Grimm's Grimmest

I don't know about you, but when it comes to reading new fairy tales, sometimes it can be intimidating to pull out a large copy of an edition of Grimms' complete fairy tales. Where to even start? It's not the sort of book you usually read cover to cover.

In fact, my copy of complete Grimm tales I use mainly for reference. I find it helpful to discover books in which tales are separated by categories such as themes or country of origin, which is why I was pleased to discover Grimm's Grimmest, edited by Marisa Bulzone, in my library. Not only did it introduce me to several tales I wasn't as familiar with alongside some of the classics, but the best part was the introduction by Maria Tatar.

She provides a little history of the Grimms and their process of collecting but also editing the tales to suit, what was then, modern tastes. Although the Grimms (and the general culture of the time) abhorred any mention of sexuality or pregnancy, altering the tales to remove such references, they actually tended to increase the violence when it was part of a character's punishment. Seemingly shocking and harsh punishments for what we might consider to be small misdemeanors were characteristic of not only the Grimms' collection but other children's literature of the time, such as Strewwelpeter.

Page from the book-Illustrations by Tracy Arah Dockray

For example, the short and haunting story "The Willful Child" would have been more or less typical fare for the time:

Image

Once upon a time there was a child who was willful and would not do what her* mother wished. For this reason, God had no pleasure in her, and let her become ill. No doctor could do her any good, and in a short time the child lay on her deathbed.

When she had been lowered into her grave, and the earth was spread over her, all at once her little arm came out again and reached upward. And when they had pushed it back in the ground and spread fresh earth over it, it was all to no purpose, for the arm always came out again.

Then the mother herself was obliged to go to the grave and strike the arm with a rod. When she had done that, the arm was drawn in, and at last the child had rest beneath the ground.


*In the introduction, Tatar clarifies that in the German, the child is given no specific gender

Tatar also cited psychology and the fact that "children are rarely squeamish when they hear about decapitation or other forms of mutilation. Typical Saturday morning cartoon fare shows that grisly episodes often strike them as hilarious rather than horrifying." It's true that some of the stories, even with their gruesome aspects, I found mostly entertaining, such as "The Three Army Surgeons." Yet others were truly hard to read-I don't think anyone can read "The Willful Child" above and not find it disturbing on some level (and this collection didn't even include "How Children Played Butcher with Each Other," which I find the most horrifying).

For while we tend to think of fairy tales as simple, sweet children's stories, Tatar reminds us that they are also the precursors to other genres, such as urban legends and horror.

Yet, there are different categories when we look at violence in tales. There is violence that is punishment for a truly horrible villain-which we tend to be more comfortable with; children in America are familiar with the scene in which Gretel pushes the witch into the oven, whereas we have largely forgotten some tales that are still part of general knowledge in Germany today, such as "Juniper Tree" which involves a mother decapitating her son and feeding his flesh to her unknowing husband (and, another perfect example of cultural differences in approaching fairy tales!).

Tracy Arah Dockray-illustration for "Juniper Tree"

Then, sometimes, the protagonist is treated cruelly by the villain. This elicits sympathy from the reader and further establishes which characters we're rooting for and which ones we're against, and many of our most loved heroines in American culture fit into this category-Snow White and Cinderella, for example.

Then there's a different sort of story in which the violence doesn't seem to serve a purpose at all. In tales like "The Death of the Little Hen," the stories lead from one tragedy to another, with no happy ending. They seem pointless and depressing, but Tatar reminds us that if nothing else, these tales point to the harsh cruelties of peasant existence, where diseases spread rampant, mothers often died in childbirth, and poor harvest meant going truly hungry. Fairy tales blend truth with hope. Although the common perception is that fairy tales are all hope and no truth, that's a misconception; but it would also be misleading to present all Grimm tales as the creepy, depressing ones found in this volume either. We can point to the darker aspects of fairy tales but they are not the complete picture.

Albert Weisgerber-"The Death of the Little Red Hen"

I have to point out though-I was very disappointed that the book jacket description claims that the Grimms' "Aschenputtel" was "the original Cinderella story." It's a common thing to mistake Grimm tales for "original," but for someone responsible for creating a book description to make such a gross error, especially when Perrault's version is not only older, but arguably more famous? Whoever wrote it clearly didn't read Tatar's introduction, which not only referenced Perrault's "Cinderella" (with the year, 1697), but compared and contrasted the Grimms' version with Cinderella tales from around the world-some of which show forgiveness for the stepsisters and some of which are incredibly violent in their punishments. On the one hand this shows that violence is not limited to German or Grimm tales, but on the other it shows that violent aspects are not necessary for the tale type.

