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capri0mniBack in 2005, I tried my hand at writing original, personalized, fairy tales on commission, and one of my first was for a young man with C.P.’s 21st birthday.
First, I met with him at his home, to talk about the story he wanted, and what kinds of themes he wanted. Then, I flailed for about a week trying to pin it down before I realized I could email him and ask for clarification.
This is the reply he sent back:
And that No CP in Fairy Tales has haunted me, ever since.
I agreed with him, when I met up with him for that first conversation, because nothing stings worse than having that aspect of yourself that marks you apart being treated as “special” and your one defining feature.
But it wasn’t long after I finished that story, and sent it off to him, before I started wondering: Why the Hell can’t we have CP in Fairy Tales?
After all, fairy tales have shepherds, and shipwrights, and kings, and cobblers, and beggars, and merchants, and old women, and young girls, and fools, and wise men -- every class and creed of humanity. And people with (what will later be called) “Cerebral palsy” have been part of humanity since the beginning (it’s a congenital condition that has many causes, results in life-long disability, but is also -- often -- survivable. So there’s no reason for people with the condition to not be part of the world.**
So, a couple of NaNoWriMos ago, I set out to write an original fairy tale with a protagonist who had “C.P.” for myself -- but I never used that term, I just described her as a person: what she could do, what she couldn’t, how she and her family improvised adaptive tools for her, etc., with a healthy soak of genre-appropriate magic for a sauce.
The result was my par-for-the-course 50K word salad. But I think there’s a good story in there, somewhere, that actually works.
Back when I was working on that story, I told myself that I was avoiding the specific term “Cerebral Palsy” because my genre’s setting was vaguely medieval/Renaissance Europe, and the medical term wouldn’t have been coined for another few centuries.
Anyway, the other morning, I woke up with a realization:
But that’s not the reason the phrase “cerebral palsy” should stay the hell out of literary fairy tales, whichever milieu they’re set in.
It’s because “Cerebral Palsy” is a medical attribute. And the medical model of disability (and the medical model of everything, really) sets the individual apart from the world they live in, as broken exception, in need of being fixed. And in Fairy Tales, the characters (and especially the protagonists) are there to represent the human condition for everyone.
So it’s not so much: “No CP in fairy tales,” but “no medical diagnoses” in fairy tales.
But in other genres (particularly in modern forms of literature), where the story does rely on a finely detailed individual (Say, for example: in a "One vs. Society," story arc), actually naming their disability would be better than avoiding the name. Otherwise, it would feel like you're treating it as something shameful, that shouldn't be named.
(And now, I'm wondering if it's possible to write something that is clearly a fairy tale, but set in an industrial, or post industrial world like our own. It's a thought.
*That's Fionn, as in the Irish hero, Fionn MacCumhail, BTW
**In fact, I think the Anglo-Saxon word “crypel” was simply a descriptive term for those people -- like “short,” or “tall,” “fair,” or “dark”; it didn’t get used in an insulting way until the 1600s.
First, I met with him at his home, to talk about the story he wanted, and what kinds of themes he wanted. Then, I flailed for about a week trying to pin it down before I realized I could email him and ask for clarification.
This is the reply he sent back:
I think about being a normal hero named Michael. He needs clothes like
fionne. Be like Fionne* but be me with Zena the warrior princess as his
friend. There should be the Lost Boys from Neverland but by another name as his friends, too. No CP in fairy tales.
Xena should need me as a healer after fighting. she needs a friend like me,
too.
thanks.
Mike
And that No CP in Fairy Tales has haunted me, ever since.
I agreed with him, when I met up with him for that first conversation, because nothing stings worse than having that aspect of yourself that marks you apart being treated as “special” and your one defining feature.
But it wasn’t long after I finished that story, and sent it off to him, before I started wondering: Why the Hell can’t we have CP in Fairy Tales?
After all, fairy tales have shepherds, and shipwrights, and kings, and cobblers, and beggars, and merchants, and old women, and young girls, and fools, and wise men -- every class and creed of humanity. And people with (what will later be called) “Cerebral palsy” have been part of humanity since the beginning (it’s a congenital condition that has many causes, results in life-long disability, but is also -- often -- survivable. So there’s no reason for people with the condition to not be part of the world.**
So, a couple of NaNoWriMos ago, I set out to write an original fairy tale with a protagonist who had “C.P.” for myself -- but I never used that term, I just described her as a person: what she could do, what she couldn’t, how she and her family improvised adaptive tools for her, etc., with a healthy soak of genre-appropriate magic for a sauce.
The result was my par-for-the-course 50K word salad. But I think there’s a good story in there, somewhere, that actually works.
