If you found Snow White annoyingly passive, meet Sleeping Beauty, whose main claim to fame is, obviously, her century-long snooze, thanks to the curse of the wicked fairy who isn’t invited to Beauty’s christening. Throughout her childhood, everyone coddles young Beauty, sometimes known as Briar Rose, but on her 16th birthday, fate finds her, and off to sleep she goes.
Sleeping Beauty may be a far-fetched tale, but it’s also a far-reaching one; according to Sur La Lune Fairy Tales, it dates to the ‘Volsunga Saga’ from 13th-century Iceland, is found all across Europe, especially France, Italy and Germany, and even appears in The Arabian Nights.
In 1890, Russian composer Tchaikovsky wrote the musical score for a much-loved Sleeping Beauty ballet, and later still, the folks at Disney borrowed some of his music for their 1959 animated film version. Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was lavishly created in 70mm traditionally inked cells, but originally it ‘napped at the box office,’ as one newspaper put it. This may be one reason it was Disney’s last fairy tale feature for 30 years, until The Little Mermaid made its splash.
Ironically, Disney achieved a much greater success with Maleficent in 2014, which retells Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the vengeful fairy, played magnificently by Angelina Jolie. There is also a scandalously spicy adult novel, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, by Anne Rice writing as A.N. Roquelaure, which explores some of the other ways the prince might have woken up the young princess, and what might have happened afterward. Don’t leave it around if you have kids!
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