Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm

by Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) Grimm

1886 translation by Lucy Crane

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• For the most part, these stories--at least in their present state--do not appear suitable for reading as diversion, much less as children's tales. Without scholarly commentary and explication, they are simply too baffling to modern readers. Some possible reasons for their inconsistencies and unevenness of tone are:
  • We simply lack the prior knowledge and cultural context to understand what is really going on.
  • By the time these stories were written down, the storytellers themselves may have lost track of the tales' full meaning. They may have been re-enacting (and distorting) a traditional ritual that was no longer understood.
  • The translation may be inadequate, obscuring or omitting details, wordplay, general mood.
• The single most powerful connection to the child's world may be the constant recourse to magic. It is an empowering fantasy for children today, just as it was for helpless peasants of yore.

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Notes while reading the first group of stories

Rumpelstiltskin

• Is there an anti-semitic undercurrent in this story?
  • Cautionary tale for poor peasants--be wary of offers of outrageous riches, the ultimate price may be unbearable.
  • A man turning straw into gold may be a metaphor for usury. For a long time, only Jews were allowed to work as money lenders.
  • Rumpelstiltskin is a man with a strange name, given to strange rituals. A member of a distinct culture.
  • In other versions, Rumpelstiltskin's stomping on the ground makes him drop into hell. Even in this version, he has the devil for confidant (the devil alone could have revealed the name).
  • The emphasis on the power of naming may be loosely related to the Kabbalistic tradition.

The Frog Prince

• Hmmm... the princess flips, slams the frog against the wall--and that's what breaks the spell?!? I guess the moral is "tantrums work magic."
• The decent king, mindful of his (and his daughter's) obligations, even towards the humble and slimy, may have been wish-fulfillment on the part of downtrodden narrators.

Tom Thumb

• The father at first refuses to sell Tom because he is a favorite son--not because selling one's children is bad. It was probably common practice in times of need.
• Tom in the cow's stomach: "The windows were forgotten when this little room was built." Quite a knee-slapper, given that most of these tales appear utterly humorless to modern readers.
• This is quite different from the story of Tom Thumb I remember reading as a child. Based on my dim recollection of illustrations by Gustave Doré, my guess is that it was the Perrault version.
  • In the other version, Tom is the smallest and most clever of many brothers. When they all get lost in the woods, Tom saves the day: the road home is marked by a trail of crumbs he diligently left behind. Possible cross-pollination with the Grimm story of Hansel and Grethel.

The Bremen Town Musicians

• There seems to be a rather arbitrary connection between the first part (aging animals seeking a new life as--of all things--musicians) and the second part (wily animals roughing up larcenous simpletons).
  • I'm left wondering if there's a pun or joke we're missing. Is there a special meaning attached to "Bremen Town Musician"?
  • Maybe two separate oral traditions were summarily stitched together.
• The theme of death threats to aging animals appears in Old Sultan as well. This may resonate with children anxious about the fate of elderly relatives.

The Six Swans

• Vow of silence to save siblings--a theme found in The Twelve Brothers as well.

Hansel and Grethel

• The basic conflict here is between the love that binds a family and the desperation borne of dire need.
  • Hopefully none of the contemporary readers of this tale will have experience of devastating famine on a medieval scale.
  • A fairy tale, with its sketchy character development, is hardly suited to bridge this gap. The mother comes across as dastardly evil on par with the witch. She is conveniently dead by the time the resolution occurs, and gets no chance for redemption.
• The witches may have been a disguised representation of powerful evildoers who couldn't be mentioned directly.
• While all female adults are villains, both the little boy and the little girl contribute to their own rescue. Thus the characters that children are most likely to identify with provide gender-balanced role models.

