Fairy Tale Themes and Motifs, and Two Courtship Tales
Fairy tales: A
quick history
There were fairy tales in Renaissance literature
such as Basile’s Il Pentamerone
(1634-36) and The 1001 Arabian Nights (ca. 1500), appearing as
stories told by travelers or other people in a frame story, as in Chaucer’s Canterbury
Tales, but they began appearing on their own in the 1500s
French women, particularly Madame d’Aulnoy, popularized “contes des
fées” (tales of the fairies) in the 1600s, telling
them in a witty manner—sometimes taking an hour—as sophisticated yet
refreshingly simple entertainment at literary salons during the opulent reign
of Louis XIV, “the Sun king” (Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature
)
After Madame d’Aulnoy
and Charles Perrault published their tale collections
in the late 1600s, English people translated them as “fairy tales,” and they
gained some popularity in
For the next 200 years or so, the English public
and book reviewers went through periods of “disenchantment” with the fairy tale
(sometimes on moral or religious grounds), overlapping with revivals in
interest in and acceptance of them.
The English translation of the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen
in 1823 opened a new era of reverence for the fairy tale as Romantic,
appropriate for children, and refreshingly direct and magical.
Before this, remember, fairy tales were
primarily told by adults to adults (though children might have been part of the
audience).
For children?
Traditional fairy tales (ones handed down by
word of mouth, until they began to be written down in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries) were told by adults to adults, while working, at
community gatherings, around the fireplace.
Bawdy details included Rapunzel’s
thickening waistline after the prince’s visits to the tower and Sleeping
Beauty’s awakening by giving birth to twins (conceived while she was asleep),
The tales’ symbolism speaks to adults as well as
children (whom we now consider the appropriate audience), and the tales deal
with childlessness, sexual maturation, remarriage, jealousy across the
generations, sibling rivalry, incest, murderous rage, inheritance issues, and
other timeless problems.
Fairy Tale Motifs:
The “rule of three”
Three characters (“Goldilocks and the Three
Bears,” “The Three Little Pigs,” “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”
Three wishes
Three tasks that a prince (or princess) must do
to win his (or her) true love
Three times for a request or saying to be
repeated (“I’ll huff, and I’ll puff …”)
Magical helpers (or
animal helpers)
An old crone
A talking frog
A fairy godmother
A swan to convey one across a river
A bird that carries one in his claws
Also, not always helping, magical creatures
(witches, ogres, fairies, mermaids, unicorns, trolls, gnomes, dragons)
Magical gifts
A mirror that allows one to see one’s heart’s
desire (or one’s loved ones)
A table that sets itself with food and dishes
A stick that beats one’s enemies
A goose that lays golden eggs
A pouch that replenishes itself with gold
Trials or tests to win one’s love
Going “east of the sun and west of the moon” and
bringing back a treasure
Learning the answer to a riddle
Spinning straw into gold (and guessing Rumpelstiltskin’s name)
Breaking through the 100-year-old forest to find
the sleeping princess
Good and Bad
Choices
Helpless people or creatures to be kind to
Opportunities to tell the truth or lie; cheat or
be honest; betray the innocent, or submit to tyranny
A related idea: One’s inside matches one’s
outside (a beautiful nature manifests itself in a beautiful exterior, an
attractive appearance; an ugly nature shows itself in an ugly appearance)
If someone’s inside and outside are at odds, by
the end of the tale the two are reconciled (as in the Beast’s transformation in
“Beauty and the Beast”
Notice the elemental justice of the tales
Courtship tales
Courtship tales = Fairy tales which focus on
marriage as a reward for "good" behavior or which depict a
coming-of-age that culminates in marriage (as in “Rapunzel”)
“Animal-bridegroom" tales: A sub-category
of courtship tales that includes "The Frog Prince," "Beauty and
the Beast," and "Snow White and Rose Red."
In the animal-bridegroom tale, the girl
protagonist marries some kind of beast, who is transformed in the course of the
story into a (handsome) prince.
Some researchers argue that these stories put
into code women's ambivalent attitudes toward marriage (that is--imagine a
coarse old woman telling this story--the young woman finds the man or the idea
of sex with the man repulsive until she marries him and then ... she thinks
he's wonderful).
Remember that these stories have been told and
retold for centuries because they have resonated with their hearers and
expressed something important to their audiences.
Charles Perrault (1628-1703)
Perrault, a polished
French nobleman in the court of Louis XIV, published nine Contes
de ma mere l’Oye (Tales of my Mother Goose),
listing his 18-year-old son as author.
