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Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 26 (2019)

Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 26

(2019)– [tijdschrift] Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Emilie Sitzia
Picturing Sleeping Beauty
Illustrations as modern storytellers

Every now and then we read books with children. Sitting by the bed, adults read, making funny voices, huffing and puffing; tucked in a warm bed, children held their breath, looked at pictures and delighted, asked questions. Fairies, big bad wolves and princesses populated bedtime. As Roland Barthes explained, ‘there is not, there has never been anywhere, any people without narratives; all classes, all human groups have their stories (...)’.1 Storytelling was and is an essential part of who we are as human beings and the stories we tell carry the cultural values we pass on as a society. They define roles assigned to classes and genders, locate attitudes and behaviours within socially acceptable frames and help delineate individual traits and group identity (or, identities).2 As such, the importance of the intergenerational ritual of reading an illustrated book cannot be minimized.

Fairy tales have a specific role in this defining of common values, as Jack Zipes argues:

The classical fairy tale makes it appear that we are all part of a universal community with shared values and norms, that we are all striving for the same happiness, that there are certain dreams and wishes which are irrefutable, that a particular type of behaviour will produce guaranteed results, like living happily ever after with lots of gold in a marvellous castle, our castle and fortress that will forever protect us from inimical and unpredictable forces of the outside world.3

However, Fairy tales were ‘not told or written for children’;4 rather, as Zipes goes on to explain, the literary form of fairy tales was gradually adapted to children.5 This means that there are often layers of interpretative material destined for both adult and child readers in the text and accompanying illustrations. The various functions of fairy tales (such as education, entertainment or escape) also contribute to the existing layers.6 Moreover, stories take many forms, they shift and change through time depending on the context in which they are presented. They are ‘international, transhistorical, transcultural.’7 This is particularly true for fairy tales as they are retold generation after generation in various geographical locations and cultural environments. Fairy tales gradually evolve and the conceptions of various authors and illustrators, the literary genre they associate the tale with and shifts in social and cultural values all impact the stories and accompanying illustrations themselves.8

However, while the words may evolve rather slowly, the images offer a more direct and dynamic reception and response to the texts.9 With each new edition, the images change and potentially question the text. It is precisely this gap between illustration and text that offers learning opportunities for young readers as they tend to be more influenced by the illustration in their interpretation of the text. The gap opens a space for questioning and reflecting on the text: this is the space for critical (visual) literacy development. Johanna Drucker, in her book Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production, distinguishes between images that 1) generate knowledge and 2) display existing information.10 The former have an active role in knowledge production processes: the translation to a visual language implies the addition and transformation of information. The latter simultaneously show existing knowledge and conceal decision-making processes that lead to the selection of what is on display. Such an image witnesses the bias of the image-maker and the society that produced and consumed it. Yet illustrations of fairy tales often play both of these roles simultaneously (as many illustrative practices do). They often generate new knowledge as the tale is reinterpreted and re-contextualized visually and they also simultaneously make visible dominant cultural and social preconceived notions. As such, illustrations of fairy tales allow us to explore the readings, bias, interpretation and criticism of such texts by illustrators.

This article focuses on the topic of illustration as reception and criticism of texts through specific case studies taken from late 19th and early 20th-century European literary fairy tale illustrations. This is a particularly interesting period as it is a time when the artistic and cultural past and present production was broadly used to define national identities.11 It is also a time when illustration began to be recognized as an art form and when the aesthetic value attributed to illustration and the freedom given to illustrators increased. Finally, it is a key moment in the development and understanding of the fields of child psychology and therefore an ideal time to question traditional fairy tales. In particular, this article will reassess illustrations of Sleeping Beauty (a tale that has recently been put under scrutiny as issues of consent populate the news in the light of the #metoo movement). Sleeping Beauty is a tale where the illustrator can equally employ all the key functions of the fairy tale (escape, education or entertainment), yet it is also a tale where social values and prescribed gender roles are at their most visible, making it a fascinating case study.

