Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Forgotten Founding Mothers of the Fairy Tale and the Stories That They Spun

Long before The Brothers Grimm, there was a sisterhood of writers who defied the patriarchy and launched a literary craze with their feminist fairy tales—these are their stories.

In 17th century Paris, a group of women who called themselves conteuses (female storytellers) came together to weave the very first fairy tales. One of them, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, coined the term ‘fairy tale,’ and some of these stories contain many familiar elements that appear in tales like Rapunzel and Beauty...