Monster-queering in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Apple”
Monster-queering in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Apple”

Summary/Abstract: The article proposes a comparative feminist analysis of two literary texts – Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s “Little Snow White” and Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Apple.” The former is one of the most generative classical fairy-tales, the latter, one of its numerous modern retellings. My reading is built on the assumption that the Grimms’ fairy-tales reflect a patriarchal conceptual framework, and aim to safeguard some of the core values of the (patriarchal) culture that produced them. For the sake of this analysis, I am specifically interested in how the patriarchal frame of the 19th-century version is deconstructed in Donoghue’s queer/feminist re-visioning. In particular, I examine how the modern narrative subverts one of the most famous representations of monstrous femininity, i.e. that of the Evil Stepmother. The paper is divided into two sections: ‘Framed,’ which considers the Grimms’ “Little Snow White,” and ‘Unframed,’ focusing on Donoghue’s tale.

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