Tell a tale to twenty listeners and it becomes twenty different stories. Each listener brings to it his own aspirations, prejudices, fears, hopes, hang-ups and so on. In the time of oral storytelling, when tales were told around the campfire to help make sense of a world that was often dark and daunting, the tribe heard one story told by a single storyteller, but each member of that tribe took away his own understanding of it in his mind and heart. In our time, when most stories are written down and therefore fixed in their form, different readers still finish the book with different interpretations of its meaning and, in particular, its relevance to their own lives.

I talked about this last week when I visited my old school, Otago Girls High School in Dunedin, New Zealand, and gave a writing workshop for senior English students. We discussed the roles of women in fairy tales and how they changed over the ages as the traditional stories were altered by storytellers to fit the moral and cultural codes of the time. The literary romances of the European tradition, for instance, demonstrated the importance of qualities such as obedience for young women and self-restraint for young men. In the Victorian era, the strong old fairy tales were sanitised and simplified into sweet stories thought suitable for children. In my workshop this led into a discussion of how the students might still make good use of fairy tale material in their own work, and what aspects they might want to change.

My trip to Dunedin was for a small and particular school reunion: just the top academic class at Otago Girls who started first year in (gulp) 1962. Yes, that was fifty years ago. Not all of us made it to the reunion. Some are no longer with us. Some had good reasons for staying away. But others came from near and far, including travellers from the US and the UK. In all, 25 out of the original 36 students were there. And I was struck most powerfully by the stories they brought with them. I had not seen most of these women since I left high school, and I was startled to discover where they had gone, what challenges life had thrown up for them and how they had coped. Their stories were as rich, strange and satisfying as any fairy tale. So, who married a handsome prince and lived happily ever after? Who became a fearsome but wise crone? Who found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?

At our reunion dinner some of us were asked to get up and speak between courses. Those of us who no longer lived in New Zealand talked about what had led us away and what we were doing now. Some people were practised public speakers, high profile professionals who probably found the most difficult aspect of this task the personal nature of the subject matter. Some were less accustomed to getting up to speak, but did so with great sincerity and warmth. Over and over, I realised how strong women can be, what an amazing capacity most of us have to weather storms and setbacks.

With a group of women in their early sixties, there are bound to be some health problems. Various people had experienced serious illness, both acute and chronic. One woman said bluntly that if she had not left New Zealand for the US she would be dead, as staying alive with her major chronic illness required a level of medical support not available in our home country. A number of people had dealt with cancer.

Our life pathways were diverse. One woman had eight children and lost her husband to a sudden heart attack when the youngest was two months old. She coped, as strong people do. One woman was now a Dame of the British Empire. One had been a nun in an enclosed order for a number of years. There were stories of loss and challenge, of strength and celebration. As school students we were a group of high achievers and that was reflected in the stellar career paths of many. But it was the stories not aired in public, the ones quietly going on behind the scenes, that most touched me.

A woman received a phone call to tell her that her cat, rescued with love after the Christchurch earthquake, had died of a massive stroke at the boarding kennels while she was at the reunion. She didn’t share this news widely. She kept up a brave front, saving her tears for the long trip home to a suddenly empty house.

Some stories remained untold; that’s always the way of it. Some women, for their own reasons, did not join us; some were present but chose not to talk about their lives. I didn’t talk much about my biggest life challenges in my three minutes on the podium but chose to speak more generally about being a storyteller and what I’d learned from this remarkable opportunity to see how the passage of time had worked on each of us. I was constantly reminded of those old fairy tales with their strong values of friendship, courage and endurance, their sometimes rough justice and their lesson that good can triumph over evil. If I ever saw those values demonstrated it was in the stories of my peers, wise women every one.

 Photo credit: Amilevin at Dreamstine.com
Image is of the Otago Peninsula in New Zealand

 

Juliet Marillier has published more than a dozen novels for adults and young adults. Her works of detailed historical fantasy have been published around the world, and have won numerous awards. Her latest release, Seer of Sevenwaters, is the fifth book in her popular Sevenwaters series but can be read as a stand-alone novel.
Juliet Marillier
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