Animal agents in Russian fairy tales

ABSTRACT

Most traditional interpretations of literary animals focus on the animals’ metaphoric or symbolic significance, exposing the prevailing anthropocentrism of the humanities in general, and literary studies in particular. The present examination of selected Russian fairy tales helps demonstrate that in many Russian fairy tales animals exercise agency and retain subjectivity. Such portrayals of animals and the resulting human–animal relationship suggest an ecosystemic worldview in which humans are positioned on an equal plane with other living beings.

RÉSUMÉ

La plupart des interprétations traditionnelles des animaux dans la littérature portent sur leur signification métaphorique ou symbolique, ce qui explique l’anthropocentrisme répandu dans les sciences humaines en général, surtout dans les études littéraires. Cet examen de certains contes populaires russes contribue à démontrer que dans beaucoup de tels contes, les animaux exercent leur volonté et maintiennent leur subjectivité. Ces représentations des animaux et la relation humain-animal qui en résulte suggèrent une vision écosystémique du monde dans laquelle les êtres humains sont placés au même niveau que les autres êtres vivants.

KEYWORDS:

• Russian fairy tales
• animals
• Russian folklore

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Anna Berman and Stephanie Posthumus for their help on earlier drafts of this article, the guest editor Eva Plach for her meticulous work, and the three anonymous peer reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. McHugh, “Animal Farm’s Lessons,” 24.

2. Lüthi, Once Upon a Time, 146. Although some scholars believe that folklore is separate from literature, other scholars, such as Max Lüthi, consider it to be a form of literature.

3. The term “fairy tale” is sometimes considered inaccurate since many tales of magic do not involve fairies. Some scholars employ the term “wonder tale,” as does, for instance, Jack Zipes in Irresistible Fairy Tale and Tales of Wonder. In the Russian language, fairy tale, wonder tale, or magic tale can be translated either as volshebnaia skazka (literally “a tale of magic”) or simply skazka. For example, folklorist Maria Kravchenko chooses to use skazka as a general term that comprises all types of folktales and points out that volshebnaia skazka (fairy/magic/wonder tale) in Russian literature is often referred to as simply skazka. See Kravchenko, “Preface,” i. Vladimir Propp analyzes volshebnye skazki (magic tales) in his Morphology of the Folktale, but uses volshebnaia skazka and skazka interchangeably. In “Preface to the Second Edition” of Propp’s Morphology, Louis Wagner specifies that volshebnaia skazka has been translated as “fairy tale.” Wagner, “Preface.” Ruth Bottigheimer, whose approach I apply to the Russian tales in this examination, employs “fairy tale.” See Bottigheimer, Grimms’ Bad Girls. Finally, the word “fairy-tale” is used in the English translation of the title of the collection compiled by R.P. Matveeva and edited by E. Shastina. Since I engage with Bottigheimer’s and Propp’s texts, and use Matveeva and Shastina’s collection, I will use the term “fairy tale” to maintain consistency and continuity of terms.

4. The first edition of Afanas'ev’s folktales was published from 1855–1863, the second edition in 1873, the third edition in 1897, the fourth edition in 1913–14, and the fifth edition in 1936–40. Although Shastina’s collection is much smaller than Afanas'ev’s, it provides a wider geographical range by including ethnic Russian tales from Siberia and the Far East. When I analyze versions of the tales, these are the versions found in these collections. Since there are other collections of tales, there may be other variants of these tales.

5. Darwin, Descent of Man, 105.

6. Derrida, Animal that Therefore I Am, 34.

7. Steward, “Animal Agency,” 218.

8. Ibid., 225.

9. Ibid., 229.

10. Judkins, “Animal Agency,” 159.

11. Bekoff, Emotional Lives of Animals, 88. For Bekoff, the “degree of difference” lies in the fact that animals do not have ethics, meaning the ability to “contemplate ‘why good is good.’” Ibid.

12. Responding to the point about language and pretend play as requirements for agency, animal studies scholars refer to recent findings about the behaviour and the capacities of certain animal species. As for language, Irene Pepperberg, well known for her work in animal cognition, worked with Alex the parrot, who was able to communicate with her using verbal language at the level of a two-year-old child. See McFarland and Hediger, “Approaching the Agency,” 1. Bekoff argues that play supports arguments for the moral agency of animals because playing requires trust that each participant will follow the rules as well as an understanding that each may choose not to. See Bekoff, Emotional Lives of Animals, 180. Even these few examples show that there is a “massive amount” of evidence relating to animals’ capacities, including agency, language, and some basic morality, that “students of literature and culture [cannot] safely leave to the side” and ignore in their evaluation of literary animal representations. See Wolfe, “Human, All Too Human,” 567.

