Tales, as We Have Come

¶ … tales, as we have come to know them in the modern world, resulted from multiple intersections of technological, commercial, and social processes printing, publishing, book distribution, and story dissemination - with a series of named authors, the most important of whom were the Italians Giovan Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile, the French Countess d'Aulnoy and Charles Perrault, and the Germans Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and Ludwig Bechstein (Davidson, Chaudhri: 59). It is safe to say that nearly all cultures of the world feature fairy tales; furthermore, the body of works belonging to this literary genre is quite homogenous in the sense that fairy tales are quite similar in terms of structure and themes. The main characteristic that all fairy tales share is the fact that they reflect universal themes but are, at the same time, strongly connected to the cultural heritage of the geographical area where they were created. Also, another important trait that just about all fairy tales have in common is the fact that one cannot trace their origins because they belong to the oral tradition, i.e. they were transmitted from one generation to another by being told, not written or recorded in any other way.

It is very difficult to trace back the original purpose of fairy tales, and one is often tempted to assume that it was only the search for entertainment that drove people to tell and listen to this kind of tales. However, fairy tales have other functions as well, such as "to awaken our regard for the miraculous condition of life and to evoke profound feelings of awe and respect for life as a miraculous process, which can be altered and changed to compensate for the lack of power, wealth, and pleasure that most people experience" (Zipes: 848-9). Thesis: this paper examines the appeal of fairy tales. To this aim, it looks at the structure, origins, as well as the main characteristics of this sub-genre, i.e. fairy tales; also, it compares and contrasts two antagonists, i.e. The witch in Hansel and Gretel, and that in Rapunzel; ultimately it tries to formulate an explanation for the popularity of fairy tales among readers of all ages.

Fairy tales: A few considerations

As far as the history of fairy tales, it was during the Renaissance that storytelling gave birth to fairy tales: "Writers and storytellers during the Renaissance began setting a trend by distinguishing a certain type of telling and writing from the main body of storytelling. This type, which can be broadly defined as the oral wonder tale, eventually succeeded to specify and define itself as a separate species and became a literary genre in the late-seventeenth-century France" (Zipes: xii). It is well-known that very old fairy tales were not written down before the invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s. This absence of documentation, of the written word is the cause behind the oral perpetuation of many folktales which were transmitted from generation to generation through the act of storytelling in order for them to be preserved in the collective conscience. "Among the earliest narrative works to be printed were Latin editions of the Gesta Romanorum and Petrarch's Griselda which were soon translated into other languages, in the process of which national differences were introduced to make narratives acceptable to the local expectations of different communities." (Davidson, Chaudhri: 60). It was in the nineteenth century that fairy tales officially became part of the literary baggage of a nation, when European countries started to include fairy tales in reading primers for school pupils. Germany was the first country to do so as public schooling for the poor was instituted across Europe. Thus schools delivered fairy tales to children at an impressionable age and drilled them into their heads by memorization, the standard teaching method of the time (Ibid.).

As far as the structure of fairy tales, there are several approaches to deconstructing the sequence of events that makes up any such literary creation. One of the most renowned theories of structuralism belongs to Vladimir Propp who, in his Morphology of the Folktale (1929, translated 1958) puts forward and elaborate yet remarkably clear sequence that he refers to as the "pattern" followed by all fairy tales. This pattern is made up of 31 "functions" which the hero has to go through in any hero story and that take place in the same order in all fairy tales (Propp: 20). According to Propp, a "function" is always deconstructed and interpreted "according to its consequences" (Propp: 67) which generates a sort of circular vision of the genre. The characters in fairy tales also follow certain patterns and are constructed according to the two moral categories that the world is built on, i.e. good and bad. They embody one of these categories - never both at the same time, as fairy tale characters are flat and do not evolve throughout the sequence of events as in the case of the novel, for instance - but also contain at least some of the social truth of their communities; moreover, the events that these characters are involved in result in an implicit morality or didacticism (Davidson, Chaudhri: 16). The only transgression on the part of the character - always the one representing the forces of good - usually takes place only to emphasize his fundamentally good nature and intentions, in the sense that he recovers through a twist in the plot which only strengthens the happy ending and the triumph of good over evil. When it comes to their relationship to the main character, i.e. The symbol of what is good and right, fairy tale characters can be divided into two categories, namely those who help and those who hinder or obstruct the quest of the protagonist. While the first category is incredibly vast and significantly varies from one geographical region - and implicitly, cultural tradition - to another, the second is smaller. Those who attack or challenge the hero or heroine are usually family members, tyrannical rulers, power from the Otherworld or jealous companions. The only thing the two categories have in common is that they both have supernatural powers. The intervention and ultimately, the fate and role of these characters - the helpers and the enemies - are the key to understanding the moral value of fairy tales in general.

