fantastic-nonsense:

maliceandvice:

fantastic-nonsense: maliceandvice: calantheandthenightingale: mydollyaviana: Disney vs. 7 early fairytales The 1812 version of Snow White is even worse when you consider that the girl was only seven years old in the tale (plus her unconscious body ended up being carted around by the prince until one of his servants accidentally woke her up). Also, in The Little Mermaid, the mermaid’s unable to speak because she had her tongue cut out >__< But I’d love to see faithful adaptations of the original tales. Especially Bluebeard. We need a Bluebeard adaptation. Actually, the original-original pre-Grimm Brothers’ stories that were passed around Europe via oral tradition are nowhere near as violent as the Grimm’s made them. Cinderella’s stepsisters were never ugly and kept their eyes, Snow White’s mother was not even a villain (instead a group of bandits were), and instead of spending the whole story napping Sleeping Beauty outwitted a dangerous bandit leader, wouldn’t let him sleep with her, and saved herself. The original oral stories were radically changed by the Brothers Grimm to fit their personal and political beliefs. Most notably, they often added in female characters solely for the purpose of making them evil villains and took away most of the heroines’ agency and intelligence. Both brothers belonged to a small fanatical sect of Catholicism that vilified women because of the idea of Original Sin and Wilhelm in particular had a particularly deep hatred of women. The Grimms were actually pretty horrible people. Those cannibalistic queens and ugly stepsisters and the mass amount of violence against women didn’t exist until the Grimms wanted them to. Their ideas stuck so soundly though that we now assume they were in the original tales and that these terrible characters and ideas come out of some perceived barbaric Old World culture. But in truth they’re really the Grimms’ weird obsession with hating women showing through. The original oral folklore focused on the heroes’ and heroines’ good deeds and used them as ways to teach cultural norms and a society’s rules and encouraged girls to be quick-witted and street-savvy instead of passive princesses, and the Grimms promptly stripped that all away. NOPE! Calling you out on your bullshit time. First, the version of Cinderella that the Disney movie is based on is the (French) Perrault version; the Grimms version, Aschenputtel, is a Cinderella story, containing two stepsisters, a ball, and the infamous cutting off of toes and heels incident, but a Grimms adaptation of Aschenputtel would look radically different than the Perrault adaptation we got in Disney’s Cinderella. Cinderella is one of the oldest and most widely-spread fairy tales in the world. There are literally Cinderella tales from every part of the world (the oldest known variant is from Ancient Greece, and there’s Ye Xian, an early Chinese variant). There is no “original” fairy tale, only the most popular versions. The Perrault version was the one that introduced the glass slipper (before that, it was fur, generally, but the French word for fur was remarkably similar to the word for glass, so it became the glass slipper), the fairy godmother, the pumpkin, and a couple of other things, and is the most famous version of the story. The Joseph Jacobs version of Cinderella also includes the gruesome foot-cutting, as does the Norwegian version of Katie Woodencloak. The Scottish does as well, and the Greek version (Little Saddleslut) has the stepsisters getting hewn into pieces in the end. The Russian “The Little Birch” includes mutilation of the “sisters” as well, and there’s a Native American “Cinderella” that has the sisters being turned into trees at the end. A particularly memorable Chinese version has the stepmother and stepsister getting crushed by stones in the end, and the Story of Tam and Cam, the Vietnamese version, Tam (the “Cinderella”) is actually killed ¾ of the way through the story by the mother and then is reincarnated in various ways, eventually getting her happy ending, and the evil sister is killed in a pot of boiling water at the end (at Tam’s request!). The “pecking out of eyes” thing was literally one of the only violent things that the Grimms brothers added to that story from the version they likely heard. If anyone else is interested, here’s some links to Cinderella tales form around the world. And your statement about Snow White is false too. Snow White’s mother/stepmother is ALWAYS evil (though sometimes every once in awhile it’s her sister). That’s a central part of the story. There are versions where the dwarves are instead robbers, but then again, there’s a version from Albania (that predates the Grimm version by at least 100 years) where the main character lives with 40 dragons and her sleep is caused by an enchanted ring. That version has the princess being urged to kill her stepmother and take her place. One of the earlier variations by Basile (who predated the Grimms by 100 years, and whose stories are often the source of many of the French and German adaptations of the tales) combines the Snow White and Sleeping Beauty tales with “The Young Slave.” The one that I think you’re talking about, an Italian tale titled “Maria, the Wicked Stepmother, and the Seven Robbers,” a fairy tale that has her father abandon her in the woods (similar to Hansel and Gretel) and Maria come upon a house belonging to seven robbers, who welcomed her as long as she agreed to cook and clean for them. This also has the “ring caused the sleep” thing, and the Queen (The mother of the prince) was the one who removed it from her finger, causing Maria to wake up. If you’re interested in the history of Snow White, here’s a link that can inform you, and here are links to collections of Snow White tales. Also the Sleeping Beauty assertion is blatantly false, as a) Basile’s The Sun, Moon, and Talia is not a Grimms tale (and predates “Little Briar Rose,” The Grimms version, by almost 200 years, as does the wildly more popular Perrault version), and b) the whole point of the “Sleeping Beauty” fairy tale