Class discussion of the first group of stories

• Bettelheim: fairy tales allow chldren to deal with negative emotions (jealousy, anger, etc.)
• Children expect a clear-cut distinction between good guys and bad guys. Appeal of simplistic world of fairy tales.
• Bad guys may end up appealing to children because they are unrestrained in their response to life's obstacles. Fantasy of revenge--play-acting actions children can't take in real life.
• Children may be overly sensitive to their own (and others') loss of control. In Frog Prince, the princess' sudden rage may be ultimately reassuring, since it has positive consequences.
  • This episode is otherwise unusual for a fairy tale because of its immorality (agression rewarded). The princess' puzzling character is balanced by the steadfast loyalty of the frog prince's servant.
• Recurring theme in fairy tales: absent adults (possibly a reflection of high childbirth mortality).
  This remains an important theme in children's literature in general. As a result, children in these stories have to show pluck and initiative.
• In Frog Prince, the king who insists on keeping one's promises (even those made to lowly and slimy) is an unusual figure--a symbol of hope for the downtrodden.
• Villains in Rumpelstiltskin: dad is an idiot, the king is greedy, Rumpelstiltskin takes advantage of people in need.
• Rumpelstiltskin's temper tantrum resonates with children. Their own tantrums are a way to test the boundary between asserting themselves and finding reassurance in their parents' authority.
• Psychoanalitical concept of 'devouring mother'--as seen in Hansel and Grethel, as well as in the Alien movies.
• Central theme in Hansel and Grethel is a fundamental one for children: the fear of abandonment. Children find reassurance in the fantasy world of the tale because the little protagonists are in fact self-sufficient. They can fend for themselves when mom and dad are gone.
• Other common theme foound in Hansel and Grethel: weak fathers who won't stand up to their evil wives. Puts children in a position to have to take care of themselves--essential plot device to set the story in motion.
• For the plot to be viable, villains have to have a weak spot: in Hansel and Grethel, the witch is nearly blind.
• Role of duck in the finale of Hansel and Grethel: because they were good, the children receive assistance from nature.
• Tom Thumb: he is powerless beyond the ordinary limitations of childhood. Yet, through perseverance, he succeeds in proving himself.
• Literalism in fairy tales: the mother's hyperbole becomes reality when she does in fact give birth to a thumb-sized child.
• Tom's parents are at first hesitant, but ultimately grant autonomy to their son. Reflect child's need to have his/her contributions acknowledged.
• Message in The Bremen Town Musicians: virtues of cooperation. Success as a group prevails over absurd dreams of individual fortune as musicians.
  Even though the animals may be separately inept, their horrible voices combined add up to one powerful goblin.
• The takeover of the robbers' hideout turns the hovel into a great clubhouse for children-as-animals.
• Recurring theme in fairy tales: impossible quest thrust upon inadequate/handicapped hero. Inner resourcefulness (and/or the blatant deus-ex-machina of magic) redresses the imbalance, allowing the hero to succeed.
• In The Six Swans, the heroine's primary allegiance goes to her birth family. She refuses to talk so as to protect her brothers--even if it means endangering her own children.
• Role played by magic in fairy tales is replaced in contemporary stories by technology. Both provide plot shortcuts, a way to keep disbelief suspended in the face of outrageous storylines.
  • There is a close parallel between computer technology, unfathomable to most, and magic.
  • Just as every listener of a fairy tale knew about witches cauldrons, most people today can figure out the basics of using a computer. We just don't understand how it is done, the way ancient audiences did not understand what went into the cauldron. In both cases, there is a justified fear that the knowledgeable few (warlocks, hackers) may spring sudden unpleasant surprises on the clueless majority.
• Faith in magic nourished hope in a world which otherwise lacked in opportunity for redress of injustice.
• Evil magic throws up obstacles for the hero. This is used to assemble an enticing plot.
• The fairy tales were not necessarily addressed to children--the Disney versions are sanitized for the purpose.
• Protecting children from violence in fairy tales (e.g., reading to them from a sanitized version) may be pointless. They are likely exposed to far more graphic mayhem in videogames and other entertainment.
• These were folk traditions: stories told by poor people. This emerges in the choice of themes, and the general dislike for aristocrats.

• Characters' Attributes
  Villains	Heroes
  magical powers	loyal
  greedy/exploitative	resourceful
  bad temper	self-reliant
  abandon children	re-unite families
  deceit	perseverance
  easily outwitted	cunning
  jealousy (especially women)	cooperation

Notes while reading the second group of stories

Rapunzel

• One heck of a scary cautionary tale about pregnant women's cravings...
• Older women characterized by evil ways, but also ineffectual. They can't quite deal the fatal blow, maybe simply to enable the plot--in the manner of Bond villains.

The Sleeping Beauty

• The plot is among the slightest of all: the original offense is trivial and unexplained--why not get a thirteenth golden plate? Afterwards, fate is pretty much on autopilot, and there's hardly anything that anyone can do about it. The hero prevails only because he happens to have his death-wish on the one lucky day.
• The greatest magic of all: the princess still gets a kiss--even with a hundred years' worth of morning breath.
• By contrast, the storytelling is absolutely spellbinding, with rich visual details (torpid flies, still flames, punishing hand suspended in mid-air). This story is a feast for an illustrator--yet a delight for children even if presented without pictures. Most of the other stories in this collection, instead, feel like ethnographic field notes.

