The eNotes Blog The Good, the Bad, and the Gross Dark Origins of Our Favorite FairyTales

The Good, the Bad, and the Gross Dark Origins of Our Favorite FairyTales Were all familiar with at least some aspects of most fairy tales. After all, who hasnt seen a Disney movie complete with singing princesses and their trusty dancing spoons? To some, these stories are perfection and you dont mess with perfection. But alas, the original creators of these beloved tales werent thinking about singing teacups and whistling puppies.  No, these writers were a bit more, shall I say, Grim(m)? Rapunzel To start on the relatively tame side, we have the story of Rapunzel, the long-haired beauty held captive in a tower by a wicked witch, whos eventually  saved by a handsome prince. The original tale doesnt start all too differently except that  she isnt rescued the first time the prince comes by- in fact, the prince comes by a lot, and  ends up getting our girl pregnant (he doesnt rescue her though- shes fine up there, captive in her tower). At a certain point, as many of you know, it becomes difficult to hide a pregnancy. The witch, being of sound mind and good vision, realizes that a man must have been stopping by the castle and flies into a rage that culminates in chopping off Rapunzels hair (something of a scalping, actually) and banishing her to wander the wilderness  forever. But thats not all! Not satisfied with simple banishment, the witch plants a trap, throwing Rapunzels stolen hair over the balcony when the prince comes a-knockin. As soon as the  prince reaches the top of the tower, the witch pushes him back out the window, where after falling a great distance, he manages to survive, but has his eyeballs pricked out by rose bushes. Romantic! The Pied Piper Long ago, a town called Hamelin had a rat problem- a really big rat problem (the rats themselves may not have been big, but there were a lot of them). Being a responsible man, the towns mayor decided the rats needed to go,  and called upon the Pied Piper to lure the rats out of Hamelin with his pipe. The Piper says okey dokey and charms the rats out of the town and into a nearby river to drown. Now that was all well and good, but  for reasons unbeknownst to us, the mayor refused to pay the Piper as much money as he had originally promised. Understandably, the Pied Piper is upset by being stiffed of his fee. Not understandably, the Piper decides to exact his revenge by luring the children of Hamelin into the river and drowning them as he did the rats. On a historical note, it is believed that this story was written in an attempt to explain why so many children in this region went missing with great frequency. While its doubtful that children were actually lured to their deaths by a rat-charmer, the fact remains that there were a lot of disappearing children and thats concerning in and of itself. Well get to infanticide a little later. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves We all know Snow White, the beautiful stepdaughter to the kings jealous new wife, ends up banished to the forest to be killed. Well,  according to canon, the jealous stepmother was actually Snows birth mother, which is somehow a little creepier. Also  creepy: not only was the huntsman sent to abandon Snow in the woods  but he was also supposed to kill her, extract her liver and lungs, and bring the organs home for her mothers dinner. Nothing like a little cannibalism among family. Fast forward to the bit with the poisoned apple putting Snow White to sleep. Originally  the apple wasnt meant to  promote beauty rest, but rather a case of dead-ness. Fortunately for Snow White, she had a little magic and a lot of luck on her side. A prince miraculously discovered the beautiful girl and came to her aid. When  attempting to lift the girl, he did an  accidental Heimlich Maneuver and dislodged the apple. Somehow, in spite of being dead to the world for some time, Snow began breathing again and fell in love with her rescuer, immediately agreeing to marry him (does anyone else have problems getting dates?). At the wedding, the evil queen arrives, not realizing who it is that her prince is marrying (ignore the hints of incest). At the wedding, the wicked wench is forced into a pair of shoes that had been cooking over a fire and is made  to dance in the burning shoes until she literally drops dead. Cinderella The beginning of this tale is well known, save  for the fact  that instead of glass, the famous shoe was actually made of gold.  Where the story gets a little tricky is when it comes to the trying on of the gold/glass slipper. Of course, the prince searches the kingdom and doesnt find the proper foot for the slipper. Eventually he comes to Cinderellas house. Cinderella is pushed behind her stepsisters in their dash to try on the shoes. To understand the motive behind  their coming actions one has to understand  that since the prince has already been to every other house in the kingdom, the stepsisters have figured out that the shoe somehow belongs to Cinderella (they know that neither of them was dancing in slippers of gold/glass). And since they also know that their stepsister has smaller feet than they, the sisters decide to do something drastic.  They decide to cut up their feet- the oldest sister chops off her toes and the younger stepsister slices off her heels. While the shoes do end up fitting,  the dripping blood somehow tips off the prince that these are not actually the feet hes looking for. Eventually, the prince learns of Cinderella and has her try on the shoes, which of course fit perfectly. To end the tale, the prince marries Cinderella and the stepsisters are left with their dismembered feet and probably terrible balance. To add insult to injury, Cinderellas pet doves dive-bomb the stepsisters and peck out their eyes during Cinderellas wedding ceremony. Sleeping Beauty Like all fairy tales, Sleeping Beauty is a little messed up from the get-go. A  wicked witch puts a baby girl to essentially an  eternal sleep on her sixteenth birthday (I say eternal because shes doomed to sleep until her true loves kiss, but no one can  really fall in love with you when youre unconscious).  This was done all because she didnt get invited to this kids birthday party- and that could be because the king and queen were worried that exactly this sort of thing would happen. But I digress. I will give the newer version some credit for  leaving out the, for lack of a gentler term, sexual assault. In the first version of Sleeping Beauty, our heroine is alone and  asleep in a random room in the  castle (in this version, she isnt the princess, but the  daughter of a nobleman). During some wandering of the castle (we assume),  the king found her. When he  found he could not  wake the girl, he decided to have sex with her, and possibly a few times- Beauty gave  birth to two children while still asleep. In the end,  Beauty is only woken due to random circumstance; one of her children sucked  on her finger and inadvertently removed the magic splinter that was keeping her asleep. To his credit, the King was really happy when Sleeping Beauty awoke from her nap and decided he wanted to be with her. Of course, being married in the days before legal divorce made it difficult for him to be with Beauty, so he went ahead and boiled his wife to death. In all fairness though, his wife did apparently try to cook his illegitimate children for dinner a couple times without his knowledge, so  maybe  she had it coming. Hansel and Gretel The earliest hints of this tale start to appear  around the beginning of the Middle Ages and star not only an evil witch, but also her husband, the Devil. Like in many versions of the story, little Hansel and his sister Gretel are led into the forest to be abandoned by their parents. In this version, however, instead of finding a house of candy, they were lured into a house by a woman with promises of food and a warm place to sleep (stranger danger!). It all went  downhill from there when it quickly became apparent that there were no beds  for the kiddos to sleep on, but cages to keep them in while they fattened for the witchs husband (again, the Devil). It  seems that the Devil preferred his meat  raw, so when it came time to make the children into a meal, instead of cooking Hansel and Gretel, the witch instead planned to tie them to a sawhorse and bleed them to death. Nice. Gretel did not  know  how to climb aboard the sawhorse, so  when the witch attempted to demonstrate, she and Hansel tied the witch  down and slit her throat. During their escape from  the house, they were  chased by the Devil but thwarted his effort by crossing the river, because apparently the Prince  of Darkness cant  swim and forgot his floaties.

