Fairy Tales

by Floriana Misceo

IV A a.s. 2003/2004

The origin of the genre

The fairy tale is one of the most common literary genre we can find among all the populations of the world since about the birth of the human civilization.

However, it is very difficult to define the effective origin of the genre because of the unbelievable resemblances among these tales and also because, very often, the same stories (even if with some inevitable differences) belong to different countries and to different nations of the world.

The modern reader knows the genre because of Charles Perrault’s printed adaptation of popular fairy tales such as Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood: but, although large numbers of literary fairy tales were written in France in the 17th century, most of the tales which are still told and retold nowadays are far older in origin.

Some searchers supposed that the origin of the genre dates back to the 13th century before Christ because traces of very ancient tales were found over the Egyptian papyri, but probably the real and effective origin goes back to the beginning of speech and of symbolization!

Also in Plato’s works is possible to find information about old women who told children symbolical stories called “Mythoi”.

However, in times past, fairy tales were narrated by old people, by wise men, who transmitted, through their stories, ancient wisdom and moral rules to the younger. The moment of narration held a great role in the social life both from a pedagogical point of view and as entertainment. Think that the ancient Arabian, Indian and native American fairy tales had got the curative power of the modern psychotherapies! In the far East, if someone had got some mental disease, he was told a fairy tale and, during the night he could recover from that illness.

Coming back to our time, if we asked people to name some authors of fairy tales, most of them would answer the Grimm Brothers or Charles Perrault or perhaps Christian Andersen. But in this way people forget that fairy tales have been orally transmitted during the century from generation to generation!

Perrault and Grimm’s merit was surely the fact they collected and printed these traditional tales till then orally narrated: that’s why they have come until our times! However we cannot be certain of this: in my search I found an amazing piece of information. I discovered that the first literary fairy tales of great imagination and invention, often cruel and gruesome, were written by some women rebelling against their society. So, fairy tales, in origin, have been women’s stories passed down orally by the mothers and grandmothers.

When these tales began being a literary form, the number of female authors vastly exceeded that of male ones.

Although female authors included familiar elements in the stories, their now-forgotten tales were largely more inventive, original and fantastical than their male counterparts - and frequently nastier, too.

Probably this was one of the first areas in which women largely overtook men!

Another unbelievable element I found is that the first women’s tales were not written for children: they had a political symbolical meaning. In a time of political censorship, when women had very few rights, fairy tales were the only means they could use to express their ideas and opinions. Only in this way they took their revenge upon a strict male society.

The heroines commented on the double-standards of the times, about the arranged marriages and about the false glory of war; the tales also illustrated the authors’ ideas about the standards of correct manners, justice and love.

The female tales were also written in opposition to the literary establishment at the time, which championed Classical literature as the standards for French writers to follow. But women of that time could not study and learn Latin or Greek and so, instead of being forced out, they followed their own style of writing.

Women could not voice their opinion because their talk has been always considered shocking and dangerous since even before the Church taught that Eve’s words tempted Adam and led him to the fall.

However, through their tales women could voice the unspoken and could pass on knowledge to the young, telling tales which outlined social functions, which saw the virtuous rewarded and adversities overcome.

In spite of this, the best-known tales today are the ones collected by the Grimms and Perrault in which the protagonist is the charming Prince rather than the clever heroine.

Narrative features

The most evident feature in fairy tales is that space and time are not clearly defined.

Especially time is undetermined: vague expressions often recur such as “once upon a time…”or “after a long time” in order to point out we are entering in an abstract world with no connections to reality.

Places are not geographically defined and are rarely described. The most common are: the wood, the little house, the castle…Each of them symbolizes a situation: for example, the dark wood suggests a moment of tension in which the character finds himself, the little house in the glade can represent both a shelter (as in the case of “White Snow and the Seven Dwarfs”) and a trap (as in “Hansel and Gretel”’s story)

As regards characters, they belong in part to the real world, in part to the fantastical sphere. They cover fixed roles and their features are clear and defined: the protagonist has got all the positive aspects ( fine, good, brave, smart and scornful of danger), while all the negative features are peculiar to the antagonist (ugly, bad, coward, envious, unfair and wicked).