Maria Tatar in Faerie Magazine

I bought a subscription to Faerie Magazine years ago and I'm not sure how long I'm going to keep getting them for, but there is a new issue out. When I flip through, I'm always a little confused at how random some of the articles are. With such a specific reader base-those who are interested in faeries and lore-why have such generalized topics such as spring umbrellas, berry pie, 10 ways to laugh more, and ways to spend a rainy day? There is also some fairy fiction scattered throughout. I remember one past issue had an article on cotton, which I never understood.

Not to bash the magazine or anything. Beautiful pictures, and some people would enjoy being inspired by faerie-like things, but I personally would prefer something a little more academic overall.

But every issue has one article which I find really interesting. This time it was an interview with Maria Tatar, well-known fairy tale scholar and author. I like everything I've read by her and have great respect for her opinions. In addition, I found the questions they asked to be very relevant-topics that have gotten a lot of discussion on this blog and others, and are very pertinent for our culture. Tatar talks about her favorite tales, the issue of the violence in tales, advice for parents reading fairy tales to their children, the appeal of mermaids, and the overall popularity the tales have in today's culture/Hollywood. Her answers were succinct and yet managed to address each topic well.

Here's an excerpt:
"Faerie Magazine: How do you account for the recent surge of fairy tale-related movies and television shows and books? Why are we reconnecting with fairy tales now?
Maria Tatar: Culture is marked by crisis, and every age is seen as a time of turmoil...In times of crisis, we need the consolations of imagination more than ever-in particular the tried and true. Everything feels unstable these days...It's comforting to go back to stories from the culture of childhood or from the childhood of culture. These are the stories told by our ancestors, and they are also the tales we grew up with. And they are compact and action-packed. They give us small doses of large effects. We have never stopped refashioning fairy tales, but it's more obvious today than it was fifty years ago...We now understand that Disney appropriated the tales for a time, but they have always circulated in popular culture-now we own up to it."

The problems with trying to find morals in fairy tales

In Maria Tatar's Off With Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, she has a very interesting section on Beauties and Beasts, analyzing different types of Animal Bridegroom tales. Often, modern interpretations of tales such as Cupid and Psyche and Beauty and the Beast criticize the tales for what seem to be misogynist messages: "Never once do these stories show a heroine making a move in the direction of autonomy-the tales ceaselessly turn on the question of retargeting the object of the woman's devotion [from her father to her lover]." Tatar points out that women are expected to love because of duty and not passions, yet men rarely have the same standards applied to them.

Yet I have a very strong connection to the story of Beauty and the Beast and love the fact that Beauty learns to love someone despite how he looks-not because she's a woman, but because she's human. Many critics of the woman's expectation to accept whatever she's given are also under the impression that all Beasts are evil as well as ugly, a trend popularized by Disney, but this was never the case before (with the Marianna and Mercer Mayer picture book being the only exeption as far as I'm aware). As a single tale I think it's a beautiful, powerful, and challenging story, and yet if you look at the pattern of the tales told through history, you do notice disturbing trends. Cupid and Psyche especially is very condeming of feminine curiosity-Psyche is severely punished for looking upon Cupid, but who can blame a woman for wanting to look at her husband? Tatar points out that Psyche's act reveals she wants enlightenment-knowledge of her husband that goes beyond carnal (he's been visiting her every night and performing his husbandly duties under the mask of darkness). You would think this would be encouraged, but it proves to set off the chain of events that make Psyche miserable for years as she has to earn back her husband-another source of grief for modern people who loathe the implication that a woman's life should revolve around the man.




I'm still wrestling with the concept of how much you can condemn one tale for fitting into a pattern. Literary collections of tales, like Apuleius' "The Golden Asse", from which Cupid and Psyche comes, or the Grimms, have a direct source you can point to who had their own agenda. But folklore itself-those fairy tales that are supposedly handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth-have no one responsible for their messages and meanings other than collective humanity. It's just kind of sad that your appreciation of a tale can be diminished by knowing that it can be offensive, simply because it suggests things when studied alongside other similar tales.


But Tatar concludes with some very interesting observations that are important to keep in mind when studying fairy tales-you can't take fairy tales too seriously because even within one tale they will contradict themselves. Tatar says, "The many variants of 'The Search for the Lost Husband' remind us of the strength of children's fairy tales as moral magnets, picking up bits and pieces, if never entire blocks, of a value system. But since fairy tales seem to resist wholesale assimilation of a moral outlook or ethical orientation, they tend to offer mixed signals about the way to get ahead. One tale may impart a critique of dishonesty at the same time that it shows a boy defeating his enemies by cheating them. While it is tempting to look for a certain consistency in a tale's moral code (particularly since so many fairy tales have been pressed into service to provide behavioral models), it is rarely possible to find a story that does not encode competing moral claims."