Key questions we will ask ourselves are related to the dynamic between text and image specific to illustrated books. How do illustrations interfere and interact with the text? How are the illustrations placed in the book to contradict or reinforce specific ideas? Do illustrators continue certain illustrative traditions or do they question them? All in all, we want to investigate how these illustrators, through the choices they made, re-interpreted classical stories and offered sometimes-alternative tales for the modern era.

This article will first clarify why illustrated books hold such a unique place in the word/image relationship. Then it will focus on why fairy tales and Sleeping Beauty in particular are especially interesting material to analyse when it comes to the word/image relationship. Finally, illustrations of Sleeping Beauty from Gustave Doré, Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham will be analysed to illustrate the various relationships the images can have with the source text. The three sets of illustrations represent three distinct visions of the tale. The mechanism underlying Doré's adventures of the prince, Dulac's rococo love story fantasy and Rackham's young woman bildungsroman will be explored.

The image in the book

During the 19th century, illustration became an indispensable part of the promotion of most literary work. For instance, frontispieces were often used as the main marketing image to promote the books. The term ‘illustration’ itself became common in the 1830s, as Ségolène Le Men notes: ‘Only when the famous magazine L'Illustration (...) was founded in 1843, (...) did the expression (...) become more familiar.’12 There are three main factors that contributed to the sudden increase in the popularity of illustration in Euro-

pe. First, literacy increased as educational developments took place in the 1820s and 1830s.13 Second, technical improvements reduced production costs for printed material, meaning that more printed material was available at a lower cost.14 As author Charles Nodier noted in 1841, civilization ‘had reached its most unexpected period: the age of paper’.15 Third, illustrations benefited from a variety of available techniques (new and old) that gave artists greater artistic freedom while keeping the production costs low.16 By the beginning of the 20th century, photographic reproduction meant that illustration was easier and cheaper to reproduce, giving illustrators even more control and freedom over their production.17 Not only did illustrations proliferate in number, they also regained a place of honour within the book.

Illustrations have a privileged place in the book. Side by side with the text, they directly influence our understanding of the text, our imagining of the characters and the contextualization (geographical or chronological) of the story. During the 19th century, images went from being separate folios, to frontispieces, to multiple vignettes (in Romantic novels), to being integrated in the body of the text. Illustrations such as Tony Johannot's for Charles Nodier's Histoire du Roi de Bohême et de ses Sept Châteaux (1830) even penetrated and interrupted the text, questioning the traditional setting of the page itself. This combination of technical, social and aesthetic changes created a fertile ground for the development of illustration.

Gradually, images were also given a greater role in daily life through the launch of illustrated newspapers - such as L'Artiste (1830), Punch (1841) and Le Journal des enfants (1833) - and through posters' omnipresence in urban environments. This ubiquity of printed images in a changing society is an argument used to claim 19th-century Europe as the starting point of what W.J.T. Mitchell called the ‘pictorial turn’.18 At that time, the status of images shifted, as they became an efficient way to convey information and were no longer perceived as untrustworthy. This increase in readership, access to printed ma-

terial and ease of production meant that over the late 19th and early 20th century illustration gradually gained relative freedom as it developed as an independent artistic field.

The role of illustration and the role of the illustrator

As the space and importance of images grew, the role of illustration diversified. There are various theories about the role of illustrations in regard to the text. Andrzej Klimowski proposes three main functions: reflective, provocative or decorative.19 According to Klimowski, reflective images reinforce and expand the text, provocative images confront the text and offer a divergent interpretation of the narrative, while decorative images function solely as an aesthetic element. Alan Male, in Illustration: A Theoretical and Contextual Perspective (2017), proposes a more detailed typology of these core relationships.20 Male asserts that illustration has five main functions. First, it can be documentation, reference and instruction, and he highlights that this is especially the case for illustrations related to natural science and medical and technical subjects. Second, illustration can serve as commentary, in the domains of politics or current affairs, for example. Third, illustrations can be used for storytelling, particularly in the context of fiction, narration, picture books or early readers books. Fourth, illustrations can be tools of persuasion. This is especially true for the domains of advertising and promotion. Finally, illustrations can be used to construct identity. Male predominantly outlines their use in corporate branding, books, music or design.

