The princess problem

The Sleeper and the Spindle is Neil Gaiman's sort-of retelling of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty but of course, with a twist. Nothing is what it seems. In this fairy tale the princess with her jet-black hair and skin as white as snow, cancels her wedding and sets off to save her kingdom from the plague of sleep which began in the neighbouring kingdom of Dorimar in the tower of a castle long covered by a tangle of deadly rosebushes. It offers a welcome relief from what I call "the princess problem" (a current obsession in our house).

The queen is certainly more contemplative than the Snow White we've come to know through Disney. The ponders her imminent marriage, "It seemed both unlikely and extremely final. She wondered how she would feel to be a married woman. It would be the end of her life, she decided, if life was a time of choices. In a week from now, she would have no choices. She would reign over her people. She would have children. Perhaps she would die in childbirth, perhaps she would die as an old woman, or in battle. But the path to her death, heartbeat by heartbeat, would be inevitable."

And so the quest to release Sleeping Beauty from her enchantment, and through this stop the plague that threatens her kingdom, this fairy tale veers away from being a love story to being a tale of bravery and courage and ultimately about making choices.

Unlike most fairy tales there is no guarantee of "they lived happily ever after". This made me think of the stories that the kid is currently obsessed with. We have been reading (and re-reading and re-re-reading) a whole host of fairy tales that end with the conventional "and they got married and lived happily ever after". I've probably mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of these fairy tales in their shiny pink Disney-coats, so it's  always nice to look at some princess alternatives.

I've never understood why so many children's fairy tale collections only focus on such a limited number of stories (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel etc) when there are so many more interesting and equally entertaining stories that don't necessarily have anything to do with marriage.

For example, there is the Grimms' story of "Clever Gretel", a tale with a questionable moral about the cook, Gretel, who cleverly outwits her master and enjoys two juicy roast chickens she was supposed to be preparing for a guest. Or Gerda's brave adventures to rescue her enchanted friend in the "Snow Queen". Or a sister's determination and perseverance in saving her six brothers from a curse, that has turned them into swans, by suffering through six years of silence and a host of challenges in the story "The Six Swans".

I'm sure I'm not alone in facing the princess problem. It's not that I even mind reading princess stories to the kid, but a bit more balance and variety would be nice. I also have to keep reminding myself that in the end it's not so much about what I want to read as much as it is about letting the kid choose the way in terms of the stories she enjoys. That is after all what reading for pleasure is all about.

Old classics redesigned

Who doesn't love childhood favourites such as Mary Poppins, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and all those others? Aren't they beautifully represented in these minimalist, but incredibly effective posters by designer Christian Jackson? I keep encountering them during my travels around the internet and each time I seem to fall in love with them more! Time to get some maybe...?

The big, bad wolf

There have been repeated readings of Little Red Riding Hood  at bedtime here in our house. During one of these many readings, I began wondering about all the different versions of this well known classic. Each fairy tale book seems to take a slightly different angle when it comes to this story, so I started looking them up. The many variations got me thinking about scary stories and how we deal with them in children's literature.

The whole notion of being hunted by a wolf in a deep, dark forest is terrifying when you actually think about it, yet the two versions of the story we have conveyed that very differently (one a German Grimm version and one a rather more sanitised children's collection). In the newer, sanitised book, the kid listened spellbound and delighted to how Little Red Riding Hood and the grandmother were saved from a very gruesome end (Grandmother by hiding behind the woodshed and Little Red Riding Hood by screaming for her father, the woodsman).

The very comical and non-threatening illustrations of the newer one, made me think of how they contrasted early illustrations of fairy tales. Gustave Doré's amazing, yet incredibly sinister illustrations come to mind. The Doré illustrations below are from Little Red Riding Hood published in an 1800s Charles Perrault collection of fairy tales. They really do convey that terror of being stalked in the woods ... the menace in the lines of the wolf's body, the deadly claws and then the frozen look of fear on the girl's face after she has been seduced into bed with him (the old French version did a fair bit more moralising about young girls who strayed off the path and allowed themselves to be seduced. This version did not have a happy ending!).

Anyway, back to the Grimm version. Here the wolf attacks and eats the Grandmother in her bed and when Little Red Riding Hood finally arrives, he eats her too and finally satiated, falls asleep. It is only through the chance passing of a huntsman that Little Red Riding Hood and her Grandmother are rescued. The huntsman sees the sleeping wolf and cuts open his stomach to release the two. Heavy stones are then placed inside the wolf so that when he wakes up and tries to run away he collapses and dies. Pretty gruesome when you compare it to the new version!

Much of this difference is because traditional fairy tales were originally never meant to be for children specifically; they were folklore, but at the same time, children weren't necessarily sheltered from them either. The Grimm brothers initially started collecting German folktales not with the aim of entertaining children, but rather to preserve German culture. It was only in 1812 that they published the first collection of Kinder und Hausmärchen. While the old stories are far from the sanitised version we expect of children's literature today, there is just something about scary stories... you don't want to know what happens next, yet you can't look away.

In The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1976), the psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim makes a compelling argument for such scary stories to be told to children by analysing traditional fairy tales (mostly the Grimm versions). This was in spite of the fact that the traditional versions of many fairy tales had a disturbingly dark and violent side to them; just consider Cinderella's step sisters hacking off their own toes and heels to fit into the shoe or the evil stepmother in Snow White being forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes at Snow White's wedding as punishment. Today we might say these are not appropriate for children to hear and would want these stories to be adapted and changed accordingly.

