princess & the pea bedside journal

My Princess & the Pea inspired Bedside Journal is finished!

Atop a pile of pretty mini mattresses sits a padded mattress-esque journal notebook...

The Royal Pea sits atop the journal acting as a button fastener for the notebook...

And this will be FOR SALE soon...
Yay!

On peas and princesses...

I seem to move from obsession to obsession, especially when it comes to reading and fairytales... Whatever the tale, I read every version I can find, I buy the editions I can afford, I read the literary crit on the tale and then come up with my own interpretations too...
This month I have been obsessing over 'The Princess & the Pea'. Its certainly a very pretty tale. I say this because there is so much art work out there, like that above by E. Dulac, which has been inspired by it.

It is a very visual tale. It conjurs up strong images of soft versus hard, little versus big, rich versus poor, lies versus truth and not forgetting a very Royal Pea indeed.
I just love the idea of the tower of mattresses. I wish I could sleep on a bed like that. I also love the idea of the pea itself. Where does this come fom I wonder? I can find so little that attempts to explain any underlying meanings to this tale. Its joy comes from the fact that it is so simple and so short. Perhaps this is why there is so little written about it in response?

I have just finished reading Lauren Child's gorgeous photo art version of the tale. Its such a beautiful book. Oh and also I re-read The Pea and the Princess by Mini Grey, told from the perspective of the pea. ha! I remember reading this for the first time many moons ago when I worked in children's publishing. It made me laugh. It still does.

So of course, this months obsession has influenced some of my new designs.

First I started making peas. There is something entirely satisfying to me about having the ability to sew a sphere. Especially a tiny one.
I wasn't sure exactly why I was making peas, but now I do know. The Princess & the Pea inspired loveliness will be revealed soon.

notes on my favourite fairytale

Last year I read a lot about fairy tales - the underlying meanings, the psychology, how the stories are now interwoven with our ideas and our society…I love fairy tales, but I also wanted to understand why they resonate so strongly with me. I was sure it was more than just nostalgia from childhood. 'The Uses of Enchantment (The Meaning & Importance of Fairy Tales)' by Bruno Bettelhelm is a fantastic book. It takes a psychological approach but is also literary criticism. In this book I found a lot of my answers…

My favourite fairy tale is 'Beauty & the Beast' and as it turns out this is one of the most 'grown up' fairy tales. Part of what is called the 'animal groom' series of fairy tales 'Beauty & the Beast' (and the other stories which also share this theme such as 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon') share 3 common themes.No one knows how and why the 'Beast' character has been changed into an animal. The character of Beast through this is also something of an enigma. A sorceress with more power than the other characters is responsible for changing Beast, but is not punished for her evil ways.It is always the Father that is the cause of the heroine or 'Beauty' leaving home to live with Beast. She leaves out of love and obedience to her Father.Essentially 'Beauty & the Beast' is about love. It is also about a girl becoming a woman through the forms of love she experiences.

A quick synopsis - Beauty's Father loves her and promises to bring her a rose back from his trip. He tries to pick a rose from a garden which belongs to Beast. Beast jumps out and threatens to kill Beauty's Father for stealing a rose. The only way he can save his life is if he sends his daughter to live with Beast as forfeit for his life (but Beauty must come willingly). Beauty loves her Father and goes to live with Beast willingly to save his life. Beauty is at first disgusted by Beast and misses her family but over time Beauty and Beast connect intellectually and emotionally and become accustomed to one another. Beast is not just a 'Beast' anymore. Beast allows Beauty to visit home when her Father is ill as long as she promises to return, or else Beast will die. At this point in the story a Mother or sisters usually try to convince Beauty not to go back but to stay with the family. However Beauty finds that she does want to return to Beast and that she loves him. She returns to find him dying but he is revived by her return and then transformed to his natural state as a man.

The story symbolises the process of to transferring love for the Father into love for a husband. The Father allows Beauty to join Beast to save him (the father is therefore acknowledging that he cannot protect her from adulthood and the outside world forever). She joins Beast out of love for her Father but in time the main object of her love is changed from Father to Beast – or future husband. There is also a sexual element (of course). This is why Beast is a Beast – as sex seems beastly out with true love. (It also has to be remembered that this tale was written when middle class women had their marriages 'arranged' and often did not really get to know the man they were marrying until after the marriage. The tales assume therefore that it is the woman who has to overcome her fear of sex.)

Now that I have explained a bit about 'Beauty & the Beast' perhaps my theories about the themes in 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' will make more sense…AS Byatt wrote once that 'Mansfield Park' by Jane Austen was in a sense a rewriting of 'Cinderella'… I think that 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' by Tracy Chevalier is in a sense a rewriting of 'Beauty & the Beast'…Like 'Beauty & the Beast', 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' is also about love. It is also about a girl becoming a woman through the forms of love she experiences.

Like 'Beauty & the Beast' and the other 'animal groom' stories, I see the story as having the 3 common themes.

