Original and dark fairy tales

Original and dark fairy tales

Fairy tales, we have all been exposed to them. Whether it was a toned down Disney adaptation, a dramatic retelling like Maleficent, or even a book collection from our childhood, we’ve all experienced fairy tales at some point in our lives. They inform our understanding of right and wrong as children, and develop a sense of consequences due to actions. They’re wonderful, influential things. Fantasy favourites like Harry Potter, Narnia and even Lord of the Rings were all in some way influenced and inspired by the structures and tales developed within folklore. These tales have had a significant impact on the way we relate to and understand the world.

As a matter of fact, a lot of the fairy tales that we know and love started off quite differently from their sanitised modern counterparts. More often than not they are gruesome and dark, with violent and cannibalistic themes to boot. Charles Perrault seems to be one of the earliest writers of fairy tales. The Frenchman set the foundations for fairy tales as a genre, and wrote mostly in the late 1600s. He wrote some of the earliest versions of Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. In the early 1800s, The Brothers Grimm, who were particularly interested in German folklore, began to collect and record as much of the oral tradition of that folklore as possible. They’re often the go to guys when it comes to fairy tales and down some of the first versions of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. Another figurehead in folklore is Hans Christian Anderson. Instead of being a collector like the aforementioned brothers, he was a writer of fairy tales. He wrote the original versions of The Little Mermaid and The Snow Queen (which Disney’s recent Frozen was based on). Mainly I am going to be drawing from these writers for the “original” story but it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of these tales were inspired by a wider oral tradition, and a lot of them date back much further – so it’s hard to have a definitive “original.”

Personally, I have something of an obsession when it comes to fairy tales and folklore. It felt so good to actually have a legitimate reason to blow the dust off my old fairy tale collections, sit down and just read through them again. Yes, I have a whole shelf dedicated to these kinds of books.

Snow White

So, the Grimm Brothers version of this seemed fairly familiar. Evil and vain Queen, jealous of her step daughter’s superior beauty, orders a huntsman to kill her. However, at this point in the story Snow White is only seven. Oh, and unlike in the Disney film where the huntsman is ordered to bring Snow White’s heart back to the Queen as proof of her death, he is instead ordered to bring back her liver and lungs for the Queen to eat. Oh yay, cannibalism of a small child (depressingly enough this theme of eating people will turn up in more than one story.) This is my favourite type of uplifting fairy story. He gives her the lungs and liver of a boar instead and the Queen merrily eats these assuming that she’s eating her husband’s child. Great. Moving on … After finding out where Snow White is staying, the Queen attempts to first suffocate her with an extremely tight bodice, then a poison comb until finally she tricks her into eating the famous poisoned apple. The apple gets caught in her throat and she is put into a state of suspended animation. The dwarves, assuming that she was dead, place her in a glass coffin. Again, this all seems so familiar and innocent, until the prince shows up. He sees this supposedly dead seven-year-old, falls in love with her, and convinces the dwarves to let him take the coffin with him. Okay, so I am not 100 per cent sure what’s going on here, but does that sound a little like necrophilia to you? Not to mention the creepy fact that she’s so young as well? Someone trips, the coffin falls, the apple is dislodged from her throat and Snow White comes back to life. The prince marries her and now she’s Queen. This is where the Disney film ends – however, there is actually a little more to the story than that. Snow White invites her evil stepmother to her wedding. She arrives, unaware of who this new queen is, and is shocked to find Snow White upon the throne. It is at this point that the Queen is forced to dance in a pair of glowing, red-hot, iron shoes until she dies.

Snow’s just a tad vengeful, isn’t she?

Cinderella

This is probably one of the most famous fairy tales of all time. There have been so many retellings and versions written over the years, and I don’t think I have ever met anyone who doesn’t know the basic outline of this this tale. Both Perrault and the Brothers Grimm wrote a version of this tale but I’m going to focus on the Brothers Grimm’s version, just because it’s more messed up and therefore more interesting. Obviously.

Mostly it follows the same story line: Cinderella is abused by her stepmother and sisters and is treated as a slave. In the Grimm version there is no fairy godmother – she instead received her dress and famous slippers from some heavenly doves. She goes to the ball, dances with the prince, he falls in love, but she runs away by midnight. She returns the following night, dances the night away with him then runs away by midnight once again. On the third night the prince puts pitch (a sticky substance) all over the stairs and when Cinderella inevitably runs away, she loses a shoe that the prince can use to identify her. Oh, flawless plan! Once he gets to Cinderella’s home, her stepsisters both try the shoe. The first one cuts off her toes so her foot will fit. The prince is fooled and leaves, feeling he has found his queen. However, the mysterious doves reveal her treachery. He returns and tries the other sister, who cuts off her heel to fit the shoe. Once again, he is fooled and, again, the doves reveal the trick (I honestly don’t understand how he isn’t noticing the blood everywhere but, okay, let’s roll with it – however that slipper must be pretty disgusting and bloody by this point). He returns one more time, Cinderella fits the slipper, everything is lovely and they get married. Cinderella chooses to have her stepsisters as her bridesmaids at the wedding, for whatever reason. As they are entering the church the doves come down upon them and peck out one of the eyes of each sister. After this, we assume the wedding proceeds – there’s no mention of it being haltered or anything due to the Cinderella’s stepsisters now bleeding out from the eyes … Anyway, as they’re leaving the doves come down once again and strike out the remaining eyes of the two women. This is their ultimate punishment for being terrible people – they’re now to be blind for the rest of their lives.