These witty, sophisticated versions of folk
tales (including “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Cinderella,” “Toads and Diamonds,”
“Puss in Boots,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Blue Beard”) gained fame and paved the
way for literary acceptance of the fairy tale
Perrault’s tales
display courtly splendor, in contrast to the folk settings of the Grimms’ tales (Continuum Encyclopedia of Children’s
Literature 621)
His fairy tales were the first produced for
children in
Perrault’s versions of
“Cinderella” and “Sleeping Beauty” are the best-known and most frequently
re-illustrated
Perrault’s “Cinderella” (203)
Probably the most popular and frequently re-told
and re-illustrated fairy tale
Notice the girls’ resemblance to their mothers
(the proud, disagreeable stepmother has daughters exactly like her; Cinderella,
daughter of the “best woman in the world,” is exactly like her.
Cinderella’s punishment for being better than
her stepmother’s daughters is household drudgery (dirty work) and poor
accommodations
Her father is “hen-pecked” (“entirely ruled by
his new wife”).
In this story, “pretty is as pretty does.”
Unlike the Grimms’ “Aschenputtel” (Cinderella), or “Snow White and Rose Red,”
this tale takes place in a city, near the fashionable set.
“Cinderella”
Notice Perrault’s
sophisticated French touches: he includes talk of the latest fashions (velvet,
English lace, brocade, tiaras, full-length mirrors, silk
stockings).
Cinderella’s good nature enables her to endure
the sisters’ ill treatment with grace (she returns good for evil).
In the Grimms’ version
of the tale, Cinderella’s dead mother, rather than a fairy, helps her through a
magic rose tree the mother had planted.
What types of items does the fairy use to make
Cinderella’s magical clothes and accessories? (Magic in this tale is made from
everyday materials, not from nothing).
The Fairy had “probably” been the one to tell
the Prince an unknown princess was on her way.
At the ball, Cinderella’s beauty, rather than
her good nature, wins out; she does, though, act kindly to her sisters at the
ball.
Notice the two balls and two dresses (the Disney
Cinderella has just one of each).
“Cinderella” still
Is Cinderella simply passive, or is there more
to her than that?
What aspects of this tale make it such a
romantic favorite? (What’s the fantasy,
or the dream, for the little girl or adult woman?)
There are more than 2000 variants of the
Cinderella story, and the oldest version of it is Chinese (perhaps that’s the
origin of the tale’s value for the small foot)
This graceful, French version of the tale ends
with reconciliation between the sisters and Cinderella’s kind match-making for
the previously rude sisters; the German version has no repentance on the
sisters’ part, and avenging birds peck out their eyes on the way to the wedding
Also in the Grimms’
version, the sisters, at their mother’s insistence, hack off part of their feet
to try to get them to fit into the shoes (it’s a bloody scene of deception).
Rapunzel
Jacob Grimm
(1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859)
These two sons of a rural German lawyer lived at
subsistence level after their father died when they were ages 9 and 10 (they
had four more siblings).
Both studied law at the university but were
captivated by German poetry and investigated German folk literature as evidence
of a unified Teutonic culture that could unify the then-splintered German
states (Cambridge Guide 307).
After friends published German folk songs, the Grimms began collecting old songs themselves and continued
to work on their “German literature” project .
They published volume 1 of Kinder- und Hausmärchen in 1812—instantly successful—and a second
volume in 1815
The Cambridge Guide to Children’s Literature calls
the Grimms’ tales unusual among published fairy tale
collections for “their presentation of children as central and serious”: in the
tales “the lives of children are essentially dramatic and important, and their
perceptions profoundly moral” (247).
After their initial unillustrated
collection for scholars—showcasing the essentially German folk
literature—Wilhelm Grimm edited the tales to make them, in his view, more
suitable for children, and omitted the footnotes (247). Though later criticized for editing the
material rather than preserving it as the “folk” told it, the Grimms made the tales readable and accessible.
“Rapunzel”
Hinging on the desperation of a woman and her
husband in the face of cravings during pregnancy, the tale believably encodes
the conflict between the young and “in love,” and the seemingly obstructive
older generation
The story nicely transfers the teen-parent
conflict to a non-mother figure, a “witch.”
The courtship element of this tale offers a
trial, and a test, and requires something from each partner. What is the prince’s contribution? What is Rapunzel’s?
The Grimms changed the
oral version of the tale that they collected, at first publishing the
storyteller’s version, in which the witch realizes that a man has been visiting
the tower because Rapunzel’s dresses get too tight
(that is, she has become pregnant).
Does this tale allow you to sympathize with
anyone other than Rapunzel and the prince? (Are you sorry for Rapunzel’s
parents? For the witch?) Are the lovers
sympathetic characters?
Is there any symbolism in the hair—cut off to
punish the girl for sexual indiscretion (in the original—and the healing tears
of the woman character?