OLD VOICES, ANEW
“No miss,” Chloe said. “I just thought it was obvious. Just
because she lost her tongue, doesn’t mean that she can’t say stuff. Why
wouldn’t she draw him pictures of what happened? It’s like, obvious!”
Pramiti, Chloe’s teacher, momentarily
closed her eyes.
“Chloe, the point is to rewrite the
story following the same plotline. If you change it, if you make the little
mermaid tell the Prince who she is and what she’s done, the rest of the story
can’t happen. He can’t un-know she saved him, so she won’t then lose him and
have to face the choice of her own death or killing him, and make Right Choices, and be saved and raised
into a higher level.”
“I know, miss. That’s the point! The
story’s dumb. No wonders Disney made it better!”
“Wond-er, Chloe, not wonders. But anyway, don’t you see, in the Disney
version, the Little Mermaid gets told boys like girls that don’t talk? It’s almost as if the whole film is about telling girls
to keep quiet and you-”
“Not really, miss. That’s just the
witch talking. And she gets her voice
back. And she gets the guy. And-”
“And
in the original story the witch is honest! She tells her what is going to
happen, and tells her it is foolish, which is-“
“Which is because she really is stupid! She spends all that time with
the prince but doesn’t draw some pictures of who she is an’ all, so then-. Oh,
and my mum says it’s women stops women talking, like the sea-witch did, not only
men, and when I gets married, I wouldn’t give up nothing for a guy, and…” Chloe
paused before continuing. “Are you married, miss?”
“Yes, Chloe.”
“So, did you give anything up - to
get your husband, I mean?”
~
“Don’t let it worry you. You get that
with Year 6. Once they get to the top they always think they know everything.”
Mary, a much older teacher and currently happily in charge of the much sweeter Year 4s, tried to
reassure Pramiti during break. “Mind you,” she went on. “Chloe has always been
like that anyway. Always got an answer for everything. Mind you,” she said
again, her pet phrase for interrupting herself – or to stop others doing it,
“when you get to meet her mother, you’ll know why. She is the most… assertive mother I have ever met.”
“You mean she gets it from her
mother?” Pramiti asked.
“No, I mean she’s that way because she has to be. Mind you,
she might be growing into her mother! That’s a scary thought – well, not for
us, thank God. That’s Secondary’s problem.”
“So, what should I do?” Pramiti
asked, trying to ignore a sudden and unexpected empathy with
Chloe. “If I let her do it her way, it won’t be the right story.”
“Hmm. You surprise me, Pramiti? When
you came here, you weren’t so keen to stick to the rules either. Maybe, this
time, for once, Chloe has a point.”
~
As the door closed, slightly harder
than necessary, her husband’s words repeated in her head – ‘For God’s sake, I married you because you have a voice!’
Pramiti wasn’t sure how the argument
had started, but she was already suspecting it was a fight she’d picked. After
Mary’s comment that perhaps she’d lost something of herself, perhaps her own
voice, she’d come home sensitive and defensive – it had been all too close for comfort.
When she had set the task, she’d wanted the children to see the feminist
interpretation of the story: the pressure for girls to be, as the Walt Disney
film suggested, quiet, nice girls. But after looking at some of the
non-feminist interpretations of Anderson’s story, she saw she’d missed something.
That yes, she had got her prince and hadn’t had to give up her voice for him,
but she’d given it up anyway, and ultimately for exactly the same thing as
Anderson’s mermaid – to ascend. As she sat thinking about this, emotionally as
well as mentally reviewing the past few years of her career, the uncomfortable
feeling was growing.
She knew her husband would not be
back for a while; he was not one to storm out and stay away. And his choice to ‘do the shopping now’ showed he accepted
her need to be in a bad mood for a bit – despite the slightly sarcastic tone
with which he’d added, ‘I’ll get you some
wine too’. Knowing she had the house to herself, and time to think it
through, she walked back and forth, listening (as she often did when she needed
to remember herself) Lonestar’s song,
Unusually Unusual on constant repeat.
By the time Pramiti’s husband placed
a large glass of wine within reach, but safely to one side of her laptop, she’d
abandoned her original purpose in setting the story, gone through a few
personal revelations, and made some decisions. First of which was that if she
was going to be the teacher she’d truly wanted to be when she first set herself
on that course (which, she admitted to herself, was at the age Chloe and her
class were now), then she was going to have to do and demonstrate what she was
asking of them. Pushing her laptop away and taking a large slurp of the wine,
she opened a notepad and began to write.
Once, in a not so long-ago time, there was a young girl who came from an
ambitious and well-to-do family.
Or, rather, Pramiti grimly acknowledged
to herself, a family of snobbish overachievers.
