Sites to Explore

Throughout my posts, I've provided information on the Grimm brothers and the fairy tales they authored. For my last post, I want to share some useful, interesting, and fun sites that explore, inform, and promote the fairy tale genre.

For fun for both adults and children, nationalgeographic.com provides insightful information on the brothers, interactive storytelling, credible sources, forums, resources, and links to Grimm brother information.

I am a big fan of fairy tale art. Art Passions showcases artist and their artistic interpretations of fairy tales that we have come to know and love from such authors as Perrault, Brothers Grimm, and Anderson to name a few. The site is more than a web gallery of pictures. Art Passions is an engaging site packed with information and entertainment for adults, educators, and children.

Another one of my favorite sites is SurLaLun fairytales.com. This site has everything from annotated tales to blogs, educational offerings, shopping, and other regularly up-dated news and information. If you're into fairy tales, this site has it all. Be sure to check out the unique products for sale at CafePress.com which features SurLaLune original designs.

The Portitude.org is another site certainly worth exploring. The Paper Portitude is a well stocked on-line library chock full of literary choices. The Painted Portitude is an on-line art gallery showcasing artist that not only excel in their craft, but influence the way we think about art. This site also provides community forums and an opportunity through the Portitude Press for writers to publish their written work. The site is very user friendly, with a warm, inviting atmosphere.

I hope you find the above sites as useful and entertaining as I do. My fairy tale trips will continue to explore the lands of Once upon a time, Long ago and far away, and the many different paths of the forest.


Maureen

Special Ingredients

One of my favorite fairy tales, and probably among one of the darkest, and most gruesome is the Grimm brothers' tale, The Juniper Tree. Of all the wicked stepmothers in fairy tales, this one is by far not only wicked and evil, she is truly mad, and appears possessed by the "Evil One." Driven by greed, she wants to make sure that her daughter inherits everything.

In this tale, the biological mother dies from happiness after giving birth to a son. Upon seeing her child who was as white as snow, and as red as blood just as she wished, she died of happiness. Her grieving husband buried her under the juniper tree in the front courtyard. It was under this tree that she wished for a child who was as white as the snow and as red as blood.

The husband took another wife and they had a daughter. Of course the stepmother loved their daughter, and of course she hated the stepson. He would always stand in the way of her daughter getting the entire inheritance. Like I previously stated, there have been some really evil, wicked stepmothers in the Grimm brothers' fairytales, but this one goes beyond the horrors of hard labor, starvation, and abandonment. The story seems to imply some demonic possession as well. She was prompted by the "Evil One" to offer the boy an apple out of the chest, and again prompted to slam down the chest lid when he reached in for an apple. She decapitated the boy, and as if that wasn't enough, in an attempt to cover her crime, she tied his head back on to his neck with a scarf and sat him in a chair with an apple in his hand.

Here's where it really starts to get mad. The mother then tells her daughter to get the apple from her brother, and if he doesn't give it to her, she should box him in the ears. The daughter does as she is told and as planned the boy's head falls off onto the floor. Not only is the stepmother responsible for decapitating her stepson, she allows her daughter, the one she loves, to believe that she is responsible.

More horrors to come - she dismembered the boy's body and made a stew out of him. What's worse is that she fed the stew to the father, and the more he ate, the more he wanted to eat. He ate the stew with fury, and threw the bones under the table until he finished everything. The daughter wrapped the discarded bones in a silk scarf and buried them under the juniper tree.

This tale is an example of how the Grimm brothers, even after becoming aware that children were their primary audience, continued to write in graphic detail the violent description of a tormented, decapitated, and dismembered little boy made into a stew by his wicked stepmother, and then fed to his father.

I told you the guts of the story; however, there's more to it, and the ending is great. So readers, if you want to know the ending of this fantastic fairy tale, click on the link in the first paragraph and it will take you to the full story. As an added bonus, check out an animated Juniper Tree video posted on YouTube.

