Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins Literary Elements

Fairy-tale retelling, short story collection, fantasy

The stories are set in a fictional world, with a culture reminiscent of medieval Europe.

Each story is told from the first person point of view of each story’s protagonist – Cinderella, Donkeyskin, etc.

Kissing the Witch has a dark, ominous tone. Each story starts out with the protagonist reflecting on a mistake that they made, which causes readers to start out each story feeling that something will go wrong. As each story also explores the grim situations that the protagonists find themselves in, the book retains that dark tone.

Each story has its own protagonist, who is the protagonist of the fairy tale the story is a retelling of: Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, Gretel, etc. As each story is linked together, so that protagonists interact with each other, often the villain of one story turns out to be the protagonist of another, giving depth to their character that makes them more complicated than just an antagonist. For example, Snow White’s stepmother is the protagonist of a following story, where readers see that she did what she did in order to survive. Instead of having concrete antagonists, the true villains of Kissing the Witch are the social structures that force women, and especially poor women, into negative situations (manipulating others, being sold by their families) in order to survive.

The central conflict of Kissing the Witch revolves around women being placed in difficult situations because of difficult circumstances: Donkeyskin must avoid her father’s unwanted advances because his advisors don’t care enough about her to stop him, the protagonist from The Tale of the Spinster must find someone to help with her weaving because her mother oversold her abilities, and Thumbelina must find her freedom from abusive parents and a stifling husband. The protagonists may have conflicts with other women (such as Snow White and her stepmother), but ultimately, the causes of those conflicts are revealed to be societal structures that hurt women.

As Kissing the Witch is a collection of short stories, there is no one clear climax. Instead, the climax of each story occurs when the retelling departs from its original canon. For example, when Cinderella leaves the ball after dancing with the prince, rather than pursuing him, she realizes that she wants her fairy godmother instead. When Donkeyskin dresses in her disguise again and waits for her prince to recognize her, and realizes that he doesn’t, her story takes a dramatic turn from the original fairy tale. The climaxes of Kissing the Witch occur when stories depart from their source material.

Foreshadowing occurs when Snow White’s stepmother visits her in The Tale of the Apple, when she brushes her hair and is kind. This foreshadows that there is more to her than meets the eye, and that there is kindness in her that Snow White will eventually see.

Rapunzel says that she hid away from attention, implying that she was merely shy. In reality, she lived in a tower her entire life and had no human contact other than her mother for most of her life.

Snow White’s stepmother’s temptation of her with an apple alludes to the early connotations of apples with temptation, dating back to the Bible and Satan’s temptation of Eve.

“Knotted together, end by end, the plaits made the strangest rope; it flowed over my hands like a giant snake.” –pg. 97
Rapunzel creates a vivid image of a snake when describing her hair. Her comparison of it to a rope reveals its sturdiness, and how her hair is the only dependable thing in her life. In describing it as a snake, she also shows how it can be used for nefarious purposes, such as allowing in the prince who torments her mother.

Gretel’s witch is prepared to eat Hansel, but is kind to Gretel, enough so that Gretel trusts her and wants to stay with her. Her existence is a paradox, as she wants to eat one child, but nurtures another.

Thumbelina years for a life of freedom away from her abusive parents, but even when she finds it with her husband, she realizes that he is his own sort of prison, and ends up leaving him. Ariel yearns for something similar, feeling trapped in her homeland. Like Thumbelina, however, she becomes unhappy with her prince after realizing his infidelity, and leaves him. Unlike Thumbelina, rather than go somewhere else entirely, she returns home.

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“Fog came to meet me at the door.” – 105
Fog cannot act of its own will, which means that it cannot move specifically to meet anyone. Donoghue gives it life by describing the gentle manner in which it comes to the orphanage in The Tale of the Brother.