sleeping beauty

In Briar Rose, Jane Yolen uses the tale of “Sleeping Beauty” as a point of reference for a haunting Holocaust mystery – within a romance – within a compelling fairy tale – within a novel which will fascinate young as well as adult readers of all ages. Briar Rose is an unusual and poignant novel. It uses the fairy tale motif as both a thematic underpinning and as transitional material. But it is also said the book itself is a fairy tale in that it uses fairy tale logic and has a fairy tale at the core since no women actually escaped from Chelmno as recorded in Author’s note. The human brutality and cruelty exposed by Josef in his account of the Holocaust stands in dire contrast to the romantic fairytale of Briar Rose.

At all times, fairytales take romance as an important point of its structure. As follows, Jane Yolen presents Briar Rose as a fairytale by making it a romantic story with a happy ending, although it also has darker qualities. Romance is found in the relatio...