Biography, Politics, Source, Women's History

Writing Fairy Tales for Australia: Beatrice Wilcken (c. late 1830s/early 40s-1910)

… Wilcken created fairy queens and sprites of traditional fairy beauty. Her tales are filled with romance and the tensions and consequences created by human men and their love of female fairy creatures. Wilcken speaks of the folly of love and her fairies are cautioned that ‘Men are a false race. They rush in at a moment’s pleasure and break the hearts of those who trust them’. In ‘The Jenolan Caves, N.S.W’, Wilcken’s hero discovers a traditional fairy, a ‘beautiful girl…her hair a mass of golden curls; her eyes of the deepest blue’. Falling in love, ‘passionate thoughts overtake him’ and though the fairy does not reciprocate, when he steals a kiss she is turned to stone. The consequences are a warning and a lesson to all maidens in the colony to be guarded and wary of men and their lust.