The girl had a strong-minded mother, and an even stronger minded
grandmother, who both had strong feelings about what young girl should be like
and what she should do. The young girl did not like that very much, so
developed a strong mind of her own. She grew to hate the way girls were told
what to do, and her greatest ambition became to help them become strong enough
to think for themselves. She decided that the best way to do this is to become
an adventure and teller of tales.
Or, as Pramiti knew, she’d decided to
become a Girls’ School teacher.
So, the little girl learned about everything and anything, and grew up to
be strong, and brave, and very very determined. Her first adventure went well,
and was one where she travelled to a new land and learned many new things. It
went so well in fact, that at the end of this first adventure she was given a
special certificate which told her how brilliant she was, and how brave, and
how important all the things that she had learned would be for those that she
would tell them to. After that, the now grown-up little girl looked around for
somewhere she could go, where she could tell her stories, and very soon found
somewhere because she now lived in a land where there weren’t enough
storytellers.
For a whole year she told her stories, and although the children that she
told them to were very young, she felt sure that she was inspiring them to be
adventurers of their own.
Just as if she was tending beautiful little flowers that would all bloom
into a beautiful garden, that a mermaid might keep.
Pramiti added, reminding herself this
was supposed to be a Little Mermaid re-write.
But then, the place where she told her stories, to her beautiful little
ones, was invaded by a horrible monster. A sort of Sea-Witch monster.
Or, Pramiti grumbled to herself, a
new headmistress.
This horrible, evil, nasty, small minded and pernicious monster had a
really big mouth but no ears, none at all, and apparently could not hear
anything anyone said. The girl tried many times to talk to the monster, to try
to get the monster to be less horrible, to explain what she was doing, but it
was never, ever any good. The monster was absolutely insistent that everybody
should only ever say what the monster wanted them to say; and do what the
monster wanted them to do; and be what the monster wanted them to be. The
monster said this was because it knew the truth, and the right way, and the
best way. Because it came from the land of Offal-sted, and that was where the
truth came from. As if.
Pramiti paused, drank some more wine,
and crossed out the last two words.
But the girl knew this was a lie, and what the monster really wanted was
that nobody should argue with it, and only ever tell the stories that the
monster wanted told – and ignore the fact that all the Offal-sted stories were
silly, and a waste of time. So, the girl tried to say so more forcefully,
really using her voice, but when she did, a terrible thing happened. The
monster said that if the girl did not tell the stories the monster wanted, then
she would never be able to become a monster herself — or even carry on being a
storyteller.
Pramiti stopped again, for another
few sips.
Now, I know you are probably wondering why would anybody want to become a
monster. But, unfortunately, all storytellers work for monsters, because when
you become in charge, you automatically become a monster.
Pramiti paused, wondering if she was
going too far.
But don’t think this is as bad as it sounds, because not all monsters are
nasty. Like in Monsters
Inc. some are nice. It’s just that to be
in charge, you must be a monster. And that is what the girl did want. She did want
to be an in-charge monster, one day. And so, without even realising it, she
began telling the monster’s Offal-sted stories and only the Offal-sted stories,
and (remember to pause for dramatic effect) she gave up her voice. The girl stopped
telling the stories she wanted to tell. And when, at last, she realised this,
she saw she had done it for so long that she’d nearly forgotten her own
stories.
Pramiti’s hand froze. The last line had
come out of her by surprise. It was a few minutes before she went on.
In fact, she only realised it when, one day, she had to tell a story
about another little girl, a little mermaid, who had also given away her voice,
and all because she had believed a terrible lie about herself.
The lie that the little mermaid had been told and believed was that she
was not enough as she was. That to be something, anything at all, she had to
give up who she was. And more than just give up her voice, she had to give up
being a mermaid.
But, unlike the little mermaid, the girl, our storytelling girl, said no.
She liked her voice, she liked who and what she was, and she liked her own
stories. And, moreover, she remembered that while it was fine to walk along a
path that already existed, it was important to remember that it meant you were
following someone else, not making a new way. Her dream had always been to tell
her stories, her new stories, so that that they would inspire others to make their
own stories too, their new stories, and their new paths.
~
Pramiti lowered her notebook and
looked around the class. There were some confused faces, but many looked bright
eyed. She cleared her throat, realising that despite the risks she was taking, she
was excited in a way she hadn’t been since she’d begun teaching.
“Okay. So, what we are going to do is
this: in at least one class a week we will do things… differently. Our way.
Today, I want you to re-write your little mermaid story in any way you want. Totally mix it up - if you want to. But, and this
is the important part, you have to
save her – you have to save her as she is.
And… you have to save her your way.”
