Fairy Tales

The little mermaid drew back the crimson curtain of the tent, and beheld the fair bride with her head resting on the prince’s breast. She bent down and kissed his fair brow, then looked at the sky on which the rosy dawn grew brighter and brighter; then she glanced at the sharp knife, and again fixed her eyes on the prince, who whispered the name of his bride in his dreams. She was in his thoughts, and the knife trembled in the hand of the little mermaid: then she flung it far away from her into the waves; the water turned red where it fell, and the drops that spurted up looked like blood. She cast one more lingering, half-fainting glance at the prince, and then threw herself from the ship into the sea, and thought her body was dissolving into foam. The sun rose above the waves, and his warm rays fell on the cold foam of the little mermaid, who did not feel as if she were dying. She saw the bright sun, and all around her floated hundreds of transparent beautiful beings; she could see through them the white sails of the ship, and the red clouds in the sky; their speech was melodious, but too ethereal to be heard by mortal ears, as they were also unseen by mortal eyes. The little mermaid perceived that she had a body like theirs, and that she continued to rise higher and higher out of the foam. “Where am I?” asked she, and her voice sounded ethereal, as the voice of those who were with her; no earthly music could imitate it.
~from Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid (1836)

Critics see Pinocchio as a story rich in imagination and symbolism. They find Collodi interweaving his classical education with peasant folklore by combining mythological, psychological, and religious elements with Tuscan speech and storytelling patterns. Other commentators, such as M. L. Rosenthal (1989), read the book as a social and political allegory, pointing out Collodi's depictions of the disparities between the poor and the wealthy, his emphasis on the working class, and his parodies of the justice system. Still other critics see the book as Collodi's attempt to recover his lost childhood, or as his portrayal of a search of children for parents or of parents for children. Pointing out the numerous adaptations of the Pinocchio story throughout the years, Richard Wunderlich (1992) in particular has concentrated on how these alterations to the original text have been shaped by cultural and social forces, including prevalent educational and child-rearing philosophies. In a negative vein, some reviewers contend that Pinocchio consists merely of a weak string of escapades devised by Collodi to write a winning serial and reap financial gain. Few would quarrel with the book's enduring qualities, however, and most would agree with Benedetto Croce: "The wood out of which Pinocchio is carved is humanity itself."

Disney’s version of the Blue Fairy resembles Jean Harlow, in her slinky dress and blond curls, batting her long eyelashes at Jiminy Cricket. Collodi had something quite different in mind. The girl with the blue hair, who at crucial times steps in to save and admonish the errant puppet, must surely be a representation of the Virgin Mary, her classic blue veil changed, as if from a child’s impression, into flowing blue hair. In Pinocchio, she grows from a child, a little sister, into a woman—a mother figure, just as the image of the Virgin, for Catholic children, shifts from child to adolescent to young woman to suffering mother, as they need her image to reflect different stages of their lives. The most recent film version of this Tale, Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), also shifts Collodi’s story toward a search for the mother; and Robert Coover’s amazing postmodern version of the tale, his 1991 novel Pinocchio in Venice (Simon & Schuster), closes on a strange scene of the old man Pinocchio’s reunion with his Mamma, the Blue Fairy. Collodi’s tale remains a search for the father, while the mother arrives when she is needed.

The sixteen-year-old Sabu plays the title character, the right-hand urchin of a prince (John Justin), who is forced from his throne and blinded by a Wagnerian villain (the hypnotic Conrad Veidt) who also threatens to wed the prince’s true love (June Duprez). The plot moves in uneven leaps and bounds, but the royal romance is symmetrical; the prince must gain a bride and regain his kingdom at the same time, an aspect of the movie that probably appealed to nineteen-forties lads who dreamed of winning both the Second World War and a woman. (As an inspired extra, the release includes, on a second disk, Korda’s salute to the R.A.F., “The Lion Has Wings,” from 1940.)

