Sleeping Beauty

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"Sleeping Princess" redirects here. For the 2010 Turkish film, see Sleeping Princess (film).
This article is about the fairy tale. For other uses, see Sleeping Beauty (disambiguation).
"Sleeping Beauty", by Henry Meynell Rheam

"Sleeping Beauty" (French: La Belle au bois dormant "The Beauty Sleeping in the Wood") by Charles Perrault or "Little Briar Rose" (German: Dornröschen) by the Brothers Grimm is a classic fairy tale involving a beautiful princess, a sleeping enchantment, and a handsome prince. The version collected by the Grimms was an orally transmitted version of the originally literary tale published by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697.[1] This in turn was based on Sun, Moon, and Talia by Giambattista Basile (published posthumously in 1634), which was in turn based on one or more folk tales. The earliest known version of the story is Perceforest, composed between 1330 and 1344 and first printed in 1528.

Perrault's narrative[edit]

Perrault’s narrative is written in two parts. Some folklorists believe that the two parts were originally separate tales, as they were in the Grimms', and were joined together by Basile and once more by Perrault.[2].[2]

Part one[edit]

Sleeping Beauty is shown a spindle by the old woman. "Sleeping Beauty", by Alexander Zick (1845–1907)

At the christening of a king and queen's long-wished-for child, seven fairies are invited to be godmothers to the infant princess. The fairies attend the banquet at the palace and are seated. Laid before them is a golden casket containing gold jeweled utensils. Soon after, another fairy enters the palace and is seated without a golden casket. This eighth fairy is overlooked because she has been within a tower for many years and everyone thinks she's been either dead or enchanted. Six of the other seven fairies then offer their gifts of beauty, wit, grace, dance, song, and music to the infant princess. The eighth fairy is very angry that she has been overlooked and, as her gift to the princess, enchants the infant princess so that she will prick her hand on a spindle and die. One fairy, who hasn't yet given her gift, attempts it to reverse the evil fairy's curse. However, she can only do so partially—instead of dying, the Princess will fall into a deep sleep for 100 years and be awoken by a kiss from a prince.

The king forbids any sort of spinning all throughout the kingdom. Fifteen or sixteen years pass and one day, when the king and queen are away, the Princess wanders through the palace rooms and comes upon an old woman, spinning with her spindle. The princess, curious to try the unfamiliar task, asks the old woman if she can try the spinning wheel. The princess pricks her finger on the spindle and inevitable curse is fulfilled. The old woman cries for help and attempts are made to revive the princess. The king attributes this to fate and has the Princess carried to the finest room in the palace and placed upon a bed of gold and silver embroidered fabric. The king and queen kiss their daughter goodbye and depart, proclaiming the entrance to be forbidden. The good fairy who altered the evil prophecy is summoned. Having great powers of foresight, the fairy sees that the Princess will be awaken to distress when she finds herself alone, so the fairy puts everyone in the castle to sleep. The fairy also summons a forest of trees, brambles and thorns that spring up around the castle, shielding it from the outside world and preventing anyone from disturbing the Princess.

A hundred years pass and a prince from another family spies the hidden castle during a hunting expedition. His attendants tell him differing stories regarding the castle until an old man recounts his father's words: within the castle lies a beautiful princess who is doomed to sleep for a hundred years until a king's son comes and awakens her. The prince then braves the tall trees, brambles and thorns which part at his approach, and enters the castle. He passes the sleeping castle folk and comes across the chamber where the Princess lies asleep on the bed. Struck by the radiant beauty before him, he falls on his knees before her. The enchantment comes to an end by a kiss and the princess awakens and converses with the prince for a long time. Meanwhile, the rest of the castle awakens and go about their business. The prince and princess walk to the hall of mirrors to dine and are later married by the chaplain in the castle chapel.

Part two[edit]

After having been secretly wed by the reawakened Royal almoner, the Prince continues to visit the Princess. She bears him two children, L'Aurore (Dawn) and Le Jour (Day), which he keeps secret from his mother, who is of an ogre lineage. Once it was time for the Prince to ascend the throne, he brings his wife, children, and the talabutte ("Count of the Mount").