Fairy tales proceed for sequences, easily recognizable stages of the story which correspond to the changes of scene and action.

The language is simple but, at the same time, suggestive: it’s full of symbols and fixed formulas ( “once upon a time” …”they lived happy ever after”).

Also dialogues are very frequent: they’re lively and quick in order to enliven the narration.

The magic, or in general the fantasy and the supernatural, has got a great importance for the development of the tale.

Reading a fairy tale we’re not amazed if a cricket speaks, if inanimate objects move or if a dragon kidnaps the king’s daughter.

In fairy tales all the characters, both human and animals share the same universe and are on the same level: each of them has the possibility to do actions and to make the story go on.

As we have said, in fairy tales good is sharply distinguished from evil.

The contrasts between the characters are so well outlined that fairy tales tend to extremize them.

In a typical fairy tale evil is punished while good triumphs; even if during the story the evil person obtains some advantages over the good one or he seems to be favoured by chance, at the end he is always defeated and receives his just punishment.

This teaching could seem us banal or wrong because we perfectly know that in real life the evil is not so simple to be recognized…but for a child this differentiation is really helpful and later we will understand the reason why.

Fairy tales and the psyche

Since Sigmund Freud’s times, psychoanalysts have been studying fairy tales from various points of view; some of them noticed and acknowledged their therapeutic benefits, other psychologists considered them as a way to understand and approach the infantile thought.

Truly, these short fantastical tales are texts helping us to conceive the interior world of children and also their way to explain reality.

But, why are fairy tales so successful among children?

Bruno Bettelheim answers saying : “ Fairy tales, unlike any other form of literature, direct the child to discover his identity…” (“The Use of Enchantment”).

In this sentence, Bettelheim synthesises the importance of the fairy tale for a child: these tales let the child discover his interior world, his anxieties, his emotions, his fears and so on…But they also give him the opportunity to know life and to prepare himself to face it.

This could seem an absurdity: how can a fantastical genre help to understand reality??

In reality, fairy tales, although have little to do with reality, do not lack surprises, dangers, risks, pleasant and unpleasant meetings…just as real life!

Probably that is why this is the children’s favourite literary genre.

Bettelheim and the “Enchanted World”

As previously said, the genre has always been studied by a lot of psychologists over the years but Bruno Bettelheim was one of the first psycho-analysts to notice the importance of the fairy tale for a harmonious growth of the child.

He was born in Vienna in 1903 and was a psychologist belonging to the Freudian school.

He was the pioneer in the study of the infantile autism and wrote many articles and texts about the childish psychology.

In “the use of enchantment” he explains his theory about fairy tales and their important role for the child.

According to Bettelheim, these tales help the child to solve his unconscious conflicts because they talk to him in the pre-rational and animistic logic in which the child lives and is closed.

Every child has many difficulties in understanding reality .

For example, for an animistic child there is not a clear division between the animate and inanimate world: the stones, the sun and the river are as living being as his school-mates.

So fairy tales speak in the same language of the child: this is another reason for their success.

Every day the child inserts in his ever-growing mind various impressions , often not so clear.

In the attempt to organize these impressions, the child appeals to the fantasy because of his lack of knowledge about reality.

Fairy tales show the child how it is possible to live with more clearness in the fantastic world; fairy tales are a kind of support for the undisciplined fantasy of the child.

As we have said, they generally start presenting the story in an indefinite time and space (for example : “once upon a time”).

This gaps suggest the child that the world of fantasy is going to be introduced.

In this way the child is aware that he is allowed to free his imagination without being mocked and forget the hard work of adaptation to reality that society imposes him day by day.

In this way also the child can leave the control of his conscience and make his unconscious dynamics emerge.

Bettelheim believes that it is very important letting the child to be carried out by fantasy but on condition that he does not remain its prisoner.

According to Bettelheim, the fairy tale symbolically describes the basic stages of the child’s evolutive process which leads to the adult age.