For the period under scrutiny, illustrations could indeed already have all the functions outlined by Male and Klimowski. The role of illustrations was manifold: images could be a supplement to reading in learners' books or an educative support for young readers; they also offered commercial enhancement and could equally, as in the case of artists' books, add artistic or monetary value to the publication; and they could question the content of the book itself, offering a commentary.

It is important to recognise the essential role of illustration as witness and influencer of the reception of a text. As Forster-Hahn notes:

However earnest the attempt to achieve a ‘faithful’ transference of word into image, the artist always brings pictorial conventions into play, not only literary interpretation, and, by dint of its imaginary surfeit, the illustration manifests intricate links to the political and cultural fabric of its own period.21

This highlights something key to understanding illustration and its relationship to words: there isn't, nor has there ever been, a completely faithful illustration. The subjectivity of the illustrator and the artistic, social and political context all influence the choi-

ces made by the illustrator. What this means is that for most illustration one should be applying Gérard Genette's transtextual studies method transferring it to an intermedial context. In Palimpsest, Genette identified five types of relations between texts.22 In the case of fairy tale illustrations, one can consider hypertextuality as it is defined by Genette as ‘any relationship uniting a text B (...) [the hypertext] to an earlier text A (...) [the hypotext] upon which it is “grafted”’.23 Genette further explained that this relationship of hypertextuality can be established through transformation or imitation. It is precisely this relationship of transformation and/or imitation through transposition that describes the process of illustrating fairy tales (and many other illustrative processes). As a result, the images have varied relationships to what we can call their hypotext; that is, the literary fairy tale illustrated, transposed, interpreted, transformed or imitated.

Therefore, essential questions one must ask when looking at illustrations are: what are the choices made by the illustrator that contribute to the creation of new knowledge and the display of existing knowledge outlined by Drucker? How are cultural and societal bias conveyed in the images? How does an image take on the subtle various roles delineated by Klimowski and Male? How does the illustration define its relationship with the hypotext of the tale? What are the elements to look for in an illustration that conveys the illustrator's own interpretation and adaptation/retelling of the text? What are the elements that belong to a longstanding illustrative tradition?

The first element24 to look at is the intended image reader/viewer.25 How does the choice of scene and the way in which the characters are represented indicate a specific assumption about the reader/viewer? The second element to scrutinise is the text-image relationship. Images often tell more than the text. One must identify the excess of information available in the image. Images can also deviate from their hypotext, creating humorous interpretations and adding or subverting the content of the text. When analyzing that text-image relationship, precisely defining the role of the image in regards to its textual (or visual) hypotext is essential. As outlined by Male and Klimowski, images can have a broad range of (sometimes overlapping) roles. The final elements to scrutinize are the aesthetic, social and cognitive choices. The aesthetic choices are often seen in the influence of specific art movements (which impact decisions in regards to style, colours, composition, etc.). Are the illustrations a site for artistic experiment? The

social choices are often visible in the representation of various social indicators (the representation of space, the choice of costumes, etc.) and their relationship to the descriptive passages in the text. The cognitive choices have to do with what is being learnt and emphasized through the illustration. Choices regarding cognitive elements will also demonstrate assumptions about the reader's (and often assumed child reader's) psychological development. All these elements will contribute to better understanding the impact illustrations have on their readers.

Looking at Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is a particularly interesting case study with which to analyze illustrations and their relationship to potential hypotext(s) as there are several literary references that come into play. There are three main versions of the tale of Sleeping Beauty.26 Giambattista Basile's version of 1634, Sun, Moon and Talia, tells the tale of Talia, a great lord's daughter, and the prediction that she will be endangered by a flax splinter. The father orders that no flax be brought into the home. Years later, Talia attempts to spin flax as she saw an old lady do. She gets a splinter and drops, apparently dead. She is moved to one of her father's homes, as he cannot bear seeing her buried. Some time later, a king, out hunting, finds Talia in the abandoned house and rapes her in her sleep (or rather, ‘gathers the first fruits of love’). Talia, still sleeping, gives birth to twins that one day suckle on her finger and remove the splinter, waking her up. She names her children Sun and Moon and lives in the house. The king, who is already married, returns to visit but cannot bring her and the children to court. The queen discovers the king's infidelity and secretly brings Sun and Moon to the court. She orders that the children be cooked and served to the king. The cook saves and hides the children. She then orders that Talia be brought to court and thrown into a fire. When Talia screams as she undresses before climbing into the fire, the king overhears and orders that his wife be thrown in the fire instead and then proceeds to marry Talia.

