One Fairy Story too Many

One Fairy Story too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales by John M. Ellis is good for anyone who's interested in fairy tale history, or conspiracy theories.

I've read other books on the Brothers Grimm, so I knew that they weren't entirely truthful about where they got their tales, and that they doctored them up a bit. But either the other sources didn't come down on the Grimms quite as hard as Ellis, or I still wanted to believe that the Grimms were merely guilty of a little exaggerating, but not outright lying. That's another thing Ellis exposed-how for years, condemning facts about the Grimms were known, yet scholars who had access to the material did a bit of covering up themselves, also to the point of outright lying (This book was published in 1983-scholars share the facts now but virtually nothing was made known before this). For some reason, no one wants to believe that the Grimm fairy tales aren't completely authentic.

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

The Grimms claimed that they traveled around Germany, gleaning tales from the mouths of illiterate peasants, who shared tales that had been passed down through generations and weren't influenced by literary tales. They tried to cover up the fact that they really just had their close friends and family, who were not only literate but mostly also from French origin. Which would explain why many of the most popular tales in the Grimms' collection are other versions of Perrault tales. The brothers tried very hard to cover up these facts-like by describing in detail Dorothea Viehmann, who they claimed was an old German peasant woman who told the stories the exact same way every time and had impeccable memory-yet Dorothea Viehmann was a middle-class woman of French descent, certainly literate and familiar with Perrault. Yet once this information was known, scholars ignored it and sang praises of the Grimms, the fathers of authentic folklore.
Gustav Tenggren-The Frog Prince

Then, once the Grimms got their inauthentic tales, they made significant alterations to them. First of all, the Grimms destroyed all of their original manuscripts, a telltale sign of deception right there. The only manuscripts we have today are ones that they had sent to another fairy tale writer, and of those, many were cut from later editions of their collection, or the tales were based on other versions. But from the ones we do have to compare, the we can see evidence of lots of tinkering-mainly in adding descriptions to "fill out" the story, but also of little changes in plot and props here and there. Scholars tried to defend the Grimms, saying they only made stylistic changes, which is first of all not true, and secondly directly contradicts the preface to the first edition of Kinder und Hausmarchen (KHM), in which they claim they took the tales straight from the peasants' lips and didn't alter them at all. They recognized the value of authentic tales in that they made this claim, yet contradicted this with everything they did. In the preface to the second edition they try to cover their tracks, since by then it was obvious that they had made changes since the tales were now different, but again scholars ignore the obvious contradictions. Ellis says: "The rule appears to be: the more the facts throw a bad light on the brothers, the more the brothers must be praised in order to compensate" (p. 41).

Image of the Sleeping Beauty by Anne Anderson

Now, when one does compare the texts, it doesn't seem at first that many of the additions changed the meaning. Yet many of the changes in language "intended to clarify meaning, and to explain the events more thoroughly," (59), and the Grimms therefore "committed the story to a particular kind of explanation and excluded another" (62). Some scholars tried to excuse the inconsistencies by saying Jacob was faithful to the original tales and Wilhelm later went through and made the stylistic changes, but though Wilhem did do much of the work for the later editions, the brothers worked together to create the first edition, which was where the most changes occured.

And though, to me, I assumed from the original, simpler text, the same meanings of events that were later stated by the Grimms, I realized it was probably because I'm so familiar with the more common, Grimmified versions of the tales, so I can't possibly read the original manuscripts in an unbiased way-I automatically put my own pre-assumptions into the events of the tale. My copies of the KHM (and any you find in bookstores today) are both based off the latest editions, therefore the ones most tampered with.

Hansel and Gretel-by Kay Nielsen

Ellis explains reasons for many of the changes to the KHM-"purging the KHM of content they found objectionable: successful crime, sex, suicide, illegitimate birth, wanton violence by children and family members. In the final collection, this kind of content is minimized; crime is punished; only the good prosper; relations between sexes are reduced to clickes which do not allow sexual promiscuity, immorality, or incest to come into view; only sorcerers and witches usually mistreat other people; violence is generally reserved for those who deserve it; and life is too rational and just to allow suicides."

