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

[bejeezus]

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?

Not just fairy stories is it?

Debated for a while but after weeks of hearing this nursery rhyme and falling kids to the floor I decided to explain to my 3 year old DS the meaning behind the song 'ring o'ring a roses'

Not sure other parents are so happy about his repeating of the dying and the plague to other children at his nursery

Apparently ring o roses was around before 1665 so it wasn't about the great plague, as a lot of people believe.
This thread is fascinating though. Going to get a few books from the library tomorrow.

Ugh, fairy tales have been told to children for genrations. Hasn't done them any harm has it? Utter rubbish.

Owww Perplexedpirate

So what was ring a ring o'roses?

Ring a rosies was American according to one book I read - although it may be something emigrants took to America in the first place, like trick or treating (I doubt it was a Native American song what with them speaking entirely different languages and all).

loopsylou, I disagree. They perpetuate the myths, in whatever form, that women and girls are second class citizens who are owned by men.

Ring a Ring a Roses is about the plague in London Edam.

A posey was a small sachet of herbs etc that people carried in the vain hope that breathing through them would stop them contracting the black death. Hence a pocket full of posies

A tissho a tishoo

We all fall down .....deeeeed

Has anyone else read the reworked version of Snow White where Snow White (and the prince) are actually the evil ones? (It ends with the non-wicked stepmother coming to a particularly unpleasant end).

I can't remember who it's by but it still gives me the creeps when I remember it!

Don't know hedgeblog. I only know that it dates from before the great plague because I saw it on QI read it in an extremely worthy work.

Dear Parents,
How do you expect kids to listen to you when:
Tarzan lives half naked.
Cinderella comes back at midnight.
Pinocchio lies all the time.
Aladdin is the king of thieves.
Batman drives at 320km/h.
Sleeping beauty is lazy.
Snow white sleeps with 7 guys.

i often tel; DD about the miss translations in story's, and point out the stuff that is just wrong, i have a spinning wheel and have shown DD that there is nothing sharp on it. No on ever has ever worn glass shoes, they probably didn't even know how to make glass when Cinderella was first written. I like to balance things out with Greek myths to keep it all nice and bloodthirsty.

Joking apart there is an undertone of menace to many fairy stories. Has anyone read The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter? Well worth a read for exploring the latent and frankly misogynistic subtext of the tales we read to our children.

Dumbledoodah: I am actually looking at fairy tales and their impact on the way children stereotype gender roles for my dissertation. I haven't got very far yet - it is still very much in its infancy.

Probably the first comprehensive publication of fairy tales was Perrault's - writtenfor French aristocrats in the late 1600s. The Brother's Grimm then did a similar version (slightly sanitised and a bit less "moral") in the 1800s. Hans Christian Anderson was writing at a similar time.

Particularly notable authors analysing fairy tales include Zipes - "The Great Fairy Tale Tradition" lists a lot of the fairy tales and compares versions; "Happily Ever After" and others...

Bettleheim's "The Uses of Enchantment" is a "seminal text" (which as far as I can gather means it is quite old but I am still allowed to use it as it is very important...)

I've also enjoyed "The Witch Must Die" by Sheldon Cashdan and "The Fairy Tale" by Swann Jones: both of these talk about fairy tales in society and their underlying meanings.

Hope this helps. If anyone else has useful resources please let me know!!!

bebanjo the glass slipper.
I read that it was a fur slipper. The story was mistranslated in French. Don't know what 'fur' is but glass is 'verre' IIRC. I'm sure someone who speaks better French will know.

Disclaimer: brain that saves alot of useless info. Except French.

Well i was going to say that Cinderella ended up with glass slippers as it was mistranslated from the French, but apparently that's not true either.
The sands are shifting beneath my feet! Can nothing be trusted anymore?

What- all this time my brain has been hoarding a lie?

Sadly though The Little Match Girl is based on truth, if not actually true. It's my favourite sad tale.(If it's ok to have a 'favourite')

Can't link as on phone but it's on snopes.com > language>mistranslations.

Glass is indeed verre and a glass slipper would be a pantoufle de verre.

Fur is foururre.

Gawd only knows how that mistranslation happened, if it did

Oh, lovely thread. I studied this a while ago and meant to read all these lovely books and then DS came along and I've barely opened a book since...

I don't think any of these stories particularly horrified me as a youngster tho'. I got the collected works of the brothers Grimm when I was 8 for Christmas and devoured the book, I loved the gore and nastiness. There was one story I vaguely recall that scared the bejaysus out of me, it was something about a Nanny goat, where the wolf took the kids out of her stomach and replaced them with stones, and paw prints in flour or something? Anyone?

I'm now pootling off to Amazon to purchase some books!

Ooh Oakkmaiden, your dissertation sounds interesting! Mine is on Child Neglect. Ho hum...

Oakmaiden What's your degree? I did my final year project on the construction of femininities in the post modern fairytale, but it involved reading around all the old favourites.

I remember those names well! I think I might take it off the bookshelf and read it now! Well not now. I might wait until the morning.

Really enjoyed it. Far more interesting than the effect of caffeine on response times

It's actually fascinating. Fairytales were designed to instruct children into gendered roles.

Men 'do', women 'are'.

Actually Oakmaiden, Shrek is really good. It purports to be a new type of fairy tale, where the woman is all feisty and independent - until of course she meets a man.

Shrek is an ogre and Fiona is beautiful - and when the true love kiss happens and she's supposed to return to her beautiful human state, she doesn't. Why? Because she's deferred to the higher authority of the man and become just like him.

Even the fire breathing dragon becomes a simpering fool, complete with make up to please her man - Donkey.

On first viewing, Shrek seems to reject all the traditional stereotypes, but if you watch again, it just reinforces them.

I understand that this doesn't sound very intellectual but it's late!

I don't know if it would be relevant to you, but Laura Mulvey wrote about the 'male gaze' in film and given that a lot of children access fairytales nowadays through film, it might be relevant to you. I certainly referred to her.

Ok, Ive only skimmed most of this, but what we have to remember is that many of these stories are very very old. Possibly with roots in spoken folk lore. In those days, values were different. Frankly, if you were a woman without a man, things were very bleak! And this applied until relatively recently. And the basic values still stand, dont lie, steal, take apples from sweet little old ladies...
Nowadays, every story needs a happy ending. We dont teach our children that bad things happen. Im not sure that that is a good thing.
Aside from anything else, lots of kids love these stories. DD12 has an extensive collection of original ladybird books. Some of those are cracking! She loves them. The gorier the better!