Little Red-Cap

• A consequential plot that actually works, although the tacked-on story of the second wolf is much flimsier--as most sequels are.
• To modern readers, sending a child into a wolf-infested forest appears reckless beyond belief. But in the original context, sending yound children out into the world--ready or not--was a dire necessity.

Snow White

• Snow White is quite possibly the most negative of all female fairy tale characters:
  • The hunter spares her life solely on account of her beauty.
  • To the dwarves she is only valuable as a housemaid.
  • As a repeat offender, she has three strikes against her for foolish curiosity.
  • The prince quite literally has her carted off to decorate his quarters. The necrophiliac implications make this a perfect image of ultimate passivity.
• For all her cruelty and false self-image, the stepmother does at least take action. Snow White, instead, is simply swept along by events surrounding her.
• Social evolutionists would claim that the stepmother's behavior is wired in her DNA--she attempts to suppress the prior "litter" to favor the offspring carrying her genes.

Aschenputtel

• First part of the story is a compilation of the heroine's grievances. Direct appeal to the reader's sense of outrage.
• In the second part, the reader's anger is released as the sisters are maimed. In this elemental world, there is no room for forgiveness.
  • Both the brutality and the extreme repetitiveness of the plot resemble, oddly enough, that most technological of modern children's playthings--the videogame.
• The bizarre lentils-in-the-ashes ritual underscores the sinfulness of the stepmother and the stepsisters--they deliberately waste food. It is the utmost effrontery for a destitute audience.
• Aschenputtel is the most active of the heroines in this group. She seeks and receives assistance from nature--she asks for a twig, and it turns into a magic tree populated with helpful birds. By contrast, the sisters lack respect for anything which is not artificial finery--to the point of injurying their own bodies.
  • Coupled with the motif of the watchful dead mother, this suggests that pre-Christian animist beliefs survived among the peasants re-telling these stories.
• Today, the foot injury may serve as an admonishment against trying to conform to impossible ideals of beauty.
• Aschenputtel's father is perhaps the most baffling of the many weak father figures in fairy tales. He is not just indifferent, but downright fiendish in the way he demolishes each of his daughter's hiding places.
  • As in other stories, there is here a feeling of important details missing--perhaps some fundamental assumptions shared by the original narrators and audiences. Maybe the old man who re-marries was an allegorical figure for foolish lust.

Class discussion of the first group of stories

• Attributes of fairy tale heroines:
  • Beautiful
  • Dependent
  • Young
  • Kind
  • Naive
  • Talented (sing)
  • Good housekeepers
  • Passive
  • Captive (fortitude, endurance)
  • Shallow (marriage as only goal)
• Sleeping Beauty is the quintessential symbol of passivity. She sleeps, and only wakes up to get married.
• The story of Sleeping Beauty may be useful to discuss the difference between escapist fantasy and reality--precisely because of its extreme unreality.
• Rapunzel--stupid parents syndrome. The heroine herself has no common sense because she lives completely sheltered--admonishment to give info to children because ignorance has serious consequences (Rapunzel becomes pregnant).
  • The witch is the picture of an absolutely possessive parent--ruthlessly holding on to growing child. She sees any contact with outsiders as betrayal.
• Snow White reflects the child's fear of displacement when the birth mother is gone. Relevant back then because of high childbirth death rate, still relevant today because of divorce.
• The appeal of Snow White is in the way it stacks the deck against the persecuted victim--the audience is drawn into rooting for her, regardless of her evanescent character.
• The gruesome parts of Little Red-Cap appeal to kids' love of "gross". And the moral of the story is--listen to your mother. Even if mother just dispatched you into harm's way on a deadly errand.
  • In the harsh world in which these stories developed, obedience was the highest virtue. The basic childrearing approach was to terrify the child into submission.
  • The story plays on several childhood fears--dogs (or dog-like creatures like wolves), getting lost.
  • Also illustrates a difficult problem for parents: striking a balance between making chldren cautious, without leaving them fearful of the world.
• The heroine in Cinderella could be the poster child for the beauty makeover industry. From mousy to stunning through magic (= cosmetics).
• Ultimate in passivity: "Queens don't need to walk", beauty is more than enough.
• The Prince is unable to recognize his one true love except by her shoe size--a reference to lovers' selective, incomplete view of their partners.
• Double standard in Cinderella and Snow White: heroines are richly rewarded for their beauty, but the stepmother/stepsisters are punished for being obsessed with achieving beauty.
• Appeal of Cinderella-plot stories due to audience insecurities--likely to make them identify with underdogs.

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