But it’s Sabu, not Justin, who acts out the splashiest derring-do, mastering a genie (Rex Ingram) and wresting the All-Seeing Eye from the Goddess of Light. Caught in the Goddess’s palace between a fearsome spider and a gelatinous marine monster, he arouses children’s worst fears of the sky above and the sea below, only to douse those fears with a vengeance. But the film isn’t bloodthirsty, and its more idyllic conceits are as striking as the action. This is one movie fantasy that indulges our childish love of play while warning us against getting lost in playland.

Peasants began telling each other stories as a mean of entertainment, but also as an outlet and alternative for their daily miseries. Fairy tales – folk tales when they were originally told by the peasants – were often vulgar and lacking in morality. The peasants told each other tales in the spinning room and the field while they were working. The tales were a form of entertainment enjoyed by all; they were not exclusively for children. In fact, a lot of the tales were told in the night, after the children had slept, so the peasants put little check in detailed episodes of violence and explicit sexual reference; they were the equivalent of late night TV shows for us (Tatar 23). The motif and themes of the tales were old, but since the tales followed an oral tradition, they changed every so often as the tellers modified them to reflect the living conditions of their audience (Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell 33). The tales projected the peasant’s perceptions of reality, and even their desire (Rőhrich 191). For them, kings were happy just to have bean soup every day, and white bread, sweetened fruits, and sugared nuts made up a real feast (188). The horrors of the tale were real too. Poverty was real, hunger was real, because famine happened; stepmothers were real, because peasant women died young and men made rash remarriages, so child abuse and abandonment were real too (Weber 94).

Hansel and Gretel is part of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm’s collection of fairy tales originally titled Children's and Household Tales, published in 1812, but now known throughout the world as Grimm's Fairy Tales. The brothers did not collect the fairy tales alone and the discovery Hansel and Gretel’s is attributed to Dortchen Wild who heard it in the town of Cassel.

In the earliest versions of the story, it was Hansel and Gretel’s mother who suggests that they abandon the children not a stepmother. Also notable is that in the earliest versions of the tale, both parents participated in the decision. During the Middle Ages, there were many disasters such as famine, war, and plague, which would cause parents to abandon their children. It would seem that in Hansel and Gretel’s case the abandonment could have easily been due to famine, which would explain the theme of food, which runs through the entire narrative.

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/beautybeast/history.html
The first version of Beauty and the Beast appeared in 1740 by Madame Gabrielle de Villeneuve. She wrote a novella length version of the story which appeared in La jeune ameriquaine, et les contes marins. Her audience was not children, but her court and salon friends who enjoyed sharing stories for entertainment. Scholars suppose that Villeneuve derived her story from traditional oral tales and "Le Mouton," a story by another court lady named Madame D'Aulnoy whose home was the site of one of the best known literary salons in that time.

Villeneuve's version contains many little known elements and does not end with the transformation of the Prince. She spends too much time discussing warring between the fairies, the parentage of the protagonists, and the reason for the curse on the Prince. Also, the transformation from beast to prince does not occur until after the wedding night. Villeneuve's version also contains dream sequences in which Beauty is told by the Prince in his true form to look beyond appearances and rescue him. She, of course, does not understand his message and must fall in love with the beast before she comprehends his full message. Note: The best English translation of de Villeneuve's entire story can be found in Jack Zipes' Beauties, Beasts, and Enchantment: Classic French Fairy Tales. This book is out of print, but can usually be found in larger libraries. The story is not available in the paperback edition of the book, Beauty and the Beast and Other Classic French Fairy Tales (Amazon.com link). The shorter version by de Beaumont is available in both editions.

The next version of the tale appeared 16 years later in 1756 by Madame Le Prince de Beaumont. Beaumont considerably shortened Villeneuve's novel into a short story which ends after the Prince is transformed. The extra storylines are omitted. This version is the best well-known and most used as the basis for later interpretations of the tale. Beaumont's version has weak areas, just as Villeneuve's version has. Beaumont assuredly had a younger audience in mind and her story is more didactic, concentrating on Beauty's virtue. She maintains the magical atmosphere well, but her message is clearly that industrious, self-sacrificing young women will find the most happiness just as Beauty does at the end of the story. Also missing are the dream sequences found in Villeneuve's version.

