Reading Notes: English Fairy Tales, Part B

 

Castle (Sandra Ahn Mode on Unsplash)

In Part B of the English Fairy Tales unit, I was most intrigued by the story "Mr. Fox."  The story begins by introducing Lady Mary, who is a very attractive young woman who has caught the attention of many young men.  One of them, Mr. Fox, is a mysterious man, and is also the only one that Lady Mary wishes to marry.  As their wedding day approaches, Lady Mary decides to pay a visit to Mr. Fox's castle, as he is away for a couple days and he has told her about it but never invited her to visit.  She is very impressed by its appearance when she finds it, and sees an inscription on the gate that says, "Be bold, be bold."  As she goes further into the castle, she discovers another inscription on a doorway that reads, "Be bold, be bold, but not too bold."  Moving further, there is another inscription that says, "Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, / Lest that your heart's blood should run cold."  These warnings do not deter Lady Mary, so she continues on and opens the door to the gallery.  In the room, the skeletons of many young women are scattered on the floor, to her horror.  Seeing Mr. Fox returning, Lady Mary hides just in time when he comes in, dragging the body of a beautiful woman behind him.  Mr. Fox attempts to remove the wedding ring from the finger of the corpse, but it is stuck tightly, so he takes a sword and cuts off the whole hand.  The hand and ring fly into Lady Mary's lap, but Mr. Fox can't find it and takes the body away.  As soon as he leaves the room, Lady Mary flees the castle in terror.  The marriage between Mr. Fox and Lady Mary was scheduled to be the next day, and at breakfast that morning, Mr. Fox sees how distressed Lady Mary is, so he questions her.  She tells him that she had a bad dream, and outlines what she saw at his castle, framing it as her dream.  Mr. Fox denies it, but Lady Mary pulls out the woman's hand with the ring as evidence.  At this reveal, Lady Mary's brothers attack Mr. Fox and kill him.

For a retelling of this story, I would be interested to tell it in first-person from Lady Mary's perspective, as the third person perspective often removed the readers a lot from the horrors that she was seeing.  Telling the story with intensity at every reveal might make the story more in the horror genre than it currently is.

Bibliography: "Mr. Fox," English Fairy Tales unit, Joseph Jacobs.