Stephen Evans explores the twisted world of Grimm's Fairy Tales – bedtime stories complete with mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide and incest.
21st October, 2014
On the covers are the most innocent of titles: Grimm’s Fairy Tales in their English version or Children’s and Household Tales in the original German editions published two hundred years ago. Nice tales for nice children. But behind the safe titles lie dark stories of sex and violence – tales of murder, mutilation, cannibalism, infanticide and incest, as one academic puts it. They are far from anything we might imagine as acceptable today. If they were a video game, there would be calls to ban them.
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were writing in a different world. They lived in the town of Kassel in Germany and studied law and language as well as writing more than 150 stories which they published in two volumes between 1812 and 1814.
Some stories have fallen out of favour but some – Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White – seem eternal. They have morphed into countless adaptations; Disney disneyfied them and new filmmakers and novelists continue to rework them. Comics from Japanese Manga to the erotic and ‘adult’ depict the characters of the Grimm brothers’ tales.
But even in their original, they are far from saccharine, according to Maria Tatar, professor of Germanic folklore and mythology at Harvard University: “These tales are not politically correct. They are full of sex and violence. In Snow White, the stepmother asks for the lungs and liver of the little girl. She's just seven years old and she's been taken into the woods by the huntsman. That’s pretty scary.
“And then the evil stepmother is made to dance to death in red-hot iron shoes. In Cinderella, you’ve got the stepsisters whose heels and toes are cut off.”
Adult themes
These tales of gore and sexuality – John Updike called them the pornography of an earlier age – are still going strong. “I can't even keep track of the number of new versions of Snow White,” says Professor Tatar. “And these aren't just Disney productions – you have film-makers making very adult versions of the fairy tales, drawing out the perverse sexuality of some of these tales.”
They are tales of right and wrong. There are clear morals to be drawn – deception and dishonesty are punished; honest hard work is rewarded; promises must be honoured; beware of strangers – and especially the forest.
But that can’t be the enduring appeal. Moralistic lectures never entertained anyone – but gory tales of suspense are a different thing. They do have an eternal following. As Professor Tatar puts it: “They give us these ‘what if’ scenarios – what if the most terrible thing that I can imagine happened? – but they give us these scenarios in the safe space of ‘once upon a time’. I'm going to tell you the story and I'm going to show you how this hero or this heroine manages to come out of it alive.” And not just alive, but also ‘happily ever after’.
It’s clear that many children love the gory bits. And it’s clear that many parents don’t. A survey last year found that many reported that their children had been left in tears by the gruesome fate of Little Red Riding Hood. Some parents wouldn’t read Rumpelstiltskin to their children because it was about kidnapping and execution. And many parents felt that Cinderella was a bad role model for daughters because she did housework all day.
Some pop culture versions of the tales have sugar-coated their more unpalatable aspects. It’s true that the Cinderella made by Disney in 1950 is a work of schlock – the titles of the songs (A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo and Sing Sweet Nightingale) give the flavour. But Disney’s older animated versions of Grimm Fairy Tales are much darker.
“In Snow White which was made in 1937,” says Professor Tatar, “the Wicked Queen goes down into the basement where she's got a chemistry set which she's going to use to turn the apple into a poisoned apple. There are ravens down there and skulls and mysterious dusty tomes.
“And then she transforms herself into an old hag. She goes from the fairest of all to the ugliest of all.
“I think that's really an adult moment which enacts our anxieties about aging. First, her voice changes and then her hands begin to change and there she is a decrepit old woman.
“I think Disney picked up on the scariness of fairy tales as something which appeals to both children and adults”.
Evil thoughts
You get a flavour of these debates and nuances in the town of Kassel in Germany at the moment. It’s where the two brothers grew up and lived (in the same house, Wilhelm married to Henriette; Jacob single until his death).
There have been productions of some of the tales in the Botanical Gardens and a thought-provoking exhibition in the city’s documenta-Halle. It displays the original publications of the tales and the dictionaries and other works produced by the brothers.
