On Love, Arithmetic, and the most lesbian fairy tale you've never heard of
Have you ever felt yourself get entirely sucked into a rabbit hole of something so niche, so specific, and so utterly maddeningly understudied that you procrastinate your actual research in favor of a hundred-year old lesbian fairy tale?
Well, that's what I've been doing for the past three weeks. Edith Nesbit is one of the more important children's fairy tale authors you've never heard of, with her influence being better studied by smarter people than I. She wrote (stuff here)
What is interesting to me is one specific fairy tale in one specific collection of hers. This was first published in a magazine, as far as I can tell, and then republished in The Book of Dragons in 1899.
The Island of the Nine Whirlpools begins with a queen seeking out a witch, as she and the king want a child. The witch works on the spell for a bit, and tells the queen that she'll find the child when she returns home.
*"And won't you have something for yourself?" asked the Queen. "Any little thing you fancy—would you like a country, or a sack of jewels?"
*"Nothing, thank you," said the witch. "I could make more diamonds in a day than I should wear in a year."
*"Well, but do let me do some little thing for you," the Queen went on. "Aren't you tired of being a witch? Wouldn't you like to be a Duchess or a Princess, or something like that?"
*"There is one thing I should rather like," said the witch, "but it's hard to get in my trade."
*"Oh, tell me what," said the Queen.
*"I should like some one to love me," said the witch.
*Then the Queen threw her arms around the witch's neck and kissed her half a hundred times. "Why," she said, "I love you better than my life! You've given me the baby—and the baby shall love you too."
*"Perhaps it will," said the witch, "and when the sorrow comes, send for me. Each of your fifty kisses will be a spell to bring me to you. Now, drink up your medicine, there's a dear, and run along home."
So. Uh. Reminder that this was published in 1899.
Disney's 'first gay character' has nothing on these two.
Alright, so maybe let's follow along with the rest of this fairy tale and see if there's a heterosexual explanation for this. You never know! It does seem like the Victorians had these sort of close female friendships at times, and like, maybe they were cheek kisses? And by the way, the queen is married to the king. What's he like?
*When the Queen got home, sure enough there was the baby lying in the cradle with the Royal arms blazoned on it, crying as naturally as possible. It had pink ribbons to tie up its sleeves, so the Queen saw at once it was a girl. When the King knew this he tore his black hair with fury.
*"Oh, you silly, silly Queen!" he said. "Why didn't I marry a clever lady? Did you think I went to all the trouble and expense of sending you to a witch to get a girl? You knew well enough it was a boy I wanted—a boy, an heir, a Prince—to learn all my magic and my enchantments, and to rule the kingdom after me. I'll bet a crown—my crown," he said, "you never even thought to tell the witch what kind you wanted! Did you now?"
Hmm. So, the king is a misogynist and resents the child for being born a girl. So, I'm picking up some subtle themes that Edith Nesbit might have been trying to imply, but I'm not a literature expert so maybe it's just me.
Time passes and the princess is eighteen. The king then sends her away to a tower in the middle of the sea, surrounded by nine whirlpools.
*The next day his plan was all arranged. He took the poor Princess to the Lone Tower, which stands on an island in the sea, a thousand miles from everywhere.
The queen, who is quite upset about this for understandable reasons, calls for the witch.
*"For the sake of the twice twenty-five kisses you gave me," said the witch, "I will help you. But it is the last thing I can do, and it is not much. Your daughter is under a spell, and I can take you to her. But, if I do, you will have to be turned to stone, and to stay so till the spell is taken off the child."
Yeah, so the witch is still helping and also calling to the completely platonic-for-sure-yep kisses for the reason why.
"Now," said the witch, when they had all cried as much as was good for them, "I can do one or two other little things for you. Time shall not make the Princess sad. All days will be like one day till her deliverer comes. And you and I, dear Queen, will sit in stone at the gate of the tower. In doing this for you I lose all my witch's powers, and when I say the spell that changes you to stone, I shall change with you, and if ever we come out of the stone, I shall be a witch no more, but only a happy old woman."
So, the witch decides to turn into stone next to the queen at the gate of the tower while the princess is in the tower.
From here the fairy tale sadly takes the turn for the heterosexual as the princess spends her days in the tower embroidering her wedding dress. The king dies off screen.
*And now all days seemed like one day to the Princess, and the next day always seemed the day when her mother would come out of the stone and kiss her again. And the years went slowly by. The wicked King died, and some one else took his kingdom, and many things were changed in the world; but the island did not change, nor the Nine Whirlpools, nor the griffin, nor the dragon, nor the two stone ladies. *
From here, a sailor named Nigel hears about a princess locked in a tower and decides to come help out. This is where this fairy tale gets into the math! I mean, what fairy tale doesn't have math as a message for the children reading in order to focus on their homework.
Now, the sum was this: "If the whirlpools stop and the tide goes down once in every twenty-four hours, and they do it five minutes earlier every twenty-four hours, and if the dragon sleeps every day, and he does it three minutes later every day, in how many days and at what time in the day will the tide go down three minutes before the dragon falls asleep?"
So from here, Nigel just needs the starting times in order to solve the math problem. Which, in fact, is written on the witch's tablet!
*AFTER NINE DAYS
T ii. 24.
D ii. 27 Ans.
P.S.—And the griffin is artificial. R. *
Why this slight side quest into the math? Well, there's something interesting about what Nigel says to the princess after solving the math equation and figuring out how to get them out of the Island.
*"My Princess," he said tenderly, "two great powers are on our side: the power of Love and the power of Arithmetic. Those two are stronger than anything else in the world."
*
Hmm, love and arithmetic. See, the kisses with the queen and witch are core to the story in a different way. They're mentioned three different times in three different ways.
- Then the Queen threw her arms around the witch's neck and kissed her half a hundred times.
- "Perhaps it will," said the witch, "and when the sorrow comes, send for me. Each of your fifty kisses will be a spell to bring me to you."
- "For the sake of the twice twenty-five kisses you gave me," said the witch, "I will help you. "
This is a fun little way to show the different ways the number fifty can be written. It also ties the dynamic between the queen and the witch to the core principle of the story.
Nigel and the princess defeat the dragon and the griffin, which finally frees the queen and the witch from the stone.
*At that moment there was a soft, silky rush behind the Princess, and there was her mother, the Queen, who had slipped out of the stone statue at the moment the griffin was dead, and now came hurrying to take her dear daughter in her arms. The witch was clambering slowly off her pedestal. She was a little stiff from standing still so long.
*When they had all explained everything over and over to each other as many times as was good for them, the witch said: "Well, but what about the whirlpools?"
*And Nigel said he didn't know. Then the witch said: "I'm not a witch anymore. I'm only a happy old woman, but I know some things still. Those whirlpools were made by the enchanter-King's dropping nine drops of his blood into the sea. And his blood was so wicked that the sea has been trying ever since to get rid of it, and that made the whirlpools. Now you've only got to go out at low tide."
From here, they retrieve the drops of blood from the whirlpools, and they all live happily ever after!
*And a beautiful palace was built, and the Princess was married to Nigel in her gold dress, and they all lived happily as long as was good for them.
There's something about this fairy tale that feels significant to me. Again, I'm no expert in this era of literature, but if this was published today, it would be unquestionably queer. I don't know Edith Nesbit's intentions, and if she meant to write a romantic relationship between two women who have a child together and slip it into the rest of her literature. I don't even know if her other writing was like this and everyone in the field knows this already.
But what I do know, is that Disney weren't cowards, they would adapt this into a movie and keep every one of those fifty kisses.
A girl can dream, right?