Is the so-called evil fairy really all that bad?
Creating a layered, believable and truthful character is no easy feat, especially when it comes to the antihero. The audience shouldn’t be on their side but still be compelled to watch them and their wicked ways. We love to hate because there’s a humanity in the villain that is strikingly familiar, a reflection of ourselves that is sometimes clearer than the completely pure and innocent heroes/heroines of a story.
Villains can be fun, especially in ballet, where the opportunity for character development, over-the-top costuming and special effects come into play. We investigate the character of Carabosse and the ways the evil fairy has been portrayed throughout the years.
La Belle au bois dormant
Alice Topp and artists of The Australian Ballet
Image: Kate Longley
In one of the earliest versions of the fairy tale, Charles Perrault’s 1697 The Sleeping Beauty has the king and queen celebrating the christening of their daughter with a wonderful feast. They have invited seven fairies of the kingdom but have forgotten the eighth older fairy, who arrives at the party anyway only to be humiliated further when she is not offered the same golden case and jewelled cutlery as the other fairies. It’s a case of adding insult to injury for the older fairy, who retaliates by cursing the baby princess to die at age 16 by wounding her hand on a spindle.
It’s definitely an overreaction to not being invited to a christening, but perhaps the underlying themes of becoming irrelevant as we age or the fear of being forgotten make this fairy’s backstory more relatable.
The Princess Mayblossom
Alice Topp, Valerie Tereshchenko, and artists of The Australian Ballet
Image: Kate Longley
Madame d’Aulnoy wrote Princess Printaniere or The Princess Mayblossom in 1697, which bears similarities to Perrault’s tale. It is here that the evil fairy is given the name Carabosse, which would become the character Marius Petipa would use in his ballet of The Sleeping Beauty. In d’Aulnoy’s story, the King and Queen are hiring a nurse for their infant daughter, and a grotesquely disguised Carabosse tries to be hired. She is sent away immediately, and soon a series of unfortunate and gruesome deaths befall the nurses who are hired in her place (imagine a 17th-century Final Destination plot).
It is revealed that Carabosse has long held a grudge against the King for a prank he played on her as a child and ultimately curses his daughter to have bad luck until the age of twenty. The fifth fairy in the story gifts the princess with good luck after her twentieth birthday and has her placed in a tower until then for safekeeping, adding a Rapunzel-esque element to this tale.
Brothers Grimm
Gillian Revie and artists of The Australian Ballet
Image: Daniel Boud
In the later version by the Brothers Grimm, Little Briar-Rose, the king intentionally excludes the thirteenth fairy of the kingdom, also known as a ‘wise woman,’ with the excuse that he doesn’t have enough golden plates. It seems a little suspicious that someone in a position of power such as the king couldn’t rustle up an extra plate or even extend an invitation to the wise fairy. When she does arrive anyway, she recognises the seemingly deliberate slight for what it is.
Maleficent
Alice Topp
Image: Kate Longley
Carabosse got the Disney makeover in the 1959 animated film of The Sleeping Beauty and a new name, Maleficent. Inspired by the Latin word ‘maleficentia’, meaning doing evil or causing harm, this new villain was designed to look like a giant vampire bat and yet embodied the archetype of a vain femme fatale.
Maleficent’s evolution into a sympathetic character in the 2014 live-action film added depth to the two-dimensional cartoon. Once a kind hearted fairy with healing powers, she is betrayed by the future King Stefan, who steals her wings so he can succeed to the throne. Consumed with hatred, Maleficent curses the king's daughter, Princess Aurora, with the now familiar fate to prick her finger on a spinning wheel. This version of the evil fairy, however, does not curse Aurora to die but to fall asleep until woken by true love's kiss, a trope she herself does not believe in. As the years pass, Maleficent develops a fondness for the young princess and realises her error in punishing Aurora for her father’s transgression. In a sweet twist, it is Maleficent and her ‘true love’s kiss’ on the brow of the sleeping Aurora that wakes her and ultimately brings back the balance to the kingdom.
There have been multiple incarnations of Maleficent and Carabosse, and the archetype of the wicked fairy continues in pop culture today. Yet it is the characters that, for all their wickedness, are ultimately revealed to be intrinsically human that are the most enduring and interesting.
Don't miss The Sleeping Beauty
Coming to Festival Theatre 22 - 29 July.
