The Official Book Club Guide: The Binding

Fairy Tale

Classic fairy tales tend to leave a strong imprint on our imaginations, even as adults. Bridget Collins draws upon their mythic resonance by incorporating certain fairy tale tropes into The Binding.

Emmett’s first meeting with Lucian bears many of the elements we might expect from a story by the Brothers Grimm. Returning from poaching, Emmett walks through the woods, loses his sister and, wandering into the ruins of a castle, encounters a man wearing a hooded cloak. Here, in one scenario, we have a whole bundle of images commonly found in fairy tales – a huntsman, a mysterious woodland setting, a disappearance, a castle and, to top it all off, a hooded figure.

As the novel progresses, it seems that the author may have one fairy tale, in particular, in mind. Observant readers may have noticed some, or all, of the following similarities between ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (otherwise known as ‘Briar Rose’) and The Binding: -

The Spell: In ‘Sleeping Beauty’, the heroine is doomed to fulfil a fairy’s spell. On her fifteenth birthday, she pricks her finger on a spindle and falls asleep for one hundred years. When would-be rescuers attempt to save the princess, they are trapped by a hedge of impenetrable brambles shrouding the castle. In Collins’s novel, the process of being bound is like falling under a spell. Living a kind of half-life akin to sleep, Emmett and Lucian are unable to remember each other. Attempts to prompt their memory and reverse this state prove futile.

Roses & Castles: Sleeping Beauty’s real name is Briar Rose, and, in the fairy tale, the image of a wild rose is echoed in the barrier of brambles that grows around her castle. Once one hundred years have passed, these brambles part and bloom into flower, allowing the prince to make his way to the castle (you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to detect the sexual undertones in this scenario). In The Binding, a rose garden grows in the ruined castle which becomes a magical and intimate meeting place for Emmett and Lucian. At one point, Emmett is pricked by the thorn of a rose in his shirt buttonhole (echoes of the spindle) and Lucian licks away the blood. The rose-entangled ruin is the place where Emmett eventually opens up to Lucian, sexually and emotionally, and accepts who he really is. Images of roses recur throughout the rest of the novel and, when Lucian finally finds his book in Lord Latworthy’s library, it is protected by an iron grille ‘knotted with tendrils and spirals and buds’ - very much like the briar hedge that stands between the prince and Sleeping Beauty.