Sources:

Ashliman, D.L. (2009, July 4). the grimm brothers' home page.
Retrieved from http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm047.html

Tatar, M. M. (2002). The Annotated classic fairy tales. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.

Wood, P. (2007). The Junper tree. Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LHmrS9n1vc

Why are my Clothes too Tight?

When we think of the fairy tale, Rapunzel, we visualize a young, beautiful maiden with long golden locks, held captive in a tower by an evil witch. What we don't think about is the idea that Rapunzel was having daily romps in the tower with the prince. In the first edition of the Grimms' Nursery and Household Tales, Rapunzel alludes to this fact when she asks, "Tell me, Godmother, why my clothes are so tight, and why they don't fit me any longer?" In future editions of Nursery and Household Tales, the brothers did their best to eliminate through editing what they called "certain conditions and relationships." In the second edition of Nursery and Household Tales, Rapunzel asks, "Tell me, Godmother, why are you so much harder to pull up than the young prince?" The conditions of pregnancy and premarital sex made the Grimms uncomfortable; however, they tolerated graphic violence and abuse.

The same underlying sexual themes and editorial changes take place in The Frog King. In the original version of the fairy tale, the princess violently throws the frog against her bedroom wall where he falls down into her bed in the form of a handsome young prince, and the princess lies down next to him. In the current version of the story the transformation of frog to prince occurs immediately when he hits the wall. He is then referred to as a "dear companion" of the princess. In this sweetened version, the couple does not retire to the bed until they exchange wedding vows, and only with the approval of the princess's father.

To control "certain conditions and relationships" and to make both these stories more children friendly, the Grimm brothers transformed tales full of sexual innuendos into proper stories where a blind prince searches for his wife in the forest, and a princess is prim and proper.

Alone in the Forest

Abandonment is a common theme in the Grimms' tales. Parents abandon their children in the forest, and children abandon their families for their forest despite their fears of starvation, wild animals, and the unknown evils lurking within, rather than live with a cruel and wicked stepmother.

In the early editions of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, biological mothers set the standards for the wicked stepmother. The wicked stepmothers in tales such as Hansel and Gretel and Mother Holle were originally told with the children’s heartless, biological mothers as wicked and selfish.

The Grimm brothers recognized that, "What might have been perfectly acceptable as adult entertainment required considerable modification for children." The mother who abandons her children in the forest to starve, in order for her and her husband to survive, becomes the wicked stepmother.

Although the Grimm brothers censored themes of pre-marital sex, pregnancy, and heartless biological mothers, they continued with fury to portray in graphic detail the miseries of children abused at the hand of a wicked stepmother, and their biological fathers, who used them as bargaining tools for self preservation, wealth, and riches.

In keeping with my Alone in the Forest theme of this blog post, the stories of Hansel and Gretel and Brother and Sister come to mind. Both tales share an abandonment theme; however, the difference is in Hansel and Gretel they are abandoned by their parents, while in the tale of Brother and Sister, they choose to abandon their family. Although two different tales, Brother and Sister also known as Little Brother and Little Sister, often caused reader confusion with the tale of Hansel and Gretel. The tales share certain similarities; most notably, the sisters in the beginning of the tales rely on their brothers to console and protect them from the dangers in the dark forest, but by the end of both tales, it is the sisters who ultimately save and rescue their brothers.

What I find especially interesting in both these tales are that both villains, in different ways, one by oven, and one at the stake, are burned to death in the end. As Maria Tatar points out in her book The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel is identified with the witch in the forest, because she feeds the children with the specific goal of eating them herself. In Brother and Sister the wicked stepmother is identified as the witch in the story and she too is burned to death.

Starvation, abandonment, cruelty, and cannibalism especially involving children are certainly themes that as readers make us uncomfortable and shudder with disgust until the forest path takes us safely back home.

