Most people are fascinated by fairy tales and at least
partially aware of the great impact they have on children. What most people do
not know, however, is anything about the history of fairy tales, as Jack Zipes
says in his book Fairy Tales and the Art of
Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization,
“The history of the fairy tale for children is a mystery.” (Zipes 2). This is
unfortunate because the history of fairy tales gives an insight into its great
influence on children today. Essentially, they originally began as vulgar, but
gradually developed into a means of teaching children manners and virtues.
http://hubpages.com/literature/What-is-a-Fairy-Tale
Originally fairy tales came from folk tales, which did
not necessarily teach children virtues. Many of the oldest fairy tales served
to comfort both adults and children as a response to the oppression of human
reality. In the oldest tales there is a general plot where a type of material
hardship exists, and the hero fights and eventually wins power, social
prestige, the woman, and wealth. Town life, industrialization, religion, and
history are omitted, making the story applicable to all lower classes facing
hardships, “The form itself is its meaning, and the historicity of the
individual creator (or creators) and society disappears.” (Zipes 5-6).
Appropriately, peasants were the main carriers of oral folk tales, because they
were most attracted to magical ways of escaping oppression.
Not only did fairy tales mainly serve to comfort, but
rather than serving to teach virtues, often they taught vices. For example, Maria
Tatar writes in her Off With Their
Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, “Although fairy tales
often celebrate such virtues as compassion and humility and show the rewards of
good behavior, they also openly advocate lying, cheating, and stealing.” (Tatar
11). She continues to explain that the heroes and heroines, who are not
necessarily morally good people, always get all the awards while the villains,
who are not necessarily evil, are tortured and destroyed. As an example, the
miller’s daughter in “Rumpelstiltskin” becomes a queen upon marrying a king,
but her means of obtaining this ‘happily ever after’ was by breaking her end of
a bargain. Rumpelstiltskin keeps his end, but perishes. Fairy tales also
contained much vulgar material, portraying bodily functions deemed
inappropriate for children in the twenty-first century. In the Grimm Brothers’
version of “Cinderella” the stepsisters’ cut their heel and toe off. The oldest
versions of “The Three Gifts” show a boy making three wishes, the third being
that whenever his stepmother scowls at him, “her bum might then let go, and
crack like roaring thunder.” (Tatar 4). Frequently images of defecation, sex,
and other bodily functions are also expressed in the oldest folk tales.
Around the seventeenth century, fairy tales evolved to
address children as an audience. Most importantly, lessons of manners and
morals were incorporated into the plots. Tatar testifies, “The moral depravity
of fairy-tale heroes and heroines did not escape the attention of those who had
an audience of children in mind as they prepared volumes of fairy tales for
publication.” (Tatar 11). For example, Jack in “Jack and the Beanstalk” was
modified so that Jack does not steal from the giant, but simply reclaims what
was already his. Zipes also informs us that the French fairy tale writers were
required to incorporate the values of a male-dominated Christian society in
their stories. French fairy tales had to be accepted by the Louis XIV court and
prominent Parisian salons before being distributed to children. Sometimes the
morals taught were written for specific classes; fairy tales written for the
lower classes had to receive approval from Madame de Maintenon and Fenelon so
that the servants’ productivity and ideas could be “exploited.” (Zipes 3). When
Europe experienced a capitalist period, folk tales were transformed from a
matriarchal view into a patriarchal view before being distributed to children,
as Zipes explains:
“That is, by the time the oral folk tales, originally
stamped by matriarchal mythology, circulated in the Middle Ages, they had been
transformed in different ways: the goddess became a witch, evil fairy, or
stepmother; the active, young princess was changed into an active hero;
matrilineal marriage and family ties became patrilineal; the essence of the
symbols, based on matriarchal rites, was depleted and made benign…” (Zipes 7).
Another important modification of fairy
tales is that images that were deemed too inappropriate for children were
removed, although some frightening images remained so as to entertain and
frighten the children. After all, “What child is not mesmerized by the sight of
the burning dresses, lopped-off thumbs, and tormented animals in Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter, a book whose appeal can
be traced not just to the need of parents to coerce their children into docile
behavior, but also to the desire of children to hear stories as sensational in
their own way…” (Tatar 12-13). After removal of vulgar material as well as
addition of moral lessons, fairy tales became acceptable to children of their
times.
References:
Tatar, Maria. Off
with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 1992. Print.
Zipes, Jack. Fairy
Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the
Process of Civilization. New York: Wildman, 1983. Print.
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