Browse any bookstore or library and you’re sure to find dozens of examples. Intergalactic Cinderella. A modern Arthurian tale. Pride and Prejudice, but from the point of view of the least interesting Bennet sister. Revisiting older works and giving them a new spin is nothing new, but lately it seems like these kinds of stories are very popular. I’ve always been fascinated by books like this. Hitting familiar notes in a work feels like a little wink from the author straight to me. Maybe it’s something very well known–a pumpkin reference in a Cinderella retelling (Ella Enchanted), or the prick of a spindle on a spinning wheel in a Sleeping Beauty retelling (Spindle’s End). Or maybe it’s more obscure; a burning estate in a Jane Eyre prequel (Wide Sargasso Sea), or a random mention of a shrew in a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (Vinegar Girl). The author is dipping into the well of humanity’s stories and the more stories you know and love, the more likely you’ll be in on the reference. Those familiar little nuggets feel like being a part of something bigger than me. They feel like being part of a shared collective cultural knowledge and I like that.
I decided to start this blog so that I could delve deeper into my own curiosity about retellings. I wanted to read more of them and give myself an opportunity to think more deeply about each one of them; to decide why each author chose to retell the story they chose to retell, and to ask myself what new perspectives they were bringing to that story and to the world. From fairy tales to the classics, from myths and folklore to Shakespeare, I want to explore all kinds of retellings.
Literary upcycling has been going on at least as long as we have been able to tell ourselves stories. Before stories were written or printed, they were told and re-told orally, of course, but what I’m interested in here is this act of taking an older story and purposely changing aspects of it in order to bring something new to it, and that goes way back too. Even Shakespeare himself wrote his plays by drawing from already established and well-loved stories. The good folks at Folger, who publish excellent editions of Shakespeare’s works, have compiled a list of numerous sources that he may have likely (or certainly) used here. Hamlet was based on a play by Thomas Kyd, which was itself based on a Norse legend. Romeo and Juliet was based on a poem, which was based on a French translation of an Italian story. James Joyce’s Ulysses is a retelling of Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, reworks the story of Cain and Abel.
When we talk about taking trash and turning it into treasure–a thrifted t-shirt transformed into something fresh and new with the addition of some well-placed embroidery, or a work of art made from discarded plastic, for instance–we call that upcycling. In literary upcycling, an author takes a work of fiction that might be outdated or a little stale, and brings new life to it. Shakespeare, Joyce, and Steinbeck did it in their day, and in ours, authors from Barbara Kingsolver (Demon Copperhead) to Tracy Deonn (Legendborn) to Madeline Miller (Circe) are doing so.
So what is the allure? Why do we feel the need to retell stories and why do we feel the need to hear them over and over again in different ways? When a story endures for a long period of time; decades, centuries, or even millennia, something about that story is universal to the human experience and thus it draws us to return to it repeatedly. When a story explores themes like love and violence (Romeo and Juliet), social class and reputation (Pride and Prejudice), or the always evergreen good vs. evil (Cinderella), and that story hits the nail on the head, it’s natural that we’d want to revisit those stories. They tell us something about ourselves.
But time marches on and society changes. Not to take anything away from Jane Austen’s masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, because it’s worthy of reading, studying, and savoring just for its own sake, but the themes, characters, settings, and narrative are all so good (and well-loved) that it’s no wonder writers look at it as a playground for creativity. What if Elizabeth was a thirty-something single woman in modern England (Bridget Jones’s Diary)? What if Elizabeth had to take time out of her busy social schedule to fight in the zombie apocalypse (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies)? And what about Mary Bennet? What’s her story (The Other Bennet Sister)? A story well told is a story that’s begging to be told all over again, just differently.
What kinds of new ideas can retellings bring to the table? As it turns out, quite a lot. One thing a retelling can do is offer insight on something in our contemporary world using the structure of an older work. Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres is a novel that is built around the scaffolding of Shakespeare’s King Lear, but tells the story of a farmer in Iowa and his daughters. Smiley says she “was influenced by the economic and ecological problems that farmers were going through in the late eighties and into the nineties.” Shakespeare’s play allowed Smiley to explore modern events and then communicate those explorations to modern audiences.
