"Once Upon a Time" with Kate Forsyth

Yes, I did mention this tweet

I'm taking a short interlude from my regular project on this blog to discuss a talk I attended today by author Kate Forsyth, who writes re-tellings and adaptations of fairy tales for adult audiences. Her most notable work is Bitter Greens, an adaptation of Rapunzel with three separate narratives:

• A historical bio-fiction about Charlotte-Rose de la Force, a story-teller and courtier who wrote Persinette upon which Rapunzel is partly based.
• A "pure adaptation" of Rapunzel, following Margherita as she is imprisoned in a tower by a witch
• An expansion of the story following the witch, Selena Leonelli, as she aims to preserve her life by any means necessary

I first read Bitter Greens as part of my university course. As previously mentioned on this blog, I did an elective module in English Literature on Adaptation, and the second term looked at adaptations of fairy tales, with Bitter Greens being one of the set texts. 

In her talk, Forsyth discussed how the protagonists of fairy tales are a metaphor for the human spirit, with the rest of the content representing the trials and tribulations we face every day. With this in mind, we see how these fairy tales endure through re-tellings. Anybody can project themselves onto the protagonist of a fairy tale, and use the obstacles faced to represent their own struggles. The discussion was absolutely fascinating, and I suppose I unconsciously applied this myself when I first read the book.

As the post image shows, I once tweeted about the first part of the story, in which Charlotte-Rose de la Force is sent to a convent after a scandal, which includes the nuns taking away her writing implements. Now, before I went to university, I was working as an accountant. However, I'd been struggling to fit my writing around a five-day working week. I became depressed and resentful, feeling like my job was getting in the way of what I wanted to do. I suppose this is why that particular chapter resonated with me. Anyway, I tweeted about it and actually got a response from Forsyth. I mentioned it to my tutor and was asked to send over a screenshot of the tweet and her response.

Even now, that story still has an influence. For one of my later assignments, I had to write a historical flash fiction. So, I wrote about Julie d'Aubigny an opera singer who lived around the same time as Charlotte-Rose de la Force. Her most notorious story involved starting a fire in a convent to rescue a girl with whom she was romantically involved. Having read through Bitter Greens and the harsh life experienced there by Charlotte de la Force, Julie's wild adventure actually came across as heroic to me.

I do recommend Bitter Greens, and I hope to check out more of Kate Forsyth's work in the near-future. And one final thing which resonated with me was how she discussed wanting to write. I could really relate to this as well.