Scholars propose that Beauty and the Beast is a literary tale based on folk tale elements which reentered the folk culture with the literary elements added to it. In this way, the story returned to the oral tradition almost entirely as a brand new story. This gives Beauty and the Beast a considerably different history from many other tales.

The version of the story which I have annotated comes from Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book (1889). He attributes his version to de Villeneuve, but his version is actually an interesting mesh of de Beaumont and de Villeneuve. He favors de Villeneuve's elements of the story, but edits out much of the extra dialogue concerning the fairies and genealogies which de Beaumont decided to leave out of her version, too. The dream sequences are intact, however, which I wanted to include in the version I annotated. To read de Beaumont's version, I highly recommend either Jack Zipes' translation of the tale in Beauties, Beasts and Enchantments or D. L. Ashliman's online version at this external link: Beauty and the Beast.

After de Villeneuve and de Beaumont published their respective versions, Beauty and the Beast grew in popularity and has appeared in poetry, plays, novellas, short stories, novels, and film. Numbering the versions seem endless and they come in only behind Cinderella for popularity and widespread influence. More is said about these on Beauty and the Beast Themes in Art.

One of the oldest printed fairy tales in England was Tom Thumb which appeared in 1621 in a chapbook. Chapbooks were works of popular literature sold for a few pence by pedlars or ‘chapmen’ from the 16th to the 19th cent. In 1711 there appeared the first printed version of Jack the Giant Killer, a popular English folk tale.

Tom Thumb is born in answer to the wish of a childless poor couple, who desire a son even if he should be no bigger than his father’s thumb. Magician Merlin answers their wish and the Fairy Queen names him and gives him a hat made of oak leaf and a shirt of spider’s web. Tom then encounters many adventures. The last of them is being eaten by a fish which is then caught for King Arthur’s table; Tom becomes a knight and when he dies is mourned by the whole Arthur’s court.

Jack the Giant Killer is a story of witty and ingenuous Jack, the only son of a Cornish farmer. He decides to destroy a giant terrorizing Cornwall. Armed with horn, shovel and pick-axe, at night he digs a pit outside the giant’s cave. Then he wakes the giant with a blast on the horn and after the giant falls into the trap he kills him with his pick-axe. As a reward he gets the giant’s treasure and the title ‘the Giant Killer’. He continues in the same style and kills two more giants; he also helps king Arthur’s son to marry a lady of his heart and becomes a knight of the Round Table. In the second part he sets out to rid country of all giants and monsters and finally to release a duke’s daughter whom he then marries and lives happily with on an estate given to him by the king. From this fairy are the words ‘Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman’, uttered by a giant who can’t see Jack who is wearing a coat of darkness he got from another giant together with a cap of knowledge, a never-failing sword and shoes of swiftness.

However, most fairy tales circulated in England only in oral form. Puritan writers, who were the first to write for children, considered tales about magical wonders inappropriate for children; John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, regretted a childhood spent reading chapbook stories about marvellous happenings and in New England in America another writer, Cotton Mather, complained of ‘foolish Songs and Ballads’ on such fanciful subjects and recommended writing ‘poetical compositions full of Piety’.

In the 18th century English translations of French fairy tales mainly by Perrault were published in England and from the beginning of the 19th century also English folk fairy tales started to appear in print, e.g. Jack and the Beanstalk.

Jack and the Beanstalk is a story of lazy Jack, the only child of a poor widow. When she sends him to the market to sell her cow, he returns with a handful of beans instead of money. She throws the beans away and in the morning there is a huge beanstalk in the garden. Jack climbs to its top and finds there a barren land. He meets a fairy who tells him that nearby lives a giant who deceived and killed Jack’s father years ago. Jack goes to the giant’s house where he is given food and drink by his wife who then hides him in the oven. When the giant returns home and falls asleep Jack steals his hen which can lay golden eggs, climbs down the beanstalk and gives the hen to his mother. Later he makes two more journeys up the beanstalk and gets back with the giant’s money-bags and a magic harp. When stealing the harp it starts speaking so the giant wakes up and chases Jack; when he starts climbing down the stalk, Jack cuts it so that the giant falls down and is killed by the fall.