But the most interesting exhibits are the ones designed to make people think. There are videos of glossy perfume adverts featuring a radiant Little Red Riding Hood taming the wolf with her fragrance. There is a section marked “No Access for Minors?” where, behind a thick curtain, you can read the most violent extracts from the tales through slits in the wall.
One of the curators, Louisa Dench, said these extracts show that good triumphs over evil and that the bad get punished. There are clear choices. “There is good and there is bad and you know what’s good and what’s bad and there’s no question about it. And that’s very understandable for children. It’s very clear, and good always wins. That’s important”.
She thinks the secret of the enduring appeal is that much is left to the imagination. “You have only limited characterisation so there’s a lot you can imagine yourself,” she says. “If someone reads them to you, your mind can build up its own picture. That’s part of the magic”.
It is a magic based on fantasy and that may be what protects the tales from the unmitigated wrath of parents. Children – some children – do seem to like the darkness of horror but, perhaps, not if it becomes too realistic. Some parents feel uneasy about tales for children where a child's hands are cut off (The Girl without Hands) or where a man is pushed down stairs (The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was) – but children know it is fantasy.
Their fantastical darkness may have protected today's video games from the wrath of tougher laws. Two years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down a lower court's ruling that video games should be banned. Justice Scalia ruled that depictions of violence had never been regulated. “Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed,” he wrote, referring to the gory plots of Snow White, Cinderella and Hansel and Gretel.
Grim, indeed. And exciting, too, to generations of children and adults for two hundred years – and perhaps for another two hundred.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20130801-too-grimm-for-children
Premarital sex
In the original version of “Rapunzel,” published in 1812, a prince impregnates the title character after the two spend many days together living in “joy and pleasure.” “Hans Dumm,” meanwhile, is about a man who impregnates a princess simply by wishing it, and in “The Frog King” a princess spends the night with her suitor once he turns into a handsome bachelor. The Grimms stripped the sex scenes from later versions of “Rapunzel” and “The Frog King” and eliminated “Hans Dumm” entirely. But hidden sexual innuendos in “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” remained, according to psychoanalysts, including Sigmund Freud and Erich Fromm, who examined the book in the 20th century.
Graphic violence
Although the brothers Grimm toned down the sex in later editions of their work, they actually ramped up the violence. A particularly horrific incident occurs in “The Robber Bridegroom,” when some bandits drag a maiden into their underground hideout, force her to drink wine until her heart bursts, rip off her clothes and then hack her body into pieces. Other tales have similarly gory episodes. In “Cinderella” the evil stepsisters cut off their toes and heels trying to make the slipper fit and later have their eyes pecked out by doves; in “The Six Swans” an evil mother-in-law is burned at the stake; in “The Goose Maid” a false bride is stripped naked, thrown into a barrel filled with nails and dragged through the streets; and in “Snow White” the wicked queen dies after being forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes. Even the love stories contain violence. The princess in “The Frog King” turns her amphibian companion into a human not by kissing it, but instead by hurling it against a wall in frustration.
Child abuse
Even more shockingly, much of the violence in “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” is directed at children. Snow White is just 7 years old when the huntsman takes her into the forest with orders to bring back her liver and lungs. In “The Juniper Tree” a woman decapitates her stepson as he bends down to get an apple. She then chops up his body, cooks him in a stew and serves it to her husband, who enjoys the meal so much he asks for seconds. Snow White eventually wins the day, as does the boy in “The Juniper Tree,” who is brought back to life. But not every child in the Grimms’ book is so lucky. The title character in “Frau Trude” turns a disobedient girl into a block of wood and tosses her into a fire. And in “The Stubborn Child” a youngster dies after God lets him become sick.
Anti-Semitism
The Grimms gathered over 200 tales for their collection, three of which contained Jewish characters. In “The Jew in the Brambles” the protagonist happily torments a Jew by forcing him to dance in a thicket of thorns. He also insults the Jew, calling him a “dirty dog,” among other things. Later on, a judge doubts that a Jew would ever voluntarily give away money. The Jew in the story turns out to be a thief and is hanged. In “The Good Bargain” a Jewish man is likewise portrayed as a penny-pinching swindler. During the Third Reich, the Nazis adopted the Grimms’ tales for propaganda purposes. They claimed, for instance, that Little Red Riding Hood symbolized the German people suffering at the hands of the Jewish wolf, and that Cinderella’s Aryan purity distinguished her from her mongrel stepsisters.