1. The Beast character I feel is split in two – between Vermeer the painter and her suitor Pieter the Butcher's son. Vermeer is her master, a painter, quiet; he is something of an enigma to those around him. He connects intellectually with Griet and brings out this side of her. In many versions of 'Beauty & the Beast' too, the Beast encourages Beauty to read and to grow intellectually. Vermeer has power over Griet as he is her master. (Just as Beast effectively holds Beauty under his power.) She must also adjust to his ways by cleaning his studio in a certain way. Again there are parallels with the fairy tale – Beauty must adjust to Beast's unusual way of life.Pieter the Butcher is both attractive and disgusting at the same time to Griet. He is handsome yet always covered in blood from his butcher trade; it is on his apron, under his nails. The 'meat market' where he works is even, more loosely translated, as the 'beast market'(!) Pieter will be her husband by the end of the novel however there are parallels between her developing relationship with Vermeer and how her relationship (sexual and otherwise) progresses with Pieter. The two relationships are utterly tied.

2. There is no 'sorceress' in 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' but there are several people who in turn have power over Vermeer and the way he behaves and works. Firstly his patron and secondly his mother in law Maria Thins.3. Griet is of course the Beauty character. She is forced to go into service as a maid due to her family's poverty. Her Father was a tile painter, now forced into retirement due to an accident which has left him blind. Therefore Griet must go to live with Vermeer because of her Father.Griet has a fear of another side of herself. Perhaps sex? She keeps her hair covered completely; she will let no one see it… (It is after Vermeer sees her hair while she is wrapping it in new cloth in order to be painted that she goes to find Pieter to make love for the first time.) The very fact that by the end of the book the painting is finished and in order for it to be complete Griet had to pierce her ear in order to insert the pearl earring, is very symbolic. The wearing of the pearl earring and all its symbolism is like Beauty's willing return to Beast. Griet dismissed from the household for wearing Vermeer's wife's earrings allows her to join Pieter to make a new and adult life. Beauty does the same with Beast after her return. Griet has more and more become part of her new life and has found a new self through that life. Like Beauty too…

If I had the time to make a proper study of this and to draw more comparisons, explain myself more fully… I would. There are many more parts to both stories… many more parallels. One day I may write it all down.

I adore both stories. Reading sends my mind into overdrive (as can be seen from the ramblings above), reading also keeps me sane.

I love the word 'secret'

Lots of things inspire me... pictures, sounds, words.

I love the word 'secret'. The way it rolls off the tongue, the way it means something that is hidden, something to keep all to yourself; then share with others…

Who would not be intrigued by a secret? Anais Nin bought a house in Paris and was intrigued by a secret window - a fake window which was added to the front of the house for symmetry's sake but which could not be seen from the inside of the house. On holiday as a child the large old farmhouse we stayed in was all on one level, but there was a secret door, kept locked, that would have led to the upstairs…
A secret sets the imagination rolling.

Countless times I have read the book The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett... I watched the film again over the weekend. It is a fantastically well-drawn narrative, clever enough to pull together an inner and an outer journey into one simple story.

The story begins in India during the early 1900s, when Mary Lennox is orphaned and sent to England to live in Misselthwaite Manor, the gloomy estate of her brooding and melancholy uncle, Lord Craven. Because the uncle is almost always away on travels, struggling to forget the death of his beloved wife, Mary is left mostly alone to explore the estate. She finds a door that leads to a secret garden left neglected since the death of her aunt… she befriends the young brother of a staff maid called Dickon and Lord Craven's apparently crippled son, her cousin Colin, who has been needlessly bed-ridden for years. Together the three children restore the neglected garden on the estate grounds. As the garden grows, the characters grow.

The metaphor used in this book is uncomplicated and yet so powerful. There is something universal about the use of nature is writing or poetry. We understand it because we are part of it. Life, death, light, dark and the changing of the seasons all reflected in our own lives. The closeness to nature and the importance of environment is one of the things I love about this story.

I am also interested in the initial setting of the book in India, the India of the British Empire. My family on my Dad's side lived in this India. My Grandfather grew up in the Punjab. And I recognise this India in The Secret Garden…

The main character Mary Lennox is all at once a child and a young woman, a little girl and a force - a catalyst. She is weak and strong, innocence and experience. In the film version, the character is exquisitely played by Kate Maberly. When Mary arrives at Misselthwaite Manor she is defiant and haughty in her speech and attitude and yet the body language she uses is that of a little girl afraid and unsure. This is excellent acting and portrays the layers of this character that are also evident in the book.

Isn't this just how we all feel day to day? We like people to think we know what we are doing, to think we are sure and capable adults… but inside we are still children. I have an excellent childhood memory. I can remember my emotions and responses to situations and experiences from as early as age 2. I can still recognise that 2 year old in myself today. I am the same person inside and I will be that person when I am 80. In some ways The Secret Garden is also about learning to be that person, whatever age we are.