Fairy TalesStudy Guide pp.45-66

3. ‘ONCE UPON A TIME ….’• Fairy tales have their origins in oral tradition of folk tales

for adults & children.• Fairy tales have been identified as CL since the 18th c.• They extend across the oral & the literary & have played

an important role in the emergence of CL.• They have long existed b/w literature for adults &

literature for children.• They were told and retold & re-imagined throughout

centuries, changing along with historical & cultural contexts.

• More than any other form of literature, that is now regarded as being for children, they have been the subject of much debate, analysis & controversy.

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What are fairy tales ?• Fairy tales were published in Italy in 1550, & by 1560

similar tales appeared in France, including a variation of ‘Puss in Boots.’

• One of the most famous collections of early fairy tales was published in Paris in 1697 by Charles Perrault, called ‘Tales & stories of the Past, with Morals’ & given the subtitle ‘Tales of Mother Goose.’

• This book includes many fairy tales still known & read today like ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, & ‘Cinderella.’

• In England, such tales were originally circulated via chapbooks.

• They were rewritten in the simplest of language for children to understand easily. 3

• As population became more literate, many more versions were published, the most famous being those compiled by brothers Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm who published a collection of stories in German called ‘Grimms’ Fairy Tales’ in 1812.

• Over centuries such tales have proved to be infinitely adaptable & children today may learn them from Walt Disney’s films, rather than from parents, but the key elements in their stories & structures remain intact.

* Activity 1.18 p: 46• Jack Zipes : one of the most widely published academics

writing on fairy tales.• Jack Zipes’s essay in Reader: ‘Origins: fairy tales & folk tales’

Zipes sets out the history of fairy tales, looking at how oral tales were written down & turned into literature, & how tales travelled across linguistic & national borders.

• The question of what fairy tales are for is a difficult one, the answer to which has changed over time.

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• Zipes argues that, originally, these stories were written without a moral purpose & for the amusement of adults.

• Often bawdy (rude) & scatological (obscene), they did not necessarily serve a function other than to amuse their audience.

• It was only in 1820s that they began to be seen as particularly suitable for children because they bridged the gap b/w instruction & delight.

• While children may not always have understood their implicit meanings, there was a clear meaning to them that was approved of by adults.

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• Since this essay appeared in ‘The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature’, he has gone on to examine why fairy tales ‘stick’ throughout centuries.

• He argues that there is no such thing as a ‘pure’ fairy tale & no easily identifiable oral tradition.

• He claims that all fairy tales (& folk tales) have been ‘contaminated …. through cross-cultural & intercultural exchange, thereby producing endless versions of the same story.

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• Zipes focuses particularly on the question why we respond to classical tales almost as if we were born with them, and yet we know well that they are socially produced and induced, and continue to be generated this way through different forms of mass media.

• He answers this question by drawing on the work of biologist Richard Dawkins & his concept of ‘meme.’

• He argues that a fairy tale can be understood as a meme or ‘an informational pattern contained in a human brain (or in artifacts as books or pictures) & stored in its memory, capable of being copied to another individual’s brain that will store it & replicate it.’

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• Like Dawkins, Zipes proposes that memes replicate themselves through social body like viruses in human body; like viruses they mutate depending on host, some elements will no longer be relevant & will die off while others continue to thrive.

• Zipes suggests that fairy tales are designed to turn children into the sort of adults their societies need & value.

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Defining fairy talesFairy tales have the following features: • Simplistic / stock characters/ powerful plot drive/

repetition of key phrases like ‘once upon a time’ or ‘they lived happily ever after’/ particular characters like wicked stepmother, prince in disguise or hero setting out on a quest, are all instantly recognizable/ lack of a specified, realistic setting/

*These features immediately classify the story as a children’s fairy tale.Fairy tales are more than just the sum of their parts,

& definition of fairy tales remains contested & sometimes controversial. 9

• One of the most obvious & easiest question to deal with when studying fairy tales is whether they have to have fairies in them, a question to which almost all commentators would answer ‘No.’

• Angela Carter in the introduction to The Virago Book of Fairy Tales: (refer p.47).

• A more difficult question is “Are fairy tales the same as folk tales?”. Again most scholars would say not, although fairy tales are part of folklore, but not all folk tales are fairy tales.

