.
75
4 Conclusion
Typical of third generation Jewish American trauma narratives is the use of myths and
fairy tales, different versions of one story and a quest. All these characteristics appear in the
novels If I Told You Once and Briar Rose. The use of fairy tales, in particular, is prominent in
both. Judy Budnitz and Jane Yolen have both used fairy-tale elements in their novels and both
deal with trauma and inherited trauma. These authors use fairy tales in both similar and
different ways.
A very important feature in both novels is testimony. Both stories are about women
testifying about their horrible past and both women make use of fairy tales to bring across
their life story. However, if we compare the two characters of Ilana and Gemma, it becomes
clear each uses fairy tales in a different manner. Ilana uses several fairy tales, such as Little
Red Riding Hood and Hansel Gretel, and quite a few other fairy-tale references. Moreover,
she uses several well-known fairy-tale motifs, the most prominent of which is magic. Her life
story bulges with magical elements and references to several fairy tales and myths. In addition
her life story seems to follow almost the exact pattern of most fairy tales. In contrast,
Gemma‟s testimony consists of only one fairy tale, namely Sleeping Beauty. Contrary to
Ilana‟s testimony, Gemma‟s does not seem like a testimony about her past. At first, it seems
as if she is just telling an entertaining story to her three grandchildren. However, her past
shimmers through the fairy tale she tells. In short, Ilana testifies about her past while several
fairy-tale like elements invade her story. Gemma, on the other hand, testifies by telling a fairy
tale through which her real past shimmers. The reason for testifying by means of fairy tales is
also slightly different for both women. Ilana uses fairy tales to dress up the painful parts in her
life that she cannot cope with. She fails to face the reality of these traumatic events and
escapes into a fairy-tale world. The fact that Gemma tells a fairy tale also has to do with her
sustained trauma. For both women, the fairy tales they use are a manifestation of their
76
traumatic past. However, the reason why Gemma tells the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty also
has a lot to do with the fact that her memories have been obliterated by gas poisoning. She
cannot remember anything but this one fairy tale. All she knows is that in some way she is the
protagonist of this fairy tale. Both women are looking for an empathic listener to tell their
story to. They tell their life story over and over; this repetitive behaviour is characteristic of
trauma. In both novels only the youngest generation, namely Naomie and Rebecca, function
as a real empathic listener. The other family members do not attach credit to what Ilana and
Gemma recount.
Furthermore, if we look at the next generations portrayed in these novels, a different
approach can be noticed. Judy Budnitz deals with the subject of transmitted trauma in a more
profound way than Jane Yolen. Budnitz portrays four generations of women, each of whose
acts are influenced by the previous generations. Each of the women, for instance, makes up
stories to dress up painful events. Ilana‟s trauma has influenced the following generations.
Moreover, Ilana‟s daughter and granddaughter both suffer from their own trauma as they have
both lost their brothers. Additionally, the three youngest generations have been traumatized
by growing up in a dysfunctional family. Thus, Budnitz‟ novel shows how the trauma of one
generation influences all the subsequent generations. Jane Yolen does not dig as deep as
Budnitz with respect to inherited trauma. The next generations do not seem to be influenced
by Gemma‟s trauma at all. Probably because they assume that the fairy tale which Gemma
keeps telling is not a testimony at all. It is only Rebecca that seems to be possessed by what
the third generation suffers from, namely an obsession with getting to know one‟s past.
Besides, this obsession only occurs after Gemma has claimed she is Briar Rose and has asked
Rebecca to go look for the castle and the prince. With respect to inheritance, in both novels
the youngest generation is created as a double of the first generation. Naomie‟s life takes the
same path as Ilana‟s and Rebecca is a double of Gemma in that they look very much alike,
77
have the same temperament and are both Sleeping Beauty‟s being kissed awake by a prince.
This creation of a double shows the influence of previous generations and their pasts onto
one‟s life.
While Budnitz lays more emphasis on the inheritance of trauma, Yolen explores the
obsession of the third generation with one‟s past. What is more, both authors can also been
seen as representative of the third generation. Jane Yolen‟s novel deals with a quest, so this
can be seen as a typical novel of the third generation of Jewish American writers; Judy
Budnitz‟ novel, on the other hand, does not deal with a quest. However, this book is also a
typical instance of third generation fiction considering the use of myths and fairy tales, which
is also prominent in Yolen‟s novel.
Both novels also show some motifs common in fairy tales, such as the helper and
magic. Especially Jane Yolen‟s novel can be seen as a fairy tale in itself as it follows the fairy
tale pattern and has the fairy tale happy end. Also Budnitz‟ novel shows these motifs,
although these are mostly constricted to Ilana‟s testimony.
Both writers use fairy tales in both their original meaning and in innovative ways. On
the one hand, Budnitz and Yolen use these fairy-tale elements in relation to trauma and the
Holocaust, hereby going back to the roots of fairy tales as tales of horror. On the other hand,
exactly by using these fairy tales to bring across a Holocaust story and adapting them to the
modern day readers they have innovated the use of fairy tales.
78
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