When I was a kid, I discovered an entire shelf in the library full of fairy tales collected by Andrew Lang and Leonora Blanche Alleyne: The Red Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book… There are 25 of these collections, all named after different colors, and while I don’t think my little library had all of them, there were definitely more than five. I worked my way through them all.
As an adult, I am slowly amassing collections of fairy tales on my own bookshelves, including Italian and Icelandic fairy tales. I read through them periodically.
What is it about fairy tales that appeals to me so much?
Maybe this question isn’t that interesting. Fairy tales appeal to a great many people, so many that they’ve been preserved over hundreds of years. But fairy tales are usually condescended to and relegated to the interests of children (as if that somehow makes them sub-par: children are the most discerning and honest and earnest and curious of our human population and should be respected as such). They aren’t considered “great literature.” The formulaic repetition within individual tales, the disconnected plot points, the coincidences and magical twists of fate are often cause for adult eye rolling.
Within the fields of psychology and analysis, fairy tales have found a certain degree of respectability. Specifically, fairy tales can be translated into archetypal images that can help people make sense of their lives, or images that analysts and therapists use to translate the mythic in their clients’ dreams and subconsciouses and provide insight and treatment accordingly.
Fairy tales are containers for the things humans are concerned about, the questions we have, and how we make sense of the world around us.
I have been reading Julie Brown’s book Writers on the Spectrum. In it, Brown makes the case that Autistic artists do have a cultural legacy to inherit. She identifies likely Autistic literary figures like Lewis Carrol and Emily Dickinson, and maps out the commonalities among these writers. Brown’s book does include problematic, deficit-based language in regards to Autism. Brown is not herself Autistic (that I’m aware of or that she discloses). However, the book is significant, and the commonalities she notes are ring true.
Bizarrely enough, Brown’s list of commonalities among Autistic writers includes a preference for and fascination with fairy tales.
Brown’s explanation for this is that Autistic difficulties with executive functioning make it hard for Autistic people to conceive of longer plots with intricate cause and effect. She also theorizes that this may be because Autistic people have difficulties reasoning out others’ intentions, and so the flat, obvious characterization in fairy tales appeals to them; the characters are easy to suss out.
This may be true for many Autistic people. However, one of the things I love about reading fiction is puzzling out out complex character motivation. I love long, complicated plots. I love charting out cause and effect. I think this may be partly because I’ve been studying these things my entire life as an outsider, attempting to figure out neurotypical human behavior. It’s made me very practiced in the kind of analysis Brown thinks that I, as an Autistic person, wouldn’t be able to manage. I’m far better at it than my neurotypical counterparts.
Failing to understand the inner experience of Autistic people leads to oversimplification. Because it appears that we can’t follow the social interactions around us, we must prefer simplicity in our stories. Instead, what’s likely occurring is that because our brains contain more synaptic density, it takes longer for us to process those interactions. So much information is coming at us so quickly, that the subtleties of neurotypical communication get lost.
But Brown is right in that I, as an Autistic person, am drawn to and fascinated by fairy tales.
From an Autistic perspective, then, why is that?
The most significant thing that occurs to me is this.
Fairy tales frequently deal with the theme of being displaced, without a home, or being a stranger in a foreign place. Characters go out to seek their fortune. They go traveling into the woods seeking something. They experience parental abuse and abandonment. By the end, the protagonist is wealthier, happier, and more married, with a settled and permanent sense of belonging and identity (queen/king, bride/groom, rich woman/man, parent, etc.).
Being neurodivergent comes with a lifelong sense of displacement. I haven’t always been consciously aware of this sense of alienness. I think I assumed most people felt the way I did, like an imposter. But I have rarely felt comfortable in environments everyone else appeared to tolerate and even enjoy.
This is a common experience for neurodivergent folks. Some describe it as feeling like an alien in a human suit.
In fairy tales with female protagonists, there is often a theme of misunderstanding. She knows what she must do–take a vow of silence to break the spell over her brothers, for example–but her actions are misconstrued. Her intentions are maligned. She is not able to explain herself, and she is taken advantage of.
This is a deeply Autistic experience.
But in fairy tales, good intentions are rewarded and those who seek to harm are punished. Everything is set right.
The place that should have been home may fail us. We may be misunderstood. But fairy tales assure us that somewhere there are allies and mentors who will help us. Who will understand our intentions. Fairy tales assure us that we will find home, even if we have to build it ourselves.
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Allison Wall 