What modern mother hasn’t cringed at the pink and passive fairy tale princesses served up to her impressionable girl? The Disney versions of Snow White and Cinderella, Belle and Rapunzel are heroines of such vapid foolishness one wonders how they survived into the 21st century. The answer is that they are rooted in a tenacious and remarkably unaltered cultural tradition, the fairy tales first published two centuries ago by the Brothers Grimm.
The fifty iconic tales in their Kinder- und Hausmärchen collection feature a parade of weak, disobedient heroines whose errors draw down harsh punishment, and an equally noteworthy succession of heroic boys. Numerous studies in recent decades have found the 19th century social world they portray so unremittingly sexist that some leading folklorists warn against reading them to children at all.
This is why the discovery of a huge new trove of unedited German fairy tales is nothing short of a revelation. These tales, only of few of which were published in the 1850s, were collected in the Upper Palatinate region of Germany by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, a scholar intent on preserving the rapidly vanishing folk wisdom of his region. What they reveal, in abrupt contrast to the Brothers Grimm, is an equal-opportunity world where the brave and clever children are as likely to be girls as boys, and the vulnerable, exploited youths are not just princesses, but princes…
… Clever, resourceful girls also make an appearance. The Three Princesses tells the story of sisters enslaved by a witch, the youngest of whom saves an unsuspecting prince in an ingenious way. Grabbing a sword, she magically turns herself into a lake, which the old witch sucks down. The princess slashes her way out of the witch’s belly and claims her prince.
From The Economist.
Cross-posted at Hoyden About Town.
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THANK YOU for posting this. I went over & read the Economist article. I’m really excited to see the English translation of Schoenwerth’s collection of tales.
Something I think that gets overlooked a bit in the discussion of the impact these pathetic princesses have on children is how it affects *boys’* ideas of what women & men should be. I don’t want my son to be bombarded with18th century misogyny that tells him women are stupid, weak creatures he needs to rescue from themselves.
By the way, I’ve linked to your blog on my post about what I’ve been reading lately, to be published tomorrow. 🙂
There are a whole bunch of fairy-tale sources other than the Brothers Grimm. I grew up on the Rainbow Fairy Books. And I had books with titles like Tales from Ireland and Tales from India and Tales from Norway. Lots of them had smart/strong/dynamic female characters.
In related news, the artist Ursula Vernon recently put a few annotated versions of fairy tales she has read on her blog. The Master Maid is particularly relevant to this discussion; it has a male viewpoint character, but the Master Maid is the title character and the really interesting one, and she rescues him.
For anyone interested in this stuff read the cross-posted version at Hoyden About Town, some very interesting comments have been made over there.
An important point about the Grimm´s fairytales is that most kids today know them only in the Disney version (pink and passive women). In the originals, at least some of the women showed some courage and strenght. Like the Hansel and Gretchen-story, where it is the sister who saves her (quite stupid) brother from the gingerbread house.
Personally, I love Disney, but I try to comment and discuss the gender issues with my kids. And balance these stories with Nordic and African tales.
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