Whew! The above illustrates the classic problems of taking fairy tales that were not originally meant just for children and making them nursury-appropriate. Not only this, but taking tales from times when death and violence and abandoning children were much more common, to the Victorian through modern times where we try to shelter children from such ideas that will unnecessarily frighten them. And though people may disagree on how much we should censor from children, most people agree that there is a difference between adult material and material that is suitable for children. Can I just say that, even with all the moralizing that's been done, I still found it upsetting as a child that the selfish and spoiled Princess from "The Frog Prince" was rewarded with the handome Prince? There is definitely an instinctual desire for right to be rewarded and wrong to be punished and for things to "make sense," for adults as well as children (although how much of this is instinct and how much of this is the patterns of the stories we've grown up with, who knows).

Lastly, Ellis provides thorough studies of the three above pictured tales-Frog Prince, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel-by providing the original manuscripts and three subsequent editions for each tale (in German and in English-which would be great for any German speaking people out there...). It's really good to have the actual texts to compare instead of taking someone else's word for it.

BIRTHDAY!!!

Today is my birthday!
On my 16th birthday, I watched Disney's Sleeping Beauty because the whole thing takes place on her 16th birthday.

I also watched Disney's Alice in Wonderland, just to be ironic. To all of you out there who aren't celebrating birthdays, Happy Unbirthday to you!!

Inside a Black Apple

One of my favorite blogs ever is (Inside A Black Apple) by the lovely Emily Martin. She's an artist with a fairy tale aesthetic.

This week she featured this amazing locket-an illustration of Snow White and Rose Red. If it weren't sold out, I would have bought myself a birthday present. Based off of this Snow White and Rose Red Print


She has lots of other wonderful art, very whimsical and childlike yet often with a bit of the macabre mixed in. For the sake of the blog I'm only including those which directly relate to fairy tales. Alice print

Ofelia print (So, Pan's Labyrinth isn't a typical fairy tale-I like it anyway.)

Red Riding Hood and Wolf notebooks-I've also been debating whether or not to get these for myself
She also has a fashion blog. This outfit she called her modern Little Red Riding Hood outfit. Makes me want a red hoodie.

Baba Yaga's hut

In 1874, Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky saw an exhibit in honor of a friend and artist, Viktor Hartmann. Mussorgsky was so moved by the paintings he saw, he created a piece of music to go along with the exhibit, Pictures at an Exhibition.

One of the paintings Mussorgsky saw and created music for is the above, "Baba Yaga's Hut". It may look like an ordinary clock at first, but look at the tiny chicken legs at the bottom. Here are a couple other artistic interpretations of Baba Yaga's hut:

Rebuen C. Dodd

E. D. Polenova

Baba Yaga is a figure in traditional Russian folklore-the classic fairy tale witch. She lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs and often the fence and trimmings are made from human bones. From wikipedia: "Baba-Yaga (in Russian pronounced Bába-Yəgá; also spelled Baba Jaga, written Баба Яга) is a witch-like character in Slavic folklore. She flies around on a giant mortar or broomstick, kidnaps (and presumably eats) small children, and lives in a hut which stands on chicken legs. In most Slavic folk tales she is portrayed as an antagonist; however, some characters in other mythological folk stories have been known to seek her out for her wisdom, and she has been known on occasion to offer guidance to lost souls, although this is seen as rare."

Here is Mussorgsky's movement inspired by the painting:

Mussorgsky may also be known to fantasy fans for his Night on Bald Mountain, which appeared in Disney's Fantasia.

The Beast: what does he mean?

How we percieve the Beast affects not only how we read Beauty and the Beast, but many other fairy tales that involve animals as well-Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and Rose Red, etc. And when we read a story involving an animal now, we have completely different connotations associated with them now than hundreds of years ago.

For most of human history, wild animals presented a very real threat to people. They lived among nature but had very little control over it. For a large bear to come to your house asking for your daughter in marriage is somewhat like, today, say, a terrorist showing up at your door.

