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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think that the classic fairy tales ate deeply deeply disturbing?

129 replies

bejeezus · 10/12/2011 12:42

And give terrible messages to little girls?

I give you

Sleeping Beauty Surely a strange man who kisses you whilst you are sleeping needs reporting to the police not marrying, regardless of his social status?

Beauty and the Beast should include a page explaining the 'Stockholm Syndrome'?

Rumplestiltskin Where to start?! A father traffickers his daughter to a man who imprisons her and threatens her with death if she fails to turn his hay into gold. A 'friend' helps her out and she is overjoyed to ne spared death. She marries her abuser and has a child with him. 'Friend' cashed in favour and attempts to manipulate girl and steal child to take to his little house in the woods

Surely she should have packed a small bag of essentials, called the police and Women's Aid and have had herself and her baby taken to a refuge?

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Original poster
bejeezus · 10/12/2011 13:35

I can't stomach watching Eastenders and such drivel, because of the use of DCS etc for entertainment purposes/ the normalisation of it. I remember the year little mo wad raped by her husband on Xmas day-that wad the last time I watched it (my situation not like that by a long way BTW)

But it seems we've been a bit voyeuristic for centuaries?

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Original poster
bejeezus · 10/12/2011 13:36

DV not DCS

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lynniep · 10/12/2011 13:38

DS got Jack and the Beanstalk from school the other day. I read it once and thought what a horrible book! Of course I never noticed when I was a kid, but I'm not reading it to him again.

PlumpDogPillionaire · 10/12/2011 13:39

I think there are different versions of stories - so the 'same' story can be voyeuristic, cautionary, can be told from different points of view that make its meaning very different.
There's actually a very interesting thread on the feminist board.
Can't do a link (I can Blush though!) but it's called 'Rape in Literature'. Similar sorts of themes discussed.

FreudianSlipper · 10/12/2011 13:41

well there is a belief that the stories we are told help shape us into believing how we should be as adults and sadly the most popular story among women who have been in abusive relationships is beauty and the beast

also all the nice girls are fair, the bad men and witches tend to be described as jewish looking (or caricature in the more traditional books), women tend to do the most evil acts and the good girls are always saved by a man

ds has a few stories (and admit to liking them myself but they do not give out a good message especially to little girls if these are the only stories they are reading) he also 3 little wolves and the big bad pig who comes good in the end.

it may feel like everything around you is linking to dv, it is not but you are becoming more aware of what is linked to dv in your situation and that is a good but often painful thing to do through

HoneydragonAteCliffRichard · 10/12/2011 13:43

Well yes they are and Disney's rather keen on killing off the parents in the first 5 minutes but people keep buying them as they are classics.

Original poster
bejeezus · 10/12/2011 13:44

Thanks plump

Think I should take my beanbag over to the feminist boards and have a listen in. Think I might be one

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missmiss · 10/12/2011 13:45

They're supposed to be. They aren't stories for children in the modern sense: they are stories designed to reinforce cultural mores and taboos against phenomena such as incest. Excellent resource here.

Original poster
bejeezus · 10/12/2011 13:49

Thanks freudien

It's the whole package huh?
White patriarchal capitalistic society

Is there an MN board that covers that triangle?

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PlumpDogPillionaire · 10/12/2011 13:53

You gotta check the feminist board, bejeezus!

Also, FWIW, there's a great book of Jewish fairy tales called Elijah's Violin - some very different stories to the Disneyfied 'classics', lots of fun and beautiful stories.

FreudianSlipper · 10/12/2011 14:00

Absolutely :o

aubergineinautumn · 10/12/2011 14:02

we have a disney ban in our house

Whatmeworry · 10/12/2011 14:04

That they are found deeply disturbing tells me more about the cotton wool society we have today tbh.

NormanTebbit · 10/12/2011 14:06

A different view is that the stories address deep seated childhood fears - abandonment, kidnap, strangers etc and allow a child to 'play them out,' in a safe environment -through a story. They offer a resolution which is comforting. Of course these stories were not always for children and were used to reinforce cultural rules and taboos.

My favourites are Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin. hated Tangled.

