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Hunger is the beginning of every story. It might not be the most literal sort of hunger, but there is always something wanted, what the folklorist Vladimir Propp summed up as “lack.” There is something missing–to get the shivers, to find a lost brother, to make a solemn princess laugh, to have a child– and by the end of the story, that absence is satisfied– the lack is “liquidated.”

If the story begins with the lack of a child, then hunger becomes central. Food often replaces sex in folktales, and witches with some rule-bound delicacy are the fertility specialists of choice, second only to daring the fairies to give you a baby hedgehog, a snow-child, or an infant the size of your thumb. The trouble starts when a childless queen is given specific instructions– eat the white rose for a boy or the red rose for a girl, but not both. Eat the fair flower and not the bitter, black one. Peel both onions before you eat them. Folklorists would group all of these motifs under the number “T511– conception from eating,” with increasingly specific Dewey-Decimal-style numbers for conception from a flower or a fish, from swallowing a pearl or a peppercorn. Inevitably, the queen fails the interdiction, because she forgets the warning, or because the first thing she eats is so delicious she just can’t help it. Without that failure, there would be no story. Interdiction, violation: a rule is broken and the world is changed.

Desire is transformative, and transgressive: whether it’s an unpeeled onion or a noble lover, to want something, especially for women, can never be entirely benign.

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Caroline O’Donoghue’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

When I was in college, my University allowed me the option of studying several film history courses. If you’re nodding, that is because you also did an English degree, and half of the reason why you did it was because they promised you there would be film history courses, or art courses, or another kind of course that you didn’t have the guts to major in. I’m not judging you! You’re a certain kind of woman, you read a certain kind of website. I am also that kind of woman.

I choose horror and noir. Noir didn’t offer anything I couldn’t have figured out already, and was predictably a little dude-centric. Interesting, but a yawn: predictably so if your poetry, drama and mythology classes are also about ageing men secretly upset about a war. Horror was something else.

I learned that horror films never exist solitarily, and are almost always part of a trend. The Thing From Another World and the countless copies it produced in the 1950s was no accident: it was because America was literally afraid of things from other worlds. Except in this instance, Another World was Russia, and the things were Russians, Russians, big gross fucking Russians. I’m aware that this sounds tediously plain to an audience which I know to include fifty thousand feminists with a Humanities degree, but to my 19 year-old self, this information was game-changing. Maybe it’s something I should have understood already, halfway through my second year of a degree that was effectively in storytelling, but I didn’t. All stories are connected.  All stories reflect a sentiment of something: some innate cultural nausea, some collective fever, something. And when they are strung together, big chunky beads from the hobby shop, they tell a story much bigger than the teller. They tell you about the Cold War. They tell you about tuberculosis. They tell you about yourself.

Like all epiphanies, this information eventually slipped away, kicked under the door of my consciousness. I wouldn’t think about it again for years. 

Anna is not someone I know well, but I know her well enough to like her. She’s dry and merry, somehow at the same time, and whenever I see her I like her even more. Coincidentally, she is the only other Irish person in my predominantly English group of friends. This is funny to people, particularly because she is from the Other Ireland. Anna and I play up to this when we see each other, miming fisticuffs across the room and making jokes about how we will burn each other’s primary schools down, given a lick of a chance. 

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THERE was once upon a time a widow who had two daughters. The eldest was so much like her in the face and humor that whoever looked upon the daughter saw the mother whether they wanted to or not. They were both so disagreeable and so proud that there was no living with them, but of course neither of them had much of a choice in the matter.

The youngest, who was the very picture of her father for courtesy and sweetness of temper, was withal one of the most beautiful girls ever seen. That isn’t necessarily to her credit, mind you; sweetness of temper came naturally to her, without any effort, which is to say that she did as she pleased, and anyone can do that. What I mean to say is that’s not an accomplishment; acting according to one’s own nature doesn’t take any effort.

As people naturally love their own likeness, this mother even doted on her eldest daughter and at the same time held a coldness in her heart for the youngest. This could not be helped either, but never mind. The youngest daughter pleased without trying, and the eldest couldn’t please whether she tried or no, so it seemed easier after a while not to try at all. So things went on.

Among other things, this youngest child was forced twice a day to draw water above a mile and a-half off the house, and bring home a pitcher full of it. It was an easy walk along a level path, but people can’t stand the thought of a beautiful person performing chores. It breaks their hearts.

One day, as she was at this fountain, there came to her a poor woman, who begged of her to let her drink.

“Oh! ay, with all my heart, Goody,” said this pretty little girl; and rinsing immediately the pitcher, she took up some water from the clearest place of the fountain, and gave it to her, holding up the pitcher all the while, that she might drink the easier. Some things come easy to people. Some lives come easy. Some people nod and smile their way easy from cradle to grave, and people fall all over themselves to thank them for it. Well, let be.

The good woman, having drunk, said to her:

“You are so very pretty, my dear, so good and so mannerly, that I cannot help giving you a gift.”

 

There are some who would say the daughter had already been given a gift, had been given more than her fair share of gifts, but there is something about the sight of someone already obviously blessed that makes strangers want to heap further blessings on them. Let them, then.

For this was a fairy, who had taken the form of a poor country woman, to see how far the civility and good manners of this pretty girl would go. “I will give you for a gift,” continued the Fairy, “that, at every word you speak, there shall come out of your mouth either a flower or a jewel.” Some people can’t help but please.

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