Then, as humans built up cities and became more developed, they also started to show more control over animals. Bears were trained to dance for entertainment:

Image of Dancing Bear from here

Then bears were turned into cute, cuddly toys. Bears and other wild animals are no longer threatening, but like fairy tales in general, became something fit for children. The only time most children nowdays see real wild animals are in a zoo. As nature becomes less and less in our daily lives, it's also some kind of lost ideal to us-this mysterious and wonderful part of our past we want to get back to. Therefore the modern reader tends to see a Beast as exciting and mysterious.

The fact that this picture is "Beauty in the Beast" almost makes me angry. This isn't an image of Beauty and the Beast at all-this is "Little girl having a tea party with her Curious George doll."

Picture by Jessie Willcox Smith

The above picture detracts from the fact that the story is also a sensual story-one about a girl being romantically and sexually pursued by an animal. The story that goes with the picture is about a little girl and her dolls-it should hardly share the same name as the fairy tale. Some people connect Beauty and the Beast with beastiality, but there's a difference between an animal, and a person that talks and has a mind but is in the form of an animal. Since we are in the realm of fairy tales, where transformations between animals and people are not uncommon, the reader isn't that surprised when the Beast turns into a man. However, the Beast undoubtably represents an overexaggerated male figure. He's male, but usually larger than a normal person, and with the animal instincts of the form he's taken. During times of arranged marriages where women had no control over their spouses and were married off at young ages, a future groom would undoubtably seem to them more like a Beast or a monster than a handsome prince.

I think it's safe to say the Disney's Beast is one of the more attractive, human-like Beasts out there.

Other artists have portrayed the Beast as various animals:
Eleanor Vere Boyle
Anonymous illustrator-for Charles Lamb's poem "Beauty and the Beast"

For more pictures of Beauty and the Beast, visit here.

Though as far as I know, no one has tried to illustrate Villeneuve's Beast, who had scales that clanked, as well as "a trunk resembling an elephant's."

As our culture is gradually encouraging men and women alike to embrace and celebrate their sexuality, rather than the Victorian sensibility of pretending it didn't exist, or the childrenized version of a stuffed animal, the Beast in his natural state becomes more and more celebrated. Modern versions often don't end with transformation. Francesca Lia Block's Beauty becomes more and more like the Beast herself.

This is going back to the "animals are cute" ideal. Here's my plush Beast, chillin' on my bed with my Belle pillowcase.

Cinderella gets Sanctified

Did you know there's a Cinderella reference in the Bible?

Well...not exactly. Psalm 113:7-8: "He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people."But the resemblance is uncanny, non?

Art by Edmund Dulac

Princess Zeineb and King Leopard: Before Beauty and the Beast

So we know that Beaument's Beauty and the Beast was basically a summary of Madame de Villeneuve's story of the same title from 1740. And though Villeneuve did give the story many of the unique twists that shifted it from the oral stories to the tale we know today, she didn't create it in a vacuum either. Jean-Paul Bignon's collection of tales, from 1712-1714, included Princess Zeineb and King Leopard, an Animal Bridegroom tale. In the words of Jack Zipes, the story "is extremely important because of the role it plays in the Beauty and the Beast tradition. It is more than likely that Madame de Villeneuve knew this version, and it may have served as the basis for her tale that later influenced Madame Leprince de Beaumont." And...I just realized that I've been spelling "Beaumont" incorrectly this entire blog. If I get really bored one day I'll go back and fix that.

ANYWAY...the story is of a King who stumbles innocently upon a palace and randomly threatened with death if he doesn't bring one of his daughters. He has no intention of letting them go, but the eldest insists. She goes, loses courage, and returns. The next four in the line go as one bunch and all lose courage. This helps to save time and fit into the fairy tale pattern of threes. Note: in this version the sisters are good and try to save their father. Usually the sisters are too selfish to consider the sacrifice, but here their only vice is lack of courage.


