Many students come to Iowa State University looking at college as a simple walk-in, walk-out ordeal, entirely missing out on all the wonders that niche, hidden classes have to offer. While there are many of these lesser-known classes, the focus here is on a class that is very hard to find unless you stumble upon a flyer: French Fairy Tale Princesses.
Michèle Schaal is a professor of French and women’s and gender studies at ISU. She began working at ISU in 2012 and teaches a variety of classes in both the French and Women’s and Gender Studies departments. However, one of her classes stands out uniquely; the French Fairy Tale Princesses class, or FRNCH/WGS 3000F.
“I’ve loved fairytales since I’ve been a child,” Schaal said. “I have several books that I kept from my childhood, and I also particularly love the illustrations.”
The class has a particular focus on French Disney princesses. Schaal teaches the true origins of these stories, the stories without princes or anthropomorphized candles.
“Disney obviously has had a major importance in American culture, but also in global culture now,” Schaal said.
Schaal goes from as far back as possible and teaches students how to understand older texts and how they were grouped into classifications.
“Starting in the early 20th century, researchers established a list of tales and did a classification based on the common items they had,” Schaal said. “In the class, I also teach the students the terminology, so basically the jargon on how to understand the initials of the researchers who developed that index.”
The class spreads out its knowledge and is organized in such a way that the content never becomes stagnant.
“You don’t just learn about the history of these three princesses like Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty,” Schaal said. “You get to read major variants, and they’re usually very short, so you get a wide variety of text.”
Schaal also teaches students about the deeper complexity behind the tales.
“Fairy tales have a bad reputation for being sexist,” Schaal said. “And when you delve a bit deeper into the story, you see that the answer is it’s complicated. You get to learn about the history. You get to learn about the complexity. You get to read a lot of variants.”
Students engage with fairy tales through different forms of media. They read short literary variants, novels and even crime or punk rock versions of Cinderella. They also watch historical illustrations, Disney films and listen to a podcast to explore how the tales changed over time.
“Basically, you just get to engage with a variety of material and it shows you how Cinderella, but also Beauty and the Beast endured,” Schaal said.
The class is taught online but includes weekly discussion components, allowing students to share their impressions and personal responses.
“You get to respond very short and respond to each other on what really appealed to you or not in the weekly material,” Schaal said.
At the end of each unit, students write a traditional essay, and by the end of the semester they complete a creative assignment that pulls everything together. Students write and illustrate their own fairy tale variant based on one of the three princesses featured in the course.
“You get to engage creatively,” Schaal said. “So, more academically, in a learning format but also in a creative way. It does have that creative engagement that more conventional lit classes don’t necessarily have.”
Schaal uses her lectures to give historical context and highlight the roots of specific illustrations and themes. And she explains how some parts that seem outdated or sexist today were actually pushing for gender-based equality in their original context.
“We also look at the problematic aspects of the historical tales, which can have sexist components, racist components, but we also look at the complexity,” Schaal said.
The class is taught in English but counts toward both the French program and the Women’s and Gender Studies program.
Above all, Schaal hopes students take away a new understanding of the fairy tales they grew up with.
“A lot of people have misconceptions about what fairy tales are,” Schaal said. “They were initially developed for adult audiences, and that changed throughout history. Students can learn that their favorite princesses have a complex, rich history and that fairy tales are for everyone.”
Long before Cinderella had glass slippers or Belle danced with an enchanted candlestick, the very idea of a “fairy tale” came from the pens of French women writers in the 17th century.
“French women writers coined the term fairy tale itself,” Schaal said, adding that most students do not realize its origins.
That small fact opens the door to a deeper world, one that her course French Fairy Tale Princesses invites students to explore.
Schaal encourages students to take the course if they can fit it into their schedule.
“It’s an enriching class to take,” Schaal said. “Everybody feels really engaged and motivated by the creative component, and they can learn more about something that really speaks to them. And it’s offered every spring.”