Back when I was working on that story, I told myself that I was avoiding the specific term “Cerebral Palsy” because my genre’s setting was vaguely medieval/Renaissance Europe, and the medical term wouldn’t have been coined for another few centuries.
Anyway, the other morning, I woke up with a realization:
But that’s not the reason the phrase “cerebral palsy” should stay the hell out of literary fairy tales, whichever milieu they’re set in.
It’s because “Cerebral Palsy” is a medical attribute. And the medical model of disability (and the medical model of everything, really) sets the individual apart from the world they live in, as broken exception, in need of being fixed. And in Fairy Tales, the characters (and especially the protagonists) are there to represent the human condition for everyone.
So it’s not so much: “No CP in fairy tales,” but “no medical diagnoses” in fairy tales.
But in other genres (particularly in modern forms of literature), where the story does rely on a finely detailed individual (Say, for example: in a "One vs. Society," story arc), actually naming their disability would be better than avoiding the name. Otherwise, it would feel like you're treating it as something shameful, that shouldn't be named.
(And now, I'm wondering if it's possible to write something that is clearly a fairy tale, but set in an industrial, or post industrial world like our own. It's a thought.
*That's Fionn, as in the Irish hero, Fionn MacCumhail, BTW
**In fact, I think the Anglo-Saxon word “crypel” was simply a descriptive term for those people -- like “short,” or “tall,” “fair,” or “dark”; it didn’t get used in an insulting way until the 1600s.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-13 01:51 am (UTC)Palsied as a word has been around for a very long time. Usually it's associated with age [probably Parkinson's disease] but there are other cases. Henry the Eighth's son, Arthur, was described as a palsied child, with symptomatology that was clearly C.P. [he died of complications from one of the 'treatments' for it, septicemia I think, from all the blood letting.]
But I agree, why make that the central defining feature of character? I mean, ok so your mage has tremors and isn't very dexterous.. but there are schools of magic that rely on chants alone for a start.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-13 12:50 pm (UTC)The word "palsy" has been around for centuries, true. But the condition now called "Cerebral Palsy" was coined by the physician Sir William Osler in the 1890s (But it may have been the early 20th century), I believe, when he was continuing the work of William John Little.
And guess who's credited with grouping all the different types of C.P. (spastic, ataxic -- if Arthur was shaky, that's the kind he had -- and dyskinetic) together as different forms of the same condition. Go on, guess.
(it was that bastard Sigmund Freud).
Anyway, I think metaphorical disabilities are already all over fairy tales -- in the trope I've come to call the "Wish born" children: an elderly couple, believed to be well past the age of having kids, wishes for a child "even if that child ___" (were a hedgehog, only as big as my thumb, were only half a person, etc.), not to mention all the youngest sons who are "simpletons" who don't understand social manners, and take everything literally, who sure do read to me as (a blunt and ableist, to be fair) understanding of autism. And they're the ones who go on to win the day. In the Grimm tale "Thumbthick," it's even mentioned that he was born prematurely -- at seven months. I was prematurely, at around seven months.
Thumbthick is one of the few actually positive stories of disability metaphors I've come across. Instead of rejecting him for his difference (like Hans Mien Igel's parents do), they respond with: "We got the child we wished for! Now, how can we make this work?" Granted, the story also makes clear that Thumbthick, though small, was both handsome and clever, so there's still that bias about who's an acceptable disabled person, and who isn't.
In my story, I went with the "Wish born" child angle, where the elderly woman makes a magical wish without even realizing it -- while she's chasing after her best milk goat through the forest, she takes a sip from a well she doesn't even know is magical, and mutters something about wishing she had children to help out, so she doesn't have to do everything.
She gives birth to twin girls. One is smaller than the other, and at first, they're afraid she won't survive (C.P is relatively common in the smaller of twins), but she does. ...And I describe her symptoms that are consistent with C.P., in a "Fairy Tale" way: that she never progressed beyond crawling on her belly like a baby, and that her "Tongue was slow in her mouth." So her father makes a wheeled cart for her to roll on, and she's grows to be able to watch after the chickens in the yard, to make sure the fox doesn't get them, and rake the coals of the fire, so the pot doesn't boil over. And her more nimble sister can chase after the goats.
Technically both girls have the potential to understand the voices of all animals and the wind (because of that magic water her mother drank), but only the smaller twin develops the ability because the neighbors are wary of her, and impatient with her slow speech, so she talks to the forest inhabitants, instead.
So -- in a way -- her condition kind of defines her character, except not. Because what really defines her is how she responds to what's happening in the rest of the story.