The youngest daughter, Princess Zeineb, is determined not to lose courage, so she goes and is waited upon by servants. She never actually meets or talks to the leopard, but every night he comes and lies in her bed-without touching her. This is more like Cupid and Psyche. Finally the Princess starts wondering if it's really a leopard. One night she finds the skin and rips it up, for which she is chastised by the Prince, who was nearly about to break the spell, but now her curiosity has ruined it. She doesn't cower before him, but gives him excuses, including that "girls are naturally curious." Note: this was written by a man (and at least Psyche had been specifically warned NOT to listen to her mother, Zeineb got nothing. Communication is key here, guys). Villeneuve replaced this violation with staying too long at home.


There are apparantly no pictures of this fairy tale online, but this sort of relates:

Image from here...even though I didn't see it on the site and can't credit it...

Princess Zieneb embarks on a long, difficult journey where she uses her embroidery skills (yes, a domestic skill...) to make a living for herself. However, some village pervs tried to take advantage of her, and later get revenge and have her burned alive when she spurned them. She survives her trials though her resourcefulness (including bribing the judges at her trial) and through a spell King Leopard had taught her. In the end, she's saved from Joan of Arc fame in the nick of time when the King comes back to town, and you'll never guess who he really is! Yup, he's King Leopard, who pardons and marries her. It ends with this odd little line: "Then I gave the judges who had let themselves be bribed by my money the punishment they deserved. On the other hand, those judges who had been moved by my beauty were punished in a more lenient way." Isn't the whole point of the story...not to judge by looks? But I guess these pre-Villeneuve/Beaumont stories are more about the dangers of curiosity.

Eras of Disney

Disney can be quite controversial. Some people love Disney and everything about Disney-others despise it/him. Since Disney has made many many movies over almost a hundred years, and the characteristics of the movies are very different depending on when they're from, let's distinguish within Disney itself. For the sake of simplification, I'm only discussing Disney Princess movies.

Walt Disney himself died in 1966. Before he died, he had created 3 complete Princess movies- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Cinderella (1950), and Sleeping Beauty (1957.) Disney had been a leader and innovator in the world of animation. It's these three Princesses that are often accused of having the most negative female stereotypes-evil female villains and helpless heroines. Yet I have to say, these movies adhere the closest to the plots on which they are based. And some people have attacked Cinderella for being made more helpless than the Grimm version, but Disney didn't base his Cinderella off of Grimm, but on Perrault's (and either way, whether Cinderella got help from talking mice and a fairy godmother, or a dead mother's spirit, she always has help in SOME form.)

There was a long break from Princess movies. Then Disney had another golden age in the late 1980s- early 90s, with The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Aladdin (1992). Feminism had spread and filmmakers were more conscious of how they presented females. Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine definitely have more spunk and sense of adventure than their predecessors (although, as I've pointed out before, Ariel is reeeeally desperate to marry a guy she's never actually met. Interesting that the next two heroines on the scene are anything but anxious to marry just for the sake of marrying or for looks), but the plots of the stories differ more greatly from their sources. Interestingly, none of the movies created during this time were based on Grimm stories. And yes, Pocahontas and Mulan are in there somewhere, but they were never as popular. I say, Pocahontas is a travesty because they completely alter a true, historical story, which is different than altering a version of a fairy tale that isn't exactly authoritative on its own. Mulan should probably be more popular, but there's just only so many Princesses you can fit onto a t-shirt, you know?

Then there's Tiana from Princess and the Frog, and supposedly Rapunzel's coming. In the grand scheme of things they should probably be lumped together with the second batch of Princesses, except that Michael Eisner is no longer CEO of Disney. You could say that they've continued and expanded the trend of taking creative liberties, since Princess and the Frog hardly even pretends to be a retelling of The Frog Prince. And I think of the older movies differently in my mind because I was very young when the above came out, and not so young any more. Plus, so much has changed about Disney since then too. The Disney channel has just regressed so far. The popular shows and movies may sport good messages, in theory, but the scripts and acting are just TERRIBLE. Everybody knows that, since the second Golden Age of Disney, Pixar became the new Disney, and they have stayed away from Princessy fairy tales or anything that centers too much around romance. So they might suffer a little in the 4-6 year old girl department, who will forever request birthday presents from the Disney store, but overall their reputation spikes. (Not to bash the Disney store. I should open a museum for all the Belle products I own. Including a lamp in the shape of Belle, in addition to a glow-in-the-dark Beauty and the Beast lampshade. Why light your room with anything neutral when Disney products are available? I kid, but only sort of.)

