Josie has a book of fairy tales and nursery rhymes that I read to her and I've been pondering something--the ethics, or lack thereof, in some of these stories bother me. But they're fairy/folk tales, hallowed by time . . . part of the canon . . .yada, yada.
Take Puss in Boots, one of her favorites, despite the scary ogre (she told me that her baby doll Margot is afraid of the ogre because of the growly voice I read him in. But then she told me to do it again.)
So, as the story goes, the crafty cat fools the king into thinking that his master, the poor son of a miller, is the wealthy Marquis of Carabas. He inveigles a suit of fine clothes for the lad, as well as a ride in the king's carriage with the beautiful princess. Then the cat runs to the castle of the ogre who owns all the land thereabouts and tricks the ogre into turning himself into a mouse. Whereupon the cat eats the mouse and the miller's son gets the castle, the land, and the princess.
Aside from the fact that the miller's lad and the princess fall in love, based entirely on one another's good looks (and in the space of a brief carriage ride) and the king is happy to marry off his daughter because the young man is (now) a wealthy landowner, it seems wrong to me that the ogre is killed and eaten so that the miller's lad can take over his domains. There was not a word to alleviate this--had the ogre come by his castle dishonestly? Whose land was it really?
Of course I'm overthinking this. But what makes it okay?
In the same book is Jack and the Beanstalk--foolish lad lucks into a beanstalk which he climbs to find a stone castle in the clouds where an unsuspecting giant lives. Lad steals the giant's wealth and kills the giant and lives happily ever after.
Is it okay because ogres and giants are ugly? Like the ogre, the giant (in this telling anyway) isn't given any history of wrongdoing. It's not a story in which the hero is sent to slay an evil critter that has been ravaging the land and then is rewarded for his bravery. (There are few if any female slayers in traditional fairy tales and that's another problem for another day. . .)
I have pointed out to Josie that I wondered why the Miller's lad wasn't arrested for stealing but she just ignored me. Silly Meema.
She won't let me read Jack and the Beanstalk because she doesn't like the looks of the giant. Probably neither does Margot. So I don't have to get into the ethics of that story just yet.
6 comments:
I admit to never having thought of this. Mind you, I never think much anyway.
I agree...and vaguely remember the dilemma of being a 70's mom of little kids...well, they were born in the 60s and maybe my consciousness raising did go as far as nursery tales...but it wasn't something I thought very much about apparantly. So the Brothers Grimm's and Mother Goose got away with many an illegal and unethical action...not to mention all those poor princesses! You can go ahead and re=write many of these, then show the pictures with the new tales!
What would Josie think of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, a gentle man who was tormented relentlessly and forced to live out of other people's sight? I wonder at what age children begin to see beyond outward appearances. Maybe these tales are reinforcing the idea that those who are unattractive and different are evil.
That's the way it seems to me, Sandy.
I was born 69 years ago. My mother was a revisionist of nursery rhymes. I followed in her tradition when my own children were born 30 some years ago. My favorite of hers: "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the King's horses and all the King's men, couldn't put Humpty together again...So the Queen did it! Old Mother Hubbard didn't spank her children and send them to bed, she "kissed them all soundly and sent them to bed." She also refused to sing Rock-a-Bye baby. "What sadistic so-and-so came up with THAT one?" she used to say.
Sometimes I think of these tales like the Anancy the spider stories or Brer Rabbit, because it's the little person who wins....
However, I read my grandmother's book of fairy tales, printed sometime in the late 1800's and the stories were much more dramatic, even bloody. One of Cinderella's sisters cut off her toes to make the glass slipper fit and then the other stepsister cut off her heels, but a little bird whispered in the Prince's ear to warn him.
Deana the queena
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