I am starting to struggle to believe in the whole Snow White and Cinderella are such lovely people thing. Both of these women seem pretty vengeful and uncaring. I mean (a) I wouldn’t choose to have people who tortured me my whole life as my bridesmaids at a wedding and (b) I definitely wouldn’t proceed with the wedding as though everything was perfectly fine and normal if some doves had stabbed their eyes out. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just me.

Sleeping Beauty

This is another tale that both Perrault and the Brothers Grimm wrote a version of. Perrault’s version came in two parts but later versions often separated the two parts into two individual stories.

The first part covers the well-known plot, where you have a princess that has been cursed to sleep 100 years in a castle, along with all her family and subjects, until a prince comes along, wakes her with a kiss, they marry. However part two covers something totally new to me. The prince doesn’t take his princess home with him right away; rather he waits until he is king before doing that. So by the time she joins him at his castle, they have already had two children. The king goes off to fight a war, and Sleeping Beauty and her children are left alone with their mother-in-law, the Queen. The Queen has some ogre blood in her. For some reason unexplained, he sends Sleeping Beauty and her children off into a cabin, and orders her cook to kill and serve her the youngest of her grandchildren, covering it with Robert Sauce. The cook, of course, doesn’t and feeds her lamb instead. She then requests the second child and, again, he fools her but with a goat this time. Lastly she requests the princess, but is instead satisfied with a hind – all meals prepared with the same sauce. Okay so this theme of cannibalism has popped up again – what is it with all these insane mothers? I don’t understand why she thinks that it’s okay to just eat her son’s wife and children, but whatever. Eventually she finds out that she has been tricked and decides to create a pit in the courtyard filled with vipers and other poisonous type creatures in another attempt to seal the demise of her grandchildren and daughter-in-law. However, the king returns home just in time. Once the Queen is found out she throws herself into the pit and is fully consumed. The story concludes and everyone lives happily ever after.

What? I mean, yeah, what? It all just seems so strange, there appears to be no reason for the mother to eat them other than her being an ogre. She obviously knows that it’s wrong because otherwise she wouldn’t kill herself over it. If she had such a strong appetite for people maybe she could have eaten some peasants or something rather than her own family? At least the evil Queen in Snow White had a motivating force – she wanted to be the fairest of them all and Snow White was standing in her way, that little fiend!

I think I understand why that section was missing in the Disney adaptation.

The Little Mermaid

Out of all the fairy tales I looked at, The Little Mermaid is the one that differs the most from the versions I’ve seen or read – especially the Disney adaptation. The basic concept is the same, but it’s much more depressing. The Little Mermaid lives in the ocean with her father, the Mer-King, her Grandmother and her five sisters. On her 15th birthday she is finally allowed to go to the surface of the water to see the rest of the world. On her first time appearing she sees a prince and instantly falls in love with him. He is caught up in a shipwreck and she saves him, taking him to shore then waiting until a young woman comes to help him. The Little Mermaid learns from her grandmother that while mermaids have a life span of 300 years, much longer than humans, they do not have an immortal soul and merely turn into sea foam upon death. However, one way to gain an immortal soul is to have a human man fall so deeply in love with her and marry her so that they essentially become one – his soul shared with hers. The Little Mermaid decides that this is what she wants, and visits a Sea Witch (cue Ursula singing “Poor Unfortunate Souls” here.) The witch gives her a potion that will give her legs in exchange for her beautiful voice. The Mermaid will be the most beautiful creature, she will have the ability to dance better than any other person and she will have her beautiful sparkling eyes to entrap the prince. However, the process of shifting is incredibly painful, and with every step she takes it will feel like her feet are being cut open with knives and she will never be able to sing or talk to him. Furthermore, she can never return to the ocean and if she cannot convince the prince to marry her, on the morning after his wedding her heart will break and she will die, turning to sea foam, without an immortal soul and unable to live out her normal 300-year mermaid life. Obviously, The Little Mermaid agrees to these conditions, seeing as the odds are so very clearly in her favour. She gets her legs, the price finds her and he even likes her so much that he lets her sleep on a velvet cushion outside of his room. Lucky girl. She dances for him even though it causes her excruciating pain, but all of her efforts are in vain as, alas, the price has fallen in love with the woman who he met after his ship wreck. He does not marry The Little Mermaid, so she is condemned to die. Her sisters strike up their own deal with the witch so that if the Little Mermaid stabs and kills him before morning, she can return to the ocean. She cannot bring herself to do it, and thus dies, returning to sea foam.

However there is hope. Because she struggled so much to gain her immortal soul, instead of dying she is elevated to join the sisters of the air. Her task is to now help and support human kind, bringing cool winds to tropical lands and bring healing in her wake, with all the other air sisters, and maybe at the end of 300 years she will be able to gain an immortal soul. Yay! All she has is 300 years of serving and supporting human kind in order to gain a soul. What a lucky girl.

While this story is not necessarily gruesome and dark, it’s definitely depressing and so incredibly different from the versions I have previously encountered. Poor Little Mermaid: all she really wanted was to be loved and to go to heaven.

While I’ve only covered four stories here (I tried to pick ones that everyone would be familiar with), there are a plethora of these tales out in the world, each just as messed up as the last. These stories are aimed at children but they seem filled with the kind of themes we would attempt to shelter children from: cannibalism; death; violence; horror; and more cannibalism. Tim Burton stated that the old Disney films often had themes of “death and horror all the time. Children need that, I believe. It’s how they understand the world.” While Burton is talking about Disney specifically, I think the sentiment applies to all folklore. The world is filled with injustice, and children view it as a very black and white thing. The bad guy has to get their comeuppance, otherwise it’s just not fair.
This article first appeared in Issue 24, 2014.
Posted 3:00pm Sunday 21st September 2014 by Anonymous Bird.