Reclaiming the Female Storyteller in the Nineteenth Century: Strategies of Adaptation and Resistance in the Works of Laura Gonzenbach and Carmen Sylva

Abstract

This article explores how women writers and collectors of fairy tales in the nineteenth century situated themselves within different contemporary tropes of the tale-telling woman in order to follow their own social and political agendas. By focussing on fairy tales written by Laura Gonzenbach (Sicilianische Märchen, 1870) and Carmen Sylva (Pelesch-Märchen, 1883), this paper shows how these writers apparently adapted to and embraced stereotypes of the female storyteller — particularly women’s alleged role as intermediaries, rather than editors, of fairy tales, and their supposed inherent connection to nature. However, historical contextualization as well as in-depth textual analyses expose how the writers in question instrumentalized these tropes in order to follow their own agendas, namely: amplifying women’s voices and questioning gender categories (Gonzenbach), and laying claim to power that is legitimized by a connection with nature (Sylva).