Fairy tales are women’s tales. This has been said before, in words cleverer and more articulate than my own, but still, it bears repeating: fairy tales are women’s tales. They’re bent-backed crones’ tales, sly gossips’ tales, work-worn mothers’ tales and old wives’ tales. They’re stories shared, repeated and elaborated on over mindless women’s work like spinning or mending or shucking corn. These stories are the voices of those who were, within a social and cultural context, so often voiceless; they’re women’s whispered desires and fears, neatly wrapped up in fantastical narratives filled with sex, violence and humour. Fairy tales speak of the things that women most hoped for – a prince, a castle, a happy ending – and those that they were most afraid of – that their children would be taken from them, that men would hurt them or take advantage of them, that their family wouldn’t be provided for.
One need only look to the sources cited by the great folktale and fairy tale publishers from the late seventeenth century all the way through to the early nineteenth century (a time when readers, editors and publishers showed renewed literary interest in both fantastical stories and traditional storytelling) to know that women were, by and large, the main collectors, keepers and tellers of these tales. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm credit such women as Dorothea Wild, Dorothea Viehmann, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, and their brother-in-law Ludwig Hassenplug’s three sisters as being some of the most important contributors to their Nursery and Household Tales. Scottish folklorist Andrew Lang, who produced the Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Rose Fairy Books, relied heavily on his wife Leonora Alleyne and a team of female editors for his content. And Charles Perrault wrote in an introduction to his 1697 work Mother Goose Tales that these stories fell within long tradition of old wives’ tales, such as had been told to children by their nurses since the dawning of time. So, initially at least, the idea that fairy tales came from the domain of women was commonly acknowledged, and even used to give credibility to some stories. And yet these days, we think of them as being for children only. So what happened?
Well, the industrial revolution happened, for one thing. The advent of new technology, and a population shift from rural to urban settings, meant that much of the dull, laborious women’s work simply ceased to exist. Factory-produced thread and yarn, which were finer and smoother than their home-spun counterparts, became cheap and readily available, which lead to a decrease of women spinning at home. Inexpensive, mass-produced clothing meant that it was often easier to purchase a new item than to try to mend an old one. Many working class men and women were employed in the factories that produced these goods, meaning that the long work days they spent in those filthy, airless rooms left no time or energy at night to dawdle in front of the fire telling stories. Opportunities for traditional storytelling diminished radically over the course of a generation or two, and folklorists began to worry about the fate of the fairy tale. Indeed, it was with the idea of preserving German culture that the Grimms began collecting and publishing folktales.
All of this helps explain how women were distanced from the act of storytelling, but it doesn’t answer the question of why fairy tales began to be associated with children. For that, we have to look at the shift in social attitudes towards childhood that occurred during the Victorian era; in fact, one might even argue that this was the first time childhood, at least in our modern understanding of the word, existed. Children had long been treated as miniature adults, expected to help provide for their family as soon as they were physically able to do so. This went largely unremarked upon when that work took place on a family farm, but when factories began hiring children for dangerous jobs in poor working conditions, social reformers sat up and took notice. Activists fought for the right of every child to have a childhood, emphasizing the fact that the earliest years of life were critical for a child’s development. With this cultural sea-change came a new market for games, toys and especially books for children. Interestingly enough, the Grimms’ first edition of their Nursery and Household Tales, which was geared towards an adult audience, didn’t fare very well sales-wise. It wasn’t until they created a second edition marketed for children that they saw any real success.
Of course, when putting together the second edition of their book, the Grimms made certain changes in order to refit their stories for a younger audience. This makes total sense; you wouldn’t expect children to be drawn to a book that, as Maria Tatar writes in The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairytales, “…had the look of a scholarly tome, rather than a of a book for a wide audience.” And certainly the Grimms had to make sure that there was nothing in their book that was inappropriate for children. What’s interesting is what changes they chose to make.
Fairy tales are notoriously violent, and it’s tempting to think that the Grimms would have made sure that the violence was the first thing to go when they were trying to make their stories kid-friendly. However, when we compare the second edition with the first, the opposite is true – the Grimms actually increased the violent episodes in their stories. Take, for example, their version of Cinderella – in the second edition, the children’s edition, the ugly stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves at the tale’s end, whereas in the first edition, their eyes remain intact. Evidently the Grimms had worried that in their original version of the tale, the stepsisters had not suffered enough retribution for their treatment of Cinderella, as the text in the second edition reads, “ … so both sisters were punished with blindness to the end of their days for being so wicked and false.” You can just imagine Jacob and Wilhelm conferring over this scene: “I mean, sure, the stepsisters have already had parts of their feet cut off, but do you think that’s really enough to drive the point home? I think we should remove at least one more body part so that the children truly understand how terrible the stepsisters are.”
