Tags
disturbing themes, fairy tale lobby, fairy tales, Henry J. Ford, Katharine Briggs, mary grace ketner, megan hicks, national storytelling network, storytelling, Vasilisa, violence in fairy tales
Henry J. Ford’s interpretation of a young woman recently maimed by her father. She looks plucky. Her “can do” attitude is what restored her arms. Is that the lesson this horror story carries?
Simplia was looking a little green around the gills. She closed the book she was reading and blinked hard, as if to squeeze an unpleasant image from her eyeballs.
Sagacia looked up from the computer and blinked hard, too. From eyestrain.
“Ah,” she said. “You’re delving into those tomes we picked up at the library book sale. Katharine Briggs, right? Dictionary of British Folk-Tales?”
Simplia said, “Yeah. And the fabled British sense of decorum is nowhere to be found in any of the stories I’ve sampled so far. We got your body snatchers, you got your ghouls, we got your serial killers, and a father who cuts off his daughter’s limbs just because she broke some crockery.”
“She gets them back,” Sagacia reasoned. “And she’s stronger for the ordeal.”
“I wouldn’t say she’s stronger. She acts like a casebook example of victimhood, as far as I’m concerned. Not only forgiving the lousy perp, but saving his life. But that’s not the point!”
She laid the open book on the coffee table. The pages fluttered shut, leaving only the end papers and a library book pocket exposed. Instead of a “date due” card, inside the pocket was a sheet of notebook paper, torn roughly from its spiral binding. Written across the visible edge of the paper, the Simpletons both read the words:
Yo! Vasilisa!
Simplia removed the paper, unfolded it, and oblivious to the bits of paper that fluttered to the floor, she read:
What’s up with you and your magical friends, so heavily invested in keeping these stories alive? These particular stories in this particular book…many of them are absolutely dreadful! As in: ‘full of dread.’ And despair. And brutality.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no shrinking violet. Thing is, though, there’s already so much maiming and dismembering and ghoulishness going on everywhere in the world right now…I sorta turned to fairy tales to take me away from all that — to plug me into a source of ancient wisdom…or something. I’m disappointed that so many of these stories end on a note of vengeance, not justice; on resignation, not resolution.
Remind me again, Vasilisa: Why are these stories necessary?
Sincerely,
Skeptical in Skye
p.s. My questions are not rhetorical. I really want to know.
“So,” Simplia said with a satisfied nod, “I’m not the only one.”
Sagacia said, “Let’s go see if anybody at the Fairy Tale Lobby feel like proffering an opinion on this matter.” With two clicks of her mouse (not the Mailmouse!) she was on her feet, and the two of them were headed for the door.
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(Post Script: There is now a full time link in the menu bar on the home page where our gentle readers may access the ongoing bibliography of favorite fairy tale collections. Don’t ask how the miracle came about. It might never again be repeated.)
Fairy Tale Lobby 
If our folk and fairy tale characters always treat each other with no worse than a slap on the wrist, would we read them?
As in any good story there need to be stakes, something to be lost, something to be gained. If that is the hero or heroine’s life and limb, all the better. The tales are short, the stakes need to be established quickly with certainty.
We can take comfort in that the violence in these tales is not gratuitous, but serves the purpose of driving the story forward.
The predominate formula dictates the tale to end happily for the protagonist with evil being punished. A slap on the wrist of a witch will only promise her revenge. The witch must dance to her death in red hot iron shoes. There is, sadly for evil, no other way.
Thank you for this post! It is a very stimulating question for me as a storyteller and therapist…
I came across an answer from Albert Einstein. Unfortunately he referred to reading rather than telling… Nevertheless, here it is, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” One of the 3rd-4th graders I told this to related it to another Einstein quote, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
As for dread, ghoulishness and brutality… yes, it exists in the real world. But fairy tales are not so much about the external world as they are about our internal world (thank you Bruno Bettelheim for making a case for this!) Hearing fairy tales helps us to know ourselves, and to understand others. Fairy tales show us that there are solutions to life’s problems that are beyond the scope of our rational brain, solutions that seem magical.
The great psychologist Gordon Neufeld at U.B.C. Vancouver talks about how our growth and maturation require us to come up against our limitations, and to feel the “tears of futility” when we are desperate and defeated. Because then the events that we cannot change will transform us internally. This happens over and over again in fairy tales. The hero/heroine cannot accomplish the impossible task, they sit down and weep, and magical assistance appears. Fairy tales teach us not to run away from impossible tasks. They teach us that we must come up against them, risk death (ego death), and allow ourselves to be taken over by something more powerful than our will.
Of course, there are fairy tales that espouse what I would consider unhealthy solutions. I choose not to tell those. Fortunately there is a HUGE repertoire to choose from, and there are plenty of good ones.
Erran — Thank you for this much needed (for me, at least) reminder, and a little trip down memory lane. The tears of futility; desperation; defeat. And yes, magically — though often with no fanfare, no drama, no aura of enchantment — magical assistance does indeed appear.
And Barra — As always, your stories pack one heck of a wallop.
Many thanks to you who respond with words and to you who, simply by checking in with us every now and then, lift us up and spur us on.
This reminds me of my first year as a high school English teacher, when i tutored a senior in the junior English lit she’d flunked the year before. “WHY do I have to read this…stuff?” she demanded at our first session. “I mean, what’s the point?”
I wasn’t (officially, or even in my own mind) a storyteller at that point, but I answered her with another question. “What do you want to do when you finish school?”
“I’m going to be a police officer,” she said promptly, the first definite response I’d gotten.
“Then it’s really important that you know a lot of stories,” I told her. “Look, stories are a way for us to know about a wide variety of experiences. Did you ever hear or read the story of Mr. Fox?” She hadn’t. I summarised it: serial killer, charming man who would woo wealthy young women, marry them, and once he had control of their money, would kill them…and being a sicko, he kept trophies in a locked room in his country home. Then one day one young woman couldn’t resist poking around, found the trophies, managed to survive, and his killing spree was ended.
My student was enthralled, pelting me with questions. I told her to go find a written version, read it, and write about it. Predictably, she balked. “But I’d feel stupid looking at fairy tales! I’m sixteen, not six!”
“Tell the librarian that it’s an assignment, and you might be able to use them the next time you babysit,” I suggested. “Only don’t scare really little kids!”
Our next session was two days later. Her essay was well-thought-out, aside from some mechanical grammar problems, and I reminded her of our previous conversation. Stories like this, I pointed out, were useful in helping people be careful. “We can’t experience every single possible situation, and we wouldn’t want to go through some,” I said. “But if the more stories we know, the more we have guidelines for things like stranger danger, and how to react to situations we might encounter in our lives. You never know what’ll happen in your life ahead of time. And in serving and protecting, the more you know, the more you can help the public. Now, your next assignment is to read that excerpt from James Fenimore Cooper and the essay Mark Twain wrote about Cooper’s writing….”
She got a B+ (to the shock of the principal and her parents), and later left the police dept. to get a degree in psychology and counseling. I met her years later while discussing fairy tales with a friend of hers who did seminars based on Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ books.
Wow! THAT’S a great story :-)
Wow! Just wow! (probably more later, but for now: wow!)