inchoate threat

Books Another great piece from The Paris Review uncovers some unsettling truths about what might otherwise seem a fairly inocuous fairy tale:

"Sleeping Beauty is laced throughout with inchoate threat, which is why it feels so bottomless. Most obviously, there is an outrageous fact that the story passes over and that most children do not consciously note: Beauty is a century older than the prince who kisses her and ends her sleep. When he enters her dusty room she is one hundred and fifteen years old. As the reader bends with him over her inert form, adoration is tinged with something else entirely—the apprehension of death."

Which surely puts it firmly on the fringes of myths related to vampirism. It's a cultural theory essay waiting to happen.