Or a retelling can tell a familiar story from a different point of view. Maybe an author wants to be able to give the villain of a story a chance to tell their side. Or maybe there’s a minor character that caught the author’s fancy and they want to explore that character’s world. Jo Baker wrote a novel about the servants at Longbourn, the estate that Lizzie Bennet and her family live on in Pride and Prejudice. Her novel, called Longbourn, offers a point of view that we don’t get in the original. Baker says that the Bennet girls’ economic misfortunes are well-known to the reader, but “what if all you have to call your own is the dress that you stand up in, and the labour of your own two hands ... How uncertain is your future then?” This was the as-yet-unexplored world she wanted to delve into.
A retelling can improve accessibility to an older tale. Take Shakespeare, for instance. The bard has a treasure trove of great tales, but not everyone is ready and willing to dive into Elizabethan English in order to understand his work. A really good Shakespeare retelling might even inspire someone who was previously uninclined to struggle through Will’s work to challenge themselves with reading the original. Penguin Random House has a series in which some well-known authors have retold several of Shakespeare’s plays. They tackle Othello, Macbeth, and The Tempest, among others.
Retellings can take a story’s outdated themes and update them for more modern sensibilities. Take the classic middle grade novel, Ella Enchanted, which is a retelling of Cinderella. The original fairy tale’s message is that kindness will be rewarded, a perfectly acceptable moral lesson. But beyond that, Cinderella has very little agency. She’s something of a doormat, trampled by her stepmother and stepsisters and in need of a prince to rescue her from it all. Gail Carson Levine, the author of Ella Enchanted, creates a Cinderella character (Ella) who is, instead, a strong-willed, intelligent young woman intent on breaking free of the curse of obedience (bestowed upon her by a fairy). In an interview Levine said, “I didn’t understand Cinderella. I didn’t understand her obedience. I didn’t like her sweetness. [...] I was in trouble until I came up with the curse of obedience. And then I was able to write her.” Once Levine found her way into the story, she was able to retell it with themes of girl power, resilience and strength as opposed to passivity, all of which resonate much more strongly with modern audiences.
Another important thing that a retelling can offer is a chance for representation that the original story didn’t have. Our stories have long depicted a certain type of character more than any other–generally white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, and neurotypical. This has led to many people who don’t fit those categories to feel that they can not find themselves in the stories they read. Some progress has been made in this area. Publishers offer a much broader selection of titles with more diverse characters than in the past. But retellings that offer more representation are special because they can offer a reader something more from an already well-loved story. Ibi Zoboi wrote a young adult retelling of Pride and Prejudice called Pride set in a Brooklyn neighborhood with Black teenage characters. She says, “Black kids fall in love, too, and with each other. All the time. Seriously, it's not something that happens often in YA fiction.” Zoboi offers a chance for Black teenagers to see themselves in a familiar story, but also for non-Black teens to put themselves in the shoes of others. Representation is important for all types of people, not just those being represented.
I am an avid reader and I am hoping this blog leads me to some interesting new finds. I’m looking forward to exploring the world of retellings and I hope you’ll enjoy the ride with me. Check out the tab titled, “The Parameters” next to see how I’m choosing my books and how I’ll format each of my book reviews. And you can look at the TBR tab to see what books I’m planning on reading in the future. If you’ve got any suggestions, contact me and let me know!
References:
Smiley, Jane. Interview with Famous Writing Routines. Famous Writing Routines, 10 May 2023, famouswritingroutines.com/interviews/interview-with-jane-smiley/.
Baker, Jo. Interview with Petra Mayer. “Austen Unvarnished: Q&A with Jo Baker, Author of ‘Longbourn.’” NPR, NPR, 10 Oct. 2013, www.npr.org/2013/10/10/229282533/austen-unvarnished-q-a-with-jo-baker-author-of-longbourn.
Levine, Gail Carson. Interview with Lindsay Jacobson. “Remember Reading Podcast: Ella Enchanted.” HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2019, www.harpercollins.com/blogs/harperkids/remember-reading-podcast-ella-enchanted-gail-carson-levine.
Zoboi, Ibi. Interview with Goodreads. “Interview with Ibi Zoboi - Goodreads News & Interviews.” Goodreads, Goodreads, 3 Sept. 2018, www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/1397.Ibi_Zoboi.
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