The union between humans and animals is a motif commonly found in folk tales across many traditions, including traditional Indo-European, Native American, Asian, and African cultures. While some folklorists make a distinction between true human-animal marriages and the tales of animal lovers, the basic elements of the tales remain constant across cultures: a union between a human and an animal (occasionally a monster or a god); the breaking of a taboo, which leads to the magical partner’s departure; and finally, the search for the lost partner. Some folk tales skip the final motif, ending the tale, often tragically, with the spouse or lover’s departure.
What sets animal bride tales apart from animal groom tales is the apparent cultural anxiety that women are, in truth, part animal. Consequently, the animal bride is often depicted as a victim or captive of her husband. Occasionally, the tale ends with the revelation of the animal bride’s animal or even monstrous nature and the destruction or rejection of the animal bride. In contrast to animal bride tales, animal groom stories focus on a man, generally a prince, who has been enchanted to appear as an animal. When the curse is broken, the animal groom almost always returns to a human state and is rarely, if ever, rejected or destroyed.
There are significant similarities to animal bride stories across cultures. Often the animal bride is a bird or sea creature, with her elements contrasting man’s dependence on the land, which is indicative of her foreign nature. When depicted as a creature of the land, the animal bride is often cast as a diminutive animal, such as a mouse, frog, dog, or turtle. Often the animal bride is a magical creature who becomes a woman when she sheds her animal skin. In some versions, she becomes the captive of her husband, who steals her animal skin, and when she discovers the skin she returns to her natural form and leaves him, as in the tales of the Scottish and Irish Selkie, or the Swan Maiden tales. In other variants, the animal bride appears as a woman and willingly lives with her husband until he breaks a taboo, such as either physical or verbal abuse, viewing her in her animal form, or simply learning of her true nature. In some animal bride tales, the animal bride provides her husband with aid, often in the form of helping him complete tasks, obtain a quest object, learn a skill, and finally find a bride. In these tales, the animal bride is not victimized, but a willing helper to her human mate. Such tales indicate a greater cultural symbiosis between man and woman as well as a deeper relationship between man and nature.
There are also a considerable number of similar animal groom tales across cultures. While there are animal groom stories that precede “Cupid and Psyche,” which is found in Lucius Apuleius’s Golden Ass (late second century CE), “Cupid and Psyche” is nonetheless considered the prototype for the traditional animal groom tale. The most common version of the animal bridegroom is the story “Beauty and the Beast,” ATU 425C, published by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740, and revised and popularized by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756. It is Beaumont’s tale that serves as the model for the “Beauty and the Beast” tale. One of the remarkable characteristics of some of the animal groom stories is that the animal groom must take on a more passive role while the human bride assumes the more active role. However, despite the heroine’s agency, some argue that the animal groom tales are socializing tools, and that by learning to love a particularly repellent and frightening animal groom, such as a monstrous boar or pig, a crocodile, a serpent, or even a “snotty goat,” the heroine accepts and submits to male sexuality and desire.
The Tiger’s Bride, published in 1979 by author Angela Carter (pictured here), offered a new twist on the Beauty and the Beast folktale. In the story, a beautiful woman finds herself wed to a tiger who won her hand from her father at a game of cards. Her eventual transformation into an animal flips the original Beauty and the Beast script, in which the love of Beauty transforms the Beast into a human. (Louis Monier/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
In America, animal bride and animal groom tales have primarily been transmitted textually, visually, or cinematically rather than orally. Despite these new modes of transmission, the story remains recognizable because the adaptations center on the traditional elements of animal bride and groom tales. However, despite their consistency, these tales are not static or frozen. Adaptations such as Angela Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride” (1979) and “The Courtship of Mr. Lion” (1979) present a modern variation of the tale that, while still recognizable, exposes the failings of human civilization in contrast to the virtues of nature. Such adaptations keep the fluidity of the folktale alive in animal bride and groom stories.
Amanda L. Anderson
See also Animal Tales; Beauty and the Beast Folklore; Boarhog for a Husband; Women in Folklore
Further Reading
Haase, Donald. 2007. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Hearne, Betsy. 1989. Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Leavy, Barbara Fass. 1994. In Search of the Swan Maiden: A Narrative on Folklore and Gender. New York: New York University Press.
Sax, Boria. 2001. Serpent & Swan: Animal Bride Folklore & Literature. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Warner, Marina. 1994. From the Beast to the Blond: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. London: Chatto & Windus.
Windling, Terri. 2004. “Married to Magic: Animal Brides and Bridegrooms in Folklore and Fantasy.” Endicott Studio.http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrMarriedToMagic.html. Accessed August 20, 2015.