So if the Grimms weren’t concerned about small children reading about violence, what were they worried about? Sex, naturally. They took out any and all allusions to sex. Like the fact that Rapunzel was totally doing it with her prince whenever he climbed up her hair-rope into her tower. Check out this brief but sexy (well, sexy by 19th century standards) passage from the first edition version of “Rapunzel”:
‘At first Rapunzel was frightened, but soon she came to like the young king so much that she agreed to let him visit every day and to pull him up. The two lived joyfully for a time, and the fairy did not catch on at all until Rapunzel told her one day: “Tell me, Godmother, why my clothes are so tight and why they don’t fit me any longer.” “Wicked child!” shouted the fairy. “What are you telling me!”’
Once her pregnancy is discovered, Rapunzel is sent off by her fairy godmother to live in a desert, “… where things went very badly for her here and where, after a time, she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl.”
By the second edition all reference to pregnancy had been removed.
“Rapunzel” was not the only story to be sanitized; many of the others suffered the same fate. In the first edition version of “The Frog King or Iron Heinrich,” for example, the frog transforms into a man in the princess’ bed, at which point “she cherished him as she had promised,” after which both fell “peacefully asleep.” In the second edition, after the frog’s transformation (which does not occur in the princess’ bed), the happy couple immediately run off to find the king so that they can get married in the middle of the night, thus guaranteeing that absolutely nothing untoward happens between them until the palace vicar pronounced them man and wife.
The Grimms decided that some of their stories were completely unsalvageable when it came to the second edition, and just cut them altogether. Take “Hans Dumm,” the story of a man who could impregnate women just by wishing for it – if you’ve never heard of it, that’s because it didn’t make it past the first edition of the Grimms’ book. And yet stories like “The Juniper Tree” somehow made it into the children’s edition of their book. For those of you unfamiliar with it, “The Juniper Tree,” a story about a woman who kills her stepson, lets her daughter think that she was responsible for the murder, and then cooks the child in a stew to serve to his father. Because what’s murder and cannibalism when compared with the evils of sex?
The Grimms’ deletion of all things sexy from the second edition could be taken as a sort of Teutonic prudery, but when we look at it in context with some of the other alterations, there begins to emerge a pattern of marginalization and disempowerment of women. Not only did they remove any mention of sex, the majority of it both consensual and premarital, but all sorts of other details defining and limiting the female characters were added in. With each successive edition, the Wilhelm Grimm added in more and more adjectives describing what they thought was the perfect Christian woman; female characters were suddenly “dutiful,” “tender-hearted,” “god-fearing” and “contrite,” where once they had simply been “beautiful” or “young.” Wilhelm also began to alter the structure of the tales, introducing moral judgments and motivations that previously hadn’t been there. Traditionally, fairy tales had seen luck and chance count for more than hard work and obedience, but Wilhelm put a stop to that – instead the sweet, well-behaved, godly women were rewarded, and those who deviated from that mold were punished. Finally, Wilhelm added in all sorts of hints about the domestic activity he felt women should occupy themselves with – for example, in an early draft of Snow White, the dwarves only ask that she cook their meals in exchange for shelter, but by the time the first edition of his book was published, their demands included that she keep house for them, do the cooking, make the beds, wash, sew, knit and keep everything neat and clean.
And so fairy tales began to feel less like women’s stories and more like a guidebook for how women were expected to behave.
These days, women have new ways, better ways of communicating what we feel and think. And though we still face challenges when trying to make ourselves heard, we’re not silenced and dismissed as we once were. Perhaps it’s senseless to mourn the fact that fairy tales no longer act as the voice of women – after all, doesn’t that in and of itself show how far we’ve come in the past few hundred years? Yet it’s hard not to feel that in gaining one thing, we’ve lost another – or rather, that it’s been taken from us, and transformed into something that in many ways works against us. But I like to think that it’s still possible to look at fairy tales and see the beating heart of a woman’s story buried under all that repressive patriarchal junk. You may have to do a bit of digging, but it’s still there. It’s still concerned with all the same things that it once was – finding true love, protecting the ones it loves, outwitting those who would seek to hurt it. And I think that heart is worth resurrecting, if we can.
[Image from Andrew Lang’s Green Fairy Book]
Tags: andrew lang, andrew lang is the freaking best, anne thériault, fairy tales, folklore
Oh, this is good!
