The Not So Beautiful Original Tale Of Sleeping Beauty
Posted: Sunday, January 30, 2011
by Sydney Harrell
There are many different variants of the tale of Sleeping Beauty, but perhaps the most widely known is the one that the 1959 movie by Walt Disney portrays. Young Aurora has a curse placed upon her by an evil witch named Maleficent. The curse foretells that if Aurora pricks her finger on a spinning wheel, she will fall into a deep slumber. Well, Aurora pricks her finger and falls asleep for quite a while before a prince comes across her slumbering body and kisses her, waking her so that they may marry and live happily ever after.
One day, a King is hunting in the woods when his prized falcon flies off. While searching for his Falcon, the King comes across Talia’s father’s abandoned mansion. Convinced that his prized Falcon has flown into the building, he climbs through the window, only to discover Talia’s lifeless (but beautiful) body.
He thinks she is only asleep, but no matter how much he yells she will not wake. Then, being “inflamed by her charms”, the king carried her corpse to the nearest bed and “harvested the frutti d’amore” (the fruits of love). He leaves her lifeless body on the bed then, and rides back off to his kingdom, to forget what he had done for quite a while.
Nine months after the rape, Talia gives birth to two twins, a boy and a girl, who attempt to suckle her breasts but of course find her lacking because her corpse cannot produce milk.
One afternoon, while still attempting to suckle, one of the twins misses Talia’s nipple and sucks the splinter out from under her nail. The teenage girl awakes to find herself in an abandoned mansion with two babies to feed. Fortunately for her, fairies keep piling food up on a nearby table for her to feed her children. She names the two twins “Sun” and “Moon”.
The King soon fondly recalls his rape of Talia’s lifeless corpse and decides to return and do it again. Upon returning to the abandoned house he originally found Talia in, he finds her wide awake playing with her two children. Upon seeing this, he explains to Talia who he is, and what happened. Talia and her rapist apparently become best friends, and he spends many nights in her company. When he leaves this time, he promises to come back and get her and her children.
Night after night back at the King’s castle, he calls Talia’s name and her children’s names as well. The King’s wife (the Queen) whom he has so conveniently forgotten to mention to Talia, becomes suspicious. She hires one of the king’s men to discover Talia’s identity and to invite her to the palace. Talia eagerly gathers up her twins and travels to the Kings palace. When the family arrives, the queen orders the cook to kill the children and serve them up in delicious dishes.
At dinner, when the King can’t stop commenting on how wonderful the meat pies taste, the Queen mumbles more than once “Mangia, mangia, you are eating your own.” The King, becoming angry says, “Of course I’m eating my own! You didn’t bring anything to this marriage!”
The Queen, not satisfied with her first cruel prank, has Talia brought to her. The Queen screams at the innocent girl, “So you’re the little devilish ***** who’s been giving me such a headache!” (I censored the swear word because I didn’t want to post it on here).
Talia tells the Queen “It’s not my fault, your husband raped me (“Conquered my regions”) while I slept.” The Queen strips Talia naked and orders the King’s men to light a bonfire. With Talia screaming and crying, the Queen drags her toward the flames. The King arrives at that moment and demands to know where his children are. The Queen tells him that he has eaten them in his delicious meat pies. The King falls to his knees and begins to wail from his heartbreak. He then has the Queen flung into the bonfire, along with her servant and after they are dead, he orders the cook to be cooked next.
At this the cook tells the King that he never laid a hand on the twins, he cooked lamb instead. At that moment the cook’s wife marches in with the children.
The King smothers Talia and her children with kisses and blesses the kind cook with vast wealth. The King marries Talia and they live happily ever after.
And so author Giambattista Basile ends his story with this line, “good things happen to lucky people, even when they’re sleeping.”
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Top-level comments on this article: (4 total)I hadn't heard of Giambattista's version. Interesting that this fairy tale has so many variations! Well written, Sydney, thanks for sharing this.Thanks, Jennifer! I hadn't either until I checked out a book from the library once that said there was an original version, but it didn't tell the tale, or say who it was by so my curiosity was sparked and I traced the earliest known version back to Giambattista.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
OMG! Couldn't make that into a Disney movie, could they?!Certainly not! They really changed the details before they made a movie of it.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
I do agree that good thinks happen to lucky people when they are sleeping. I have been sleeping all my life and I can say good things do happen to me once in a while. :-) This is a very nice story. Neat.Thanks DM! I appreciate it.
Process: Hey, I wonder if Dinosaur Comics is still going on. Yes, it is. Haha. For real? Google. Wikipedia. This. Next: TV Tropes.
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