In Charles Perrault's version, dating to 1697, the tale also has two parts. The first part begins with the christening of the much-wished-for king's daughter, where seven fairies are invited to bless the child. The older fairy arrives later and is not served dinner on a golden plate and so takes offence. She therefore condemns the child to prick her finger on a spindle and die. The last fairy instead limits the curse to the princess sleeping for 100 years and adds that a prince will wake her. The curse is fulfilled and the princess falls asleep in the castle. Interestingly, the princess in that version would have woken with or without the prince: he is simply there as a reward for her patience. There is also no need for a kiss from the prince for the princess to wake up. When she wakes, the prince is there and they talk a lot (for four hours!), dine and get married that day. There is also a second part to the story, dealing with the ogress-mother of the prince and her wanting to eat her grandchildren. Interestingly, this part is rarely illustrated.

The Brothers Grimm version of the tale, the 1812 Little Briar-Rose, follows for the most part the first part of Perrault's story. The main differences are the kissing scene (sleeping beauty is awakened by a kiss from the prince) and the addition of the motif of the thorn-hedge as a protective device for the enchanted castle.27 Also of interest, the fairy doesn't require the kiss of a prince for Beauty to wake as she would have woken without his intervention after a hundred years. The three versions all differ in the moral of the story and the emphasis. But all in all, the sleeper is rewarded for her patience, relative passivity and beauty.

The visual tradition of the representation of the beautiful sleeper is well anchored in Europe by the mid-19th century. From antique representations of Demeter to sleeping Venuses and Odalisques, female sleepers as objects of the viewer's gaze are a trope of Western art history. Corinne Van-Eecke, in her article ‘Contes et Fables dans les livrets de Salon’ noted that among fairy tales, Perrault is a favourite for painted representations.28 Van-Eecke also noted that the first painted illustration of Perrault dates back to 1798 (by Jean-Louis Demarne).29 Perrault's tales also encountered broad success in popular imagery. Annie Renonciat notes that the first illustrated image leaflets of Perrault's tales also date from the end of the 18th century,30 and argues that such images were there to ‘reinforce the educative message of the tale’.31 This original function of the tale's illustration diversifies as the context and modes of production of illustration improve and the readership widens. The exploration of three illustrations of Sleeping Beauty from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century will give us insights into the versatility of the tale.32

Doré: The adventures of the prince, 1862 (Hetzel edition)33

Throughout his career, Gustave Doré illustrated a wide range of literary works from Perrault to Dante to Cervantes. His work is characterized by its visual density and accomplished mixture of realism and fantastic atmospheres.34 Doré's illustrations of Perrault's tales have been extensively commented upon and discussed as they are often seen as standing within the ‘canon’ of fairy tale illustration.35



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Figure 1. G. Doré, Sleeping Castle, 1862, Hetzel edition, Special Collections, University of Amsterdam, otm: ol 63-1025




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Figure 2. G. Doré, The Awakening, 1862, Hetzel edition, Special Collections, University of Amsterdam, otm: ol 63-1025


For Doré, the implied readership is often layered. As has been shown in my analysis of Cinderella, his illustrations can be implicitly political.36 While they often have humorous and playful aspects, Doré's illustrations are not specifically meant to complement the reading of early readers. For him, the tales are destined for a variety of publics. He illustrates several scenes: the old lady sleeping on a chair, which allows Sleeping Beauty to get pricked (the humor of the very old sleeping lady is not lost on viewers); two beautiful landscape scenes with the prince as a very small figure (using the Romantic trope of the hero submerged by Nature); two castle scenes (again notable for their humor and inspired by genre scenes); and the awakening scene (fig. 2). The tension between genres - the humorous genre scene, the romantic landscape and the reclining quasi-‘nude’ - creates layers of readership as they associate the tales with literary genres adapted to a broad range of audiences. The scenes inside the castle with characters drinking, eating and flirting offer, as did William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress (engravings-1734-35), a moral lesson destined for a mature public. Only the spider webs and growing mushrooms indicate that this is not just a regular inebriated sleep (figure 1).

