to be shocked to my very core by Jack and the Beanstalk?

[BroccoliSpears]

So. Jack sells cow for beans. Grows a beanstalk. Goes up the beanstalk and steals a load of the Giant's stuff. Kills the giant and lives happily ever after? Jack's mum is thrilled because they'll "never be poor again".

And the moral of the story, children, is that if someone else has something you want, you just take it from them and lamp them if they try and stop you. If the person you are stealing from is different in some way, they definitely deserve it.

And I was so pleased when someone gave dd some traditional fairy tales for her birthday. Will now consign this one to the back of the bookshelf.

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(Please note that I am not actually shocked to my very core. I just thought that would make a more interesting thread title on a dull Sunday evening).

well there's; the twits, and Georges behaviour towards his grandmother was unacceptable, and in esiotrot the hero lies and deceives his way into the effections of the rather dim tortoise loving woman.......

I think the books are being taken far too literally, I never got the urge to feed my grandmother toxic household stuffs all mixed together after reading georges marvellous medicine personally..... but there's also lots of name calling in it too!!!!

I never remembered any of this till I re-read it, just that George made a potion and made his awful grandmother disappear.

Three blind mice is a bit of a blood-fest

Apparently the American TV company that was meant to be co-financing the BBC 'Crime and Punishment' adaptation a few years ago dropped out of the project when they discovered that an old lady got bludgeoned to death in it. Arf!!

As a child, you have a totally different perspective. I don't remember thinking any fairy tales were frightening.

I remember being shocked when I learnt that fairy tales idealised the perfect female as being as passive as possible. Cinderella was fairly passive, Sleeping Beaty was asleep when the prince fell in love with her and Snow White was so passive, she was dead!

As a child, I thought it was lovely and romantic.

And all those absent mothers, unless she was a cruel, wicked step-mother of course.

Littlebella - looks like we were the only two to have watched that film then

And I think there's meant to be something Freudian about all those wolves and little girls.

DD (3) has been demanding the story of red riding hood off me, and because I (a) don't know it that well (b) seemed to recall the ending was a bit gruesome, I attempted to sanitise it by telling her the woodcutter 'came and chased the wolf away' only to be told (very firmly) 'no mummy, they cut him open and sewed a stone inside his tummy while he was asleep' - which was news to me!

I think i need to go and reread it, because I don't recognise that bit at all!

Fathers were bad too - Cinderella's Dad and Hansel and Gretal's Dad were pretty much swayed by the 'evil stepmother'.

And what harm that particular stereotype as produced!!!

Read "From the Beast to the Blonde" by Marina Warner. She writes about those who told fairy tales and the social contexts in which they were told.

You should read Roald Dahl's "Revolting Rhymes".

They are a fantastic adaptation of the original fairy tales and so much better!

In our version of Jack and the Beanstalk, the very unbloodthirsty giant thumps and stamps around a lot before sitting down to a meal of boiled potatoes and chocolate biscuits. He then nods off and light fingered Jack makes off with all his loot and viciously slaughters him when the giant tries to stop him.

I too was shocked to the core at the morals of this tale. So, no YANBU!

Blimey, max and moritz need an asbo don't they?

It's just a fairy story.

going back to what someone said back on page one of this, I have to AGREE TOTALLY that in the Princess and the Pea, it's totally RUDE of that mollycoddled blummin princess who turns up uninvited and then complains about the uncomfortable bed. Even as a child I thought that a REAL princess would surely have had some manners and said "oh I slept beautifully thank you"

Only just realised that this has been gnawing away at me for YEARS

Am at thoe Struwwelpeter rhymes. Theyre terrible!
btw, what does struwwelpeter mean, as the rhymes arnt written by someone with that name.

It means shaggy peter, referring to hair of the boy on the front and a dad wrote them for his...son I think because he wasn't impressed with the other books around at the time! They're supposed to be morality tales - shamefully have to admit I loved them when I was little, especially as my mum read them to me in German and it sounded all the gorier. Funnily enough they never really scared me, far 'better' books gave me nightmares but gore alone has never done it for me. Start on about a ghost in the night however and I'd have been wetting the bed all night

Lovecat: that's exactly right. In the original Red Riding Hood, the wolf eats the grandmother and RRH. The woodcutter arrives, slices open the wolf's belly with his axe, drags them out and fills it with heavy stones that kill the wolf when it tries to escape. Sweet dreams honey...

The reason why there are so many wicked stepmothers is due to the fact that it wasn;t uncommon for women to die in childbirth, dads would remarry and the new wife would always look out for her own children's interest so that they inherited more when the father died, hence the wicked stepmother

Ahh Broccoli you need to get a book called "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories". In Jack and the Beanstalk when Jack sees the Giant he says:
"Fee,Fie,Foe,Fum I smell the blood of an English Person"
"I'd like to learn about his culture and views on life!
"and share my own perspectives in an open minded and generous way!".

Jack ends up becoming a member of the Giants commune, and he learns not to judge people based on their size.