The Ogress Queen Mother sends the young Queen and the children to a house secluded in the woods and directs her cook to prepare the boy with sauce Robert for dinner. The humane cook substitutes a lamb for the boy which satisfies the Queen Mother. She then demands the girl but the humane cook, once again, substitutes a young goat which also satisfies the Queen Mother. When the Ogress demands that he serve up the young Queen, the young Queen offers to slit her throat so that she may join the children that she imagines are dead. While the Queen Mother is satisfied with a hind prepared with sauce Robert in substitution for the young Queen, there is a tearful secret reunion of the Queen and her children. However, the Queen Mother soon discovers the cook’s trick and she prepares a tub in the courtyard filled with vipers and other noxious creatures. The King returns in the nick of time and the Ogress, being discovered, throws herself into the tub and is fully consumed. The King, young Queen, and children then lived happily ever after.

Basile's narrative[edit]

In Giambattista Basile's version of Sleeping Beauty, the sleeping beauty is named Talia. By asking wise men and astrologers to predict her future after her birth, her father (who is a great lord) learns that Talia will be in danger from a splinter of flax. The splinter later causes what appears to be Talia's death; however, it is later learned that it is a long, deep sleep. Unlike the version of Sleeping Beauty known today, Basile's version consists of a more gruesome plot. After Talia (Sleeping Beauty) falls into deep sleep, she is seated on a velvet throne and her father, to forget his misery of what he thinks is her death, closes the doors and abandons the house forever. One day, while a king is walking by, one of his falcons flies into the house. The king knocks, hoping to be let in by someone however no one answers and he decides to climb in with a ladder. He finds Talia alive but unconscious and after crying aloud that he is unable to wake her, he carries her to a bed and rapes her. Afterwards, he leaves her in the bed and goes back to his kingdom. Though Talia is unconscious, her body gives birth to twins—one of whom keeps sucking her fingers. Talia awakens because the twin has sucked out the flax that was stuck deep in Talia's finger. When she wakes up, she discovers that she is a mother and has no idea what happened to her. One day, the king decides he wants to go see Talia again and goes back to the palace to find her awake and a mother to his twins. He informs her of who he is, what has happened, and they end up bonding. After a few days, the king has to leave to go back to his realm, but promises Talia that he will return to take her to his kingdom.

When he arrives back to his kingdom, his wife hears him saying "Talia, Sun, and Moon" in his sleep. She bribes and threatens the king's secretary to tell her what is going on. After the queen learns the truth, she pretends she is the king and writes to Talia asking her to send the twins because he wants to see them. Talia sends her twins to the "king" and the queen tells the cook to kill the twins and make dishes out of them. She wants to feed the king his children; however the cook, instead, takes the twins to his wife and hides them. He then cooks two lambs and serves them as if it were the twins. Every time the king mentions how good the food is, the queen replies, "Eat, eat, you are eating of your own." Later, the queen invites Talia to the kingdom and is going to burn her alive, but the king appears and finds out what’s going on with his children and Talia. He then orders that his wife be burned along with those who betrayed him. Since the cook actually did not obey the queen, the king thanks the cook for saving his children by giving him rewards. The story ends with the king marrying Talia and living happily ever after.[3]


An older image of the sleeping princess: Brünnhilde, surrounded by magical fire rather than roses (illustration by Arthur Rackham to Richard Wagner's Die Walküre

There are earlier elements that contributed to the tale. In the medieval courtly romance Perceforest (published in 1528), a princess named Zellandine falls in love with a man named Troylus. Her father sends him to perform tasks to prove himself worthy of her, and while he is gone, Zellandine falls into an enchanted sleep. Troylus finds her and impregnates her in her sleep; when their child is born, he draws from her finger the flax that caused her sleep. She realizes from the ring he left her that the father was Troylus, who later returns to marry her.[4]

Earlier influences come from the story of the sleeping Brynhild in the Volsunga saga and the tribulations of saintly female martyrs in early Christian hagiography conventions. It was, in fact, the existence of Brynhild that persuaded the Brothers Grimm to include the story in later editions of their work rather than eliminate it, as they did to other works they deemed to be purely French, stemming from Perrault's work.

The second half, in which the princess and her children are almost put to death, but instead hidden, may have been influenced by Genevieve of Brabant.[5]


This fairy tale is classified as Aarne-Thompson type 410.[6]

The princess's name has varied from one adaptation to the other. In Sun, Moon, and Talia, she is named Talia ("Sun" and "Moon" being her twin children). She has no name in Perrault's story but her daughter is called "Aurore". The Brothers Grimm named her "Briar Rose" in their 1812 collection.[7] Tchaikovsky's ballet and Disney's version named her Aurora.[8] John Stejean named her "Rosebud" in TeleStory Presents.

