Books by and for independent women

Let’s Get Critical: Fairy Tales and the Inner Child

Everyone has a favourite. Do you love Little Red Riding Hood’s style, Snow White’s charm or Cinderella‘s natty way with a pair of shoes? Or in fact, do you love the darkness, the fear that creeps up your sides at the thought of dark woods and hidden longings; horses hooves pounding on forest floors, long nails scratching down wooden doors or gingerbread window panes?

Disney would say the former, but the latter is more likely. When it comes to fairy tales, kids are there to be scared! Some of our strongest memories from childhood come from what scares us. My first memory is of going into my parent’s room late at night to find another woman in my mother’s bed. It was the babysitter, and my mum was giving birth to my sister at the time, but the fear of my mother being replaced still haunts me.

So is it any wonder my favourite fairy tale has to be Cinderella? And not the Disney one, oh no. I love Ashputtel, the original heroine who finds her mother replaced by an ‘evil’ stepmother, who favours her two horrid, self-obsessed daughters with the massive feet over her put-upon charge, whom she forces to sleep next to the fire. I grew up in a house with a ‘real’ fire, which it was my job to sweep up; a task I relished as it meant I got to feel pious and worthy, just like my favourite heroine.

When it comes to our favourite stories from childhood, why is that we remember the scariest ones with the most affection? The idealised state of innocence that childhood is supposed to represent is a blatantly false concept. Children are mean. They bully, tease and pry. They manipulate and arouse suspicion. They find weaknesses and exploit them, just like adults. Unlike adults, though, children have their own movement supporting this; the stories they read at bedtime.

Most people remember fairy tales as dark and moody, full of deep woods and hidden evils, but more and more this is transcribed in the modern world as ‘harmless fun’. Growing up, a trip to the library wasn’t complete without a hearing of Roald Dahl’s’ Dirty Beasts or Revolting Rhymes (if you haven’t read them for a while, I strongly recommend you do, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf is still about the funniest poem you’ll ever read). Similarly, Sondheim’s Into the Woods reflects the power of the dark, admittedly through ridiculously cheerful songs.

Fairy tales, as they are known today, are usual derived from the old stories of the oral tradition. There is some debate as to the reasons behind telling stories; child psychologist Bettelheim believes that children need the fear induced through bedtime stories as a means of dealing with the fear and trepidation of entering the adult world, and that in fact fear is good for children. I am inclined to agree with him. As the success of Horrible Histories has shown, children learn more and relate more to things that come across as ‘real’. Although the Victorians may have idolised childhood, their most popular stories relating to children, such as Oliver Twist and the Little Match Girl, showed the dark side, exploitation, corruption and coercion that a Victorian child could and did face.

In the Edwardian Period, right through to the end of the First World War, children’s books often dealt with heavy themes, albeit in a cheerful manner. Whether it’s Katy with her debilitating fall or Mary coping with the death of her parents and rejection by all remaining adult authority, early twentieth century children were not fools; they were real people facing real problems, just as Jacqueline Wilson’s much celebrated heroes are today. This remained the case until the 1930s-1960s, when the boom of civil liberties movements such as second-wave feminism, the Civil Rights movement, Stonewall and the GLF over here meant that the only way to gain control over the masses was to get them from childhood, leading to the ‘dumbing down’ of children’s stories to ripping ‘adventures’ and ‘schemes’.

Gone were the terrifying forays into the nightmarish woods with only a handful of crumbs for company, now children sailed away with bottles of pop, facing horrid pirates that were only intimidating for thirty seconds, and came home smiling and dirty and repressed. I’m not saying this is all Disney’s fault, but they certainly did nothing to stop it, and in Cinderella there is no mention of the step-sisters cutting off bits of their feet in order to fit the golden slipper.

So why, when children love scary stories, remember scary stories as adults with fondness and spend vast quantities of time trying to be scared, are we so afraid of fear? Why are the mass markets of media aimed at at children, or more accurately their parents, so constantly aware of making sure adults know that children might be a scared by something? Sure, some things could genuinely warp a child’s mind, but is there any real need for a Harry Potter movie to proclaim to the world that it contains ‘mild terror’? If we really do need to confront our fears, as so many psychologists tell us, then what better way than empathising with the predicament of a fictional character?

Nothing annoyed me more this month than the preview for the new Disney movie, Tangled,  which takes Rapunzel and somehow makes it about the misadventures of a common ruffian who ends up climbing this massive tower ‘by mistake’ and entangled in the hirsute occupant’s problems. No mention of her curing her love’s blindness through the purity of her tears, or the evil witch’s spying on humble farmers, elements from the original story that I loved.

I say yes to fear, yes to reclaiming back our oral traditions, and yes to fairy tales. They will always be with you, along with your earliest memories, no matter how horrific, and we should celebrate, not decimate that.

Post by Jess Haigh