Furthermore, only two of the images show the princess: all the others follow the prince's adventures. The viewer is placed as an observer of his adventures and quest rather than focusing on the traditional love story. This shifts the ‘lookership’ to a younger public - adventure novels were gradually becoming popular in children's and youngadult literature at the time.

In the scene of the awakening (figure 2), while the Prince wears a historical costume, the woman wears white undergarments. This is rather unusual for Sleeping Beauty as she was surprised by sleep during the day and then placed on the bed. In this version she is also not fully awake. The pose is that of a traditional reclining nude and is composed as a mirror image of the Sleeping Venus of Giorgione (c.1510). This again implies a rather mature intended audience. While the composition focuses the attention on the lightness and purity of the female character, the decentred pyramidal composition, the placement of the bed and overwhelmed environment surrounding the princess, calls to mind Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus (1827). Is the princess then seen as a femme fatale that seduces and drags her kingdom with her in her sleep? Is the prince, then, an active hero saving the kingdom?

In Doré's adaptation of the tale the text-image relationship is ambiguous. The hypotext seems more visual than textual. Perrault's description of the scene stays vague enough to leave room for a variety of representations. In the text the princess awakes as the prince discovers her. The pose of the prince conveys the urgency of the rescue and contrasts with the timeless posture of the female reclining figure. It is unclear which version of the tale Doré is illustrating. The posture of the prince, advancing hands first, does not evoke the long conversation of Perrault's tale and instead hints to the potentiality of a Grimm kiss. The omnipresent vegetation also conveys an atmosphere of neglect more suited to the version of the Brothers Grimm.

If one looks at Doré's aesthetic, social and cognitive choices, the illustration is com-

plexified further. The dominant aesthetic influence of the series of images is Romanticism. As mentioned, the dominance of nature, expressive potential of the images, visual hypotext and the references to the Middle Ages in the architecture and decoration of the castle are indicative of the influence of Romantic art. As is usual with Doré, there are touches of realism throughout (particularly in the first pricking scene and the two genre scenes). Doré makes the story his own, pulled between a fantastical atmosphere, realism and romanticism. The social indicators (representation of space, clothing, etc.) bear an ambiguous relationship to the fictional text. The rich clothing of the prince is relatively traditional, but the undergarment of Sleeping Beauty is less so. Similarly, the environment is richly decorated (note, for example, the detailed carving of the bed) but all this richness is in disarray and shows signs of neglect. On the cognitive level, Doré creates a theatrical distance between the viewer and the characters. The focus is firmly on the prince's adventure. This gap leaves room for interpretation and critical thinking. All this creates extremely layered visual images. The tale is allowed to float between the three core functions of the fairy tales: entertainment, education and escape.

All three aspects of Klimowski's functions of illustration are visible in Doré's work. They are reflective as they reinforce and expand the text. Some (especially the awakening scene) are provocative images that slightly divert from the hypotext's narrative. Some also have decorative aspects (especially the landscapes) and focus on the aesthetic impact on the viewer. When brought back to Male's classification, Doré's images do play a storytelling role and, to some measure, document and comment on the tale. Their main strength in that framework is their ability to construct identity, especially in terms of gender expectations: adventure and active exploration for the prince, a slightly dangerous and seductive role as the object of the quest for the princess. Doré, in his illustration, transforms the tale of Sleeping Beauty into the adventures of the prince.

