Rewriting the fairy tale in Louise Murphy’s and Lisa Goldstein’s Holocaust narratives

Abstract

While considerable scholarly attention has been paid to the ways in which modern authors have exploited the inherent formulaicity of the fairy tale, its use in narratives of the Holocaust is as yet little studied. This essay analyses two rewritings of ‘Hansel and Gretel’ by Lisa Goldstein and Louise Murphy. It focuses on the way in which the intertext is adapted for the purposes of Holocaust representation and on how the strategies used by these authors contribute to their problematisation of the categories, respectively, of victim and perpetrator. At the same time, the essay addresses related issues regarding the transmission of trauma across generations, empathy and ‘overidentification’, and the question of whether recourse to the fairy tale brings readers closer to, or distances them from, the truth of the events that these narratives are designed to portray.

Keywords:

• Fairy tales
• Holocaust
• intertextuality
• Lisa Goldstein
• Louise Murphy
• trauma

Acknowledgements

The author is also grateful for the support of the University of Zaragoza (JIUZ-2014-HUM-02), the Government of Aragón and the European Social Fund (H05).