Fairytale research: Sleeping Beauty

The Disney film we all know, sees a beautiful princess put to sleep when she pricks her finger on a spindle. She sleeps for 100 years, until a prince kisses her, wakes her, and they all live happily ever after.

The Italian poet, Giambattista Basile, published the early version of this fairytale this as 'Sun, Moon and Talia' in 1634. In this early version, the princess does not prick her finger and instead, gets silver flax underneath her fingernail. She falls, and is allegedly pronounced dead; her father cannot face the idea of losing her, so he lays her body on a bed in one of his estates. A king, out hunting in the woods, then catches sight of her...

 
“As he tried to wake her, she seemed so incredibly lovely that he began to grow hot with lust.”

 The king does not wake princess Talia (the sleeping girl) with a kiss, but instead rapes her while she is unconscious. She gives birth to two children (helpfully attended to by some fairies) and one sucks her finger, eliminating the curse so she wakes up. Princess Talia falls in love with the king, but the king, having already married, has to deal with his jealous wife. The queen kidnaps their children and orders the kill them and feed them to the king. The jealous queen also threatens to burn Talia to death, but the king has his wife burnt to death instead.

Sleeping Beauty is a well known tale and would most likely be quite easy to incorporate as a theme. However, in the original version, a rape takes place. This is a sensitive topic and has to be represented with extreme care. While we could subtly imply this reference, the pregnancy which occurs would be hard to include and the queen burning to death later on may look unrealistic. This may be hard to put across to our target audience and we would not like to represent women as victims; using this tale might do just that.