Tatar uses the Grimms' The Frog King as an example. The heroine had to be forced to allow the frog to share her plate and bed even though she had given him her word, violently throws him against a wall, and ends up marrying the handsome Prince he becomes. Tatar's words: she is "selfish, greedy, ungrateful, and cruel, and in the end she does as well for herself as all the modest, obedient, magnanimous, and compassionate Beauties of 'The Search for the Lost Husband.'"' She contrasts this with a similar tale from England where the girl does obey each of the frog's requests, as her stepmother forces her to. The frog even asks that she chop off his head, and after hesitating she still obeys but still ends up with the same result. Tatar says that the tale could be meant to be humorous, as if obeying the commands of a villain would lead to a happy ending. In many fairy tales, whether you obey or violate a command, you get the same results.

Katharine Cameron

And remember that the fairy tales versions we are familiar with, especially from the Victorian period, were specifically written to be moral guidelines for children, therefore inserting messages in where they weren't before and sometimes contradict the actual facts of the story. But these messages we grew up with become embedded in the meaning of the tales in our minds and it's hard to see them as meaning anything different-but fairy tales can be read multiple ways. Though Tatar concludes that though Cupid and Psyche does have an unfortunate message of rewarding female self-sacrifice while condemning attempts at enlightenment, "it also celebrates the revelatory power of curiosity, the way in which the desire for knowledge of the beloved can deepen passion to turn it into love."

Maria Tatar: Off With Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood

To sum up this book very quickly: Life in the Victorian times sucked if you were a woman or child because men had complete authority. The fairy tales collected and published during this time were not the "authentic" versions of the tales, as we often think they are today, but altered from the oral tales to encourage complete submission to authority (children to adults, women to men.)

First of all, let me preface by saying: I've heard feminist arguments before that I thought were weak and/or failed to take into account the culture and context in which the tales were created. Things like "the fact that Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are in coma-like-death clearly indicates that men want their women passive." Which I didn't buy into. First of all, a couple tales in which women are immobile for a while doesn't indicate that those circumstances are set as the ideal for all women everywhere. Secondly, the sleep is clearly a curse, not the desired state of being. The happy ending occurs only after the heroine has been awakened, therefore giving mixed signals at best.

Another slightly better argument I've heard: "Since females in fairy tales do domestic chores and then have a happy ending, this means that domesticity is a trait of the desirable female in the eyes of the storyteller." But again, nearly always, the chores are represented as an undeserved punishment imposed by (usually) a cruel mother/stepmother. The happy ending includes the female, generally, as married to a Prince and therefore never in need of doing housework again. But consider it as well in the context of the culture--in a time when most people were living off the land, women did housework. Housework itself is not demoralizing or degrading, someone has to do it. I think it totally natural that women would pass the time cooking or cleaning by telling stories and imagining that someone hardworking like them would be rewarded so richly. Plus, at the time, men weren't going into the office and leaving all the chores to the women, they were probably working in the fields or doing their part to supply the family with their needs. But the interesting thing about this argument is the fact that there is a notable lack of males who ever do their own chores in tales. Males tend to go on supernatural quests, while females end up doing chores somewhere in their adventure. But one more thing--Cinderella often gets accused of being too passive. But what options did she have? She couldn't go out, get a GED, and work her way through school. Back then women could be wives, be servants, be a teacher if they were educated themselves, or be prostitutes. Those were pretty much their only options. If Cinderella had run away, it would have been to be a servant to someone else who probably would have treated her about the same.

All that to say, I think Maria Tatar has the best arguments I've read to describe the reality of gender roles in folktales. She does take into account the cultural context, and also analyzes the trend of the tales through different cultures and time periods, rather than picking apart details of a certain version and assigning them meaning, even if it's a meaning most educated people wouldn't necessarily pick up on, much less uneducated peasants telling tales among themselves.