So the next time someone bashes Disney, ask them to define which part of Disney they mean. And you could point out that taking creative liberties is exactly what the brothers Grimm and other major fairy tale collectors did too. But then you can criticize the particular creative liberties they took, and their reasons for them. But to classify all of Disney as one large entity is almost like lumping all fairy tales together. Well, bad example-people do that, but they're misinformed.

Brothers and Beasts

Just finished reading Brothers and Beasts: an Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales, edited by Kate Bernheimer. It's impossible to summarize or even pick highlights, since each essay was so different, yet each author is a professional writer so the quality of each was good (i.e., no worries about "fan fiction" type stories). First of all, when I saw it was a collection of essays specifically collected by men, that struck me as odd, but as Maria Tatar and Kate Bernheimer remind us in the Foreword and Introduction, in modern times it's very unusual for men to admit interest in fairy tales. In the past, the foremost collectors and theorists on fairy tales were men, but today the only major one that comes to my mind is Jack Zipes, whereas there are a host of women doing wonderful work in the field. Ironic that as academia becomes more infiltrated by women, certain areas of study are pushed aside and thought of as only for women.


If there was one summarizable thing I gleaned from the collection of essays, it is that everyone experiences fairy tales differently. We have so many theories on what certain symbols in fairy tales mean and how they affect children, etc. But I wonder how much of that study is personal philosophy, and how much is conducted by discussing with people how they understood fairy tales as children and now as adults, or reading tales to children to record their reactions and questions. Because really, who's to say one philosopher's personal journey with fairy tales is any more valid than the little kids I babysit? Or my own, or any of the authors in this book? Some of the essays were very similar to my own personal connections with tales, others are quite opposite, but they're all real experiences.


One thing Jack Zipes points out in the Afterword I thought was interesting-that though you can spot a feminist trend in fairy tales, you can't really spot a clear "male" trend. And though I respect those who are trying to undo negative stereotypes of women in tales, at the same time that's kind of sad. In order for a tale not to be offensive to females, it has to have a plucky and courageous female character who doesn't need a man to save her. Yet the males in this anthology seemed to identify with the neglected and forlorn youngest son who is thought to be useless but eventually rises to power, not the sword-weilding, kiss-bearing hero we might think they would. I myself connect a lot more to any shy characters. While I like reading about these lively females, I never really connect with them. If anything, female warrior characters (in pop culture, or in a more fairy tale-like setting, such as Mulan or other feminist versions of tales) intimidate me. I can't be beautiful and kind and witty and courageous and strong and athletic all at once! It was enough to just be beautiful and kind! And since female warriors are never anything but beautiful, it's not like we're setting more realistic expectations for our heroines-they've only become more unattainable.

Disney and drunkenness

I always loved the song "Pink Elephants," but the first time I watched Dumbo as an adult I was kind of shocked that the whole thing is a drunken delusion.

Dumbo isn't the only classic Disney to involve drunkenness, or to make it humorous.

Check out Sir Hiss from Robin Hood at 3:30

The Kings-and the Page-drink a little too much in Sleeping Beauty
"Let me fill up your glass-that glass was all full!" Heehee

And of course, Gaston's tavern song.

LeFou: More Beer?
Gaston: What for? Nothing helps. I'm disgraced.
LeFou: Who, you? NEVER! Gaston, you've got to pull yourself together!

In addition to these, David Koenig cites 12 other Disney films which include characters drinking: Pinnochio, Fantasio, Saldos Amigos, Make Mine Music, Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Sword in the Stone, Aristocats, Rescuers, Pete's Dragon, Great Mouse Detective, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Hunchback of Notre Dame. Pocahontas was mentioned but dismissed as not qualifying for "heavy drinking."