HardCheese · 10/12/2011 14:15

Agreed to an extent, Whatmeworry, and Norman. Children, after all, live in the world, too, and can be harmed or abandoned by immediate family - which is one of the disturbing messages of fairytales. The bit of 'Hansel and Gretel' that frightened me most as a child wasn't the cannibal witch, but the parents abandoning the children repeatedly in the wood to starve.

There's also a lot of interesting recent analysis of folktales about changeling wives and children (common in Irish folklore - not sure whether they occur to the same extent in the UK?) suggesting that they were a way for pre-scientific communities to try to 'explain' a child developing a handicap or chronic illness after an apparently 'normal' start in life, or to categorise a woman with postnatal depression or MH issues. The scientific explanations are comparatively recent, so communities told stories about how the fairies stole healthy children and replaced them with strange-looking, puny, whining changelings, and then took nursing mothers to nurse the stolen babies, leaving strangely-behaved fairy women behind in their place.

PlumpDogPillionaire · 10/12/2011 14:26

Yep, also partially agree with Norm - except for that when 'fairy tales' were folk tales, most children didn't have the 'safe environments' that have been developed for them during the last century.
Children would have been out and about, working, running errands and negotiating an adult world before they were safe in compulsory education. So actually, stories like Little Red Riding Hood could have functioned quite well as cautionary tales.

BalloonSlayer · 10/12/2011 16:04

I have a book about autism, Hardcheese and the writer speculates that the type of autism that seems to appear about 1yr-18months old is perhaps not as modern an occurrence as some people think; she mentions the tales of changelings and wondered if that these children that looked the same as they used to but were now different and other-worldly were actually autistic.

Scheherezade · 10/12/2011 16:16

What about the original little mermaid; who kills herself when her prince doesn't love her?

xPAULAx · 10/12/2011 16:22

I just hate that most of them are about girls waiting on men to rescue them.

Read Rhol Dahl's Revolting Ryhmes. Much better take on classic stories :)

Backtobedlam · 10/12/2011 16:38

I never realised there was so much to them, but they do provide a good basis for discussion. My ds question goldilocks breaking in to the house and now asks me to check the door is locked every night before bed! I am careful with some of the endings though, I've never questioned them but ds always gets really upset, even if the 'baddies' are hurt, and I end up saying they came back good.

HumanFly · 10/12/2011 16:47

Second/third/hundredth Women Who Run With Wolves - fantastic, beautiful, and full of rarrrh! and so much in it reminding you of what you might have lost, instincts-wise. The essay on BlueBeard was fantastic, as was The Ugly Duckling. Oh and the one about red shoes!

Fairy tales are dark! Dark stories of heeding warnings, morality tales etc. It's Disney that took them and turned them into the whole "a good, wholesome girl has something done to her that means she must spend her time waiting for her prince". Proper fairy tales ultimately remind us to listen to our instincts, as not listening to them is usually what gets the protagonist into trouble. Disney - in my mind - helped bring to the forefront the so-called predicament of "Waity Katy" Middleton. She was and always will be forced into the role of the woman waiting for her prince. The media refuse to cast any other shadow around her - they don't talk about her life, other than making her sound flaky (working a couple of days a week for her parent's business, a stint at Jigsaw). Who knows what she does or doesn't do but at the time, the media didn't want her to be anything other than a princess waiting for her prince.

OldGreyWassailTest · 10/12/2011 16:54

Turn off the TV. Burn all books. Don't read newspapers. Don't let the children out. Problems solved.

moonstorm · 10/12/2011 16:56

Are there any good books that anyone can recommend to find out more about this? It's really fascinating. Can you get hold of the original stories? (or more original, anyway?)

Thanks (sorry for hi-jack)

Original poster
bejeezus · 10/12/2011 17:21

Really interesting about autisme slayer

Am thinking that the originals without the happy endings would ne much more useful in being cautionary tales. And that they need adapting to be useful nowadays

Looking forward to reading everything suggested here

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Original poster
bejeezus · 10/12/2011 17:59

Is that true about abused women and beauty and the beast?? Crikey

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