Sleeping Beauties: Mummies and the fairy tale genre at the Fin de Siècle
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 26/01/2019

In this paper, I examine the relationship between mummy fiction and the fairy-tale genre at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. I observe the differences in depictions of male and female mummies, and argue that perfectly-preserved female mummies typical of fin-de-siècle mummy fiction emulate the figure of Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, preserved in glass coffins (or museum display cases). Concurrently, I observe that while the suggestion of the marriage of the mummy is raised in several texts, any chance of longstanding romantic union is often foiled, in contrast to the (distinctly marital) ‘happily-ever-after’s which characterise the fairy tale. As human remains that were bought, sold and collected across the Victorian era (and beyond), mummies invited objectification. Yet their frequent disintegration or disappearance before they can be bound by the legal and religious strictures of marriage demarcates them as objects which cannot be tamed. I claim that we might read this, considering Britain’s contemporary imperial involvement in Egypt, a political and historical context which scholars have recognised as responsible for the emergence of the notion of the mummy’s curse: bodies which cannot be fully controlled might also be seen to resist Britain’s imperialist mission.  

Eleanor Dobson (University of Birmingham)