In particular, each of them concentrates on a special dynamic or problem related to this process.

For example, in many tales we find the main character lost in a thick dark wood. What does it mean for Bettelheim?

Getting lost in a wood, especially after leaving one’s home, can symbolize the loss of childhood and of all the material and psychological certainties deriving from this.

For coming out of the wood, the protagonist has to face many other troubles completely alone as it happens to the child who tries to accustom himself to the adult age.

In these tales, the characters are not realistic but they are very close to the idea the child has of reality. The child isn’t able to combine the good and the bad side of the same thing and that’s why the child divides everything in “good “ and “bad” (since his birth the child distinguishes the good breast from the bad breast of his mother!).

That is the reason why in fairy tales we have such a polarization of these two realities.

Also the figure of the mother is ambiguous: on the one hand, the careful and loving mother, on the other one the bad, unbearable and the envious step-mother.

In Hansel and Gretel, the witch embodies the two opposite aspects we have mentioned: at first she looks like a good and sweet mother but, little by little, she starts showing off all her diabolic malignity.

Bettelheim explains the idea in this way: “in these stories the witch appears in the way the mother behaves before the Oedipus complex: she’s completely generous and able to satisfy her child’s desires until he remains bound to her; but, as soon as the child starts to act independently, the conflicts increase. The mother shows her real identity and the child experiences a bitter disappointment .”

Finally Bettelheim’s theory about the origin and the development of the genre is very interesting..

He says that the fairy tale is traditionally an oral tale and in this way, lacking a written text, the narrator is obliged to improvise and tell what he remembers. Nonetheless, memories can be affected by many factors, for example the conscious and unconscious feelings of the narrator and also by the emotional involvement between the reader and the listener. That is why, over the years, the story undergoes a lot of changes which will be transmitted from generation to generation.

In this way, the final version of a tale will combine all the conscious and unconscious communications between the narrator and the listener.

Bettelheim underlines that the narration of the tale is also an important moment of syntony and complicity between parents and children. Every parent tell his child a tale in their own way. Only in this moment parents and children are on the same level. To conclude, the fairy tale symbolically describe the development process which leads the child to the adult age. But, vice versa, it can be also an opportunity for an adult to become a child again trying to feel for a brief moment those inimitable emotions which only a child can experience.

That’s why fairy tales have got such a great seductive power upon both children and adults.

Looking for sex symbols

One of the funniest of all games played by Freudian literary critics is finding sex symbols in old fairy tales. It is a very easy game to play. Freud is said to have once remarked that a cigar sometimes is just a cigar, but psychoanalysts who write about fairy tales seem incapable of seeing them just as fantasies intended to entertain, instruct, and at times frighten young children.

Bruno Bettelheim's analysis of Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH), in his book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1976) is a prime example of Freudian symbol searching. But first, a brief history of this famous fable.

The story began as a folk tale that European mothers and nurses told to young children. The fable, in its many variants, came to the attention of Charles Perrault (1628-1703), a French attorney turned poet, writer, and anthologist. He published one version in a 1697 collection of fairy tales-a book that became a French juvenile classic.

Perrault opens his story "Le Petit Chaperon Rouge" (Little Red Cape) by telling about a pretty village girl who is called Little Red Riding Hood because she loves to wear a red cape and hood given to her by her grandmother. Her mother hands her some biscuits and butter to take to the sick grandmother in a nearby village. Walking through a wood, LRRH encounters a friendly wolf who asks where she is going. After she tells him, the wolf says he'll go there too, but by a different route and they'll see who gets there first. The wolf naturally arrives ahead of the girl, devours the grandmother, then crawls into bed. When LRRH shows up he simulates the grandmother's voice, telling her to put the biscuits and butter aside and climb in bed. LRRJ undresses and does as she is told. A famous dialog follows: "What great arms you have, grandma! The better to embrace you, my child. 'What great legs you have! The better to run with, my child. What great ears! The better to hear with. What great eyes! The better to see with. What great teeth! The better to eat you with."The wolf then gobbles up LRRH and the story ends! I have been told, though I strongly doubt it, that French children find this ending amusing, and are not in the least disturbed by it. Andrew Lang, who reprinted Perrault's version in his Blue Fairy Book, severely criticizes Perrault for choosing a version with such a gruesome ending.

