I’ll walk along the shore collecting shells,
read all the books I’ve never had the time for,
and study witchcraft. What should women do
when they grow old and useless? Become witches.
It’s the only role you get to write yourself.
Hungarian-born author Theodora Goss has several novels to her name (including The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter and European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman), but she’s also been writing a steady stream of short stories and poems over the years. Snow White Learns Witchcraft collects eight short stories – most of them previously released but a couple of them brand new to this collection – surrounded by twenty-three poems that echo the themes of the tales and then braid them into new meanings.
Each of the stories and poems here are are based on a traditional fairytale that’s retold from a different point of view, or a different time period, or a completely new motivation for the main characters, all with Goss’s characteristic imagery of feathers and rose petals, lace and snow (and sometimes blood).
Many of these stories are familiar, but it may be a few pages before you recognize them, especially since Goss can pull them from versions that those of us who only read The Brother’s Grim might not recognize. The poem of “The Ogress Queen” for instance features a character who only appears in the second half of Perrault’s original Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.
“The Rose in Twelve Petals” is closer to the familiar version, with dreamlike images of the roses growing over and through the sleeping Princess’s bed. And yet even this version is something new, with some of the twelve parts of the story being told from the point of view of the princess, the wood witch with a real grievance against the king, and even the beautiful spinning wheel who never asked for any of this. It’s a lovely retelling that gives the princess herself some agency in what happens to her. And the bit with the dog damn near made me cry.
He lives happily ever after. Someone has to.
The author returns again and again to the idea of characters taking a different path: Snow White with an inherited magic mirror she’ll never misuse. The solitary gardener in “Rose Child” who stumbles across the miniature Thumbelina (possibly?) but who has the sense to leave wild things alone. Or the no fewer than four tales – some of the fanciful, one of them a little snarky – of human society mixing with bear society, and the possible happily-ever-afters that result (what if the Little Bear was the hero, and Goldilocks was the villain?)
And then there’s “The Gold Spinner,” one of my favorites. It’s very short, with shades of C.S.E Cooney’s story “How the Milkmaid Struck a Bargain with the Crooked One“, and it makes you think, really think, about why anyone would want to marry the king who threatened to execute them if they didn’t spin straw into gold.
Not all of these stories are bright and happy. The poems inspired by Little Red Riding Hood all dance around the darkness of the forest and the mother’s warnings about wandering off the path or speaking to wolves (or men). “Snow, Blood, and Fur” is especially dark, drawing from some of the theories about the original fairy tale being mostly about violence, possibly sexual violence (keep in mind that saying “yes” to the dangerous person who may hurt you if you refuse is not the same thing as being willing.) And yet…I’m not sure if this is about being irreparably damaged by the event, or being released by it.
She stops only once, to howl.
Two of the stories are more traditional tales, where the main characters set off on a quest and eventually discover themselves. “Blanchefleur” features Ivan, sometimes called The Idiot, as he serves a three-year apprenticeship to the Lady of the Forest, accompanied by one of the Lady’s talking cats, Blanchefleur. And in “The Other Thea”, a young woman travels to the halls of Mother Night in search of her lost shadow. I loved every part of this, especially the quick-tempered daughter of Mother Night who ends up being totally cool with selfies and friending on Facebook, along with the masquerade in the ballroom that’s also a moonlit forest glade.
…There was the stag man with flowers draped over his antlers. A woman with scaled blue skin was talking to what looked like a large owl. Three young girls with pig snouts were slipping in and out between the trees, playing tag. A satyr was bowing to a woman whose dress seemed to be made of butterflies…
“Seven Shoes” is another favorite, a life told in sneakers and flipflops and sensible pumps and comfy slippers. And the poem titled “The Stepsister’s Tale” is self explanatory. Set in the modern times, it shows how at least one of the “wicked” stepsisters made a life for herself after the glass slipper. Cinderella wasn’t the only one who was abused. In fact you can argue that she didn’t even get the worst of it.
Oh mother, love me without asking me to
scrape
my fingers like carrots, cut off my heels and
toes.
That’s really a unifying theme for many of the stories, the way the author can zero in on the parts of the original stories that just weren’t…fair. Imagine if spitting out diamonds was exactly as unpleasant as it sounds, and having toads fall out of your mouth when you spoke was the punishment you got for just one day of being in a 
bad mood. Could it be that the Princess kissed the frog, or the servant stole the Princess’s identity and her talking horse Falalda, because someone’s perfectly-planned future was exactly what they didn’t want. And what if the Little Mermaid got exactly what she’d wished for: then what? How would the rest of her life pan out? What if the only person who really understood her was the person who’d changed her into a human in the first place, who knew exactly what it was like to change everything about yourself to try to please someone else?
If you think pointing out all the places in the stories where the characters got a rough deal means this is a downbeat collection, well, think again. In many ways these are all about the author’s attempt to spin straw into gold, to find the happily ever after that the characters actually wanted, rather than the ones that everyone thought they should have.