Briar Rose
Narrative structure
and techniques
Structure
A: Home
•
Gemma's version of the Briar Rose tale, which Becca
recognises to be a metaphor for Gemma's life, is
interwoven with the narrative of Becca's quest to
make sense of this story after her grandmother’s
death.
•
Interspersing segments of Gemma’s never-completed
fairy story at intervals through the main narrative
adds suspense and mystery to the novel.
Home (cont.)
•
The fairy tale references relate the story of Gemma's
Holocaust to the cultural tradition of good and evil,
suffering and rescue, and seeking and finding.
•
A third strand, Becca's developing relationship with Stan,
is presented more lightly, but suggests that, for Becca, a
happy ending is likely.
•
Becca’s quest to find "the Princess and the castle", suggests
all the quest heroes of folklore and fantasy. Because she
succeeds in this quest she is rewarded, with an
understanding and supportive partner.
B: Castle
•
A story within a story: Josef ’s account of his experiences
in the war and the truth of Gemma’s story.
•
Josef is the key to the mystery of who Gemma really was,
but he tells the events in the third person as if he were only
a storyteller and not one of the main characters.
•
Josef has been in the opposite situation to Becca: he has
known the beginning of the story, but not what happened
to Gemma. Now both Becca and Josef receive the
revelation of the part of the puzzle that was missing from
their portrait of Gemma.
A: Home again
• A short concluding section, reprising the intertwined
structure of the beginning.
• At the end, in a parallel with every fairy tale, there is a
happy ending foretold by Stan after he has greeted
Becca with a long and very satisfactory kiss: "We'll get
to happily ever after eventually."
Class activity
• Read the epigraphs that begin each section of the book:
• Home: page 1
• Castle: page 161
• Home Again: page 223
• How do these quotations relate to the content of the
sections of the novel which follow?
• Do they suggest the ways the writer wants us to interpret
each section?
• Make notes and be ready to present your findings to the
class.
Techniques
Intertextuality
• “Using one text as an ingredient of another”
• Intertextuality is distinctive feature of Briar Rose. Yolen
sets her narrative narrative in the present, and inserts
flashbacks in the form of Gemma’s version of the
Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.
• Gemma changing the details to suit her story echoes
what oral retellers have always done with fairy tales.
• The references to traditional mythic texts give the story
a universal dimension.
Allegory
• Symbolism of Gemma’s fairy tale – refer to class notes
(on Edmodo)
• Yolen goes beyond mere symbolism to tell her
Holocaust narrative. She has constructed the whole
story as an allegory – a text whose whole plot is in
itself symbolic.
• Allegory: “A specialised form of symbolic narrative,
which does not merely suggest something beyond its
literal meaning, but insists on being decoded in terms
of another meaning.”
(David Lodge, The Art of Fiction).
Allegory (cont.)
• The Briar Rose tale is an allegory of Gemma's life. she
cannot recall the details of her, she needs to pass this
story on to her descendants, and uses the fairy tale to
do so.
• Like many allegorical tales, it tells of good triumphing
over evil, of a contented life won only after lifethreatening difficulties and dangers have been
overcome.
Allegory (cont.)
• Yolen has added strands from other traditional tales to
enrich the story:
• Becca is on a quest.
• Like many quest heroes, she is the third child – the one
whose heart is truest.
• The Potocki family ring is the sign that reveals the truth
of Josef's tale.