Keywords
Vernon Lee
snake-ladies
patriarchy
gender roles
How to Cite
Abstract
The tale “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” by Vernon Lee is a rich text in so far as how it utilizes the symbol of the snake and its significance within pagan culture and spirituality. Prior to the cementing of Christianity, the snake was not associated with evil, but rather the opposite; with the arrival of the faith, it was demonized as were women, so much so that they were fused into a hybrid. Lee’s tale turns employs this cultural significance and deconstructs it, drawing from other folktales that also employed the figures of snake-women, such as the Melusine myth. The paper argues that through the tale’s main characters, Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady Oriana, Lee deconstructs the patriarchy as a construct; as something that does not simply exist in the world, but as patterns and behaviours that are learned. In “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” Lee dismantles the system and proposes new behaviours and new gender roles for the members of society.
References
Bain, Frederika. “The Tail of Melusine: Hybridity, Mutability, and the Accessible Other.” Melusine’s Footprint Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth, edited by Misty Urban, & Deva F. Kemmis, Brill, 2017, pp. 17–35.
Campbell, Joseph. Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, edited by Safron Rossi, New World Library, 2013.
Condren, Mary. The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion, and Power in Celtic Ireland. Harper & Row, 1989.
Delyfer, Catherine. “Rewriting the Myth of Atalanta: Sex and Style in Vernon Lee’s ‘Lady Tal’.” Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, no. 2.2, 2006.
Ehman, Caitlin. “The Aesthete, the Hedonist, the Imperialist and the Dandy: The Construction of Masculinity at the Fin de Siècle in Vernon Lee’s “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan.” The Albatross, vol. 1, 2011.
Giallongo, Angela. The Historical Enigma of the Snake Woman from Antiquity to the 21st Century. Translated by Anna C. Forster, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.
Gimbutas, Marija Alseikaitė. The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe. Harper San Francisco, 1991.
Harrison, James Wright. Melusine: Matriarch, Elemental Spirit, Archetype. PhD thesis, 1976, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ProQuest Dissertations & Theses.
Hensel, Marcus and Asa Simon Mittman. “Introduction.” Classic Readings on Monster Theory. Arc Humanities Press, 2018, pp. ix–xv.
Knapp, Bettina Liebowitz. “Melusine: “The Beauty of Things Is Fleet and Swift.” French Fairy Tales: A Jungian Approach. State U of New York P, 2003, pp. 23–59.
Lee, Vernon. “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady.” The Virgin of the Seven Daggers and Other Stories, edited by Aaron Worth, Oxford UP, 2022, pp. 211–51.
Martorell, Carmen Miralles. “Of Snake Ladies and other Reptiles: The Subversive Transition from the Femme Fatale to the Godmother in Vernon Lee’s Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady.” Babel – AFIAL: Aspectos De Filoloxía Inglesa E Alemá, vol. 24, 2015, pp. 37–54.
Psomiades, Kathy Alexis. “Still Burning from the Strangling Embrace.” Victorian Sexual Dissidence, edited by Richard Dellamora, The University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 21–41.
Shaw, Jan. Space, Gender, and Memory in Middle English Romance. Architectures of Wonder in Melusine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle. Penguin, 1991.
Stetz, Margaret. “The Snake Lady and the Bruised Bodley Head: Vernon Lee and Oscar Wilde in the Yellow Book.” Vernon Lee: Decadence, Ethics and Aesthetics, edited by Catherine Maxwell and Patricia Pulham, Palgrave, 2006, pp. 112–22.
Urban, Misty. “How the Dragon Ate the Woman: The Fate of Melusine in English.” Melusine’s Footprint Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth. Edited by Misty Urban, & Deva F. Kemmis, Brill, 2017, pp. 368–87.
Zhang, Emma H. “The Taming of the White Snake: The Oppression of Female Sexuality in the Legend of the White Snake.” Ex-position, no. 44, 2020, pp. 103–25.
Zhao, Zifeng. “Metamorphoses of Snake Women: Melusine and Madam White.” Melusine’s Footprint Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth, edited by Misty Urban and Deva F. Kemmis, Brill, 2017, pp. 282–300.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2025 Elena Ramírez Sáenz