Sources:
Tatar, M. M. (1987). The Hard facts of the grimms' fairy tales.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Tatar, M. M. (2002). The Annotated classic fairy tales.
NY, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Heiner, H.A. (2010, March 1). Surlalune fairy tales.
Retrieved from http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/index.html

Brother and sister. (2010, February 10). Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_and_Sister

Two of Nine

Before walking down the forest paths of Once upon a time…, Long ago and far away…, and In a distant land…, it is important to explore the background of the authors of these tales, Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm, commonly known as the Grimm Brothers. Jacob Grimm was born in 1785 and Wilhelm Grimm was born in 1786 they were the second and third sons of Philipp and Dorothea Grimm. The Grimm family was large, 9 children, 8 boys and one girl; however three of the Grimm sons died within a year of their births. The sixth child, Ludwig Emil Grimm, became an artist and illustrator of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The family lived in Hanau, Germany until 1791 when they moved to Steinau, Germany where their father, Philipp, became a district judge. They were an affluent family, and both Jacob and Wilhelm were schooled in the authoritarian environment of the Reform Calvinist Church.

Life changed for the Grimm family in 1796 when Philipp Grimm died leaving behind his wife and six children. As Jacks Zipes discusses in his Essay, Dreams of a Better Bourgeois Life: The Psychosocial Origins of the Grimms' Tales, much like the characters in their fairy tales, the Grimm family experienced "...a sharp drop in social status and was often treated unjustly by so-called superiors" (McGlathery, 1991, p. 205). For example, after their father died, Jacob was only eleven years old and felt the pressures to help the family. It was during this time that he wrote a letter to his aunt Henriette Zimmer, his mother's sister, for console and advice. The Grimms could have possibly disintegrated if a "good fairy" like his aunt, as well as other family and friends, had not offered emotional and financial support. (McGlathery, 1991).

Zipes provides insightful thoughts when thinking about the Grimm brothers identifying with the characters of their tales. Similar to their characters, the brothers experienced fear, loss, and separation from loved ones. As such, they developed a work ethic that embraced diligence in order to lead a good, clean, and stable life as fundamental elements necessary to overcome the miserable, chaotic life of the unjust. These themes are obvious throughout their fairy tales - good vs. evil - good winning because of character diligence in sustaining honest, good, and clean living.

Now that the family background of the two brothers has been examined, it's time now to go down another path in the Grimms' Forest. In keeping with the purpose of this blog, which is to provide information on the Brothers Grimm, the next forest path to explore is their fairy tales that are terrifying, painful, not necessarily for children, and as readers, makes us shudder.

Sources:
Ashliman, D.L. (n.d.). Grimm brothers. Retrieved from
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm.html

Hettinga, D.R. (2000, January 10). Ludwig emil grimm 1790-1863. Retrieved from
http://www.calvin.edu/~hett/Ludwig%20Grimm1.html

McGlathery, J. (Ed.). (1991). The Brothers grimm and folktale. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.

Grimm Brothers' Forest Introduction

Welcome to the Grimm Brothers' Forest. My name is Maureen and I am a senior at Rowan University. I am a Writing Arts major, and as part of an assignment in Writing, Research, and Technology, I have to create an information blog on a topic that is interesting to me. Without hesitation I knew exactly what I wanted to blog about. I love fairy tales, especially their darker side. My blog will explore and provide information not only on fairy tales that we have come to love in a traditional sense, but also those tales that are terrifying, painful, and as readers, make us shudder.

Like fairy tales, I want this blog to be a journey that celebrates a literary craft born of peasant storytelling among adults. Early fairy tales represent life as experienced by many central Europeans in a crude environment where children worked hard labor, suffered abuse, and were often abandoned.

With that said, let’s walk down the forest paths of Once upon a time…, Long ago and far away…, and In a distant land…, where our lives are mimicked with a mixture of vitality and variety in pursuit of our desires for passion, power, privilege, and riches. In pursuing these desires, the forest is full of evil doers who eat kids, turn children into animals, frogs into princes, and kings who want to marry their daughters. Through the power of enchantment, the forest paths will take us on a journey that is both magical and painful; yet, these paths ultimately lead us out of the forest and safely back home.