There Once Was a ______ Who Was ________

Reading fairytales in this class has been such a treat. Yes, because they're much easier to swallow than Kors and Peters, sure, but also because none of them are what they seem. I've always (well, at least since I've been in school) known that they are far from innocent tales and that they typically have dark and twisted morals, but I never realized just quite how dark they truly are. The first batch of readings were mostly fairytales that I've heard of before and they only had a few bits of variation to them, but out of this group of assigned tales, I've never heard of any of them before. Contrary to the majority of people, I didn't really grow up on fairytales. My favorite books when I was younger were the watered down classics for kids, the Little House on the Prairie books and odd things like The Magic Treehouse and Secrets of Droon series. When I was even younger, I liked things like Eric Carle and love the Very Hungry Caterpillar and Papa, Please Get The Moon for Me (which is why I chose The Moon as one of my picks)

But besides the hidden innuendos, dark themes and double-meanings, the aspect of these tales that I can really appreciate are the patterns. Dr. Sandona talked about fairytales during his portion of the Approaches to Literature class when he discussed structuralism, and now that I can get past the organization and categorizing that broke the rules of Literature and drove me nuts from this school of theory, I absolutely understand what he was saying: there is only one story.

 While I hate the thought that every story can be traced back to a few different patterns, I will admit that the majority of stories and tales can be predicted to end a certain way. Once in a while, we'll get that jaw-dropping surprise ending, but after you've read enough books, you can pretty much guess the ending. With fairytales, this seems to always be the case. Maybe we didn't know that this stepmother was going to decapitate her son and let his head roll into a trunk of apples, but we knew that she didn't like him and that her jealous and disgust wasn't going to lead this boy into a happy ending.
                                   
                                      


There are distinct patterns in all of these stories, and while not all of them follow one specific pattern, there are a good two or three that we can categorize together into groups of similar stories. For example, The Three Snake Leaves, The Riddle and The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces are three different tales that all have similar patterns. In each of these, there is one princess, or twelve princesses, who each have some sort of quirk, but the king promises that if a prince can solve this quirk or is willing to accept it, he will be able to marry the princess, and if not, he will die. It's also interesting to note that all of these princesses are beautiful. The only quality they are ever given is beauty and the only reason a prince caves to follow her's or the king's orders is because she has such great beauty. In fact, beauty seems to be their only redeeming quality. The princess in The Three Snake Leaves, grows out of love with the prince, lusts after another man and kills the prince even after he has managed to revive her life and was willing to be buried alive with her. In The Riddle, the princess doesn't know the value of all the men who have lost their lives and thinks it's laughable that they are killed if she solves their puzzle. Even when she doesn't have the answer, she will not accept defeat and take the man as her betrothed, she lies and cheats to get the answer with the hopes that this prince will die too. And the twelve princesses are so vain and self-composed that they (except the youngest) never think it would be possible for a prince to outsmart them.

In a way, this pattern can be seen as empowering because these women all believe they can outsmart men and have their own plans. However, it always takes a turn for the worst because man trumps woman each time and the princess ends up punished or married. In fact, in all of these fairytales, once a woman is beyond the age of a little girl like Gretel, she is seen as manipulative, with high orders demanded of men and selfish or she's a downright evil stepmother/mother or a witch! The only innocent females are ones who can be classified as children and anyone who is older is never as intelligent, witty or resourceful as a man. It's sad that while it appears innocent on the surface, there are certainly misogynistic undertones in fairytales. We've always known the damsel in distress pattern, but even when that is not the case on the surface, women seem to always be getting themselves into trouble, or at least, that is how it is presented. Fairytales have never quite been for children, but it's children who read them and have lessons ingrained in them from the start whether they know it or not, and it's only when we've grown out of innocence ourselves that we can see what we read as children wasn't quite as innocent as we'd thought. There is absolute comfort in a pattern and that's why we're soothed by fairytales and tell them to our children, but what are we really teaching them?

My mother chopped my head off, my father swallowed me. My sister buried all my bones, under the Juniper Tree. Ka-twee! Ka-twee! You'll never find, a prettier bird than me!

(If you're wondering, yes I wrote that title entirely from memory.)
I know these are the Grimm's fairy tales, and violence is to be expected, but even so this set of readings seemed somewhat darker than the previous. Maybe it's because the new readings are stories I'm not familiar with and therefore I haven't become accustomed to their dark nature like I have been with any of the ones that Disney has gotten hold of. If you're wondering what I mean, I'm taking about the traditional ruination of your childhood via internet: "Hey, you used to like Cinderella, did you? Did you know in one of the older versions she doesn't wake up, and the prince rapes her comatose body?" Once you get enough of that from online randos you kinda become numb to it, but NOW I get an all new set of stories to make me say "wow okay that just happened." I do think happy endings where everybody gets along are overrated though, so needless to say I was pretty okay with when the stepmother in The Juniper Tree got her head smashed in with a millstone and when the shoemaker in The Two Traveling Companions got his eyes pecked out, went mad and died lost and alone in the forest. People  back then knew how to write a satisfying ending.

However, if there's one story from the readings that I think is Disneyfiable, it has to be Iron Hans. Kid's born into a rich family, does a noble deed by helping a strange man escape enslavement, henceforth befriending the man and getting taken out of his sheltered life. Then he's exposed to the wild man's magic that turns his hair gold, henceforth marking him as a "special snowflake." He is thrown out into the real world, where he takes on the roll of the mysterious-and-secretly-superior underdog, and he and the princess playfully charm each other and fall in love.Then he uses the very Genie-like powers of the super special friend he made to become a hero, get the girl, and get dem monies yo. Reunites with his family and releases Iron Hans from the spell that was put on him then I guess Hans like, becomes his godfather or something? And everybody lives happily ever after. The only thing it was missing was an identifiable villain, which would obviously have to be the king of the opposing army in the war, who plots to kill the good king, destroy his kingdom, and take his daughter for his bride in the Disney version. There's simply no other way to do it.

Along with the assigned readings, I also read The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs and The Girl with no Hands. I'll give you one guess as to which one has heavy religious connotations, and I'll tell you that it's not the one with "Devil" in the title. Seriously though, I thought I was reading something straight from the bible with all the devil trickery and the praying and the angels. It's a totally feel-good god-loving thing that's saying everything will be alright as long as you belieeeeve, and nobody got killed, maimed, or otherwise beaten down in that one, so it really was not up my ally. Well, except for the main character spoiler: she loses her hands, but her hands grow back, so everyone's happy and not at all maimed la-dee-da. I know it's not a show I payed for but I still want my money back.