With Perrault's version of this story, we begin to approach more closely to the tale familiar to most contemporary readers.  If Basile's version emphasized adult concerns such as marital fidelity and inheritance, Perrault's eliminates much of this concern by replacing the adulterous king with an unmarried prince, and substituting an ogreish mother-in-law for Basile's betrayed wife.  This French version also establishes the well-known spindle as the mechanism for causing the girl's sleep - as Patricia Hannon has noted, the spinning wheel "[f]orcibly symboliz[es] women's work," so that the initiation of a period of sexual latency (in Bettelheim's argument) or contained sensuality (in Hannon's terms) also corresponds with the limitation of women's sphere by adult labor.  Perrault also introduces the motif of the fairy gifts at the baby's christening, including the overlooked guest whose anger leads to the curse on the infant; later literary fairy-tale writers such as George MacDonald would make good satiric use of this motif, widely recognized as part of the "Sleeping Beauty" tale.
        However, Perrault retains the disturbing cannibalism of Basile's story.  Hannon interprets the prince's ogress mother as a mark of the alternative female stereotype to passivity - i.e., woman as threat that must be eliminated from the social body.  Note that the story ends with the dangerous female destroyed and the passive, "safe" female (the sleeping beauty) established in her place as the new queen.  The cannibalism is sufficiently disturbing that many editions intended for children remove this part of the story, or substitute the Grimms' version, which ends with the awakening and marriage.
        This was the first story in Perrault's collection.  The Opies link it to the story of Brynhild in the Volsungasaga - fearing that she will be forced to marry a coward, the heroine is protected by Odin (the chief of the Norse gods) by being placed in a castle surrounded with a fiery barrier, then put into a deep, magical sleep until a sufficiently brave hero should rescue her.

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