October 26, 2001

'Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale'

By NINA C. AYOUB

Once upon a time there was a fairy tale. Ageless, universal, and vaguely handed down by the folk, it comforted us with formula and ended happily ever after.

Wrong, says Elizabeth Wanning Harries. Our common ideas of fairy tales are mistaken, "part of the nostalgia and traditionalizing that have accompanied our construction of our own modernity."

The tales we know now have always been deeply affected by the practices of writing, argues the scholar, who teaches English and

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