The Brothers Grimm included a variant Little Briar Rose in their collection (1812).[7] Their version ends when the prince arrives to wake Sleeping Beauty, unlike the stories of Basile and Perrault.[9] Some translations of the Grimms' tale give the princess the name Rosamond. The brothers considered rejecting the story on the grounds that it was derived from Perrault's version, but the presence of the Brynhild tale convinced them to include it as an authentically German tale. Still, it is the only known German variant of the tale, and Perrault's influence is almost certain.[10]

The Brothers Grimm also included, in the first edition of their tales, a fragmentary fairy tale, The Evil Mother-in-Law. This story begins with the heroine married mother of two children (as in the second part of Perrault's tale) and her mother-in-law attempting to eat her and the children. Unlike Perrault's version, the heroine suggested an animal be substituted in the dish, and ends with the heroine's worry that she cannot keep her children from crying and getting the mother-in-law’s attention. Like many German tales showing French influence, it appeared in no subsequent edition.[11]

Italo Calvino included a variant in Italian Folktales. The cause of her sleep is an ill-advised wish by her mother. As in Pentamerone, the prince rapes her in her sleep, her children are born, and one sucks on her finger, pulling out the prick that had put her to sleep. He preserves that the woman who tries to kill the children is the king's mother, not his wife, but adds that she does not want to eat them herself, but instead serves them to the king. His version came from Calabria, but he noted that all Italian versions closely followed Basile's.[12] His version came from Calabria, but he noted that all Italian versions closely followed Basile's.[13]

Besides Sun, Moon, and Talia, Basile included another variant of this Aarne-Thompson type, The Young Slave. The Grimms also included a second, more distantly related one, The Glass Coffin.[6]

Joseph Jacobs noted the figure of the Sleeping Beauty was in common between this tale and the Gypsy tale The King of England and his Three Sons, in his More English Fairy Tales.[14]

The hostility of the king's mother to his new bride is repeated in the fairy tale The Six Swans,[15] and also features The Twelve Wild Ducks, where she is modified to be the king's stepmother. However, these tales omit the cannibalism.

Myth themes[edit]



Illustration to Tennyson's 1830 poem, Sleeping Beauty
  • In 1949, the story was made into a Finnish film, Prinsessa Ruusunen, directed by Edvin Laine and score by Erkki Melartin's incidental music from 1912.
  • In 1955, the story was made into a German film, Dornröschen, directed by Fritz Genschow.
  • In 1959, Charles Perrault's version was adapted into a Walt Disney animated film. The film was notoriously expensive to produce and, at the time, not very successful. However, it has come to be regarded as the quintessential adaptation and a film classic in its own right. It is also notable for expanding the character of the wicked fairy significantly and features music from the ballet.
  • In 1987, Charles Perrault's version was adapted into a musical film direct-to-TV, directed by David Irving.
  • In 2009, Mattel Entertainment was supposed to adapt the story into a Barbie film, titled Barbie as the Sleeping Beauty, due to the success of two previous films based on Tchaikovsky's ballets. But everything was shelved because of the trademark controversy, in which the Walt Disney Company acquired the rights for the adaptation of the film.[17] When the trademark was granted back on January 17, 2012, the film production was completely abandoned.[18]
  • Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters novel, The Gates of Sleep, set in Edwardian England, includes many elements from "Sleeping Beauty." A notable difference from the original is that in Lackey's version, the Sleeping Beauty's analogue does not sleep passively waiting for the Prince to wake her, but rather while her body lies unconscious, her spirit is very much awake, waging a magical battle to the death with the witch's analogue.
  • Jim C. Hines in Princess Series portrays the prince as raping Sleeping Beauty- AKA Talia- while she slept. After Talia wakes up after giving birth, she uses her gift of grace to become a highly skilled martial artist. She develops a strong dislike of fairies and unrequited feelings of love for her friend and ally, Snow White.
  • In the ABC TV show Once Upon a Time, Sleeping Beauty (named Aurora after the Disney version) is portrayed by Sarah Bolger, and Prince Phillip is played by Julian Morris. Maleficent (Kristin Bauer van Straten) appears in a different context, but it is mentioned that she is the one who cursed Aurora and that she once cursed Aurora's mother in the same manner.
  • In his 1854 satirical fantasy "The Rose and the Ring," William Makepeace Thackeray used an element from the "Sleeping Beauty" with a reversed meaning: The Fairy Blackstick comes uninvited to the Christening of the Princess Rosalba and wishes the child "a bit of bad luck." But in Thackeray's version, the Fairy meant well and the Princess's bad luck ultimately made her a better and happier person than she would have been.
  • In the Sailor Moon manga, the evil witch Nehelennia casts a curse on the objects of celebration, Silver Millennium and Sailor Moon, a story based on the curse in Sleeping Beauty. In the Sailor Moon anime, "Awaken, Sleeping Beauty! Mamoru's Distress," Sailor Moon is fighting two of the Ayakashi sisters from the Black moon when she is put into a deep sleep from which only Mamoru's kiss can wake her. The episode had started with Usagi reading the fairy tale to Chibiusa as a bedtime story.
  • In 2014, a Walt Disney live-action film called Maleficent staring Angelina Jolie proposed a backstory for the Disney-created villain of the 1959 animated film.