Incest
In “All-Kinds-of-Fur” a king promises his dying wife that he will only remarry if his new bride is as beautiful as her. Unfortunately, no such woman exists in the whole world except his daughter, who ends up escaping his clutches by fleeing into the wilderness. While interviewing sources, the Grimms likewise heard versions of a different story–“The Girl Without Hands”–with an incestuous father. Nonetheless, in all editions of their book they recast this father as the devil.
Wicked mothers
Evil stepparents are a dime a dozen in fairy tales, but the Grimms originally included some evil biological mothers as well. In the 1812 version of “Hansel and Gretel,” a wife persuades her husband to abandon their children in the woods because they don’t have enough food to feed them. Snow White also has an evil mother, who at first wishes for and then become infuriated by her daughter’s beauty. The Grimms turned both of these characters into stepmothers in subsequent editions, and mothers have essentially remained off the hook ever since in the retelling of these stories.
https://www.history.com/news/the-dark-side-of-the-grimm-fairy-tales
Dr Victoria Zascavage
Associate Professor of Special Education
Xavier University
September 2014
… Normalcy must constantly be enforced in public venues … creating and bolstering its image by processing, comparing, constructing, deconstructing images of normalcy and the abnormal. (Davis 23) Born in Hanau in the principality of Hesse-Kassel during the later part of the 18th century, the brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, were graduates of the University of Marburg. Originally referred to as Children's and Household Tales, the Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales are rich with imagination, triumph, valor, honor, and wonders of the supernatural. The tales are also dark with graphic depictions of torture, cannibalism, incest, cruelty, seduction, abandonment, and vindictiveness. In the preface to the first edition of the Children's and Household Tales, Wilhelm Grimm reflecting on the “universal truth” of the tales stated:
The tales live on in such a way that no one thinks about whether they are good or bad, poetic or vulgar. We know them and we love them just because we happen to have heard them in a certain way, and we like them without reflecting why (205).
At the turn of the 20th century, Grimm’s Children's and Household Tales had been part of the Prussian and German principalities teaching curriculum for over 30 years (Zipes, Introduction, xxxxiii). The first English translation of the Children's and Household Tales occurred in the late 1800s. In a 1993 compilation of the Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales (Grimm), published by Barnes and Nobels Books in collaboration with Doubleday Publishing House, there are 211 tales taken from the seventh edition (1857) of the Children's and Household Tales. The 1857 version is the last and “authoritative” version of the tales, representing the additions and deletions made by the brothers Grimm.
Criticism and discussion of the tales have centered on areas concerning gender role expectations (Robbins 109), child abuse (Zipes, Introduction, xxxiv), incest (Tartar 8), cannibalism (Tartar 3), infanticide (Tartar 5), and antiSemitism (Tartar 21) .There have been few authors in the 21st century specifically addressing issues of violence, child abuse, or abandonment of characters portrayed as mentally incompetent, blind, medically fragile, or physically different in the Grimm’s folk tales.
In revisiting the images of the Grimm’s tales as “archetypes that augment and explain our experience” whose “background status” has been unquestioned as a “universal truth” (Frank 243), there is an opportunity to reflect on the historical roots of the image and expectations of those considered to be different or exceptional. Scholars dedicated to the analysis of Grimm’s, such as Jack Zipes, contend that the tales through depictions of families that faced starvation, children abandoned, and consequential exploitation of the desperate or different, may very well reflect the lived experience and social attitudes of the “family in the eighteen and nineteenth century” (168).
Within the 211 of the Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales (Grimm), 67 tales have “dramatis personae” who in the 21st-century would be described as an individual with a disability that conforms to a category assigned using the criteria as described by Roger Pierangelo and George Giuliani in the Educator’s Diagnostic Manual of Disabilities and Disorders. This work targets for discussion the most significant of these tales where characters whose characteristics are similar to categories commonly associated with disability are depicted, namely: Vision Impairment, Speech Impairment, Emotional Disorder, Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity, Autism, Learning Disabilities, Orthopedic Impairments, and Other Health Impairments. Gigantism and dwarfism as representations in the Grimm’s tales are primarily imaginary and, therefore, not included in this discussion as to place them in a category such as Orthopedic Impairment or Other Health Impairment is a stretch.