A couple months ago, I read From the Beast to the Blonde, and enjoyed it well enough, but was frustrated by how she sometimes buried the point of the chapter, or stretched her theory a little too far, or just plain ignored things that didn’t fit (or maybe she didn’t know about?), and in the last few chapters, everything was Sex Sex Sex which just bugged me. (Not sure if it’s because I’m asexual and just often don’t see sex where other people do, or if it’s because she really was oversimplifying things to fit a pet theory.) So I really appreciated reading this to give a better perspective and easier-to-read version of the Grimms and tales!
I love fairy tales and saints’ tales and everything. I wish I’d realized younger how much folklore encompasses (more than just the stories!) and that it’s an actual field of study, so that I could have studied it properly in university.
Thank you so much!!
I read From the Beast to the Blonde a few months ago and definitely know what you mean. I sometimes felt mired down in the language that she used, when it seemed like she could have gotten her point across in a much simpler, more accessible way.
I would love to be able to formally study folklore. Someday! Maybe!
Yes, it read as super-academic in many places, where I wasn’t sure if it was meant for popular reading or not. So many early chapters I was tempted to bring out my pencil and highlighter to help bring out the connecting threads of the section and see how it all fit together, because my lord it was frustrating to get to page 15 of the chapter and suddenly get a topic sentence that pulled it all in, and then have to go back and reread with a new eye. “Finally, I see what she’s getting at with these references and anecdotes…five paragraphs before she starts a new topic.” (Have I been out of school too long???)
My not-so-secret dream is to study how folkloric transmission correlates to language transmission, and how they might influence each other and the trade of information of different communities. It’s totally nerdy and probably not very useful, but I find it utterly fascinating, like how the Spice Route influenced so much throughout history. I’m awful at school due to depression/anxiety, so I can never go back to study it formally (I was lucky I finished my English Lit degree!), besides which the expense >.< Maybe one day…
I would recommend At The Bottom Of The Garden and Spinning Straw Into Gold if you want more analytical material! The latter can be a bit overwrought, I think, but still has valuable things to say. The former is pure perfection.
Thank you! I’ll look into them 🙂
I’m really fond of When They Severed Earth from Sky by the Barbers, and even though it’s mostly about mythology, it has colored a lot of how I view folklore in general. I need to reread it now that I understand more about the topic as a whole, but it’s really intriguing to me how so many stories started as pragmatic ways of transmitting information in a way that’s easy to remember, using metaphor and such – and fairy tales in many ways are an extension of that, but also they’re as much about … I don’t know how to word this exactly … but taking social and cultural norms that may suck and subverting them or recontextualizing them … it’s like simultaneously showing how awful the social rules are and complaining, but also encoding them and saying This Is What Must Be Done in a way to teach them to younger generations (or to remind the old biddies of their place). And then you get things like the Grimms or even Disney cutting the tales off at the knees, so to speak.
This is very cool, but it’s left me wondering if there’s anywhere I can find the less-edited early versions to read. Is there?
I can’t find an online English translation of the Grimm first edition, but the German is at various places including http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Grimm,+Jacob+und+…
if you can read German or want to take your chance with online translation.
Thank you! And Tatar’s The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairytales contains a bunch of the unedited (or only edited for the “adult” edition) fairytales – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691114692/ref=a…
Thank you!
I’ve got a book called Grimm’s Grimmest – http://www.amazon.co.uk/Grimms-Grimmest-Jacob-Gri…
Thank you!
Sometimes you can find the 1812 versions on D.L. Ashliman’s Folktexts site, here: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html
For example, under “Cinderella,” Ashliman includes links to both the 1812 and 1857 versions. You can also see side by side comparisons of the 1812 and 1857 “Rapunzel”s here: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm012a.html However, for a tale like “The Blue Light,” he includes only the 1857 version in English, though he links to the 1812 version in German. It’s not the easiest site to navigate, but at least you can be sure that Ashliman always specifies which version he’s using.
Thank you!
Yay, Anne Thériault is on The Toast! She is fantastic. Going to read this now…
Is now a good time to point out that Angela Carter’s book of all-women’s-voice tales exists, edited by Marina Warner, and is a beautiful edition of stories from all around the globe?
Maybe late. But yes, go look!
Tatterhood and Other Tales is another good one in a similar vein!
WikiSource.org has the first edition of Nursery and Household Tales here (in German): http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Kinder-_und_Hausm%C…
By the by, my favorite tale is The Wishing Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_Household…
It’s ridiculous and it has a talking goat who speaks naught but lies. Rhyming lies. I love it.
Oh, excellent!