• See below Marcia Lane & J.R.R Tolkien on fairy tales (Refer p: 48).

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• Marcia Lane : fairy tales have a sense of numinous (magic), feeling or sensation of supernatural or mysterious.

• A story that happens in the past tense/ a story not tied to any specifics/ If it happens ‘at the beginning of the world’ it is a myth/ A story that names a specific ‘real’ person is a legend/ A story that happens in the future is fantasy/ Fairy tales are sometimes spiritual, but never religious.

• J.R.R Tolkien : [F]airy-stories are not in normal English usage stories about fairies or elves but stories about Fairy, ie; Faerie, realm or state in which fairies have their being. Faerie contains many things besides elves & fays, & besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons…. (p:48)

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• According to Tolkien, all fairy tales have the same elements of fantasy, recovery and consolation.

• Although fairy tales deal with worlds that are unlikely or that contain fantastic elements, magic must be treated as real.

• He saw as central to fairy tales the element of ‘recovery’, which enables readers to see the world differently, and thereby to review their own world through perspective on another & change their own assumptions accordingly.

• He emphasized consolation of ‘Faerie.’ He recognized the pleasure these stories give to their readers but argued that they go beyond escapism, eventually bringing moral & emotional consolation, which he called ‘Eucatastrophe.’ He argued that ‘happily ever after’ is not simply a standard phrase but a glimpse of this consolation. 12

Activity 1.19 : Recognizing fairy tales.• 2 short stories that contain some common elements of

fairy tales: Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess on the Pea” and “The old woman and the spirit” story told by people called Trio collected by Koelewijn & Riviere

• These are 2 very different stories, but both contain elements that make them fairy tales. Neither mentions fairies but have elements of Faerie about them. They deal with fantastic, yet both are realistic in their own terms & have an internal logic & consistency.

• Both are set in the realm of mythic time: the ‘once’ of the first & ‘long ago’ of the second.

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• Both tales end happily. Both stories have characters that may have thought classified them as folk tales. Both stories differ from conventional fairy tales.

• “The Princess on the Pea” was probably not part of oral tradition. It was written for educated elite who had access to books.

• The Trio tale ‘The Old Man and The Spirit’ is part of an oral tradition of a non-literate people. It is not a fairy tale but a reflection of Trio cosmology & belief systems. The Trio believe in a world of invisible spirits that take variety of forms & humans need to be on their guard against such spirits. 14

• Andrew Lang : anthropologist who collected fairy tales from around the world & published them in a series of 12 different coloured books, starting with Blue Fairy Book (1899) & ending with Lilac Fairy Book (1910).

• As series developed, Lang took stories from India, Africa, Asia, and from aboriginal communities of Australia.

• He called these ‘folk tales’ implying a split b/w fairy tales of Europe & folk tales of other places, even though they were all published in books devoted to ‘fairy tales.’

• Split b/w folk & fairy tales was controversial. 15

• Some of Lang’s contemporaries argued that fairy tales were part of folk traditions that should be studied academically, and referring to them as ‘fairy tales’ classifies them as children’s stories, demeaning them & devaluing their meaning.

• The President of Folklore society, Laurence Gomme believed that Fairy tales should not be given to children, but should be studied for what they tell anthropologists & folklorists about ancient cultures & historical heritage of Europeans.

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The purposes of fairy tales • Writing the foreword to the translation of Grimm

brothers’ fairy tales, Victorian critic John Ruskin claimed for them a moral simplicity and nobility that he felt had been lost from other forms of literature for children.

• Ruskin suggested that fairy tales could not only teach children morality but also to cope with inherent unfairness of life and apparently inexplicable (mysterious) reversals of fortune they might suffer in the future.

• Andrew Lang claimed that while tales did have a moral to them and ‘were meant to make their hearers kind, unselfish, courteous, and courageous,’ children actually showed interest in ‘the diversion than [in] the lesson.’17

• In a post-Freudian world, fairy tales are seen as a form of therapy, a way for children to understand and face their fears in a controlled and manageable way. This is a central claim made by Bruno Bettelheim, the Freudian psychoanalyst & author of The Use of Enchantment.

