Lesbian Relationships in Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

It is difficult to determine the real origin of fairy tales, yet, what it is clear is that they where linked to folklore and oral tradition and that their main aim was didactic. This means that they were told not only to transmit information about the world, but also to convey cultural values. From the 17th century onwards, these oral stories started to be collected and, after that, they were also modified in order to adapt them to other genres or other type of audience. During the second half of the 20th century, the changes that the fairy tales experienced were connected to cultural values due to the fact that during this period, many writers decided to revise and rewrite canonical texts in order to ask for more visibility of minority groups. One of the latest fairy tales rewriting is Emma Donoghue's Kissing the Witch (1997), a collection which adds to these stories a combination of feminist and lesbian perspective. This essay analyses the three tales of this collection in which the lesbianism appears more openly: “The Tale of Shoe”, “The Tale of the Rose” and “The Tale of the Kiss”. The main aim of it is to see and understand not only the demands that Donoghue makes with these texts, but also the new points of view that they promote. Concretely, this essay focus on how this author uses lesbianism in order to destroy the traditional gender and sexual values of fairy tales