The first focus of this discussion is Grimm characters whose visual impairment is critical to the plot. In the tales of “Cinderella” and “Rapunzel,” the mistreatment of the heroine by exploitation is punished by blindness in what seems to be a justifiable revenge of fate. In “Cinderella” the step-sisters, exploiters, have their eyes plucked out by birds because of their wickedness and falsehood. The tale reminds the reader that blindness is a horrible fate that will destine the evil step-sisters to a life of poverty and penance.
In “Rapunzel” the prince falls into the thorns and is blinded, destined to wander without hope, hungry and impoverished as a consequence of his unwedded intimacy and exploitation of Rapunzel’s innocence. His sight is restored by Rapunzel’s tears of forgiveness, and he opens his eyes to see his two children. Both tales reinforce the image of vision impairment, blindness, resulting directly from the deliberate exploitation of another through actions that are based on selfishness, deceit, and immorality. Both tales speak to the folk perception of the times, which equated sinful action with a visual impairment or blindness, a condition that will most certainly lead to poverty, disenfranchisement, and disrespect within the community.
Read the full article in International Journal of Humanities and Social Science HERE.
Alan Hodkinson and Jemma Park
Centre for Cultural and Disability Studies,
Faculty of Education,
Liverpool Hope University,
Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Corresponding Author: Alan Hodkinson
Email: hodkina@hope.ac.uk
Abstract The research examined the cultural construction of disability found within children’s traditional fairy tales that are employed to support the English National Curriculum. The study employed proto text analysis, a meta-analysis process which combines textual analysis, critical discourse analysis and semiotics, to uncover the hidden representations and stereotypes relating to disability that were contained within well-known children’s fairy tales. The study, which examined five story books in detail, found consistent themes which included normalcy, the emphasis on the ‘perfect’ physical appearance, exclusion, avoidance and portrayal of the disabled character as an ‘object of evil’ as well as the employment of the ‘happily ever after’ story ending. The research concludes these children’s fiction books, commonly employed to support the English National Curriculum, are problematic in terms of how they represent disability. The authors argue that this form of children’s literature is introducing young children to ableist assumptions and oppressive attitudes towards disability which we suggest could be a factor in why these attitudes are replicated within society.
Click HERE to read the full article.
By Harvard professor Maria Tatar, editor, translator and annotator of the bicentennial edition of The Annotated Brothers Grimm
1. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm didn’t intend their collection of fairy tales to be for children at all. It was part of a scholarly project to identify and preserve the true spirit of the Germanic people.
2. But Edgar Taylor, an Englishman, translated and published the stories in England in 1823, where kids loved them. German Popular Stories was so popular it inspired the Grimms to edit their collection for family reading. The rest is history: today their stories underpin literary and popular culture in the western world.
3. The Grimms didn’t wander the countryside, braving woods and weather to glean tales from peasants in crumbling hovels. Their sources were mostly educated, middle-class women who were especially good raconteurs. Many came to the Grimms’ home and recounted stories in genteel comfort, except for one retired soldier, who told his in exchange for old clothes.
4. The Grimms kept adding to and editing the collection, publishing a final, seventh edition in 1857. It’s the basis for most versions of Grimms tales published today and contains 210 stories. As well as the familiar magical stories, it also has many cautionary and religious tales, jokes and fables.
5. Once they saw their collection would become popular family reading, the brothers made them more suitable for a respectable middle-class audience. One of the first things Wilhelm did was take out the sexy bits. In the first edition of Rapunzel, it’s Rapunzel’s pregnancy that alerts the witch to her princely visitor. “Tell me, Godmother, why my clothes are so tight and they don’t fit me any longer,” she says. By the seventh edition, there’s no allusion to Rapunzel’s sexual activity: “Tell me, Godmother, why is it that you are so much harder to pull up than the young prince?”
