She Will Be a True Love of Mine: On Fairy Bargains & Female Power
The beguiling fae. The kidnapped bride. The impossible task. This archetypal story has occupied media and popular culture in every form imaginable for centuries, from classic fairy tales like Bluebeard to the 80s glam-rock musical Labyrinth to the uber-popular romance novels of Sarah J. Maas. In fact, this particular narrative is the fantasy fare du jour, which is great for everyone who fell in love with David Bowie’s gloriously campy Goblin King—and also great for people like me, who have had a niche, life-long fascination with the fairy ballads of the British Isles.
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Most people’s introduction to this literary canon will be the haunting strains of Simon & Garfunkel’s cover of “Scarborough Fair.” This ballad tells the story of a young woman who is threatened with abduction by an elf, unless he can complete a series of seemingly impossible tasks. She responds with her own list of impossible tasks, vexing him in return. Scarborough Fair belongs to a tradition of folk ballads from Britain and Ireland, in which elves are understood to be synonymous with the Fair Folk of Celtic lore.
Scarborough Fair has most in common with the Scottish folk ballad “The Elfin Knight,” but there are countless variations on this theme within the Child Ballads—traditional ballads from the British Isles anthologized in the 19th century. There is one particular grouping of ballads known as “Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight,” all of which share the same general outline: A young woman elopes with a knight, who turns out to be a sinister supernatural figure and uses magic to charm and beguile her, then begins to subject her to abuse. Through some manner of cleverness and wiles, she manages to murder him and escape. I was captivated by this story—which allegedly dates back to the 15th century—and particularly its proto-feminist implications.
In writing my young adult fantasy debut, A Study in Drowning, I was inspired not only by the content of these ballads, but also our collective cultural fascination with this specific narrative. YA fantasy is currently deeply preoccupied with “monster romances” and “villain romances,” which essentially follow the same outline as a fairy ballad, including the feminist twist wherein the protagonist beguiles the sinister elfin lord in return. In most YA fantasies, this fraught dynamic eventually unfolds into a genuine love story.
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It’s not hard to see why this narrative is so poignant for young women. Just as the protagonists of these fairy ballads reclaim their power by turning the tables on their captors, YA readers and writers reclaim a narrative of female powerlessness—abduction, abuse, subjugation—and turn it into a romance. The women are preeminent, and the elfin lords are ensorcelled.
A Study in Drowning is a secondary-world fantasy, albeit heavily inspired by mid-20th century England and Wales. This gave me the opportunity—and the challenge—of creating an entire literary canon. I had to decide which particular traditions I wanted to draw on in order to build out the setting and express the themes of the book. What stories would influence Effy, the book’s protagonist, and shape her view of the world?
Effy is a young woman living in a deeply patriarchal society, trying her best to survive and belong in the insidiously misogynistic realm of academia and higher education. She finds solace in books; reading is both her escape and her inspiration. Marginalized, exploited, and belittled by the men around her, I wanted Effy to have a narrative she could look to for strength. And I wanted any readers who might identify with her to know that they were seen and understood.
So I drew heavily upon these fairy ballads when creating the in-world literary canon of A Study in Drowning. And as much as the book is a romance between Effy and her love interest, Preston, it is also a love story between Effy and the protagonist of her favorite novel—the heroine of a fairy ballad. A Study in Drowning is a bit of a Russian nesting doll. It is a story about a girl who loves stories, written for girls who love stories. It follows the legacy of British folklore and also exists in conversation with current YA literature, which draws heavily upon these folkloric fae narratives. It is, I hope, a meaningful book for young readers who want to reclaim their agency within a gruelingly, violently misogynistic world.
Take your Goblin Kings, your elfin lords, your Bluebeards and your beasts, and beguile and ensorcel them. Craft your own clever riddles. Weave your own tapestry of impossible tasks. As long as there have been fairy bargains, there have been women who break them.