ABSTRACT
One of the most popular current threads within the fantasy genre is the retelling of fairy tales. Emma Donoghue's short story sequence Kissing the Witch is therefore part of a much larger tradition within fantasy, yet it also partakes of a different tradition: the feminist tradition of undoing, recasting, and revealing. One of the problematic aspects of Kissing the Witch is the way in which it is located in a fairy-tale' time and space common to many other modern adaptations: a pseudo-European, wholly white, largely sexist and heterosexist society. The lack of explicit characters of color connects this retelling both to the invisible politics of modern fantasy and to the French and German tales it draws from, queering the gender roles, but not questioning the racial hegemony of the fairy-tale mirror. Donoghue demonstrates that one can use the fantasy-space of the fairy tale to expand, rather than restrict, gender horizons.
