Fairies in Disguise

I've been thinking a lot today about those Fairy Godmothers and wrinkled Old Grandmothers in fairy tales.  Especially how they ask questions and let people's answers sit with them.  And maybe cast a spell or curse if the answer is wanting.  Somehow when a fairy in disguise does it, it doesn't come off as such a mind game or manipulation. It's more a a searching or teaching moment.  They're trying to see who they're interacting with. Are you kind? Noble? Sly? Selfish? Naive? Wise?

It's all in your answer.  It's a test, a trick, you say.  But is it?  Or did you answer in a way that revealed something less than flattering about yourself.  Tread carefully in the presence of faery...

Where do our Favorite Fairy Tales come from? A brief history Part II

The Brothers Grimm

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their two-volume collection Children's and Household Tales in 1812 and 1815.  The brothers worked together collecting stories from books, friends and relatives, "a number of tales in their collection were contributed by Dorothea Wild, Wilhelm's mother-in-law, and others came from Jeanette and Amalie Hassenphlug, two sisters who later married into the Grimm family" (Cashdan 7).  That is how stories such as "Cinderella" (Aschenputtel), "Little Red Riding Hood" (Little Red Cap), and "Sleeping Beauty" (Briar Rose) came to be in the Grimm's collection of children's stories.  To their credit the brothers did make some serious alterations to make the tales that parents would consider suitable for children.  Which sounds a bit funny considering how the violence in these tales cause parents to swoon nowadays but apparently taking out the sexualized parts of the Italian and French tales was enough to make them "more proper and prudent" tales for children in Germany in the 1800s (Zipes 72).  In addition to recording and editing fairy tales the Brothers Grimm were also linguists and something of perfectionists.  The Brother's Grimm continued to edit and perfect their Children's and Household Tales, "after 1819 there were five more editions and sixty-nine new texts added to the collection" (Zipes 72).


Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen differed from his predecessors by writing his own original fairy tales instead of collecting and re-telling folk tales.  He grew up in Denmark where "his parents, grandmother, and elderly townspeople, including the inmates of the lunatic asylum where his grandmother worked, regaled him with fairy tales and myths" (Owens xii).  I'm picturing the young Hans who was inspired, in part, by tales that were told to him by residents of a lunatic asylum and my mind is still in the process of being blown.  Most of Andersen's fairy tales were moralistic and based on his own Christian background.  Although Andersen is the author of the beloved children's tales "Thumbelina," "The Little Mermaid," "The Snow Queen," "The Princess and the Pea" and "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," he didn't consider himself a writer of children's tales.  In fact, Andersen "often read his tales for the pleasure of adult friends" (Owens xi).  Anderson even read some of his tales to the King and Queen of Denmark!


So there you are.  Now you too will share in my frustration when you see "The princess and the Pea" or "Puss in Boots" in a new edition of "Grimm's Fairy Tales" and you will probably think Gee, that editor is a bit of a bonehead.  Fairy tale anthology editors beware!


Resources:

Cashdan, Sheldon. The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Print.

Owens, Lily. "Introduction". The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales: Complete and Unabridged. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1981. Print.

Zipes, Jack. When Dreams Came True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Tradition. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Where do our favorite fairytales come from? A brief history Part I

 As you may have noticed by now, I have read quite a few fairy tales and something I've noticed is that people will often credit our most beloved and well known fairy tales in western culture solely to the Grimm brothers.  Now Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm certainly did their part in perpetuating our favorite fairy tales in western literature, however many of these same tales that are often credited to the Grimms were actually due to writers before and after the Grimm brothers. Fairy tales started out as oral tales handed down through the generations, often from mothers and nurses.  Although the most well known writers of fairy tales are men, women arguably dominated the fairy tale scene (I plan to devote an entire blog post about this in the near future).  Fairy tales started out as oral tales often told by mothers, nurses and governesses and for a long time these oral tales were seen as a lowly common amusement.

We shall start with Giambattista Basile.  Basile was an Italian poet who collected fairy tales.  He wrote La Pentamerone a collection of five tales told within one longer tale, much like the Arabian Nights, which was published in 1634.  The stories in the pentamerone included the first recorded versions of the stories that we have come to know as Sleeping Beauty (Talia, Sun, and Moon), Rapunzel (Petrosinella) and Cinderella (Cat Cinderella).  Contrary to the belief that fairy tales are solely for children Basile's stories were actually written to entertain adults.  Basile's versions of these tales were much more violent and sexualized than the versions that most people are familiar with today.

Now let us journey to France, where the literary fairy tale took another major leap.  During the 1630s aristocratic women in France, who were not allowed to go to school or university, started having gatherings in their homes known as salons to discuss art, literature and philosophy.  These women, who strove to prove they were the intellectual equals of men "were called Precieuses and worked to develop a precieux manner of thinking, speaking, and writing to reveal and celebrate their innate talents that distinguished them from the vulgar and common elements of society" (Zipes 32).  These women would play parlour games in which each woman (or man, as men also attended the salons) would prove their wit and eloquence by telling a story they made up on the spot (although everyone would have rehearsed their story well in advance).  According to Jack Zipes the Precieuses and their salons made fairytales more popular and "French aristocratic writers for the most part established the conventions and motifs for a genre that is perhaps the most popular in the western world" (31).  So there you have it, French hipsters jump started the fairy tale from a lowly form of entertainment into a fashionable vehicle to make moral and political statements.  One of these hipsters was Charles Perrault who published his own collection of fairy tales called Histoires ou contes du temps passe in 1697which included "Little Red Riding Hood", "Puss in Boots", "Blue Beard" and his own versions of "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella".

To Be Continued...