Skin of Ass (tale of Perrault)

History

Dying, the queen is made promise by the king to take for new wife only one woman more beautiful than it. But the only person able to compete with her beauty is not other than her own daughter, and the king makes him his request. To escape from this incestueuse union and on the councils from her godmother, the princess asks for her dowry of the unrealizable dresses her father who, alas always arrives to offering to him. The princess flees then of the castle, covered with a skin of ass…

Analyzes

Inceste and what the psychoanalysis will call later “Electra complex” is the central themes of the account.

The king falls in love with his daughter. Pretexting the promise which it made with his late wife, it chooses to marry the princess without the shade of a feeling of guilt in front of what all human civilizations regard as the Tabou taboos: the inceste.

It receives in that the support of a druid, left advising who acts more by ambition than by wisdom.

The Godmother-fairy of the child, will dissipate any misunderstanding while learning how with the princess not to confuse the loves more: his parents are loved but they are not married!

The stain felt by the child is materialized here by the skin of ass, feeling reluctant clothing which it chooses to wear. Thereafter, it becomes slattern.

As in Sleeping Beauty , it will be the long and tortuous way which will carry out the Prince charming until the Princess and her delivery. As in Cinderella , the identity of the princess will be revealed by a meeting of fitting: that of a ring, being appropriate for the finest finger (slipper with the finest foot in Cinderella), sign of youth, beauty and purity.

The final meeting will allow the Prince, reference to “normality”, to eliminate any unsuitable relation:

too old women (too large finger);
little girls (too small finger);
women of lower condition (misalliance).

Adaptations

the brothers Grimm adapted this German tale under the title Allerleirauh , translated sometimes into Peau of thousand-animals or All-Furs (1812).
Opera of Raoul Laparra (1899).
Two filmed versions of Albert Capellani (1904 and 1908). Black and white. Dumb man. Short-measuring.
Film of Jacques Demy (1970).

Full text

Original version in worms.
Version in prose adapted anonymously, in Wikisource.

See too

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