Hansel and Gretel vs. Rapunzel

The general function of the witch is limited to the sphere of evil. She is the villain who embodies a distortion and exaggeration of everything that is associated with the dark side of maternity. She is both a witch i.e. has supernatural powers, and an evil mother. In Hansel and Gretel, when the two children return home they find that their mother has vanished; her disappearance is deeply symbolical. The two siblings defeat the witch and virtually annihilate all evil; innocence and purity conquer evil; the destruction of the witch who is eventually killed, is synonymous to the destruction of all forms of evil. The characters are real and they experience emotion and their actions are reactions to life's trials and circumstances. They do not give the impression of artificiality, on the contrary, they seem like regular children trying to fly away from slavery or just escape from the hands of the evil witch. In Hansel and Gretel, the two siblings, although very young, are able to recognize that the stepmother and the witch are one and the same. Both women stand in their homes framed by doorways and windows, staring out in disgust at the children. They both have dark eyes, the same down-turned grimace, and the same mole in the exact same spot. Moreover, apart from these physical similarities between the two, there are also others which are related to deeper aspects of their personalities and attitudes; the best example is that they even use the same language, both calling the children "lazybones" as they wake Hansel and Gretel up in the morning.

Rapunzel is the story of a child being taken away from her parents and raised in a tower by an evil witch. The child grows up and falls in love with a young prince but the witch discovers their romance and tries to kill the prince. She does not manage to do so, but during a fight, they fall down from the tower and the prince scrapes his eyes and goes blind. The plot seems very simple and easy to follow. We can, once again, identify the protagonist and the antagonist, the forces of good and those of evil. In fact, this fairy tale poses a few important problems at a closer look. First of all, unlike in Hansel and Gretel, in Rapunzel, the child is taken away from her parents upon birth, and does not wander into the hands of the witch as in the former fairy tale. Secondly - and perhaps most importantly - the child is not killed. The witch does not even attempt to kill Rapunzel, but keeps her locked in a tower. This has been interpreted as overprotective behavior and is directly linked to being a parent. One cannot be overprotective of a child he or she does not have. It is only logical to conclude that the witch is to Rapunzel a sort of a stepmother; also, one could gather that the witch wanted Rapunzel not only to hurt and get back at the child's natural father, but for her own benefit. She has also been interpreted as a motherless child who steals someone else's offspring in order to fill the void in her own life. Consequently, the witch in Rapunzel cannot be seen as a purely evil character, a typical antagonist who seeks the destruction of the protagonist at all costs. Her refusal to accept the prince and to offer the young girl a chance to fall in love could be explained by maternal jealousy and overbearing parenting. Also, the reader needs to properly understand and interpret what the witch says when the prince comes to see Rapunzel not knowing she had been sent away by the witch. Her words, "Ah, ah! you thought to find your lady love, but the pretty bird has flown and its song is dumb; the cat caught it, and will scratch out your eyes too.

Rapunzel is lost to you for ever - you will never see her more," reflect a certain degree of jealousy and a different kind of evil compared to the witch in Hansel and Gretel, i.e. The witch in Rapunzel is more human and almost seems vindictive towards her daughter because of her own fate. In Rapunzel, the tower is a symbol of the kind of over-protectiveness that is characteristic to many parents even nowadays. Unlike the witch in Hansel and Gretel, the witch in Rapunzel is a complex character that could also be interpreted as a parent who means well as far as her child is concerned, but ends up making serious mistakes due to her inflexibility and ultimately, madness. In this sense, the witch in Rapunzel is more 'real' and more easily placed in real contexts and situations whereas the witch is Hansel and Gretel is an abstract notion, a character representing pure evil, which is why the witch is also the stepmother: evil remains the same irrespective of the form it takes.

The typical antagonist uses words, but especially supernatural powers to control, incarcerate, and destroy, intentionally for personal benefit. Their supernatural powers are also used for personal gain which eventually brings about these characters' damnation. In the case of Hansel and Gretel, the witch is stopped using its own means; the innocent children prevail and good is triumphant over the dark forces represented by the witch. The witch is evil in a way that is hard to understand and appears not to be founded on anything. In fact, she is the type of purely evil antagonist who needs no reason to be evil, and exists only because of this trait of character. She is a flat character; in fact, she is barely a character at all. Instead, she is a pretext used to launch the fight between good and evil, and an incarnation of any kind of evil existing in the world. On the other hand, the witch in Rapunzel is lonely. She is human-like and makes mistakes that are easily recognizable from the beginning of the tale. Her actions are supported by reasons even if they are neither right nor just. Nonetheless, they exist, and are the basis of her actions.