SOURCE: "Spiegel, das Kätzchen: A Fairy Tale in the Age of Prose," in The Poetics of Scepticism: Gottfried Keller and Die Leute von Seldwyla, Berg Publishers, 1994, pp. 118-23.

In the following excerpt, Swales asserts that greed subverts the fairy-tale quality of the Keller's novella Spiegel the Cat.

First conceived in 1855, this fairy-tale recounts how Spiegel, the cat, on the point of starvation, enters into a pact with the town sorcerer Pineiss, who undertakes to feed him until the next full moon, when the cat will be slaughtered for his fat. Spiegel finally manages to free himself from the contract by fabricating a story about a hidden treasure and thus enticing his master into the trap of greed. Poetic justice triumphs in the end: the owl and the cat capture the town witch and marry her off to Pineiss, who suffers for the rest of his life under...