Briar Rose

'He is lean and stong with flowing locks, just a little hair around his snout an dirt under his nails, but otherwise a handsome and majestic youth, worthy of her and of her magical disenchantment. She sleeps still, eyes closed, and yet she sees him as he bends towars her, brushing her breast with one paw--hand, rather.....'

I love how this excerpt portrays the prince as animal-like, and not so much like a human. Its funny that Rose expects this epiphany or right-of passage to come through intercourse with "this prince" even though he seems kind if gross with his dirty fingernails and scruffy snout. I think this represent our ideas of reality versus what we want to see. What we want may seem like one thing, but it turns out to be completely different that what we expected. Sometimes we naively go for what is right infront of us, we'll see the flaws (dirty fingernails) but yet we still pursue it. Like Rose, we need to wake up and see reality, instead of taking what is blaring us in the face, we have to search independently for our own prince or goal elsewhere.

Briar Rose

"She dreams, as she has often dreamt, of abandonment and betrayal, of lost hope, of the self gone astray from the body, the body forsaking the unlikely self...her longing for integrity is, in her spellbound innocence, all she knows of rage and lust"

I think this passage represents Briar Rose and the idea of an isolated princess inside of a castle waiting for her prince. This story is far from the typical fairy tale; this story is much more sexual and blatant about the characters' sexual desires. The qualities of knowing rage and lust were never mentioned in the original Sleeping Beauty and the fact that these characteristics are given to Briar Rose makes this story very distinct. I also think that she drams of abandonment and betrayal because of all the past failures of men to extract her from the castle. I think this passage shows that even though she has been deprived of her integrity, she longs for better and constantly awaits for a man who is up to the task of saving her.

Briar Rose

Usually the stories we read involve a naive girl who experiences the harsh realities of the world and changes her perception of her role in her own story. But in Briar Rose, the princess is the static character. Her story is a continual repetition of the same plot over and over with minor changes that usually leave her worse off than when the story began. This time it's the prince, the male presence in the story, whose view of the world changes over the course of his journey. The prince first views the princess as someone he could use to make a name for himself. She's a means to an end, someone to be viewed solely in a sexual light and who would inevitably thank him for freeing her from her captivity. But as he becomes trapped in the briars he begins to lose faith in his journey and questions the point of what he's doing. He starts to view the princess as something of a companion instead of an object, someone who could appreciate his struggle. While I'm hoping the princess will eventually become less static as the book goes on, I actually found this role reversal refreshing.

Briar Rose

"He is surprised to discover how easy it is. The branches part like thighs,the silky petals caress his cheeks. His drawn sword is stained, not with blood, but with dew and pollen. Yet another inflated legend. He has undertaken this great adventure, not for the supposed reward — what is another bedridden princess? — but in order to provoke a confrontation with the awful powers of enchantment itself. To tame mystery. To make, at last his name."

The quote that really got to me was the quote that we looked at on the first day of class. It gives a good feeling of what the story is about and why he is going on this journey to find rose. I didn't realize the sexual context in the quote at first, but after looking at it a second time it is really apparent. He is not on this journey just to save a princess, but to "tame mystery".

Briar Rose

"Though proud of the heroic task set him (he will, overcoming all obstacles, teach her who she is, and for his discovery she will love and honor him forever without condition)..."

This quote really struck me because it shows the idea of male dominance in the story and also the prince's original perspective of the princess. At the beginning of the story the prince only saw the princess as a way to make his name. He thought that she should be eternally grateful to him because of what he was doing for her. When he thought of her, he thought of her as a sexual object. But as the story goes on and he becomes hopeless and entrapped in the briars, he begins to see her as a friend. Someone that he can talk about his strife with. I found it interesting how each time the story switches to the prince, his thought process changes subtly. The more he hacks through the briars, the more he questions what he was doing and why. When you're in the princess's POV, her story just repeats with different variations. Its very redundant.

Briar Rose

The prince may or may not be a rapist. The father, as well. And Sleeping Beauty/Briar Rose may or may not have a hundred children or still be dreaming or be awake and faking sleep or be a fairy tale character or be real or what have you. This book is disturbing and confusing, in other words. I find it fascinating, though.

The character of the prince is of a young man who thinks that he has it all together. He embarked on this quest to gain a reward, not for any psychological awakening or growth of courage. It seems immature to me that he is going through all the trouble of finding this abandoned castle and trying to secure this maiden that so many others have failed to awaken just because he wants to have sex with her. I would say that we have an unsympathetic protagonist on our hands, but that's also the motivation of every other suitor who has come after Briar Rose. All she wants is her true love and an end to her pain, but even this new prince who we're following now isn't going to be any different from the ones who came before. Unless he has a change of heart, the plot isn't going anywhere.

Briar Rose

"No, in the end she was taken rather rudely by a band of drunken peasants who had broken into the castle, intent on loot. I don't believe this."

This quote makes me think about society's expectations on the endings of stories, movies, etc. Rose is surprised that in this "fairy tale," the Beauty isn't woken up by a prince, but by a bunch of savages instead. I think many people in our culture have been conditioned to expect a happy ending or some sort of closure when it comes to fictional stories, and I find it interesting that Rose is the same. I also think it is interesting that "Briar Rose" does not try to fit this mold, which makes it unique. Instead of telling the story of Sleeping Beauty that many have been exposed to (the happy fairy tale of a princess being awoken by her true love), Coover puts a dark and twisted spin on it that would make many people in our society cringe.