Fairy tales and necrophilia: A new cultural context for antebellum American sensationalism

My dissertation investigates an understudied area of American sensational fiction in the antebellum period---the influence of fairy tales. I trace the development of a literary fascination with women's bodies from the fairy tales of Giambattista Basile, Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm through the media coverage of the 1836 murder of prostitute Helen Jewett, through the short fiction and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, and finally through the "porno-gothic" literature of George Lippard and George Thompson. I argue that the English translations of Basile's, Perrault's and Grimms' fairy tales laid the cultural groundwork that encouraged a fascination with women's dead bodies and the seemingly necrophilic, incestuous, and pedophilic desires demonstrated in the American public's fascination with Jewett's murder and the popularity of antebellum sensational fiction.; My argument maintains that each subsequent author contributes something new to the tradition of the fairy tale princesses by building upon the adaptations of previous authors and twisting the plots and descriptions to suit his immediate purpose. James Gordon Bennett adapts the tradition of the Sleeping Beauty to evoke erotic desire for a murdered prostitute and further encourage passivity among women in Antebellum America, whereas Edgar Allan Poe combines the sleeping beauty motif with active women, like Jewett, who refuse the ultimate passivity of death and return to terrorize their male oppressors. George Lippard mixes the fairy tale descriptions with Bennett's sensational reporting style and Poe's Gothicism to create apocalyptic, anti-capitalist fairy tales that work to reveal the excesses of the ruling elite. George Thompson, seeing the success of the politically and socially subversive fiction of Lippard, couches his nearly pornographic adaptation of fairy tale themes and descriptions in mock subversion.