When the German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm later published in 1812 their collection of more than 200 traditional fairy tales, many taken from Perrault, they gave the story a less grim ending. In their version (you'll find it in the Modern Library's Tales of Grimm and Andersen), LRRH's mother gives her cake and a bottle of wine to take to the ailing grandmother. LRRH is not afraid of the wolf when she meets him in the forest. He persuades her to pick some flowers to rake to her grandmother. While she is doing this (disobeying her mother who told her not to dawdle) the wolf hastens to the grandmother's house, finds the door unlocked, enters, and promptly eats the grandmother. When LRRH arrives she is surprised to find the door open. She thinks it is her grandmother in bed because the wolf has pulled a nightcap over his face, and sheets over his body. LRRH stands beside the bed while the familiar dialog occurs about the wolf's body parts. The wolf then springs out of bed and eats LRRH. He now goes back to bed and falls asleep. A passing hunter hears the wolf's loud snores. He goes inside to investigate and is about to shoot the wolf until he realizes it may have eaten the grandmother. So he pulls out a knife and cuts open the wolf's belly. Both LRRH and the grandmother emerge as unharmed as Jonah when he was vomited out of the whale's belly.LRRH brings some big stones into the house to put inside the wolf, who is still asleep. When he awakes and tries to get away, the heavy stones drag him down and he drops dead. The hunter skins the wolf and takes the skin home. The grandmother can hardly breathe, but she feels much better after eating the cake and drinking some wine. LRRH says to herself, "I will never again wander off into the forest as long as I live, when my mother forbids it."

The tale is short and simple. Its obvious moral is that children should obey their mothers and to beware of seemingly friendly strangers. LRRH's beauty and innocence with her grisly experience caught the hearts of so many adults everywhere, especially in Germany, France, Sweden, and England. "Little Red Riding Hood was my first love," declared Charles Dickens. "I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss."

Bruno Bettelheim devotes eighteen pages of his book on fairy tales to LRRH. In his eyes the girl is not as innocent as she seems. She is at the nymphet stage when her premature "budding sexuality" is creating deep unconscious conflicts between her id (animal nature) and her superego (conscience), what Freud called the "pleasure principle" and the "reality principle." Unconsciously, she wants to be seduced by her father. The wolf's eating her represents that seduction. The red colour of LRRH's hood, according to Bettelheim, symbolizes her unconscious sexual desires. He sees the gift of the hood by the grandmother as representing a transfer of sexual attractiveness from an old sick woman to a young healthy girl. The grandmother is a symbol of the little girl's mother. When the wolf eats the grandmother it represents the little girl's wish to get rid of her mother so she can have her father all to herself.

In Grimm's version, Bettelheim sees the hunter as another father symbol. When he cuts open the wolf's belly it indicates "the idea of pregnancy and birth". Bettelheim, of course, is not the only Freudian to read dark sexual meanings into the story. Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm, in “The Forgotten Language: an introduction to the understanding of dreams, fairy tales, and myths” is also convinced that LRRH is experiencing unconscious sexual impulses and really wants to be seduced by the wolf. The red cape symbolizes her menstrual blood as she enters womanhood. When the mother warns her not to leave the path or she might fall and break the wine bottle, it represents the mother's fear that her daughter might lose her virginity .

"The story," Fromm concludes, "speaks of the male-female conflict; it is a story of triumph by man-hating women, ending with their victory,exactly the opposite of the Oedipus myth, which lets the male emerge victorious from this battle."

Today's feminist writers, who analysed the story from a female perspective, like Angela Carter in her collection of short stories The Bloody Chambe,r deny that LRRH had unconscious impulses to be raped. They give her the strength and cleverness to take care of herself. This is surely the most innovative innovating interpretation of the old traditional tale.