What to Learn from the Story of Sleeping Beauty
Sleep Disorders Among Young Women Revealed in Fairy Tales
Aug 6, 2008
Sleeping Beauty is the most unconscious and passive of heroines in all fairy tales. More than Cinderella, a hard worker struggling to make do despite her evil stepsisters, Sleeping Beauty climbs up a flight of castle stairs, pricks her finger on an old woman’s spinning needle, and passes into sleep which lasts forever. Or until she is awakened by a kiss. From a psychological perspective her sleep raises a few questions.
Retreat from the World
Fairy Tale analyst, Joan Gould, calls this the most spiritual of all fairy tales. It “reflects a portion of us that retreats from the world in a castle protected by thorns (a walled garden, a glass coffin, the top of a glass mountain) while building up strength to emerge at a higher level of fruitfulness.” This analysis gives new meaning to the age-old expression “beauty sleep.”
Recent studies from the American Psychological Association cite a link between sex hormones in puberty, mood swings, and the of start of menses with rates of depression in girls. Going through difficult times, young women often use sleep as a coping mechanism. Studies from the National Sleep Foundation show that sleep disorders such as narcolepsy often start in the teenage years. Beauty’s sleep might be said to resemble a disorder along these lines.
Heroines of the Great Sleep
Other lesser known heroines from fairy tales and literature have fallen into the arms of sleep.
- Brunhilde, daughter of Wotan, King of the Norse gods, who, as punishment for his daughter’s disobedience was to sleep on a rock surrounded by flames.
- Snow White, poisoned by the evil witch/step mother, was laid out to sleep away her years in her glass coffin.
- In literature, poetess Elizabeth Browning lived as an invalid in her father’s house until awakened by her prince, the poet Robert Browning .
Many young women have lived as if asleep, crippled by bouts of ennui or depression. As French philosopher, Diderot, writes to a woman he loved, “You all die at fifteen.” Joan Gould notes that particularly among girls entering adolescence, daily life is characterized by a general forgetfulness and inattention to life.
Common Ways to Sleep Through Life
- Daily chores and activities engaged in are forgotten as soon as accomplished.
- Naps throughout the day as a way to avoid life, especially during stressful times.
- The stupor borne when all feels pointless and willpower itself seems to crumble.
Transformation Through Sleep
Teenagers in general need more sleep than adults due to continuing brain development. Happily, even during sleep transformation is going on throughout body and mind. Research has established that sleep deprivation can have serious consequences. As Gould reminds us even when a teenager sleeps, her cells network and form new perceptions; her emotions can catch up with her body, even if her mind doesn’t yet understand. This is, as the fairy tales teach, a time of inner and outer transformation.
Rejeuvenation and Dream Knowledge
It is well accepted that sleep is a time of rest and rejuvenation, but it is also a time for gaining knowledge about oneself. This is especially true from a Jungian perspective and is in keeping with the ancient Greek practice of incubation. At critical transition points, people would submit themselves to meditation in caves deep inside the earth in order to induce vivid dreaming. Later the dreams would be interpreted by the local oracle, an equivalent of our modern day therapist.
Life comes on the heels of sleep. Sleeping Beauty is, like all fairy tales of transformations, the story of rebirth through the soothing and rejuvenating powers of sleep.
Gould, Joan. (2005). Spinnng Straw into Gold: What Fairy Tales Reveal About the Transformations in a Woman's Life. New York: Random House.
