Fairy Tale Structure, Origins, and Appeal Explained

Introduction: The Origins and Nature of Fairy Tales

Fairy 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 remarkably similar in terms of structure and themes. The main characteristic that all fairy tales share is that they reflect universal themes while remaining, at the same time, strongly connected to the cultural heritage of the geographical area where they were created.

Another important trait that nearly all fairy tales have in common is the difficulty of tracing their origins, since they belong to the oral tradition — that is, they were transmitted from one generation to another by being told rather than 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 entertainment alone drove people to tell and listen to such stories. However, fairy tales serve 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). This paper examines the appeal of fairy tales by looking at the structure, origins, and main characteristics of the genre; it also compares and contrasts two antagonists — the witch in Hansel and Gretel and the witch in Rapunzel — and ultimately attempts to formulate an explanation for the popularity of fairy tales among readers of all ages.

Historical Development and Structure of the Genre

Regarding the history of fairy tales, it was during the Renaissance that storytelling gave birth to the fairy tale as a distinct form: "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 storytelling in order 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 heritage of a nation, when European countries began including 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. Schools thus delivered fairy tales to children at an impressionable age and reinforced them through memorization, the standard teaching method of the time (Davidson, Chaudhri 60).

Regarding the structure of fairy tales, several approaches exist for deconstructing the sequence of events that makes up any such literary creation. One of the most renowned structuralist theories belongs to Vladimir Propp, who in his Morphology of the Folktale (1928, translated 1958) puts forward an 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" through which the hero must pass in any hero story, and these functions occur 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 kind of circular vision of the genre.

The characters in fairy tales also follow certain patterns and are constructed according to the two moral categories upon which the world is built — good and bad. They embody one of these categories, never both simultaneously, since fairy tale characters are flat and do not evolve throughout the narrative as they might in the novel. They do, however, contain at least some of the social truth of their communities; moreover, the events in which these characters participate result in an implicit morality or didacticism (Davidson, Chaudhri 16). The only transgression on the part of a character — always the one representing the forces of good — usually serves only to emphasize his fundamentally good nature and intentions, in the sense that he recovers through a plot twist that strengthens the happy ending and the triumph of good over evil.

With respect to their relationship to the main character — the symbol of what is good and right — fairy tale characters can be divided into two categories: those who help and those who hinder or obstruct the protagonist's quest. While the first category is vast and varies significantly from one geographical region and cultural tradition to another, the second is smaller. Those who attack or challenge the hero or heroine are usually family members, tyrannical rulers, powers from the Otherworld, or jealous companions. The one thing both categories share is that they each possess supernatural powers. The intervention and ultimate fate of these characters — the helpers and the enemies — is the key to understanding the moral value of fairy tales in general.

Conclusion: The Enduring Appeal of Fairy Tales

Fairy tales have ancient roots; the fact that they have been around for such a long time has resulted in a mixture of stability and change, in the sense that the stories have been continuously updated, as have the circumstances of their telling. However, they are easy to recognize because their meanings are always clear, even as they may also carry deeper hidden meanings and offer a wide range of interpretations. The characters in fairy tales are usually stereotyped and, as discussed above, the events follow a very clear pattern, making them quite predictable.