type is that the maiden sleeps. That’s the fairy tale type (Type-410). Which version are you talking about that she outwitted a bandit leader and saved herself? As you can see, the Grimms really didn’t radically change the stories, and you’re just spouting off BS because you don’t like them. Once again, there are not “original oral stories” because many of these stories occur in various formats (Cinderella has 500 variants in Europe alone) from various time periods. They each have wildly different stories while keeping the same basic theme (which is why they’re in the Type: Cinderella or Type-Sleeping Maiden, etc). You obviously either didn’t do the research or you’re letting your hatred of the Grimms brothers cloud your analysis (I think both). The Grimms brothers were devout Calvinists, hardly “a small sect of fanatical Catholicism.” Calvinism is a major branch of PROTESTANTISM, actually, and is still a major international denomination today. Most settlers in the New England and Mid-Atlantic region were Calvinists, actually, including the Puritans, the French Hugenot, and the Dutch settlers of New York. Today one of the most famous denominations that uses Calvinist theology is a little denomination called the Presbyterians. The Grimms Brothers were not the only people whose versions of the fairy tales had less than active women (Perrault and Madame Beaumont, for instance, who predated them). You also don’t seem to know the methodology which the Grimms Brothers collected their tales: they went and talked to people and recorded their version of the story. You obviously have no background in fairy tales if you believe that cannibalistic queens and mass amounts of violence magically “didn’t exist” until the Grimms version. And actually, using fairy tales to teach morals didn’t really happen until Charles Perrault, so… Please don’t perpetuate false knowledge, as people on Tumblr will eat it up without doing the research themselves. And I’m gonna call you right back in return because you’re still talking about written versions of the stories, not the oral traditions that I’m talking about. Every single version you’ve pointed out is a written story that has been influenced by the authors’ own bias. While you’re correct in your analysis of those stories, you’re incorrect about some of their origins. You’re obviously well versed in the written folktales, but you’re absolutely wrong about everything that came before the big name collectors stepped into the game. The Chinese versions you linked, The Jacobs version, and many of the Cinderella ones on that list - you need to look at the dates they were written down. These are not the oral versions of the tales, these are stories that have been shaped by a post-Grimm world. You can’t point to a story written by a European scholar in 1954 and tell me it comes from ancient China. You can’t point to Jacobs’ version of Cinderella that was published after the Grimms’ version and say he wasn’t influenced by them, especially not when he hero worshipped them. And you can’t link an unsourced folktale from an elementary school’s website and call it an accurate scholarly version of the traditional tale. And yes, the Grimms were Calvinists, but their specific church was far from the popular, traditional Calvinism that we’re familiar with today. You’re clearly not familiar with the changes in the religion over time or the Grimms’ religious background if you’re going to claim Calvinism didn’t have a stark effect on the Grimms’ storytelling. It’s the main reason physical beauty and purity of women suddenly became important factors of these stories. In Wilhelm’s later editions of the stories in particular you can see the addition of religious themes and motifs that didn’t exist before. Which swings nicely into my next point about them editing the oral stories… As far as their research method goes, yes, they gathered tales by talking to native groups, but they heavily, heavily edited those collected tales. You only have to look at earlier versions of the Grimms’ tales to see this happening. Earlier versions are closer to their original oral stories, but over time and edits become more violent and misogynist. Compare the 1812 version to the 1857 version. You’ll find no violent wicked stepmother in 1812, but simply an unfair mother. Violence against villains - particularly villainous women - increases immensely as well. You can’t argue the Grimms didn’t increase violence in the stories when you can chart the progress of violence within their own writing over 40 years. Also, Wilhelm was known to pick and choose from various other mythologies and traditions when editing to make the stories better fit his personal tastes. The stories are hardly the traditional Germanic stories they’re touted to be because they’re so heavily peppered with things like Greek mythology and Biblical allusions. Saying that the Grimms didn’t change the stories is patently untrue and ignorant. You clearly know nothing about oral fairytales and folklore if you’re going to claim they didn’t teach morals before Perrault. As if Perrault invented telling cautionary tales to your children. As if storytelling as a teaching tool simply didn’t exist prior to 1697. That’s just blatantly not true and I’d be curious to hear what purpose you think they served before that time then. You need to brush up on your Jack Zipes if you don’t think fairytales serve and have always served a social function. The Sleeping Beauty versions I’m talking about are probably easier to find under the name “Blancaflor” or “Blachefloure” (though it’s not the Romantic Medieval story that shares a similar name). Same story type, different name for the girl. Lastly, I highly recommend you read “Enchanted Maidens” by James Taggart for a crash course in real oral folktales. It’s a collection of unedited Spanish folktales straight from the mouths of the ones telling them to their children, verbatim. If you want a well laid out introduction to oral folkore, start there. I think you’ll find you have to take back that statement about Snow White’s stepmother always being evil if you do.

