Sergio Strizzi

Nicoletta Braschi and Roberto Benigni in his self-directed Pinocchio.

One of the most significant additions to the second half of the book is the figure of the Blue Fairy, a civilizing female influence on the unruly puppet who had, up to her appearance, lived in an entirely masculine world of dog-eat-dog street smarts, macho bravado and dangerous trials and tribulations. The puppet's "birth" is accomplished without any maternal involvement, but his "rebirth" and eventual elevation to full human status take place under the sign of the mother, as if Collodi realized that a motherless creation is inevitably monstrous (à la Frankenstein) and doomed to exclusion from the human family.

In his very rich "An Essay on Pinocchio" that appears as the introduction to an annotated translation of the critical edition of the Italian book, Nicolas J. Perella discusses some of the complexities of the Blue Fairy, who first appears as a moribund little girl, a kind of sister to the puppet, and later, reborn, as a grownup, a kind of young mother. Perella sees her as having a "social bearing that lies somewhere between a lady of the middle class and a woman of the rural popular class." Her essentially bourgeois status is in decided contrast to the poverty-stricken status of Pinocchio's "father," Geppetto, who is most concerned about the "reality of hunger and a struggle to survive," and their socio-economic differences, according to Perella, mean that they could never live together as one happy family, just as, I would add, the Italians of Collodi's time were deeply divided along economic and class lines.

	Discussion
	The mysterious Blue Fairy in Pinocchio offers fertile ground for scholars to debate her ambiguous role in the story. Discuss the strengths or weaknesses of the various readings presented in this session (e.g., the Blue Fairy as symbol of class difference, Christianity, the female grotesque). Which reading do you feel holds the most merit, and why?

Perella also notes that usually in the fairy tale tradition the mother or stepmother is the "crueler parent," while the fairy godmother is kind, but that the Blue Fairy, as an "internalized mother imago," is both benevolent and cruel, thus "blending the two concepts." There are many mysterious, even mythic aspects to this ambiguous figure, including her blue hair, her ability to metamorphose and her associations with death, and these aspects are among those that tend to fascinate some of the writers who have done their own versions of the tale. To use Mary Russo's phrase, the Blue Fairy is a "female grotesque," a being at once fascinating and repellent.

Given the dominant cultural referents in Italy, critics there have often associated her with the Virgin, who is traditionally depicted with a blue mantle, and have even read the tale as a Christological allegory, given that Pinocchio is the son of a carpenter whose name derives from Giuseppe or Joseph, and given also that the puppet must die in order to be reborn as a transfigured being. But, mother, sister, fairy godmother, or stand-in for the Virgin Mary, the Blue Fairy is a disquietingly rare female figure in a tale in which, as Perella writes, "the patriarchal family stands as an island of security in an egotistical, aggressively hostile world"--a patriarchal family, I might add, that is fairly much all patriarchy, and much less colored by the maternal than traditional families of the time would have been.

www.arttoday.com The Virgin Mary, as traditionally depicted wearing blue.

from Pinocchio, 1901 The Blue Fairy as depicted by Chiostri.

from Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1924 The Blue Fairy as drawn by Mary Augusta and Luigi Cavalieri.

The Blue Fairy is not the only disquieting element in the puppet's tale. Pinocchio himself (or itself?) is mysterious from the beginning--first a piece of wood, but a very special piece of wood in that it speaks even before it is transformed into a puppet. The old carpenter mastr'Antonio, a tippler nicknamed Mister Cherry (Ciliegia) on account of "the tip of his nose, which was shiny and purplish like a ripe cherry," intends to turn the piece of wood into a table leg.

	Pinocchio and His Nose
	How interesting it is that the nose as indicator of one's character and habits is thus introduced very early on in the tale... [more]

Mr. Cherry is stopped from cutting into the piece of wood by "una vocina sottile sottile" (a thin little voice) that pleads: "Don't hit me so hard!" Ciliegia thinks he is imagining the voice, and, although he is fearful, continues to manhandle the piece of wood very roughly, stopping only when, as he is planing the wood, the voice says, "Stop! You're tickling my belly!" Then the old man is so frightened that "the tip of his nose turned blue with fright." Violence, threatened mutilation and chilling fear permeate this rousing first chapter--just the stuff to hook young readers, and lots of fun for adult readers, too, who may be thinking that Mister Cherry has definitely had one too many.

from Pinocchio, 1901

Geppetto carries the piece of wood that will become Pinocchio, in this illustration by Chiostri.

Ciliegia is only too happy to give his friend Geppetto the frightening piece of talking wood, and Geppetto, who had already declared his intention of carving a puppet "who can dance, and fence, and make daredevil leaps" (his goal is to travel the world with this puppet in order to earn his living), takes the wood home and begins to carve out his little future source of income. He names the puppet Pinocchio, which means "pinenut," and comments ironically that he once knew an entire family of Pinocchios who all did well for themselves, to wit, "the richest one of them begged for a living." Thus is the theme of hunger and of the constant search for enough food to survive introduced into the tale.

The mysterious pre-existence of Pinocchio, a sheer potentiality hidden in a piece of wood and waiting to be liberated into form, brings mythic elements into the story. As critic Rodolfo Tommasi has noted, in his reading of the symbolic and allegorical qualities of the tale, Collodi certainly would have been aware of Celtic and Nordic myths of talking trees that had been incorporated already into the French and Italian fairy tale traditions in writers such as Perrault and Luigi Capuana; moreover, Dante had provided a striking example of such magical vegetation in his Inferno, in the circle of the suicides who must suffer eternal pains as gnarled, speaking bushes and trees.

from Pinocchio, 1901 Pinocchio's hanging, a dark representation by Chiostri.

from Pinocchio, 1901 Night scene, illustrated by Chiostri.

from Pinocchio, 1901 Chiostri's depiction of the funeral.

As the tale proceeds, more eerie elements are introduced: many gothic night scenes; Pinocchio's hanging; the funereal images that surround the dying little girl with blue hair. Yet the eeriness is balanced by the recognizably everyday characters and the open, cordial and "grandfatherly" tone of the narrator's voice, who recounts the amazing events in a very concrete and agile Florentine prose. The cordiality and sprightliness of the book's tone, the vivacious dynamism of the narration that carries Pinocchio ever onward through varied adventures, and the very ancient and recognizable themes of the voyage as initiation into maturity, the overcoming of hardships, and the search for a mother's love: all of these positive elements account for the book's mainstream appeal.