Asakiyume mita

February 26th is Tell-a-Fairy-Tale day, a fact I discovered two years ago on asakiyume's blog. I loved the idea, although I didn't take part last year (I think I remembered that I wrote my story two years ago on a day of fine, warm weather, which made me think it was spring, and completely I overlooked the fact that I was in Nice at the time and fine warm weather with plenty of flowers lasts around 365 days a year).

Anyway. There was a story I liked when I was little, which has given me much thought ever since. My mother didn't seem to like it as much as I did, and I couldn't really understand why. After all, it was a very cool story of a girl discovering that she should stand up for herself and finding creative ways to do so, and I treasured that kind of tale at the time, as they were so rare among the stories of heroic guys and helpless, worthless girls. That's how I saw it anyway. Years later, I learned a bit more about how people thought when that story was first told, and I came to suspect why my mum didn't like it all that well. A girl who stands up for herself is one thing, a girl who has to take responsibility for her husband's violence is another. Sadly enough, many stories were told to teach women that they were accountable for their husband's behaviour, and that they should be able to change him through the power of their feminine virtue if they are dissatisfied. That's how I discovered that a story I naively believed was about a resourceful woman was, probably, not much more than a tool to teach women their proper place in the world.

But then I wondered: does it have to be so? If this tale had such a bleak hidden meaning, how come I found it so good when I was a child? I rooted for active, resourceful heroins long before I learned the word 'feminism', after all. This story I read could not be all that sinister. So here is today's story: not the one in the book, but the one that formed in my head when I read it.

The Lady and the Lion

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