6. One of the stories the Grimms eliminated after their first edition was Hans Dumm, a about a man who has the power to make women pregnant simply by wishing them so.
7. The Grimms changed the stories in other ways, too, adding Christian references and folksy expressions, and emphasizing gender roles their audience would approve. They elaborated on and expanded scenes of violence, often choosing versions with nastier, rather than nicer, endings.
8. In some versions of Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin escapes on a flying ladle or even just runs off, as he does in Grimms first edition. In the 1857 edition, however, he screams and “in his rage he stamped his right foot so hard that it went into the ground right up to his waist. Then in his fury he seized his left foot with both hands and tore himself in two.”
9. In the French Cinderella, Cinderella forgives her stepsisters and finds good husbands for them. Not so in the Grimms version. First, both sisters cut off parts of their feet to fit them into the shoe, and the prince only notices they’re not the right girls when a dove tells him there’s blood dripping. When at last the prince finds Cinderella, doves peck out the stepsisters’ eyes.
To read the rest of the list, click HERE.
https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2012/11/10/grimms_fairy_tales_20_things_you_didnt_know.html
Everyone knows the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the young girl who is tasked with delivering a basket of goods to her grandmother’s house. On her way, she is distracted by a wolf who engages her in conversation. Before she knows it, the wolf convinces her to deviate from her original plan, nearly resulting in the death of both her and her grandmother. While disaster was averted by the presence of a brave woodsman, Red Riding Hood never accomplished her intended goal, and the outcome may have been different had she kept her eyes on the prize.
Moral: Always keep your focus on the task at hand. Don’t allow distractions to sway you from your ultimate goal.
Be Cautious of Whom You Do Business With – Rumpelstiltskin
In order to save her life, a miller’s daughter is forced to enter into a verbal contract with an impish man who agrees to help her fulfill a contract she made with the king. She agrees to give the man her first-born child if he is able to weave straw into gold. She later reneges on her part of the agreement and in the end, Rumpelstiltskin dies. In this particular story, both the miller’s daughter and Rumpelstiltskin are to blame. Neither party conducted a background screening on the other. Had they each gained insight into the other’s previous business dealings, it may have saved them from making further harmful decisions.
Moral: Consider a background check before entering into a business transaction with anyone. It could just save you from making bad business deals that you’ll later regret.
A Person’s Age Does Not Determine Their Abilities – Hansel and Gretel
Poor Hansel and Gretel overhear their father and stepmother conspiring to abandon them in the woods. While the parents assume the children won’t remember their way home, Hansel shows resourcefulness by leaving a trail of breadcrumbs showing the way, but his plan is foiled by hungry birds. While lost in the woods, Hansel and Gretel are kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch who imprisons them. Once again, Hansel and Gretel use their problem-solving skills to trick the witch into climbing into the oven where they trap her, thus saving their own lives, as well as those of future children. Had the witch given the children more credit, she may have survived and continued to lure children into her gingerbread house of horrors.
Moral: It’s not wise to underestimate a person based on their age. Remember, you can learn something from everyone around you.
Overly Demanding Bosses Can Drive Your Best Talent Away – Cinderella
Sweeping, mopping, dusting, cleaning, cooking, serving, sewing and tending to the farm animals – these are just a few of the duties that are assigned to Cinderella by her horrendous stepmother. Additionally, her two evil stepsisters berate Cinderella on a daily basis. It’s no wonder that she seeks happiness elsewhere. Her stepmother’s misguided micromanagement leaves Cinderella feeling the need to escape her stressful life, even if only for an evening. Had Cinderella’s stepmother treated her fairly and provided her with a friendly work environment and some decision-making freedom, she may not have felt the need to escape.
Moral: Trust your employees to do their job without hanging over their shoulder to ensure work gets done. By showing them respect and trust, they will be more likely to work not to lose it.
Author: Kara Singh is the Social Media Manager for Insperity Recruiting Services. She has over nine years of experience in recruiting and seven years of experience in sourcing and social media. You can connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
https://theundercoverrecruiter.com/business-lessons-grimm-brothers/