Following on from the very different original ending to the Pied Piper we now look at Sleeping Beauty. As you can already guess, the original stories of many popular tales were extremely violent, cruel and sinister. The original story of Sleeping Beauty was no different. In fact, it had possibly one of the most evil acts perpetrated upon women by men that you could imagine. This hideous act that we talk about was rape. You read that sentence correctly, Sleeping Beauty was a rape victim. So lets start to unravel the original story of Sleeping Beauty.
We are familiar with the tale of Sleeping Beauty. In the story of Sleeping Beauty we are familiar with she is put to sleep when she pricks her finger on a spindle and sleeps for one hundred years, until a charming prince comes and wakes her with a kiss. They fall in love and live happily ever after. The original story of Sleeping Beauty had no such ending, in fact Sleeping Beauty was a rape victim.
Who makes Sleeping Beauty a rape victim, and just how different is the original story of Sleeping Beauty?
In the original story of Sleeping Beauty she falls asleep due to a prophesy, not a curse. Guess what? It isn’t a kiss from a prince that wakes her either. In fact there is no prince at all in the original story of Sleeping Beauty. The king sees Sleeping Beauty and decides to rape her! She has two babies nine months later, even while she is still sleeping. She awakes when one of the children sucks a piece of flux off her finger that was causing her to sleep only to discover she had been raped and is now the mother of two children.
Like many other stores of the time, it had advisory undertones as a warning for children. But this version is still not a very nice bedtime story to tell your children.
If you found this fact disturbing wait until you read these:
- The Little Mermaid died in the original story
- Aladdin was Chinese, not Arabian
- Mary Jane was killed by Spider-Mans radioactive sperm
- The longest story written by one person is Peanuts