Dulac: A rococo love story fantasy, 1910 (Hodder & Stoughton edition)37

Dulac is well-known for his luxurious book illustrations and is part of the generation of the ‘golden age’ of gift book illustrators.38 If we consider his intended readership for Sleeping Beauty, the choice of scene is significant. He represents many scenes such as the guests' walk to the party celebrating the blessing of the child, the evil fairy cursing the child, the encounter with the old woman spinning, the dwarf with the seven league boots warning the good fairy, the result of the fairy putting the teachers to sleep in the castle, the castle in its landscape, the soldiers asleep and the sleeping princess's encounter with the prince (which is used as the frontispiece in the 1910 edition). Dulac closely follows the narrative of the princess and focuses on the fantastic and magical aspect of the story. Here, captions underneath each image make sure the reader/viewer follows along, almost summarizing the tale.



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Figure 3. E. Dulac, Sleeping Beauty Awakes, 1910, Hodder & Stoghton edition, Special Collections, University of Maastricht, mu kpb 047


In this case, children and early readers are clearly the principal intended audience. The tale is perceived as adapted from adult literary genres: comedy (for the sleeping scenes), fantastic (for the fairy scenes), romance (for the bedroom scene) and thriller (for the curse and the pricking of the finger scenes). The characters' representations reinforce this

impression. They look like dolls and traditional fairy tale characters: that is, the representations are idealised and beautiful for the ‘good’ characters and ugly and caricatured for the ‘mean’ ones. The explanatory nature of the illustration, the focus on the fantastic and the traditional polarization of representation indicates quite clearly the illustrator's intention to address a certain type of young public.

When looking at the text-image relationship and which text is being illustrated, the answer is quite clear. The tale is firmly set in a French Rococo setting. While the images still tell more than their hypotext, the excess of information in the image follows closely and reinforces certain aspects of the text. In the awakening scene (fig. 3), the princess is, as described in the text, on a bed with the curtains drawn wide. It is, however, a day bed which somewhat limits the impression of her having been there a hundred years. The taking over of the vegetation is not central to the representation, which focuses instead on the lavishness of the environment. An interesting element is the use of the Putti above the head of Sleeping Beauty. They can arguably be read as a reference to the Basile version of the tale, and thus to represent the children Sun and Moon, or they can be seen as a reference to the future children of Beauty in Perrault's version, Dawn and Day. Another interpretation would be to place them within the tradition of mythological portraits (which were very popular in 17th and 18th-century France). One Putti is waking Beauty while the other seems to have just drawn the arrow that hits the Prince in the heart. In any case, the Putti hint at the love between the main protagonists and the fertility of their future relationship. The sleeping cat in the foreground replaces the traditional dog, the usual symbol of fidelity. Cats represent female sexuality (asleep in that case). Therefore, with Dulac the hypotext is multiple but Perrault stays the main and clearest reference text. The visual references to French painting reinforce the link to Perrault as a source.

If we consider the aesthetic, social and cognitive elements in Dulac's illustration, they confirm this positioning. In a typical Dulac style, the images clearly refer to the French Rococo period; in particular, to paintings by François Boucher or Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The furniture, the use of drapery, the pastel colours, the rich costumes, the powdered hair and decorations all reinforce this impression. The composition itself is framed, creating a painterly rather than stage-like impression. The focus on the moment of falling in love and the use of the Putti as a symbol refer to Boucher's mythological paintings and shift the period of production of the tale to reinforce the French visual identity of the scene. The social indicators also place the tale in a luxurious and rarefied aristocratic world. The rich costumes of all the characters, the detailed architecture and decoration of the castle shows no signs of time passing. There is no dust, spider-webs or mushrooms growing in Dulac's palace. In terms of cognitive elements, there is very little space for questioning between the text and the decorative and narrative image. Interestingly, in the rest of the book, only Cinderella is in a similar environment, and the other the stories, Blue Beard and Beauty and the Beast, for example, all take place in a far-away ‘orient’. The escape function of the fairy tale is strongly reinforced by the illustrations in Dulac's version.

The images in Dulac's adaptation, as he depicts the many events of the narrative and

detailed scenes, function as reflective of the text and his stylistic choices enhance the decorative aspect of the images. Within Male's framework, the images are pseudo-documentation of the period in which the tales were written (even though this is not completely correct as the visuals place the tales in late 18th-century France). The storytelling aspect is reinforced by the use of captions. This version of the tale focuses on the overall narrative rather than the adventures of the prince. Furthermore, the images reinforce the identity of the tale as a French tale (which is presented as exotic). This visual interpretation of the tale also offers a less stereotyped gender role as there are active female figures (the good fairy and the bad fairy). And Sleeping Beauty, while still passive and on display, is less straightforwardly sexualised. While the cat hints at her sexuality, it is asleep and therefore somewhat controlled. The prince is not presented as the active hero of an adventure but is only represented as a victim of love's arrows.