Around the middle of the 19th century J. O. Halliwell and Robert Chambers collected fairy tales, the latter in Scotland. In 1890 were published English Fairy Tales collected by Joseph Jacobs, followed by more collections of this editor.

The curious thing about Jack is that – in contrast to that other fairy-tale contemporary of King Arthur's, Tom Thumb – there is no trace of him to be found before the early eighteenth century. The first reference to him comes in 1708 and the earliest known (now lost) chapbook to have told of his deeds was dated 1711.... If Jack was a literary creation – rather than a genuine figure of folk-tale – whose tale was woven from earlier non-Jack giant-killings and traditions, this naturally raises some intriguing questions about the origins of both these stories of Welsh and Cornish giants and the actual concept of Jack as the hero who finally rids Britain of these creatures. With regards to this, it is important to note the presence of King Arthur throughout Jack‘s tale....

The solution, as I have argued elsewhere, may well lie with Arthur‘s well-documented role as the slaughterer of British giants through a combination of extreme violence, cunning and trickery....In fact, in Welsh and Cornish folklore of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries it is repeatedly claimed that Arthur was the greatest of all giant-killers, responsible for finally ridding the land of giants....

In Arthur we have a figure of genuine folklore and early British story who parallels and pre-dates Jack in both his role and the type of deeds that are ascribed to him....Jack was a new final vanquisher of the giants of Britain, designed for an England that was interested such folkloric tales but which would appear to have become bored of Arthur himself by the early eighteenth century....

This is not, of course, to say that a knowledge of the Arthurian tradition fully explains Jack‘s History... but rather to suggest that The History of Jack and the Giants deserves to be considered as a genuine part of the development of the Arthurian legend, not simply an unrelated fairy tale that happens to be set in the reign of King Arthur as a variant of 'Once upon a time.'

Snow White and Rose Red is of German origin with no known oral antecedents. The Grimms included the mostly original story in their collection and consequently popularized it. According to Stith Thompson, Wilhelm adapted the tale from a story, titled "The Ungrateful Dwarf,"by Caroline Stahl published in her own collection of German stories in 1818.

The elements of the story beyond the broad theme of the Animal Bridegroom is uniquely German. Aarne and Thompson have classified the tale as type 426: The Two Girls, The Bear, and The Dwarf. In this tale, as well as Grimm's The Lion and the Frog, the Animal Bridegroom is a kind and gentle beast whom the heroines do not find threatening. The girls are not required to "tame" the bear; they must deal with the wicked dwarf instead.

The tale has not appeared outside of a small geographic region in central Europe. Thompson considers the tale to be part of the animal bridegroom themes, including Beauty and the Beast, that are all related to the Cupid and Psyche myth (Thompson 1945).

Next Thursday evening the White Bear came to fetch her. She seated herself on his back with her bundle, and thus they departed. When they had gone a great part of the way, the White Bear said: "Are you afraid?"

"No, that I am not," said she.

"Keep tight hold of my fur, and then there is no danger," said he.
~ from "East of the Sun, West of the Moon"

The tale of Cupid and Psyche is considered by many scholars to be one of the first literary fairy tales. Written by Lucius Apuleius in the second century A.D.... the tale features many characters from Greek/Roman mythology, although earlier records of this tale are not known. Cupid and Psyche was translated into English in 1566 by William Adlington and was well-known throughout Europe. For example, John Milton refers to the story in his Comus, first performed in 1634 and published in 1637....The tale is a direct ancestor of the French Beauty and the Beast tale. However, it bears even closer resemblance to East of the Sun and West of the Moon.