13. McHugh, “Literary Animal Agents,” 489; McHugh, “Animal Farm’s Lessons,” 26.

14. McHugh, “Animal Farm’s Lessons,” 32.

15. Ibid., 26.

16. McHugh, “Literary Animal Agents,” 490.

17. As an example, McHugh refers to Harriet Ritvo’s The Animal Estate (1989) – a work on breeding practices in Victorian England. Show dog breeds, just by virtue of who they were, could promote their common non-aristocratic owner’s social mobility, thus acting as agents. McHugh, “Literary Animal Agents,” 490.

18. McFarland and Hediger, “Approaching the Agency of Other Animals,” 3. René Descartes is credited with the modern view of animals as “machines sans âme” (soulless machines). See Descartes, “Automatism of Brutes.”

19. Bottigheimer, Grimms’ Bad Girls, 51.

20. Ibid., 51–80.

21. Ibid., 15.

22. Recently there have emerged scholarly revisions of the interpretation of the origin of folktales. According to these new interpretations, folktales were not created by “folk,” but by specific authors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In that case, the absence of the distinct authorial voice becomes even more significant for human–animal dynamics. For more information, see Bottigheimer, Fairy Tales: A New History.

23. Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell, 7.

24. Haney, Complete Russian Folktale, 20.

25. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 21.

26. Ibid.

27. For folktale formulae see Haney, Complete Russian Folktale; Jakobson, “On Russian Fairy Tale”; Lüthi, Fairy Tale as Art Form; and Thompson, Folktale.

28. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki, vol. 1, 415. All English translations of the Russian fairy tales examined are mine.

29. Ibid., 424. “The Magic Ring” in the Siberian version begins with a similar “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state, in the very one where we live, there lived a peasant with his wife.” See Shastina, Russkie skazki Sibiri, 223. The beginning of the Siberian version is almost identical to Afanas'ev’s variant #191 of the same tale: “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state there lived an old man with his wife.” See Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki, vol. 2, 44. Afanas'ev’s version #190 of the same tale varies the place of living, but essentially follows the same formula: “In such and such places, in such and such big villages there lived a man.” Ibid., 40.

30. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki, vol. 1, 422.

31. Such endings may seem somewhat nontraditional, but it is not so. They, too, fall precisely into the conventional final functions/actions as listed in Morphology of the Folktale. After the villain is exposed and punished (in this tale the villainous king gets cooked in the boiling milk), the hero gets married – such an ending represents the function “wedding.” See Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 63.

32. Lüthi, Once Upon a Time, 53. Other reasons that explain why repetitions have become an integral structural element of fairy tales include the fact that repetitions provide both the narrator and listeners a moment to relax. See Lüthi, Fairy Tale as Art Form, 76. They also serve as a strong organizing element, making it easier for the narrator and the listener to follow the story line.

33. Jakobson, “On Russian Fairy Tale,” 91.

34. Ibid.

35. “Anthropocentric” refers to a perspective according to which human beings are the most significant entity of the universe; consequently, one interprets or regards the world in terms of human values and experiences. See “Anthropocentric” in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 52–3. Based on this definition of anthropocentric, many fairy tales lack a strong anthropocentric point of view owing to their “crystal-clear narrative technique.” See Lüthi, Fairy Tale as Art Form, 69.

36. Lüthi, Fairy Tale as Art Form, 19.

37. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki, vol. 2, 25–9.

38. Afanas'ev numbered his tales consecutively (in the order in which he included them in his collection) and placed variants next to each other. For example, in this particular case I compare two variants of the tale “The Magic Ring” that are listed as #190 and #191.

39. Haraway, When Species Meet, 82–3, 303–4.

40. Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde, xvi; Bottigheimer, Grimms’ Bad Girls, 51–2.

41. Bottigheimer, Grimms’ Bad Girls, 51–2.

42. Propp, “Notes,” 465.

43. In his collection Afanas'ev included tales from the archives of the Russian Geographical Society. See Propp, “Preface,” ix.

44. The old man’s speech in the short introduction in version #170 does not count because this work focuses on the dynamics of human–animal interactions rather than on not human–human ones, and because this introduction is not part of the exposition and is essentially optional.