Rackham: A young woman's bildungsroman, 1910-193339

As with Dulac, Rackham was part of the ‘golden age’ of the illustrated book. He illustrated eleven collections of fairy tales.40 He illustrated the tale of Sleeping Beauty several times in Fairy tales of the brothers Grimm (1910), Sleeping Beauty (1920) and The Arthur Rackham Fairy Book (1933). Rackham's choice concerning the intended readership is interesting. His selection of scenes (22 scenes) mostly follows Beauty's biography and coming of age. This focus on the biographical is quite unusual and there are even a few images of the princess as a child (the image where she draws on a wall followed by a small dog holding her crown in its jaw is particularly sweet). Rackham's technique also contributes to the projection of the reader/viewer in the silhouettes and increases the potential for identification. The scenes often function as a synthesis of the narrative and the love story is secondary to the overall story of the princess. There are three images of the awakening; one of which is in colour (fig. 4). In this image the prince is absent. With muted colours, hair down, hand gracefully hanging out of the bed, Beauty is not a Venus or an Odalisque. Rather, Rackham is using pre-Raphaelite imagery: the princess is represented withdrawn in sleep. The visual display of the body is interrupted by sharp shadows. The room shows no luxury and apart from the crown on the floor, one would be hard pressed to identify this image with the tale of Sleeping Beauty. The neutrality and generalisation of the scene allows for a more universal reading of the tale; the potential for projection onto the character allows for layers of interpretation, serving a broader audience.

In the two black-and-white images (before and after the awakening - fig. 5), once again the indeterminacy of the characters and the location reinforce the potential for projection. The only indication of a fairy tale is the plumed hat of the prince.

Here again the image leaves open a range of interpretation and allows it to serve various intended audiences.



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Figure 4. A. Rackham, Sleeping Beauty, 1920, William Heinemann edition, Special Collections, University of Maastricht, mu kpb 006


Identifying the text-image relationship in Rackham's adaptation is difficult. Which text is being illustrated? Rackham's imagery tends to merge Perrault's and Grimms' versions of the tale. There is no visible kiss, which implies Perrault's version. However, some of the vegetation-filled scenes seem to take their patterns from Briar Rose's story. The indeterminate clothing (long dress, plumed hat, cape and pointy shoes) do not help locate the story. Rackham, by not giving the tale a specific location or time, mixes the hypotexts and illustrates a universal story about coming of age. The links to the text are carefully minimized and the narration of the images functions within its own system. This is especially true for the full-page illustrations representing the whole castle and its various rooms simultaneously.



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Figure 5. A. Rackham, Sleeping beauty awakes, 1920, William Heinemann edition, Special Collections, University of Maastricht, mu kpb 006


In terms of aesthetic, social and cognitive choices Rackham is quite unique. His technique of pen and ink and watercolour creates expressive lines and a very personal visual identity. The social indicators are also minimal in the images: there is no palace, no curtains or drapery, and the architecture is hinted at by means of shadows from the window and forms suggesting beams. All elements reinforce the indeterminacy of the tale. In terms of cognitive impact, such illustrations create plenty of space for interpretation, projection and critical thinking. It encourages meaning making and the development of literacy (textual and visual). Whether it entertains, educates or offers escape depends very much on the readers themselves. In terms of gender representation Beauty is shown throughout the images as active (she draws, climbs stairs, plays music, sings, etc.). The prince is not the hero of the story but a secondary character that helps Beauty along the way.