*goes off to learn German*
Reading the belle jar and Anne Theriault has actually made me a better person. She is that good. What a smarty pants, cheers to the toast for seeing value when it is so evident !
I’m an amateur scholar of fairy tales and folklore, and I always find it terribly sad that so many people think fairy tales are patriarchal nonsense. I’m very pleased to read another’s defense of them, as what they once were (and still are, if we look).
Fitcher’s Bird forever!!!!
Tatterhood and Other Tales is another good one in a similar vein!
THANK YOU FOR THIS. One of my hyper-specific pet peeves is when people insist that the “real” (i.e. dark and edgy) versions of fairy tales are like some fixed, single text. (This kind of attitude is generally found with the person who thinks they are blowing your mind by telling you Disney didn’t have the whole story, man!) Like the Grimm Brothers just went into the woods of Bavaria and plucked them, fully grown, from the Tree of Violent and Patriarchal Homespun Fables. The “originals” are as altered and mutable as the Disneyfied versions. Fairy tales are a mirror for the times they’re told in.
I really,really liked this piece.
You know what’s really good? Fairy Tale themed porn… Wait what’s everyone talking about?
You know what's really good? Fairy Tale themed porn… Wait what's everyone talking about?
Factory-produced thread and yarn, which were finer and smoother than their home-spun counterparts
Lies! Factory-made stuff wasn’t better, it’s always been merely good enough. It’s just that the time savings was enough to be worth the drop in quality.
Other than that, this is a lovely piece!
Marina Warner and Ruth Bottigheimer are not nearly as generous with their assessment of the Grimms’ alteration of fairy tales. According to Warner, almost all of the writers who are responsible for “consciously inventing the modern fairy tale” are women. Warner also asserts that ironically, French women in the late 17th century began to cultivate the form as a means of protest. Among other things, these French women wanted to be able to choose who or if they would marry; they wanted to have some control of their dowries; they wanted equal treatment under the law when it came to adultery; and they wanted to be able to take part in intellectual and political matters of all kinds. Warner writes, “the blunting of fairy tales as well as their infantilization, as they shed their context,…has been one of the main changes to take place in their perception: the conservative romance of marriage and material comfort has usurped the fiery protest of a whole generation of French noblewomen against the serfdom of dynastic matrimony and mental inanition”. (From the Beast to the Blonde 169)
Bottigheimer’s research in Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys demonstrates that the Grimms, revised the tales many times altering subsequent editions by: 1) excising female protagonists who were too audacious or insubordinate; 2) meting out far worse punishments for girls than boys for comparable transgressions; 3) differentiating and defining certain behaviors as only acceptable in boys and other behaviors as required of girls; and 4) finding multiple ways to silence the good female characters while simultaneously exaggerating the voice of evil female characters.
And both Bottigheimer and Warner stress that the Grimms disingenuously claimed they were preserving German folk tradition, when in truth their stories were based on French literature of the bourgeoisie.
Marina Warner and Ruth Bottigheimer are not nearly as generous with their assessment of the Grimms' alteration of fairy tales. According to Warner, almost all of the writers who are responsible for "consciously inventing the modern fairy tale" are women. Warner also asserts that ironically, French women in the late 17th century began to cultivate the form as a means of protest. Among other things, these French women wanted to be able to choose who or if they would marry; they wanted to have some control of their dowries; they wanted equal treatment under the law when it came to adultery; and they wanted to be able to take part in intellectual and political matters of all kinds. Warner writes, "the blunting of fairy tales as well as their infantilization, as they shed their context,…has been one of the main changes to take place in their perception: the conservative romance of marriage and material comfort has usurped the fiery protest of a whole generation of French noblewomen against the serfdom of dynastic matrimony and mental inanition". (From the Beast to the Blonde 169)
Bottigheimer’s research in Grimms' Bad Girls and Bold Boys demonstrates that the Grimms, revised the tales many times altering subsequent editions by: 1) excising female protagonists who were too audacious or insubordinate; 2) meting out far worse punishments for girls than boys for comparable transgressions; 3) differentiating and defining certain behaviors as only acceptable in boys and other behaviors as required of girls; and 4) finding multiple ways to silence the good female characters while simultaneously exaggerating the voice of evil female characters.
And both Bottigheimer and Warner stress that the Grimms disingenuously claimed they were preserving German folk tradition, when in truth their stories were based on French literature of the bourgeoisie.
I wonder whether the first edition of Grimm’s Tales could be reprinted. I sure would buy it.
Of course, I prefer original folk tales to adaptations, why are you asking?