This article I’ll be reviewing The Serpent and the Swan, by Boria Sax

I expected to like this book. Not only was it given to me by a good friend, whose opinion I respect about 90%of the time, but I’m also a sucker for books on mythology, folklore and fairy tales. I grew up on tales from The Brothers Grim and Andrew Lang, as well as stories of witches, ghosts and the like. I’m well steeped in these stories and their variations and they fascinate me. Thus I was looking forward to reading what someone else had to say on the matter.

It’s obvious that Dr. Sax put a lot of thought and research into this book. It’s also obvious that the thought and the research was high caliber, and the book does provide food for thought and discussion. Nonetheless, I was not nearly as impressed as I had expected, and I’ll tell you one of the reasons why.

Dr. Sax comes to this book with a definite agenda. There is something that he wishes to prove, and a cause he wishes to support, through his review of animal bride tales throughout history and around the world. He is very interested in the cause of animal rights, and the survival of the ‘natural world’ and it is through this lens that he views these stories. Which is laudable, I suppose, but the difficulty I have with this is that folk tales are like a mirror…what they give you is less dependent on any inherent moral or value of the tale than the beliefs and viewpoints of the person reading them. I’ll give you my major issue only, for the sake of brevity: Dr. Sax includes ‘animal groom’ tales in with ‘animal bride’ tales, although almost all ‘animal groom’ tales follow the formula of “Eros and Psyche”, or the possibly better known story of “Beauty and the Beast” – that is to say, the animal form is an enchantment. The breaking of tabu and loss of the groom is the necessary component to breaking the enchantment and ‘rescuing’ the groom, thus allowing him to regain and retain his human form. There are variations, of course. Some tales do not include a broken tabu – these merely require a marriage to break the spell (rather like the kiss ‘of true love’ in tales such as ‘Sleeping Beauty’).

Animal bride tales, on the other hand, generally (not always, but in the main) involve females who are predominately animals, or at least are other than human. When their skins are stolen they weep and beg for them back…the retention of human form is seen as an imposition and imprisonment, and when the skin is regained it is donned and the bride escapes with nary a look back. This may be a ‘tragic romance’ seen from the abandoned male’s point of view, but seen from the female’s point of view it’s more like a ‘tragic rape and joyous release’ tale. The exception would be the tale of the Fairy Melusine, which Dr. Sax includes as a story of the animal bride where the separation is seen as tragic for both parties. The difference here is that the marriage was pursued by the bride, and even a cursory reading of the story shows that she’s the one with the power in the relationship.

It may be that we can use the animal bride tales as a foundation for altering our relationship with the ‘natural world’…If so, however, I wonder if the cautions of animal bride tale can be honored in the modern world: 1) Man cannot expect to heal the split while also remaining in control, and 2) there are places where man cannot expect the right to look.

Just my take on the ‘animal bride/groom’ tales, and one example in which the beliefs and viewpoints affect the possible meaning of a folktale.

This is not to say I don’t think the book is worth reading. I don’t agree with all his conclusions, but the book (as I said in the beginning) provides some definite food for thought, and provides a foundation for re-thinking one’s own relationship with Nature as Other (or if it even is Other at all). And that alone I think is an excellent reason to read it.