Within Klimowski's framework Rackham's illustrations are altogether reflective (they do follow the story), provocative (as they break stereotypes by presenting an active images of Beauty) and decorative (especially in the scenes of vegetation). Within Male's framework, Rackham's illustrations can be seen as offering very little documentation, reference or instruction (as his technique means that very few details are available to the viewer/reader). They can also be interpreted as a commentary on the role of women (as Beauty is presented as a rather independent and even slightly rebellious character). The function of storytelling is important for Rackham as he follows and expands on the literary narratives. In terms of identity construction, Rackham's images are efficient as they use projection and universalization to follow the childhood and coming of age of

Beauty. Rackham therefore presents a more universal tale focused on the development of female identity.

And they illustrated happily ever after...

This article aimed to highlight that illustrations present existing knowledge and create new knowledge concerning fairy tales; they offer intricate readings and interpretations of the tales and place them in specific contexts for a pre-determined audience. The three very different uses of illustration and stories told through the images, from Doré's adventures of the prince, to Dulac's French Rococo fantasy love story, to Rackham's universal woman's bildungsroman shows that illustrations tell us about how the texts were read and understood by the artist and their times. From a cultural historical viewpoint, the images render bias, social shifts and cultural references visible.

The first element we examined, the intended image reader/viewer, revealed how the choice of scene and the representation of the characters indicate specific assumptions about the reader/viewer. Children's literature is often seen as an adapted adult form (adventure, romance, thriller or fantasy, for example) and fairy tale illustration often reveals an assumption about the specific literary genre the tale is thought to belong to. For example, for Doré Sleeping Beauty is an adventure tale while for Dulac it is a romance. It also often includes the interesting assumption that children understand less than adults - or that adults want that to be so. Who is represented and how is key to understanding such assumptions.

The second element we scrutinised was the text-image relationship. As we have seen, images often tell more than the text. This excess of information can include the emotions of the character, the social, historical or political contexts, the characterization of fictional individuals and the points of view taken. It can depict more events than are present in the text, or use visual codes to refer to other alternative canonical texts or images. It can create a web of visual or textual references that impact on the reading of the text.

The final elements we analysed were the aesthetic, social and cognitive choices of the illustrators. Asking if the illustration align itself with a specific visual tradition or with the avant-garde, how is the fictional architecture or interior decoration represented, if there are there some graphic design choices that imply a specific aesthetic choice help the researcher identify if the illustrations under scrutiny are a site for artistic experiment. The social choices are visible in the representation of various social indicators and their relationship to textual descriptions. But other elements can indicate the social positioning of the illustrator such as the viewing distance adopted (the focalization), temporal or causal elements (anticipation-retrospection) and representations of children and childhood. The cognitive choices in the illustrations highlight what values are being conveyed, what level of assumption there is in the image (and its relation to the hypotext), and if there is hidden adult content or traditional fairy tale binary content (a good/bad polarization). Other cognitive indicators can be the level of the sequential un-

derstanding of narratives, if there is room for interpretation and critical thinking on the part of the reader and if the illustration is encouraging meaning making and triggering the development of (textual and visual) literacy.41 Choices regarding cognitive elements that will demonstrate assumptions about the (child) reader's psychological development can relate to how the child is invited to understand him/herself (through adult eyes or not) and to what issues and emotions the illustrations focus on (fear/anxiety, parent/child conflict, grief, etc.). All these elements need to be analysed to better understand the impact illustrations have on readers.

Sleeping Beauty continued to be illustrated throughout the 20th century. Later or contemporary versions by Rie Cramer, Harry Clarke, Dorothy Lathrop, Jean Lébédeff, Gustaf Tenggren and Johann Georg van Caspel are just as rich as the images analysed here. The persistence of Sleeping Beauty as a topic of illustration proves the richness of potential interpretations of the tales. These are also only the start of the reimag(in)ing of the tale. As Zipes proposed:

From the nineteenth century up through the 1960s, visual artists generally celebrated the opulent and extraordinary optimism of fairy tales (...). On the contrary, contemporary artists have approached fairy-tale topics from a critical and sceptical perspective (...). Their subversive views of the fairy tale collide with traditional norms and conventional expectations of fairy-tale representations (...).42

Contemporary representations of Sleeping Beauty keep subverting, questioning and reframing the tale, renewing it constantly and making it relevant to new generations of readers/viewers.


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