Fairy Tales

Originally, fairy tales were oral stories for a dual or primarily adult audience. They serve some of the same functions that folklore does today, along with some others:

Functions of fairy tales:   
      --to entertain people engaged in mundane household tasks
      --to convey and preserve cultural values
      --to teach about taboo subjects, like sex and violence
      --to help children get a handle on their unspoken fears
      --to set up models of personal development, and to give hope in difficult circumstances

General problems/complaints with fairy tales:
     --they reinforce negative gender stereotypes for both men and women
     --they often emphasize lying and trickery as part of the road to success
     --they are often sexual and very violent
     --they present marriage as the only possibility for "happily ever after"
     --they emphasize negative views about love (based on physical beauty and instant) and marriage (for money, prestige)

Points to ponder:
    --Bettelheim suggests that purging children's stories of violence and evil villains makes them think that the violent urges they experience are abnormal. If stories insist that all people are inherently good, and the child has feelings that he or she knows are bad, he or she feels that he or she must be monstrous.
    --Children are very aggressive as they go through stages of separating from their parents. They have lots of fears and anxieties that they need to release. Stories help them do that in fantasy.  Without stories, how will they release those aggressions?

Little Red Riding Hood is often read as a tale of a girl experimenting with sexual behavior.  The endings of the tales reveal how the author or the culture that supported the tale felt about women and sex. In "The Story of Old Grandmother," for instance, the girl is clever and resourceful, a flirt who knows her limits. But in Perrault's tale, Little Red Cap is condemned for her behavior. She wears a red hat, which indicates that she is of low moral character, and she unwisely leads the wolf on, and is killed for her behavior. The tale ends with a warning that doesn't make men look very good either.  The Grimm brothers extend their message of punishment for disobedience by writing in a lot more rules for Little Red to break. But they also extend mercy in that they let her be rescued. So while some men may be wolves, others are kind and gentle. But all little girls are still disobedient and stupid. Contemporary versions make fun of the story itself. What does that say about our culture?

An alternate reading of Red Riding Hood is less about sex and more about fears of being devoured.  The mother/daughter/grandmother relationship is emphasized, with the daughter carrying food from one to the other, thus entering her primary role of being a food provider. But this role, absent any other, puts her at risk to being equated with food itself.  It's not very uplifting, but if you think about it, it's her obedience to her mother to take the food in the first place that puts her at risk. So obedient or not, women end up being vulnerable to being consumed.

Hansel and Gretel

   In order to prepare for questions on Hansel and Gretel, I'd suggest that you reread Bruno Bettelheim's article on the story.

Alternately, a Jungian interpretation would emphasize that each character of a fairy tale represents aspects of a single personality.  So the qualities of cleverness and bravery shown by Hansel, and the resourcefulness, kindness and fear of Gretel, the greed and cruelty of the mother and the passivity and weakness of the father are all aspects inside the same person. They struggle with one another, and certain portions need to be de-emphasized (greed, cruelty) while other emphasized (resourcefulness, loyalty), but none ever really go away.  For instance, if Gretel hadn't had a bit of her mother's cruelty, she couldn't have pushed the witch into the fire, and if they hadn't had a bit of her greed, they wouldn't have taken the jewels.