ABSTRACT
Diana Wynne Jones’ novel Howl’s moving castle and Miyazaki Hayao’s animated adaptation of the same title feature a fascinating figure: a girl protagonist who is transformed by a curse into the form of an old woman. In fact, some traditional fairytales – ‘Ubakawa’ (The Old Woman’s Skin) in Japan and tales related to ‘Cinderella’ in the West – also include girls who experience life as old women. Stories of this unique female figure and the different roles she occupies in different households provide an opportunity to examine imaginings of family across these traditional and contemporary fairytales. In this chapter, I identify key elements of the ‘Ubakawa’ tradition: connections between girls and older women and women’s appearance, disguise and labour. These elements serve as a background and departure point for an analysis of the much-loved contemporary texts. The analysis takes up the ‘girl-grandmother’ relation explored by Aoyama (this volume) from the perspective of fairytale studies, with a focus on the girl. It investigates images of family in fairytales and fairytale metafiction; that is, the extent to which these contemporary texts comment on typical images of family in traditional fairytales.
