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?

Ring Around the Rosie is not about the Black Death

Quattro, I thought that the slippers were made of squirrel fur, known as vair, but snopes disagrees.
www.snopes.com/language/misxlate/slippers.asp

Dust I think what the slippers were made of has changed over the years, just as has whether the sisters were ugly or just wicked.

In earlier versions the sisters weren't 'ugly', that's only come about fairly recently (given that the stories are part of spoken folklore as CatPuss said) as beauty became the prevailing female ideal.

In earlier versions, the stepsisters hacked their toes off to make them fit. The relevance of this was that they were bleeding and it was symbolic of them not being virtuous young maidens (like Cinderella), rather that they were less attractive, possibly sexually active older women who bled.

I agree with CatPuss about them being a bit too sanitised now. There is a wonderful Grimm fairytale (I can't remember the name of it now though) in which the (step?)mother is really evil to the daughter. The King finds out who she is and what she has done pretends he doesnt' know it is her. She is agreeing with the King about what a terrible crime has been done to the daughter, pretending she knows nothing about it. He asks what punishment she thinks would be fitting of someone who could be so wicked and she states that she would seal the woman in a barrel that has had nails hammered into it from the outside and then roll the woman in said barrel down the hill to her death. Which is what the king does to her! Nice!

They are just stories.................

I seem to have turned out alright!

I had a Collection of books as a child which I loved, I never knew that about Bluebeard I was to young to have the attention span to read it lol.

I remember one story called something like East O' sun, West o'moon where like a wolf person shares a bed with a young woman on the condition she never tries to look at him whilst asleep, she does and he disapears ? I still to this day am confuzzled by this story. I'm not evern sure if its grimm.

There is an opera based on the bluebeard story, and we used to have a video of it, at the time it was my then 3 year old sons favourite. He especially liked the bit where "she goes into the shower" which was full of blood oozing all over the place. That story is obviously psychological, and not necessarily about a physical mass-murderer, but maybe about a husband to psychologically destroys his partners.
Children have a high tolerance for gore on the whole, my kids love hearing about people being hung drawn and quartered, its me as an adult who feels squeamish.

Folkgirl and Freddie - my degree is Education Studies, so my focus is on the effects on children, rather than pulling the tales apart (although obviously I need to do that too). I do have lots of opportunities to talk to children about what they think about fairy tales and the characters though, which is great.

Thanks for those thoughts on Shrek, Folkgirl. I might end up having to cite you! I'll have a look at Laura Mulvey too, thanks.

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.

I agree. I think the stories hold a mirror to our cotton wool society that finds them "deeply disturbing".

And kids love gore, no matter how un PC it may be.....

Folkgirl

That would be The Goosegirl. I remember being disturbed by that bit as a child! Valuable moral lesson in the drawbacks of being caught out in hypocrisy, though.

The Goose-Girl! Thank you, Jesse!

And I quote:

"the aged king... what sentence such a person merited. Then the false bride said: "she deserves no better fate than to be stripped entirely naked, and put in a barrel which is studded inside with pointed nails, and two white horses should be harnessed to it, which will drag her along through one street after another, till she is dead". "It is you," said the aged King, "and you have pronounced your own sentence, and thus shall it be done to you."

Although I was sure I'd read one about her being rolled down a hill in a barrel into a river! Perhaps that was a similar fate meted out to someone else!!

the aged king asked - obviously

SillyOldBear01

I remember West of the Moon, East of the Sun, too.

My version of the story went like this, basically.

Girl meets/weds boy, but has to promise never to look at him during the night. But she does, and finds out that he looks different then. (I can't remember whether the transformation from night to day is man/beast or beast/man. He disappears, because she broke her promise. Apparently he was under a spell that forces him to marry a goblin princess, unless he could find a human girl who wouldn't check his appearance at night,

Then she has to work 14 years (or maybe 21) in order to afford the equipment to free him, and she arrives a day before the wedding. And then there's shenanigans.

I downloaded Grimm's Fairy Tales on my kindle last night - they really are 'grim'. I read the Goose Girl, where they chopped off the talking horse's head and nailed it to the gate and it continued to speak. Nice!

Anyone remember 'revolting rhymes'? I loved that as a kid!

PS: I think that the East of the Moon, West of the Sun story has similarities with the Greek myth about Psyche

The horse was called Falada. I know. Poor horse.

Can you tell that story made a deep impression on me?

The darker the fairtale the more I love it. My favourite is the princess and the donkey skin... where a beautiful princess has to find a husband who loves her for her rather than her status or looks. So she slaughters the family donkey, skins it and wears its skin (the picture in thebook was bloody and dripping).

As far as what they teach our kids, well I believe in good stories being enough.. my children know that good stories involve good and bad. My sons think the princesses in most of the stories are silly, and the princes stupid. They certainly don't believe its okay to kiss sleeping women randomly!

Stories can contain lessons its true, but sometimes the lesson within a fairytale is the opposite of what's written.

If you want a disturbing fairy tale book - look up the German children's book Der Struwwelpeter.
The tale of the child who sucked his thumb is very disturbing !

I used to have a feminist book of fairy stories which was brilliant, it rewrote all the classics with a twist, very funny. wish I could remember its title also the kids had an alternative book of fairy stories and loved the one about the three wolves huff puff and ruffly who howled at the moon and invited the little pig home for weetabix and raisins. it was very funny too.

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/1858810868/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books

www.amazon.com/Politically-Correct-Bedtime-Stories-Modern/dp/002542730X

both great books

Aldiwhore, original versions of 'Donkeyskin'/Peau d'ane' have the princess running away in a donkeyskin because her father (having unhelpfully sworn on his wife's deathbed that he would never remarry unless he found someone who was her equal for beauty) wants to incestuously marry her, his own daughter, because she's the only one that fits his requirements! I suppose it's a kind of morality tale about endogamy and the incest taboo, because the happy ending is when the princess marries a prince and is reconciled to her father because he's also safely married someone else.

I adored 'The Goose-Girl' as a child, especially the bit where the wronged princess, demoted to being a goose-girl, would pass by the city gate with her flock and say to the nailed-up talking horse's head 'Ah Fallada, that you should hang there!' and the head would say back to her 'Ah, Princess, that you should pass there!'

I agree that while the tales do often reward female pluck, endurance and virtue, they are reflective of their patriarchal times where the 'reward' was the safety of being safely married and under the protection of a powerful man - women on their own are usually depicted as straying at risk in the forest, having vulnerable servant status within someone else's household, or as cannibalistic witches.

the struwelpeter is indeed vey disturbing.

as a child I had a book of sieben bürgen (a mountainous region which is now in romania, where rübezahl, blaubart and dracula) come from. most had to do with young women having to leave the parents' home with the choice of either starving in the woods or marrying any old man to be their wife and maid.

jessie as soon as I started reading it last night - `i was instantly transported back to being 7 years old again!

FreddyMercurysBolero I think the story you are thinking of is 'The Wolf and Seven Little Kids'. I read it to my children recently.

I loved Fairy Tales as a child - The Goose Girl was a particular favourite. I was always so sad for Falada.