by Catherine Delors

Charles Perrault was born in Paris in 1628 into a family of wealthy bourgeois. As befitted his status, he received a careful education, on occasion running afoul of his school’s rules. There must have been a stong element of whimsy in him, for he wrote a burlesque version of Virgil’s most serious Eneid. He then went on to law school and became of member of the Bar, but discovered in short order that the practice of law was not to his liking.

As a well-connected young man, he had other options. He became a clerk in the Ministry of Finances, rose through the ranks and soon reported directly to Louis XIV’s most famous and influential minister, Colbert. He became Comptroller General of the Royal Buildings, a position of great importance, given the Sun King’s passion for architecture. The colonnade of the Louvre was build under his supervision.

He waited until middle age to marry, a much younger woman of course. But poor Madame Perrault died in childbirth after bearing him five children in six years, not an unusual occurrence at the time. Another misfortune followed a few years later: Colbert died, and Perrault, as his protégé, was dismissed from all of his public functions.

A widower and unemployed, Perrault returned to his first love, writing. Not that he has ever neglected literary endeavors during his years as what we would call an upper civil servant. He had been one of the most vocal proponents of “modern” literature versus the classics, and had played a major role in establishing the procedings of the French Academy.

Now he could dedicate his full time to writing. During the 1690s he published various literary versions of traditional folk tales. Perrault was not a mere scrivener. He chose between concurrent versions of the same stories, embellished, polished, removed what he did not like. Perrault’s fairytales are very much his own stories. They are terse, brisk, subtly ironic, unsentimental and beautifully written. If you read French, I recommend the original 1697 text, far superior to the better known “modernized” versions.