Growing up, each child is typically exposed to various fairy tales, full of knights and damsels and witches and ghouls. To children, these are simply stories, meant to entertain and, sometimes, spook. However, now being a member of the adult world, it saddens me to observe that most, if not all, fairy tales are created with the purpose of teaching children what is right and wrong. Now, this action doesn't seem to be negative! But the truth of the matter is, most stories are based on superstitions of everyday life and religion. Religion is not always relevant to multiple cultures at once. Not to mention, superstitions can be confusing to kids who are gullible. Sure, it's entertaining to have the daylights scared out of you, but is it realistic that in the ancient times, when these tales were written, they were meant for children? Think back to early England, when the forests were still full and the days were often dreary. Don't you think your playtime as a child would have been littered with disturbing visions from your gruesome and vibrant fairy tales? Modernly, when frightened, we can just change the TV channel, put down the book, or leave the storytelling event. But in the ancient times, when the tales were used as moral teachings, the visualizations could not be avoided.
I don't mean this with intent to say that fairy tales were used as torturous teachings, I am just pointing out the fear they must have evoked in the youth of England and surrounding countries. I am sure that this relates to the Monsters and Monster-Babies that we have read about. The religious leaders in the early European communities, especially the Protestants and Catholics, used monsters as punishment for sins, or as a way to prove the fault in the beliefs of others. Stories in this time couldn't just be stories- they had to have a moral. As in the Hog-Faced Woman tale, the knight was rewarded for overlooking her ugliness and giving her the choice of when she would appear beautiful, day or night. But in this example, the moral is somewhat faulty because he still reflects selfish reasoning. If he asked her to stay beautiful in the daytime, he would have to endure sleeping at night with a hideous woman, versus if she was beautiful in the nighttime, he would have no reason to brag about his affairs with her beautiful self in the night. It's quite a sad story, as are many of the fairy tales. In modern society, it is very interesting how the demented details of fairy tales are left out, and they no longer reflect the foreboding, horrifying ideas that they once did so strongly.
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3 comments:
That's a good point you've brought up, and something I mean to explore further in my fairy blogs. The idea of a culture that actually believed this stuff is rather romantic (to me, anyway), but the reality could have had devastating results. For instance, people's fear of having their babies swapped for fairies caused them to literally torture mentally disabled children whom they believed to be "other," in order to have their "real child" returned from the fairy world. And of course they didn't mean it cruelly; they were just, as you said, gullible.
Don't you ever wonder who's responsible for coining the tales that manipulate people in this way, and if they meant to do it? It reminds me of that mysterious "they" which is the mind-molding media today.
P.S. I though the same thing when I read the story about the enchanted young woman/crone. She was all happy to be granted her free will, but her husband was only doing it because he was bummed and indifferent at choosing the lesser of two evils. I mean, seriously, if that's the best sovereignty women can hope for... Depressing.
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