The Goat-Faced Girl : A Classic Italian Folktale

Like many good fables, this story opens with a child left in the woods. A large lizard picks up the infant and takes her home, where she soon grows into a pretty, pampered, and generally useless young woman named Isabella. Despite her adoptive mother's efforts (for the lizard is really a witch in disguise) to shape her up, the girl prefers the allu

Like many good fables, this story opens with a foundling left – rather inconveniently, if not surprisingly – in the woods. A large lizard, ever conscious of tripping hazards, picks up the infant and takes her home, where she soon grows into a pretty, pampered, and generally useless young woman named Isabella. Despite her adoptive mother''s efforts (for the lizard is really a witch in disguise) to shape her up, the girl prefers the alluring life offered her by the charming Prince Rupert, a world of cooks and servants, palaces and jewels, luxury and indolence.Luckily, the lizard woman is a canny, concerned parent. She does not suffer fools lightly and is not about to let her daughter''s too-easy transition to palace life go unchallenged. And so she arranges a surprise transformation for her daughter – one that puts the prince''s marital plans on hold and gives the witch just enough time to hammer home a few lessons about the downside of idleness, the inanity of vanity, and the satisfactions of self-reliance.