Abstract or Keywords
Mirrors deceive and mirrors reveal. Mirrors are ephemeral, just like beauty. Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy (1650/51–1705) was not spinning tales as wet nurses and nannies did in the bedroom of Louis XIV or other aristocratic children; neither were peasant children gathered closely around her in front of the hearth to listen to her contes. D’Aulnoy created fairy tales for adults, specifically told and read in salons of aristocratic women—and these fairy tales were their looking glasses. In her story,“Babiole,” d’Aulnoy constructs a tale in which a cursed queen gives birth to a human infant that metamorphoses into a monkey shortly thereafter. Despite the fact that Babiole describes herself in repugnant terms, d’Aulnoy’s treatment of Babiole’s humanness is captivating: she is depicted as a reasoning being, capable of owning pets, falling in love, and refusing to look at herself in the mirror. The tale concludes with a magical transformation in the desert from monkey to beautiful woman—after which she marries her cousin, the prince, who once rejected her apish love, but eagerly accepts her now human hand. Babiole reunites with her birth mother, and they live happily ever after, free from bestial tones of the simian.