Reading Diary A: Turkish Fairy Tales

Okay, so I am really loving the Turkish Fairy Tales. They are everything fairy tales should be. They have princes, talking animals, fairies, and witches. At the end of the story everything is wrapped up into a neat little bow. These are the types of stories I would have loved to have been told as a child.

So far I really like The Fish-Peri.I love how magical the story feels. The fish is so grateful to the man for not selling or eating her, that every day when he leaves to go fishing, she changes into her human form and cleans his house for him. I also really enjoyed the tasks he was given by the Padishah. They were so random and seemingly impossible, yet the fish-maiden never batted an eye. She always had the perfect solution. I really liked how in this story it was the woman who was helping the man. So often in fairy tales the women are presented as being helpless creatures who rely on a prince charming to come and rescue them, but in these fairy tales, the women are not helpless at all. I can imagine that these stories would have given girls confidence that they are capable of solving problems themselves, and that they too can come to people's rescue.

Illustration from The Crow-Peri by Willy
Pogany

The Crow-Peri is another story that was very similar to The Fish-Peri, and I liked it equally well. In this story, a young maiden had been turned into a crow. She was helping a man to complete a series of tasks given to him by a Padishah at the demand of his jealous and vindictive lala. I really liked the element of treachery in this story, how the lala was constantly trying to influence the Padishah and force him to come up with tasks that the man would fail at. It was an added element to the story, which the Fish-Peri did not have as much of. Again I was so very impressed by how the women in this story were not portrayed as being helpless and weak, but instead contributed equally to the solving of various problems.

I cannot wait to read the rest of this unit!