45. Bottigheimer, Grimms’ Bad Girls, 54.

46. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki, vol. 1, 417.

47. The fact that the wolf chooses to help Ivan further weakens the possible objection mentioned above (that Ivan’s choice of path determines what follows next). Even though Ivan chooses the path on which he was to remain alive but the horse was to die, his choice of path does not influence the wolf’s decision in any way. In fact, right after eating the horse, the wolf leaves. When he comes back to the weeping Ivan, he expresses his regret over eating Ivan’s horse, shows compassion towards the exhausted Ivan, and expresses a desire to help him. The wolf’s decision to help Ivan did not result from Ivan’s choice of path. Thus, throughout the entire second exposition of Ivan and the wolf’s meeting, the animal has a voice and acts completely independently, as an agent, while the human has no voice, and is at the mercy of the circumstances.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., 418.

50. Ibid., 420.

51. Ibid., 623.

52. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 21.

53. Although Morphology of the Folktale has been very influential, some scholars have pointed out a number of weaknesses in it. For instance, some of the elements that Propp identified, such as “villainy,” “lack,” or “helper,” proved to be too general and applicable to any narrative, not just to folktales. Zipes understands weaknesses in Propp’s approach to folktales as a certain idealization of the “folk.” He also notes overlooked questions of the patriarchal dynamics that often dominate in folktale narratives, and a generalized, schematic presentation of the historical development of folktales. See Zipes, “Classical Folklore Research Revisited,” 90. Modern structuralists, including Lévi-Strauss and A.-J. Greimas, write that despite constant references to the “structure” of folktales, Propp’s analysis turns out to be “strictly formalistic.” See Tatar, “Folkloristic Phantasies,” 83. Lévi-Strauss argues that by focusing on the syntagmatic rather than on paradigmatic relationships in folktales, Propp deals with the obvious elements of tales and fails to identify “more fundamental structures” and patterns of meaning (Levi-Strauss, Totemism).

54. Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, 82.

55. Goscilo, “Introduction,” 6.

56. Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki, 30.

57. Lévi-Strauss, Totemism, 13.

58. Shannon, “Eight Animals in Shakespeare,” 477. The term “ecosystemic” should be distinguished here from such similar terms as “biocentric” and “ecocentric.” “Biocentric” is closer to ecosystemic in that it extends the status of moral being from humans to all other living beings in nature, with moral priority given to the survival of individual living beings. “Ecocentric,” on the other hand, gives moral priority to ecosystems and whole species and suggests/accepts a willingness to sacrifice individual organisms to ensure the survival of an ecosystem or a species.

59. Mondry, Political Animals, 13.

60. Helfant, “That Savage Gaze,” 63.

61. Shannon, “Eight Animals in Shakespeare,” 475.

62. Ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. “Sem' Simeonov” (“Seven Simeons”), “Skazka ob sil'nom i khrabrom bogatyre Ivane-tsareviche i o prekrasnoi ego supruzhnitse tsar'-devitse” (“The Tale about Strong, Courageous and Undefeatable Bogatyr Prince Ivan and his Wonderful Spouse Tsar-Maiden”), Skazka pro persten' i dvenadtsati vintakh (The tale about a ring with twelve screws), Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki; “Vasilisa Vasil'eva” (Vasilisa Vasil'ievna), Shastina, Russkie skazki.

65. The word beast in Russian, zver', usually refers to quadruped mammals, and excludes birds, fish, and so on.

66. Shannon, “Eight Animals in Shakespeare,” 477.

67. The classification of primarily northwestern European folktales according to their motifs (The Types of the Folktale, started by a prolific Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne, 1910), served as the basis for N.P. Andreev’s first Russian classification of folktales, Ukazatel' skazochnykh siuzhetov po sisteme Aarne(Index to folktale types according to the system of Aarne), 1929. This classification was first expanded upon by the American scholar Stith Thompson and later revised by Hans-Jörg Uther into Aarne-Thompson-Uther (ATU) and became a foundation for the comprehensive Comparative Index of Types.

68. Goscilo, “Introduction,” 11.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zora Kadyrbekova

Zora Kadyrbekova is a faculty lecturer at McGill University, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures – Russian. She earned her MA and PhD in Russian Literature at McGill. Her areas of interest include nineteenth-century Russian literature, Russian folklore, animal studies, and trauma theory.