Deerskin: YA or Adult?
In my last post, I introduced Joseph Abbruscato's ideas about the necessity of evil in fairytale retellings. He believes that, because children understand that obstacles are a part of the world, we should tell them stories that show them how to overcome those obstacles. In theory, this idea sounds amazing. Of course we want everyone to have stories that talk about overcoming obstacles.
What about obstacles that our culture doesn't consider appropriate to talk about?
The original tale "Donkeyskin" isn't an innocent story. In this tale by Charles Perrault, a dying queen makes the king promise he will never marry again until he finds a woman who can match her beauty and wisdom. Because the queen is so very beautiful, the king doesn't remarry for some time. Finally he realizes that only his daughter matches his former wife in beauty and wisdom. The king then sets out to marry his daughter. Naturally horrified by this turn of events, the daughter does her best to prove her father unworthy in a twisted perversion of the fairytale "impossible task" trope. Her father passes the tests and the princess finally flees to a life as the lowliest of servants, dressed in a donkeyskin. She eventually wins the heart of a prince who peeks through her keyhole, and her father apologizes at her wedding.
Needless to say, retelling this story while skirting around incest and rape is difficult. These components are an integral part of the plot. Occasionally retellings will say that the princess is a stepdaughter or a ward instead of a biological daughter, which weakens the plot and does nothing to lessen the evil of the king's intentions.
The issue of incest and rape is tricky. It's a topic that should be handled sensitively in all literature, but for a YA audience, plenty of people are uncomfortable with it being present no matter how it's handled. Abbruscato says that evil should be part of the stories we tell, but this specific evil is often considered a bit much in books aimed at teenagers.
Robin McKinley is a capable storyteller with several other fairytale retellings under her belt, so when she tackled "Donkeyskin," she wasn't interested in watering it down. Instead, her novel Deerskin directly tackles rape, incest, and the resulting trauma. Her protagonist Lissla Lissar spends most of the novel with a memory block over the event, but the readers are there when it happens and don't have the privilege of ignoring it.
This book is categorized as YA by some lists and as adult by others. Although it is a YA text in every other way — it is a coming-of-age story, contains a first-love plot, and deals with identity in every line — the heartbeat of the book revolves around trauma from incest, and we don't often consider this trauma to be appropriate for YA readers. Sarah Wakefield places this book firmly in the YA age range anyway, arguing that it is important for teenagers to read this kind of material. She says,
Above all, even the uncertain ending of Deerskin provides hope that healing can and will happen.
What about obstacles that our culture doesn't consider appropriate to talk about?
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| "Princess Donkeyskin" by Oddeum on Deviantart |
The original tale "Donkeyskin" isn't an innocent story. In this tale by Charles Perrault, a dying queen makes the king promise he will never marry again until he finds a woman who can match her beauty and wisdom. Because the queen is so very beautiful, the king doesn't remarry for some time. Finally he realizes that only his daughter matches his former wife in beauty and wisdom. The king then sets out to marry his daughter. Naturally horrified by this turn of events, the daughter does her best to prove her father unworthy in a twisted perversion of the fairytale "impossible task" trope. Her father passes the tests and the princess finally flees to a life as the lowliest of servants, dressed in a donkeyskin. She eventually wins the heart of a prince who peeks through her keyhole, and her father apologizes at her wedding.
Needless to say, retelling this story while skirting around incest and rape is difficult. These components are an integral part of the plot. Occasionally retellings will say that the princess is a stepdaughter or a ward instead of a biological daughter, which weakens the plot and does nothing to lessen the evil of the king's intentions.
The issue of incest and rape is tricky. It's a topic that should be handled sensitively in all literature, but for a YA audience, plenty of people are uncomfortable with it being present no matter how it's handled. Abbruscato says that evil should be part of the stories we tell, but this specific evil is often considered a bit much in books aimed at teenagers.
Robin McKinley is a capable storyteller with several other fairytale retellings under her belt, so when she tackled "Donkeyskin," she wasn't interested in watering it down. Instead, her novel Deerskin directly tackles rape, incest, and the resulting trauma. Her protagonist Lissla Lissar spends most of the novel with a memory block over the event, but the readers are there when it happens and don't have the privilege of ignoring it.
This book is categorized as YA by some lists and as adult by others. Although it is a YA text in every other way — it is a coming-of-age story, contains a first-love plot, and deals with identity in every line — the heartbeat of the book revolves around trauma from incest, and we don't often consider this trauma to be appropriate for YA readers. Sarah Wakefield places this book firmly in the YA age range anyway, arguing that it is important for teenagers to read this kind of material. She says,
"Novels like Deerskin refute the Oedipal complex... perhaps more important for the average teenage reader, Princess Lissla Lissar's story shows that recovery, while slow and stumbling, is possible for trauma survivors" (Wakefield 85).She believes that Deerskin provides a way for teenagers to understand the recovery process. Because Lissla spends so much of her own story struggling to deal with memories as they return to her, she provides an example both of the possibility and of the pain of healing. Wakefield goes on to explain how this novel castigates rape culture in fairytale theory. Theorists sometimes use the Oedipal complex to explain why fairytales like "Donkeyskin" exist and are so fascinating, but Deerskin makes it clear that there are no latent desires at work for Lissla, only adults who won't listen to her. Wakefield summarizes her arguments by saying,
"Deerskin offers a mature fairy tale that honors the darkness experienced in adolescence, especially for readers whose traumas go far beyond sibling rivalry or a nasty stepmother" (100).For Wakefield, the horrible fact that some teenagers will experience Lissla's trauma themselves is sufficient reason to treat this novel as a YA text. Retellings that don't shy away from the worst aspects of life can provide a necessary space for discussion about these events.
Above all, even the uncertain ending of Deerskin provides hope that healing can and will happen.
Work Cited
Wakefield, Sarah R. "'She would not think of it:' Surviving Incest in Robin McKinley's Deerskin." The Gothic Fairy Tale in Young Adult Literature, edited by Joseph Abbruscato and Tanya Jones, McFarland, 2014, pp. 83-101.
Work Referenced
McKinley, Robin. Deerskin. Ace, 1994.
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