You seem to forget the very nature of fairy tales (ie, that they are never told the same way twice). Every version of a tale (whether written or oral) is as legitimate as the other, regardless of embellishment or changes of the text. There is no “true tale,” because there are so many different versions, even within a confined area. And how are the oral versions that you talk about not influenced by the storyteller’s bias? Once again, every tale never told quite the same way twice; for instance, my English teacher, when reading Red Riding Hood to her child, will sometimes add embellishments like “she was in kindergarten and she liked to play soccer in her spare time” to make it more relatable to her child (who is in kindergarten and likes to play soccer) or to illustrate a point. Every time the tale is told will be different depending on the audience and the storyteller in question. Storytellers have biases just like the people who wrote them down.

Question: how do you know the differences between the oral versions of a tale and the written versions? Written tales are our historical record. We have no knowledge of the differences between the exact details of the (many) oral tales and the written ones. We DO have the Brothers Grimms’ original 1810 manuscripts, though.

And actually, the Chinese version I linked was Ye Xian, one of the oldest known Cinderella stories (from the 9th century). The Story of Tam and Cam (the Vietnamese Cinderella story) could have been written anytime between the 2nd/3rd century and the 15th…and is largely thought to have no Chinese OR European influence. Your assumption that most of them were written in a Post-Grimms world comes from the dates of the ANTHOLOGIES those stories were included in that those sites got their sources from, not the age of the stories themselves, and your refusal to look at actual sources. I admit that the Jacobs version was written post-Grimms, and I will not deny it.

You seem to have this ridiculous notion that excessive violence and violence against women in fairy tales somehow didn’t exist before the Grimms versions. I firmly assure you that this not true. I can’t fathom why you would even think that, but there are fairy tales from all over the world that were recorded CENTURIES before the Grimms brothers that had excessive violence and violence against women (And a hell of a lot of violence against men as well). As I’ve said before, these tales were not intended for the consumption of children, though children were sometimes a part of the audience. As such, they had lots of violence, lots of sex, lots of bawdy jokes and references, and lots of frank discussion about issues that impacted the storytellers’ worlds.

Where are your sources for your assertion that the Grimms’ particular church was not consistent with mainline 19th century Calvinism? Neo-Calvinism wasn’t a thing until around 20 years after their deaths, and if you’re referring to Pietism, that was definitely more a Lutheran thing (and later the Methodists), though it definitely influenced the culture’s view of religion at that time (though the height of the movement was around 50-60 years before the brothers were even born), and did pervade the Calvinist tradition in some ways.

In Wilheim’s later versions, he was bending to the will of middle class parents and the church who wanted the stories to be made suitable for children. You don’t seem to understand that the first edition WASN’T MADE for children, and the Grimms brothers were poor, and so to maximize financial success when it began to become popular, they began to sanitize and edit them to make them more suitable. There is a thing called censorship in fairy tales, and there’s plenty of articles on it.

The Grimms brothers were trying to please two different audiences. Their first edition was not meant for children at all, and was instead a scholarly pursuit with them trying to record the tales faithfully, even down to colloquial language. It was only when people began buying the book and telling the stories to their children, complaining that the stories were too graphic in nature that the Grimms brothers started extensively editing and sanitizing the tales. Many of the Christian references were added because of harsh criticism that they WEREN’T Christian enough.

Your refusal to look at the greater cultural context and WHY the Grimms brothers edited their tales multiple times until their deaths speaks to your incredible bias and your inability to look past your own hatred.

