ABSTRACT
In traditional fairy tales, the movement from 'once upon a time' to 'happy ever after' is usually achieved through the plot convention of the reversal of fortunes. This reversal of fortunes most often takes the form of the rags to riches story, as in "Cinderella", where the protagonist starts the story as a poor and unloved girl who is made to toil for her stepmother but ends up becoming the new princess. The connection between fairy-tale cycles and the life cycle of a woman is not peculiar or unique to Byatt's work; the rewriting of fairy tales seems to have been a particular preoccupation of feminist writers since at least Angela Carter's publication of The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. The final story of the collection initially appears to grant more individuality to its female characters, yet it is equally concerned with the erasure of female individuality in fairy-tale narratives.
