Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance-Book Review

Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance details a group of women writers in 17th century Paris, their sisterhood of writing fairy tales, and their legacy as originators erased from history. Harrington organizes her book into chapters that highlight a significant contributor to the salon story workshops and two of their translated works named fairy tales by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy. Readers will reconnect with familiar characters and conflicts, or discover they never loved this type of fantasy much at all. Writers will be enchanted by themes of perseverance, power, and the founding fantasy elements that talented women wielded – fairy gifts of magic – as their only means of self-determination and freedom.

This purpose is best summarized by one of the book's own protagonists. “‘One writes in order to instruct oneself and to amuse oneself,’” said Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier, and “‘one also writes in order to instruct and amuse one’s friends.’ She had this to offer about the withering criticism that female writers inevitably face: ‘What does it matter if people … are discontented with works that were not made for them?’” (126). Harrington’s touch was light and gentle in lifting their words, and as a true editor, making the best of the long unheard words. She projects the message of their storytelling – taking care of other women and other women’s stories, not the stories themselves.

Each of the seven highlighted women demonstrated what Charlotte-Rose La Force’s character Finfin says aloud, “A remedy can be found in the same thing that has caused suffering” (95). When authors don’t have the power of choice in their own lives, they choose to write their way through their reality using any context necessary, in this case fairies and magical elements. “A character’s feelings should be natural and realistic, but the plot should be fantastical,” instructs Catherine Bernard (155). Female readers and writers will be reminded that we should come together to give ourselves what we want and cannot have, to reframe and reforge the lands we are forced to inhabit.

Harrington’s book is an enlightening reminder of how content favored in girlhood may be assumed to be trapping but instead is revolutionary. I checked out this book because of the title’s words, “fairy tale” and “resistance.” I believed I loved fairy tales. I don’t believe this now. Still, I admire women who write, their commitment to their audience, and what they endured to be heard. As writers we’re told to embrace that the stories we write are for the group that needs to hear them and then we allow ourselves to be disappointed when they are rejected by audiences never intended to be their own. Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance is a reminder for anyone who has lost sight of what it means to write this story, our stories, not the story.

Harrington, Jane. (2025) Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Forgotten Founding Mothers

Of the Fairy Tale and the Stories That They Spun. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers:

New York.