And I am completely bewildered at what you mean by the ‘edited version’ of Snow White vs. the original 1812 version, because they read virtually the same except that the mother has been replaced by the stepmother, the change from the Queen wanting the liver and lungs of Snow White to the heart (And the cannibalistic nature), and the manner in which the apple is dislodged from Snow White’s mouth (and the shortening of the Prince’s mooning over her dead body to make it less creepy). Yes, you do find the violent wicked MOTHER in the 1812 version. She still tries to kill Snow White four separate times (besides the Huntsman one). I am completely nonplussed as to where you are getting this “simply an unfair mother” assertion from.

Yes, the Grimms stories increased in violence (generally) and decreased in literally everything else (mentions of sex and premarital sex, generally immoral things like the Donkeyskin “father wants to marry his own daughter” kind of thing), because surprise surprise: children are fascinated by violence. There is also a cautionary aspect in increasing the violence, as violence to bad characters increases the lesson of “bad people get punished” and violence to good characters, particularly children, helped the MANY abused and poor children of the time (or children who saw themselves as neglected) identify with the characters more. More here.

It is well known (though I guess not by you) that the fairy tales were a relatively accurate representation of everyday life in Germany, particularly among the lower class. In 1806, when the Grimms were beginning to collect their tales, child abandonment and infanticide were still relatively common among the poor. And given the high mortality rate of childbirth, having a stepmother in the house was almost the rule rather than the exception. If you want more information on how the Grimms tales were highly influenced by the everyday life and culture of GERMANY, I suggest you check out “The Hard Facts of the Grimms Fairy Tales” by Maria Tatar, some of which can be viewed for free here. The section detailing the cutlural influences on their tales would be here. I also recommend The Annotated Brothers Grimm, also by Maria Tatar.

I never said that the Grimms didn’t change their stories. You are putting words in my mouth. What I SAID is that their original versions are close to what the women they gathered them from told them (as evidenced by the original manuscripts) and that it was largely due to pressure from society and the pressure to sanitize those tales for children that led to many of the changes and the introduction of Christian motifs and whatnot.

One of my favorite articles on the subject of the Grimms’ life in general, that also touches on the women who they gathered the tales from and their sanitization of the tales is this one from National Geographic.

You forget that fairy tales were not intended for children for a long time. They were told by women, for women. They were tales women told to each other while doing chores, or around the fire after the children had gone to bed. They were chiefly for entertainment purposes, though there were often lessons embedded in them (because most tales do, after all). There are several records of who exactly they transcribed the tales from (including over 40 by Dorothea Viehmann, many by Marie Hassenpflug, and several from Wilhelm’s wife, Dorothea Wild), and several articles and books detailing this process.

Of course Perrault didn’t invent telling cautionary tales to children. However, Perrault was the first one to make fairy tales specifically ABOUT teaching morals. As stated before, they were chiefly for entertainment purposes before that point. Writers, editors, and storytellers began to utilize fairy tales in 18th and 19th-century Europe in the moral and cultural education of children. Before that, they were chiefly for adults, whether for the teaching of lessons or entertainment purposes, which is why so many of the tales are particularly gruesome: they are not sanitized for children. I never said that they didn’t carry lessons and moral undertones before Perrault; I said utilizing fairy tales specifically to teach morals didn’t really exist before Perrault.

I have not been able to find the Sleeping Beauty variant you specified, either through Google searching (it just comes up with the medieval tale you told me it wasn’t), or through browsing the different tales of Type-410. The SurLaLune Fairy Tales website’s history of Sleeping Beauty tales pins the earliest variant “Perceforest,” a 16th century French romance. The Grimms version basically eradicated all of the references to rape, cannibalism, or adultery that was in Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia” (as they did many of their tales). If you would direct me to somewhere where I could read the version you reference, I would be most grateful.

And no, I don’t have to take back the “interpretation” of Snow White’s mother/stepmother always being evil and trying to kill Snow White. That is the foundation of the Snow White fairy tale and appears in all variants of the Snow White tale (though some include the father in them as well). The Basile variant has it, the other Italian versions (Maria, the Wicked Stepmother and the Seven Robbers, The Crystal Casket) have it…all Type-709 tales have this in common: a beautiful daughter persecuted by her jealous mother/stepmother/female authority figure for being beautiful. Several variants can be found here and here.

Frankly, I think you need to take a look at what you’re saying, because you really aren’t making much sense. Your hatred of the Grimms brothers clouds your judgement and your ability to interpret history and the historical and cultural context of fairy tales, as well as your ability to acknowledge that there were fairytales before the Grimms brothers, sometimes very close to the Grimms versions.