Angels and Fairies: Male Flight and Contrary Females

Angels present an opportunity to explore the theme of male flight, in that all angels were originally male, and sometimes said to be androgynous, which is much the same thing. Once female angels became popular, the belief in angels was trivialized and domesticated. Fairies are mostly women, sometimes winged, who can be captured and who then bring their captors great wealth and happiness. Usually in these tales, the men who captured them fail to observe a taboo laid out by the fairy, thus allowing her to escape. All fairies are time- benders, so often in these tales, the men awake to discover that centuries have gone by in a few days. This is the case in both Western and Asian tales. In the West, fairies frequently appear in Arthurian legends, especially in the figure of the troublesome Morgan le Fay, half-sister to King Arthur.