Sleeping Beauty in music[edit]

The Sleeping Beauty, ballet Emily Smith

Michele Carafa composed La Belle au Bois Dormant in 1825.

Before Tchaikovsky's version, several ballet productions were based on the "Sleeping Beauty" theme, among one from Eugène Scribe: in the winter of 1828–1829, the French playwright furnished a four-act mimed scenario as a basis for Aumer's choreography of a four-act ballet-pantomime La Belle au Bois Dormant.

Scribe wisely omitted the violence of the second part of Perrault's tale for the ballet, which was set by Hérold and first staged at the Académie Royale in Paris on 27 April 1829. Though Hérold popularized his piece with a piano, Rondo brilliant was based on themes from the music, however he was not successful in getting the ballet staged again.

The fourth movement of Robert Schumann's Märchenbilder[19] depicts scenes from this story.

When Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the Director of the Imperial Theatres in Saint Petersburg, wrote to Tchaikovsky on May 25, 1888 suggesting a ballet based on Perrault's tale, he also cut the violent second half, climaxed the action with the Awakening Kiss, and followed with a conventional festive last act, a series of bravura variations.

In 2008, the American musical trio GrooveLily released Sleeping Beauty Wakes, a concept modern-day album, loosely based on the fairy tale. The songs are part of a homonymous musical with book by Rachel Sheinkin.

Abby Dobson released Sleeping Beauty: You Are the One You Have Been Waiting On - Volumood One, her debut album, loosely based on the fairy tale.

Sleeping Beauty in art[edit]

See also[edit]


  2. ^ Maria Tatar, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, 2002:96, ISBN 0-393-05163-3
  3. ^ Basile, Giambattista. "Sun, Moon, and Talia". Retrieved 31 March 2013. 
  4. ^ Jack Zipes, The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, p 648, ISBN 0-393-97636-X
  5. ^ Charles Willing, "Genevieve of Brabant"
  6. ^ a b Heidi Anne Heiner, "Tales Similar to Sleeping Beauty"
  7. ^ a b Jacob and Wilheim Grimm, Grimms' Fairy Tales, "Little Briar-Rose"
  8. ^ Heidi Anne Heiner, "The Annotated Sleeping Beauty"
  9. ^ Harry Velten, "The Influences of Charles Perrault's Contes de ma Mère L'oie on German Folklore", p 961, Jack Zipes, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ISBN 0-393-97636-X
  10. ^ Harry Velten, "The Influences of Charles Perrault's Contes de ma Mère L'oie on German Folklore", p 962, Jack Zipes, ed. The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: From Straparola and Basile to the Brothers Grimm, ISBN 0-393-97636-X
  11. ^ Maria Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p 376-7 W. W. Norton & company, London, New York, 2004 ISBN 0-393-05848-4
  12. ^ Italo Calvino, Italian Folktales p 485 ISBN 0-15-645489-0
  13. ^ Italo Calvino, Italian Folktales p 744 ISBN 0-15-645489-0
  14. ^ Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, "The King of England and his Three Sons"
  15. ^ Maria Tatar, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, p 230 W. W. Norton & company, London, New York, 2004 ISBN 0-393-05848-4
  16. ^ Hill, Robert (1971), Tennyson's Poetry p. 544. New York: Norton.
  17. ^ "An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine". Retrieved March 26, 2010.  Deadline Hollywood/Niki Finke, May 1, 2009
  18. ^ "US Patent and Trademark Office – Princess Aurora trademark status". Retrieved March 26, 2010. 
  19. ^ Märchenbilder (Schumann)

External links[edit]