Chapters 1-4

The Victorian age witnessed the birth of children's literature as its own genre. Stories for children were made specifically to induce fear of disobeying. While this summary may not seem to surprising--as an educator myself, I know firsthand the need for obedience in the classroom--but the many specific examples she quotes of excerpts from literature or actual childrearing practice are shocking. In stories, one disobedient act by a child would be punished by often a painful death, if not the deaths of others around them. Parents were encouraged to beat and whip their children for mild offenses, even infants. Tatar gives examples of oral fairy tales, and then the written Victorian versions (mainly the Grimms), and it's clear that the tales were altered to fit in with this harsh trend in childrearing. (What I really wish someone would publish is the complete original notes the Grimms took while listening to their oral sources, then the first edition, and the subsequent versions, to trace the evolution even within the Grimms themselves. Some revisions are surprising, but some tales have very little editing.)

Tatar also refers often to Maurice Sendak as a more modern contrast to the Grimms, which was very enlightening, since I was only familiar with his "Where the Wild Things Are."

From chapter 4-"This simple fact of children's literature as a product of adult reconstructions of childhood's realities does much to unravel on of the mysteries of fairy tales...whenever a book is written by adults for children, there is a way in which it becomes relentlessly educational" (p.92)

Chapters 5-7

The next section of the book deals with women and girls. I had known life wasn't ideal for women in Victorian times, but the more I learn the more horrified I am. Women now tend to long for the old-fashioned man with manners and chivalry, and I think we think every man back in the day was a Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." I've always preferred the Bronte sisters to Jane Austen--their novels introduce a slightly darker side to Victorian life. Especially Anne Bronte's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," the lesser known of the Bronte novels, but probably more indicative of what life was really like for a typical woman. If anyone wants to learn about life for women in Victorian times through a novel, read this book. Warning: you will get very angry while reading this book.

That had nothing to do with Tatar, by the way. Tatar again cites cultural views of women and their role, as well as lesser-known tales and versions to give a more complete picture. Like children in the didactic tales, women are often severely punished for things like disobeying their husbands. "Even the harshest penalties remain unchallenged when women begin breaking all the rules in the book of feminine behavior by taking steps in the direction of acquiring knowledge and power" (p.119). Males actually get off pretty easily for more severe sins--think of the father in Donkeyskin, most versions of that tale end with the Princess reconciled and living happily with him. Daughters are expected to be completely devoted to their fathers, then transfer that total (even blind) devotion to their husband--while, of course, still remaining on good, obedient terms with their father. "Never once do these stories show a heroine making a move in the direction of autonomy--the tales ceaselessly turn on the question of retargeting the object of the woman's devotion."

Tatar points out a very interesting contradiction existing in most tales--characters are applauded for disdaining worldy wealth and then rewarded with...worldly wealth. I had noticed this in "Beauty and the Beast," that the sister that wants a simple rose rather than the jewels and expensive clothes of her sisters is given more dresses and jewels than she could ever wear, as well as a complete life of luxury. Tatar explains this as the affect of didactic morals being placed into a tale that was not originally didactic, therefore has competing messages. I definitely agree, but I think another way to view this would be to think of the riches (or even the handsome prince at the end of Beauty and the Beast) as symbolic: to those who appreciate the simple things in life and are content rather than always wanting more, those simple things provide genuine pleasure. The Beast, which is initally seen as ugly, ceases to be ugly once Beauty gets to know him because she sees the beauty of his character.

Chapters 8-10-Violence, Cannibalism, and the Juniper Tree

Tatar explores the surprising amount of violence found in most tales, especially the un-moralized oral tales, but also the extemity of the violence found in moralizing tales when punishing the villain. Food itself also plays a very significant role in folktales. Tatar again alludes to culture--to a people often exposed to starvation, infant deaths, deaths of mothers giving birth, and child abandonment, some of the more dark themes explored in fairy tales make more sense. Returning again to the subject of gender roles, she talks about how a "happy ending" often consists of father and children living happily without the mother. A lot of this could be attributed to the reality of stepmothers stepping in after a mother had died in childbirth, who would desire for her own children to have what inheritance there was. Or, it could be attributed to the fact that these tales were largely collected and published by men, who felt more comfortable with female than male villains.

The epilogue contains a very interesting critique of Disney's "Snow White." I don't think Disney consciously knew he was, as Tatar claims, creating "a complete absorption of maternal figures into the realm of evil" (232)--as Tatar does point out, he was really just following the trend the Grimms before him paved the way for. And for those who attack Disney as being chauvenist, while there are good arguments against him, consider again the context--Snow White came out in the 1930s, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty in the 1950s. American notions towards women were very different then than they are now. Not that that completely excuses Disney, but people back then weren't aware of what messages they were implying as much as they are today.

To close, a quote from the epilogue:

"No fairy tale text is sacred. Every printed version is just another variation on a theme--the rewriting of a cultural story in a certain time and place for a specific audience." (229)