However, Bettelheim argues that these old stories hold a symbolic significance for children in that they are a safe way for children to work through conscious and subconscious fears such as death, abandonment, change, injustice and their own violence and anger in relation to the adults in their lives. They do so by interpreting these stories in their own terms and creating meaning out of them. So for example, Bettelheim explains how Little Red Riding Hood might hold greater symbolic meaning for the child:

"The child knows intuitively that Little Red Cap's being swallowed by the wolf - much like the various deaths other fairy-tale heroes experience for a time - is by no means the end of the story, but a necessary part of it. The child also understands that Little Red Cap really 'died' as the girl who permitted herself to be tempted by the wolf; and that when the story says 'the little girl sprang out' of the wolf's belly, she came to life a different person. This device is necessary because, while the child can readily understand one thing being replaced by another (the good mother by the evil stepmother), he cannot yet comprehend inner transformations. So among the great merits of fairy tales is that through hearing them, the child comes to believe that such transformations are possible."

I am going to tell the kid the Grimm version some time soon and see how she responds to it. I have a feeling that somehow it will all make sense to her. Perhaps these stories also force us to face the darker side of life, the things that lie in the shadows and ultimately force us, on some level, to confront our fears. As Alfred Hitchcock puts it, the big, bad wolf never goes away entirely and the sooner we learn to face our fears, the better:

“Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf. This fright complex is rooted in every individual.” 

Snow White and the disneyfication of the fairy tale

Been a day of musing over cups of tea about this.

Around about this time each year I go to Toys R’ Us to purchase a present for the big birthday celebration where my kid goes to day care. Each year I decide to have a look at their book section to see what they have because I like giving books. Each year I’m sorely disappointed with what I find myself looking at: a range of Disney princesses in their uniformly bright colours, the book spin-offs from various animation successes (Cars, Finding Nemo) and colouring-in books (seriously, people, colouring-in books don’t count!). Each year I go around and find some bewildered looking shop assistant and ask them if they’re sure these are all the books they have. Each year I end up speaking anxiously to the manager about their selection.  Each year they give me the phone number of their head office.

Last year I phoned the Toys R’ Us head office and spoke to the buyer for children’s books (without any success clearly) and wrote a letter to the paper. I am aware that Toys R’Us isn’t called Books R’Us (which people have pointed out to me), but when I stare jealously at the impressive DVD and gaming section they have, I can just as easily say they’re not called DVDs R’Us either.  Clearly children’s literature isn’t considered fun enough or entertaining enough to warrant much shelf space in a toy store.

Anyway, the point of this blog post is not to discuss my obsession with the book selection of toy stores, but rather the uneasy feeling I get when I stare at those inanely smiling Disney princesses with their flawless, generic features. I want to talk about Snow White (and Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty) and the disneyfication of the fairy tale.

Image from here

Many of us won’t remember how we know fairy tales – we just seem to have always known them. This common or shared knowledge can be referred to as our common repertoire of fairy tales.  If the Disney-dominated bookshelves of toyshops are an indication of demand, then it is probably true that these days the version that we all “know” is that of the Disney movie.

But these are not the original fairy tales. The first written records of these oral stories date back hundreds of years and make it clear that they were not originally intended specifically for children, as we assume they were today. In a version of Sleeping Beauty recorded by Giambattista Basile in 1634, for example, the prince is so taken with the looks of the sleeping princess that he climbs into bed with her and enjoys “the first fruits of love”. Then he leaves her pregnant, but still sleeping. She gives birth to twins but doesn’t awaken until one of them sucks hungrily at her finger and, in so doing, removes the poisoned piece of flax that enchanted her.

Recognisable versions of the fairy tales we know today first appeared in print in 1697 in Charles Perrault’s collection aimed at entertaining the French court. Much later, in 1812, the brothers Grimm published their first edition of German folktales. Clearly, fairy tales have come a long way from oral folklore to Disney product. Versions have changed over time and become less scary and more child-friendly as we would define it today. Disney has in many ways sanitised the fairy tales of the past.

In his chapter entitled Breaking the Disney Spell (from Fairy tale as myth myth as fairy tale), Jack Zipes makes the point,

“It was not once upon a time, but at a certain time in history, before anyone knew what was happening, that Walt Disney cast a spell on the fairy tale, and he has held it captive ever since. He did not use a magic wand or demonic powers. On the contrary, Disney employed the most up-to-date technological means and used his own ‘American’ grit and ingenuity to appropriate European fairy tales.”

As a result, Zipes argues, 

“If children or adults think of the great classic fairy tales today, be it Snow White, Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella, they will think of Walt Disney. Their first and perhaps lasting impressions of these tales and others will have emanated from a Disney film, book, or artifact.”

It would seem a pity if the only contact children have with fairy tales is the sanitised, mass-produced Disney version and that the rich, varied history of fairy tales is lost. I’m not suggesting that Disney is all bad, but that it would do well if, as Zipes suggests, the spell was broken and that among the Disney spin-off books could be found more of the traditional versions as well.

Just a thought...