• Bettelheim analyzed the symbolism of fairy tales, & suggested that these symbols were a way of understanding & dealing with traumas of children’s earliest lives.

• C.S.Lewis also believed that fairy tales could help children manage their anxieties.

• Like Ruskin, Lewis suggested that fairy tales allowed children to make sense of a disordered world in which fear could be safely expressed & overcome through these stories. 18

Looking again at ‘Little Red Riding Hood’• One of the most enduring & best known of fairy tales:

‘Little Red Riding Hood’ written by Charles Perrault (1697). It has been retold & re-imagined ever since.

• For Jack Zipes, it is ‘the most popular & certainly most provocative fairy tale in Western world.’

• Zipes has written extensively about variations in tale, & argued that, despite differences across countries, the tale remains at heart patriarchal, politically conservative, reflecting & upholding social values of the most powerful elites.

Activity 1.20 : Analysing 2 traditional versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’

Refer to pp. 55-60 19

• Both stories contain certain key features: girl in red hood (cap), grandmother, wolf; repeated phrases like ‘What big ears you have.’

• In tone & outcome they are very different.• 1st version : does not end happily ever after but with moral

warning that there are various kinds of wolves. Little Red Riding Hood learns her lesson the hard way, and the story ends with her death. The story can be enjoyed as a straightforward tale, but its symbolism suggests other meanings. Its original adult audience were aware of the French slang of that time, which suggest that, a girl who lost her virginity was said to ‘have seen the wolf’ & the word ‘chaperon’ (cap or hood) meant then in French what its derivative ‘chaperone’ means in English – someone or something that guards a girl’s sexual virtue & reputation. (Refer to p. 61)

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• In the Grimms’ story, danger has changed from sex to disobedience. Little Red Cap is explicitly warned about dangers of straying from the path but ignores this caution, thereby placing herself & grandmother in danger. The moral is subtler in the 2nd version. Rather than disobedience bringing death & dishonor, obedience pays & brings its own rewards.

• The Grimm brothers cleaned the tale of much of its sexual & cannibalistic overtones// They emphasised the importance of obedience rather than sexual propriety, although obviously the 2 are connected.

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‘Little Red Riding Hood’ today: feminist & psychoanalytical approaches• ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ remains a popular story to

this day; it is one of the most analysed & studied of all fairy tales, especially by feminist & psychoanalytical critics.

• It has been re-written extensively by women.• Angela Carter’s ‘The Company of Wolves’ (1979) :

the heroine reclaims control of her sexuality & chooses to become a wolf herself.

• Francesca Lia Block in ‘Wolf’ : Little Red Riding Hood is a rape victim who shoots dead her attacker, her mother’s boyfriend, at her grandmother’s house.22

• According to feminist critics, traditional versions of this tale present a reactionary view of women where they are passive & helpless objects of both male lust & male fantasies of rescue.

• Drawing attention to hidden messages of tales, feminist writers tried to reclaim fairy tale as a particular form of women’s culture, where stories were passed from woman to woman until men turned the oral into literary & added a moralistic ending.

• Catherine Orenstein claims that ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ has another history, that it was a story told b/w women & that original versions of the story showed the heroine outwitting the wolf.

• Another prominent way of analyzing ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ in 20th & 21st c has been through psychology & psychoanalysis. 23

• Bruno Bettelheim, basing his argument on Freudian theories, saw ‘Little Red Cap’ as the story of a young girl’s unconscious sexual desire for her father. (Refer to p.62)

• Bettelheim viewed ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ as a symbolic representation of unconscious desires, & emphasized the story’s sexual overtones.

• He draws parallels b/w girl & grandmother being cut out of the wolf, & pregnancy & birth, again suggesting the innately sexual nature of the story to the child.

• He also analyzed the importance of associations b/w sex & death in the child’s mind, & argued that the strength of the story lay in the way it enabled the child’s anxieties about sex & death to be worked through & a resolution to be found. 24

• The fact that the wolf & Little Red Riding Hood end up in bed together before she is devoured is central to Bettelheim’s thesis that children are fascinated by both death & sex, and are in the grip of desires they do not understand yet which scare them.

Activity 1.21 : A contemporary reworking of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’

Refer to pp. 63-64.Activity 1,22 : Visual representations of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’

Refer to pp. 64-66.25