Huckleberry Finn and the Subject of Slavery

'Huckleberry Finn' and the Subject of Slavery The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was first published in the United Kingdom in 1885 and the United States in 1886. This novel served as a social commentary on the culture of the United States at the time, when slavery was a hot-button issue addressed in Twains writing. The character Jim is Miss Watsons slave and a deeply superstitious man who escapes from his captivity and societys constraints to raft down the river. This is where he meets Huckleberry Finn. In the epic journey down the Mississippi River that follows, Twain portrays Jim as a deeply caring and loyal friend who becomes a father figure to Huck, opening the boys eyes to the human face of slavery. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said of Twains work that, Huckleberry Finn knew, as did Mark Twain, that Jim was not only a slave but a human being [and] a symbol of humanity...and in freeing Jim, Huck makes a bid to free himself of the conventionalized evil taken for civilization by the town. The Enlightenment of Huckleberry Finn The common thread that ties Jim and Huck together once they meet on the riverbank - other than a shared location - is that they are both fleeing from the constraints of society. Jim is fleeing from slavery and Huck from his oppressive family. The disparity between their plights provides a great basis for drama in the text, but also an opportunity for Huckleberry to learn about the humanity in every person, no matter the color of skin or class of society they are born into. Compassion comes from Hucks humble beginnings. His father is a worthless loafer and mother is not around. This influences Huck to empathize with his fellow man, rather than following the indoctrination of the society he left behind. In Hucks society, helping a runaway slave like Jim was the worst crime you could commit, short of murder. Mark Twain on Slavery and the Setting In Notebook #35, Mark Twain described the setting of his novel and the cultural atmosphere of the south in the United States at the time The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took place: In those old slave-holding days, the whole community was agreed as to one thing - the awful sacredness of slave property. To help steal a horse or a cow was a low crime, but to help a hunted slave, or feed him or shelter him, or hide him, or comfort him, in his troubles, his terrors, his despair, or hesitate to promptly to betray him to the slave-catcher when opportunity offered was a much baser crime, and carried with it a stain, a moral smirch which nothing could wipe away. That this sentiment should exist among slave-owners is comprehensible - there were good commercial reasons for it - but that it should exist and did exist among the paupers, the loafers the tag-rag and bobtail of the community, and in a passionate and uncompromising form, is not in our remote day realizable. It seemed natural enough to me then; natural enough that Huck and his father the worthless loafer should feel it approve it, though it seems now absurd. It shows that that strange thing, the conscience - the unerring monitor - can be trained to approve any wild thing you want it to approve if you begin its education early and stick to it. This novel wasnt the only time Mark Twain discussed the horrendous reality of slavery and the humanity behind each slave and freed man, citizens and humans deserving of respect the same as anyone else. Sources: Ranta, Taimi. Huck Finn and Censorship. Project Muse, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. De Vito, Carlo, Editor. Mark Twains Notebooks: Journals, Letters, Observations, Wit, Wisdom, and Doodles. Notebook Series, Kindle Edition, Black Dog Leventhal, May 5, 2015.