Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales by The Grimm Brothers
- mayleencadiz
- Oct 22, 2019
- 8 min read
An Analysis of its History, Its Present Influence, and Its Lessons for the Future Generations
The last name Grimm is sort of a harbinger on its own - it sort of warns the readers that what they are going to read are going to make them horrified, or the least uncomfortable. The stories that were supposed to be about fairies and for children were downright grim with a touch of moral lesson after painful and terrible punishments. In today's standard, these stories I assume may not be even published - they will never see the light of day.
Some people are surprised when they read or hear about the stories of Cinderella and Snow White in their original form written by the Grimm Brothers over 200 years ago. Children and even adults are more familiar with the kid-friendly versions of Disney's Snow White shown in 1937 and Cinderella in 1950. Even the 2015 reboot of Cinderella was so heart-warming that I forgot how gruesome the original story was. In the Disneyfied version of these movies, we didn't see that Snow White and the prince punished the Queen by making her wear shoes made of hot iron and ordered her to walk until she died painfully. Disney also chucked the scene where Cinderella's sisters' had to cut their toes off so the shoes would fit their huge feet. We also didn't see that the evil twin sisters' eyeballs got angrily poked out by crows. Fun, right?
Why would the Grimm brothers write horrifying these fairy tales? Would they want to give the children of their time a trauma? Let's look at the history and the lives of the authors over 200 years ago when they wrote these collection of stories.
Fairy Tale - A"Confusion" in Terminology
Let us first start with the terminology - fairy tale. The word in itself is already a misnomer because there were no exactly fairies in the stories. What Grimm brothers incorporated in the stories were monsters, witches, mean dragons, devils, saints, talking animals, giants, and sometimes, even God himself. The fairies that we know of - those winged little beings like Tinkerbell rarely made an appearance. So why was the collection of stories called fairy tales? Fairy tales are a form of folk tales and over 200 years ago were considered to belong to the "low class" or "low culture" of the society. Back in those days, stories about saints and knights with complex plots were paid for by the rich - who were then the trendsetters and dictate which things were to be considered of refined taste.
Scholars heavily debated the meaning of fairy tales. It was then sort of accepted that a folk tale starts with the line " Once upon a time...". All cultures' folk tales start with this ambiguous time frame which connote that the stories happened many moons ago which can be interpreted as the stories happened back in the Middle ages or even long before that. In terms of the settings, the place was not exactly specified except that the stories were set in the nearest forest, garden, palace, mountain, sea, or anywhere as long as the story teller can just have a setting where the stories took place.
The main goal of these folk stories were to serve as moral lessons to the listeners. The characters could either live happily ever after because of their kindness or die the most painful and horrible way as consequences of their actions.
In terms of characters and their descriptions, there were no in-between. It was either you're a prince or a knight with a valiant heart or a thief with the darkest soul. When it came to women characters, you can either be a pious virgin or a wicked witch who ate children for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yes, the stories were heavily sexist, but again they were written over 200 years go.
Grimm Brothers' Corner of the World 200 Years Ago
We must understand the context and the time period when these stories were written. The main resource material I used in writing this analysis was the introduction in the book written by Ken Mondschien, PhD. These stories were written in German and during the height of the book's popularity, it was translated in the 1880's. The one I bought and read was translated by Margaret Hunt.
I will not review each story because there were over a hundred of them and that review will bore you to tears. I would rather discuss the historical backdrop of when, where, and why these stories were written.
These folk stories with simple narratives and language were handed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. It was not until the brothers Grimm - Wilhelm and Jacob decided to compile these stories into a book back in the 1800's. Their original goal was to collect these stories to preserve and define their German culture.
When Jacob and Wilhem were born in the 1870's, Germany as we know now didn't exist yet.
According to the introduction written by Mondschien in this book, "the lands that now comprise Germany and Austria were under the Holy Roman Empire which was dissolved by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806." With the dissolution, governing the large mass of lands became more difficult. To the German young patriots of the time, they dreamed to have a country like the USA which at the time had a more defined grasp on how to rule its people, have boundaries, and sort of a mish-mash of culture. Just a note, the US had just been recovering from the American Civil war which happened in the 1860's, so despite having established a government, there were still political issues that were not resolved. But comparing Germany and the US in the 1870's, the US had a semblance of a more unified country.
Liberals in Germany at the time - liberals meaning those people who believe in constitutional rights, economic equality, and being ruled by the people elected by the majority to replace the monarchy. Just like the uncertainty that the undefined Germany faced, the Grimm brothers who were born into a middle class family faced financial insecurity when their father died. With the grace of their maternal aunt, who could be argued as their fairy god mother, they were able to study at a prep school then eventually got into a university.
