20230517 HaikuPrajna - Briar Rose [Book Review]

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Fairy-gifted sleep \\ within the castle of thorns. \\ Fate of a rose bed.

#HaikuPrajna - Briar Rose [Book Review]

Read online [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2023/05/20230517-briar-rose-book-review.html ]

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Hello readers,

Briar Rose is the Sleeping Beauty fairytale by the Brothers Grimm. A King and Queen wished for a child, which went unanswered until being granted to the Queen by a frog. 

In celebration, the new parents invite all the Wise Women, except one, to bestow their gifts on the princess just like this story's better known forms.

Before all the gifts were given, the uninvited thirteenth fairy interrupted their party and spoke only a curse, that the princess would prick herself on a spindle and die after she turned fifteen. The twelfth fairy, unable to prevent fate, was able to use her gift to alter the terms to be a century-long sleep, but the King nonetheless kept all spindles away from his daughter.

She grew up and was said to be beautiful and loved by everyone, but by the time she turned fifteen she had never seen a spindle before and her ignorance, never even knowing it existed, had led to her curiosity toward the first she ever saw [this one seems more like a lesson for the parents]. The entire castle falls into a kind of stasis as Briar-rose falls asleep after pricking her finger.

Over the next hundred years, a story spreads of a castle behind the wall of thorns, with many dying in an attempt to breach the bushes. 

A Prince, after listening to the story, walked through the thorns and among the castle's beautiful flowers the day the curse was to be lifted. Queue the kiss upon awakening followed by an immediate bedding and wedding. 

My immediate perception, shared by some other readers, was that the prince saved the agentless damsel in distress, but I believe that underneath this fairytale cliche hides the concept of predetermined fate, in this case from a curse casted by somebody else, where the prince was just the latest in a line of men who had died during similar attempts but who was just in the right place at the right time for Briar-rose to reawaken by herself, thanks to the twelfth fairy's gift.

The prince had little agency in Briar-rose’s fateful awakening, in this version of Sleeping Beauty, and he was in fact swept up at once into her Happily Ever After. 

In the follow-up tale, the prince’s previous fate hindered his new royal family's when the prince’s mother--or first wife--was revealed to be part Ogre, further solidifying Briar Rose's lesson of overcoming one's belief in their own fate.

Thank you for reading,

Until next time!

Allen W. McLean 

PS. April 23rd was the fourth annual HaikuPrajna Day, celebrating my haiku journey; submit to the #HaikuPrajnaChallenge, a monthly poetry prompt, to participate in the occasion! [ https://haikuprajna.blogspot.com/2023/04/20230423-haikuprajna-challenge-001.html ]

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