Elizabeth Vail wrote this review for Green Man Review.
A popular theme in fairy-tales, particularly those collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, has a dainty, oh-so-precious damsel in some sort of peril, who has to wait for a righteous King or brave third son or handsome Prince to pluck her out of danger and back into normal life. One of the humorous revelations made clear by this carefully researched book; however, is that the Brothers Grimm, in their time of literary need, had to turn to a swarm of educated young women to help them achieve their lifelong goal.
Far from traveling the countryside pestering common country folk to complete their anthology, the book begins by immediately debunking this popular belief, revealing instead the lives of the groups of sisters that Jacob and Wilhelm consulted. In fact, the stories eventually compiled into the two volumes of the Brothers Grimm anthology were almost exclusively provided by young women, who traded tales amongst themselves while performing chores or needlework.
Sorting through the mountains of letters and paperwork left behind by Jacob, Wilhelm, and their circle of friends, Valerie Paradiz constructs an absorbing and enlightening read, beginning with the Grimm boys’ childhood, to the publications of their two volumes, to their eventual deaths. Growing up fatherless, with a multitude of brothers (soldier Karl, eccentric writer Ferdinand, and artist Ludwig, who contributed illustrations to the anthology) and only one sister (Lotte), the Grimm men turned to the energetic Wild sisters who lived just across the street from them, then to the Hassenpflugs girls, the higher-class von Haxthausens women, and the old widow Dorothea Viehmann.
The author establishes an interesting narrative with the brothers, but also recounts several examples of fairy-tales and uses them to draw parallels between them and the cultural and social aspects of the Grimms’ situation and that of their female collaborators. During much of their early adulthood and work on the fairy-tale project, Napoleon dominated much of Europe (including the fragmented German states where the Grimms lived), and the frantic diligence and toil on their collection was performed against a backdrop of international violence and political turmoil.
However, the fairy-tales also served another purpose, one that was made even more evident by the fact that it was young women who provided them. The fairy tales, while serving as a window into a forgotten culture, also embedded a firm idea of the female ideal and women’s rights — or lack thereof — onto the social consciousness of society for hundreds of years.
The fairy tale princess was expected to be quiet, resourceful, hardworking, bear many children, and do everything that that her male superiors told her to, regardless of the disastrous consequences, because such ideal womanly behaviour would reward them with the highest honour a woman of the time could wish for: marriage to a well-to-do and tolerant man. Women who were defiant, lazy, detested marriage and children, and mouthed off ended up on a ship full of holes, covered in pitch, violently dead, or unwillingly wedded to an undesirable match. According to their correspondences revealing their praises or condemnations of their various female acquaintances, Jacob and Wilhelm tended to strongly agree with that vision.
Clever Maids, by combining the facts of the Grimms’ life, recollections of their stories, and the parallels the author skilfully manages to draw between them, succeeds being in being eye-opening, entertaining, and informative. After one read, you will probably appreciate fairy tales in a whole new light.
(Basic Books, 2005)
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