It was at the university that a professor named Von Savigny encouraged them to do research to find and create their own version of Germany. The brothers collected German folklore and stories from the Holy Roman Empire which were compiled into a book called Marchen, which we now know as the fairy tales.
Although Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood were already written by other authors, the Grimm brothers retold them in a simple manner to appeal to the masses. Marchen was written for the common folk - the working class who comprised of fathers who worked in the fields and the mothers who were left at home to take care of the children and regale them of stories about princesses, monsters, knights, princes, kings, and God. These mothers, in the eyes of the Grimm brothers are the true keepers of the German culture as they told stories to their children to be passed on to the next generation.
The Appropriateness of Fairy Tales in the Modern Times
As mentioned in the introduction, reading fairy tales in their original forms in the present times to children is a horrifying idea. Even adults can feel queasy and unsettled at the brutality yet the simplicity of the plot. Although we, adults are already used to the violence we see in the movies, we still cannot wrap our heads around the idea that the Grimm Brothers intended to write these books to children who lived over 200 years ago. But let's back up. What was life like in Europe 200 years ago? It was completely different - bleak and almost desperate. So if you read the stories in the fairy tales, the masses lived in abject poverty while the monarchy lived in luxury. To the common man, to have the financial and even food security of a king was the dream and the goal.
Another common theme in the stories were children being left to the elements to fend for themselves. If they lived and were able to find settlements on their own, well then good. But if not, too bad. No one really mourned the loss of a child during those times because of poverty. Remember the story of Hansel and Gretel? It was their evil stepmother who gave the father the idea to let those poor children to get lost in the forest to get rid of them because they were extra mouths to feed. Luckily, these two children were smart enough to put the witch in its proper place - in a boiling pot where she used to cooked other children who were unfortunate enough to be her victims. The theme of being left to the elements was even present in Greek mythology. We will discuss Greek mythology in future blogs.
The idea of Children's Rights was very new; it was first declared in 1924 during the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child. It underwent several revisions over the years such as United Nation's Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 in which there was a provision for mothers and their children, Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, and the most recent is the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Back in Wilhelm and Jacob's days, children were considered as adults. As long as they were strong enough to help the parents to put food on the table, they should start helping the family in working - whether in the fields or in the shops. Poverty was the norm so every member of the family was expected to contribute financially - even the children. Only a handful of children at the time attended school. Most of those children were from affluent families and royalty. If children commit crime, they were also tried as adults so you've heard countless stories of children's hands chopped off for stealing bread or even hanged.
Racism was also another theme in these collection of fairy tales. In today's standards, there is no place for anti-Semitism, however over 200 years ago, Germany's desire to find its core identity as a people was their driving force to establish their country. For them, the Jews were the common enemy, and unfortunately, Adolf Hitler used this atrocious belief that caused millions of Jews' lives and Germany is forever ashamed for their participation in the darkest part of the history of the world.
Sexism was also prevalent in the stories because most of the stories involved the maidens needed to be saved from spells, monsters, evil stepmothers, princes, or dragons. However, there were stories where the girls took on the lead role and saved the men from evil creatures just like in the story of Snow White and Rose Red (not to be confused with Snow White). Feminists argue that these stories do not set good examples for today's children, and to that I respectfully disagree. Sure, these stories do not align to our present-day philosophy and intelligence, however, we must view these stories as glimpse into our dark past and help us appreciate what we have now.
In conclusion
Should Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales still be published and sold? Definitely. Banning them will make us the same Nazis that we hate who burned books during World War II. These fairy tales can make us appreciate how far we have come from the suffocating ideas of racism, purity, anti-semitism, and sexism. These fairy tales make us appreciate that kids should be kids and they should not be treated as work force, although I believe that they should be taught early on about consequences for their actions. Should they be read to present-day children in its original form? That decision is up to the parents, but I argue that when they are mature enough to discern what's acceptable or not, they should read them.
There are timeless lessons we can all learn from fairy tales. These stories value kindness, hard work, faith, forgiveness, and love. We sure still need a lot of those things today. Despite being far removed from the very conservative views from over 200 years ago, there still room for understanding and empathy.
Fairy tales can usher us into the future where we can all look back and be grateful how far we have become as a society. We can all be horrified and cringe at the shock factor that Jacob and Wilhelm wove into their stories, then close the book at the end of the day then be thankful that we live in a world where those stories were just small windows from the past that we can sometimes peek through.
References:
Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales Introduction by Ken Mondschein, PhD
1870 in the United States - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1870_in_the_United_States
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