Sleeping Beauty II – I smell a sequel

by Amy Rensberger

Most modern consumers of fairy tales who recount the story of Sleeping Beauty will end it when the prince wakes her up from her 100-year slumber. The second half of the story is very rarely told. When I read Charles Perrault's version on SurLaLune Fairy Tales, I awoke from a near 40-year slumber, as the cobwebs in my memory of fairy tale classics began to clear.
For those of you who haven't brushed up on the original, an intriguing shift of perspective takes place, away from the accursed princess and her family's woes. Instead, the tale focuses squarely on the prince and his own familial baggage.
First he keeps his marriage to his strange bride a secret, fearing the wrath of his human-eating mother - who is described as a descendant of Ogres. Then, when the prince's father dies and Princey becomes king, he reveals his bride and children amidst celebration, only to leave her and his kids in his mother's care while he goes off to war with a neighboring Emperor.
Within a few days, Queen Beauty's crazy mother-in-law had decided to eat two of her grandchildren, Morning and Day, and ordered they be prepared by the kitchen clerk. The clerk, thankfully, could not kill the children, instead hiding them and serving a tasty lamb instead of Morning. Granny was tricked, but later requested the 3-year-old, Day, to be served in the same Sauce Robert. This time the cook served up a kid goat, and Gran was again fooled.
But the new king's mother wasn't sated until she ate Queen Beauty, and requested that meal as well. The poor queen, thinking her children were dead, was willing to go under the knife, but the cook reunited the mother and children and hid them all, serving a three-year-old deer called a hind instead.
Unfortunately, for the immediate royal family, the Queen Mother caught wind of the trickery. This occurred when strolling the grounds and hearing the children's crying -- Day had been whipped for being naughty. So she ordered up a cauldron of serpents, vipers, and toads to be placed in the middle of the court. The deceivers were about to be tossed in, when in rides the King, who is dumbfounded at what he encounters. “ [He] asked, with the utmost astonishment, what was the meaning of this horrible spectacle.”
His mother, outraged to be challenged, goes into the ultimate martyrdom act, throwing herself into the cauldron. “The King could not but be very sorry, for she was his mother; but he soon comforted himself with his beautiful wife and his pretty children.”
Ah, what a lost classic this second half of Sleeping Beauty is. I can't help but think of the first narrator of the story, perhaps a young mother telling this tale to her children. She manages to work in the fact that bratty kids get their comeuppance, first when Beauty grabs the spindle without so much as an “if you please” and then when Beauty's child Day cries during his punishment.
But what is much more fun is when our narrator takes out her frustrations of her mother-in-law and husband in a dark and dismal depiction of apathy by the husband, as well as a struggle for power between the two women Royals. I particularly like how the prince appears as a mama's boy, overly engrossed in his job and clueless to the folly of leaving his wife and children in the hands of his mother.
Given that we are in a feminist age, where men are typically depicted in a manner much like this story, I can't help but wonder how this section of the tale became lost – could it be a 1950s Disney conspiracy?
More importantly, who will be the one to revive “Sleeping Beauty: The Sequel“ for the modern age? Excuse me, I've got to go call Oprah's and Drew Barrymore's production companies. Time to start a bidding war.

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