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| Hearsay: |
What happens when you leave everything scary out of fairy tales? You get the generation of kids we have coming up who think life owes them something, that’s what. Whippersnappers!
Yet something important is lost when a child’s introduction to fairy tales comes in such whitewashed form. It’s not just Rapunzel: In toys, movies, and books, the old fairy tales are being systematically stripped of their darker complexities. Rapunzel has become a lobotomized girl in a pleasant tower playroom; Cinderella is another pretty lady in a ball gown, like some model on “Project Runway.”
“Fairy tale” may be our shorthand for castles and happy endings, but these classic stories have villains, too – nefarious witches, bloodthirsty wolves, stepmothers up to no good. And scholars have come to see the stories’ dark elements as the source of their power, not to mention their persistence over the centuries. Rich in allegory, endlessly adaptable, fairy tales emerged as a framework for talking about social issues. When we remove the difficult parts – and effectively do away with the stories themselves – we’re losing a surprisingly useful common language.
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September 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
I think that the young of this generation are being delivered a serious disservice by turning all of the faerie tales to happy endings, or even taking the real danger out of the predicaments in them. I mean, thanks to Hansel & Gretel I learned quite graphically not to go with strangers. And via Rapunzel and Rumplestiltskin I learned to never makes deals with creepy people, or schmoozers…and if you don’t never put one of your kids up for colateral.
In a sense, I owe my existence today with some of the precepts I learned in faerie tales.
September 22nd, 2008 at 12:30 pm
I can’t remember the name of the story, but its about a dog that gets mistakenly accused of killing a baby. From this i learned not to make judgements based on appearances and circumstantial evidence.
i can still see the blood covered sheets in the pictures accompanying the story.
Didnt scar me all that badly.
September 22nd, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Working in a library, I often mention fairy tales as an option for parents to read to their little ones. More often than not, I get a response like “But have you read them? They’re really quite dark. I’m not sure I want my child to be exposed to that.”
I tend to reply by pointing out that the parents read them when they were young and appear to have turned out ok. I ask if they feel they were harmed or tormented by the stories. I also say that I suspect they are glad to have their memories of these stories. Sometimes they agree, sometimes not.
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I especially like the Grimms’ “The Willful Child”, which is only five lines long and is quite instructive for young children. It’s available at: [see link above]
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:01 am
ok, Paul. That one’s just creepy.
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, working with autistic kids, tried sanitizing fairy tales by taking out the dark parts. In a controlled study comparing the real thing with the cleaned up version, he found that kids that got the happy ending fairy tale were less able to cope with day-to-day life and were less resilient under stress. These tales arose out of an oral tradition and had important psychological lessons built into them. We tamper with them at our peril.
September 24th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Monica,that terribly sad story about the dog that’s thought to have killed the baby is called Bedd Gelert (at least in the version I have). It’s a Welsh legend.
We started reading our son a pretty unsanitized version of the Greek Myths for children at about age 4, and now at almost nine he’s about as bloodthirsty as most little boys, but can make metaphorical allusions to the sirens, and the Lotus Eaters etc.
Just last night we went to an event at Vancouver Kids Books with Edge Chronociles creators Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell who spoke with gusto about the real Grimm’s stories and recounted the death of Cinderalla’s stepmother. Nailed into a barrell, set on fire, and the rolled off a cliff for good measure. Try writing that today!
September 24th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
It is important for children to hear the original tales. In the original Red Riding Hood, she is eaten by the wolf along with her grandmother. What is the moral in the one in which she is cut free from the wolf’s belly, exactly; that being overly friendly to wolves/nasty strangers will almost get you in trouble?
My son, in kindergarten, explained to one of his classmates that God hadn’t made it rain, that God was actually in charge of lightning. In particular, he was a kid who needed the real stories as they paralleled his own inner, vivid and amplified world. We did Greek, Norse, Japanese, all the Lang collected. We did the Odyssey and Iliad, Beowulf (Sutcliff and Seaney), the Persian Book of Kings (still working through that).
These stories give a template for good against evil, for civility and cleverness against stupidity and dishonesty. the also teach children about other cultures. Why water them down?