Before getting lost in the history of the Brothers Grimm, I wrote about reading the fairy tales for the first time. To my surprise, the technicolour vision I had initially projected onto these tales were somewhat darkened as soon as I got into reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales. However, rather than crush the idealism I’ve held since childhood, reading these stories for the first time – in its purest and original form – has drawn me to love these tales more than I have ever had before.
This new found fascination can only be aptly described as a sort of literary awakening, much like discovering something you’ve always held to be true, to be entirely false. And rather than feel like my dreams had just been managed, it felt like I had just discovered the Matrix, or how I felt when I first learned that there are, in fact, only eight planets in our solar system: mind-boggling, astounded, wide-eyed and fully dedicated to exploring more.
As we all know, the original Household Tales were prettified into Fairy Tales in order to make it more suitable for children. In its original form, the language is grim (no pun intended), brutal, and more often than not, gruesome.
In Cinderella a.k.a. Aschenputtel, we remember and pitied the beautiful kitchen maid who would later become queen. Cruelly treated by her evil stepsisters and stepmother, Cinderella’s fate took a turn for the better when a prince fell madly in love with her during a ball. However, because Cinderella had to rush off at midnight, the prince did not have enough time to get down her details. As such, armed with only her shoe as a means to identify Cinderella, the prince held a shoe fitting competition – so to speak – to find his bride.
When the prince arrived at Cinderella’s house, her two stepsisters attempted to get their large foot into her shoe but to no avail. What I didn’t know was that the evil stepmother said in response to the failed fitting: “Cut the toe off, for when you are Queen you will never have to go on foot.” So, the girl (eldest stepsister) cut her toe off, and though the prince was convinced he had found his bride, this was only temporary when he discovered blood pouring out of the shoe.
Rather than follow in her eldest sister’s ‘footsteps’, the younger stepsister sliced off a piece of her heel instead, which worked wonders in getting her foot in the shoe. But alas, blood poured out of it again, and she was found out.
Indeed, like the Cinderella story I recall from my youth, the prince and Cinderella lived happily ever after; the stepsisters, however, had a different fate:
“The elder was on the left side and the younger on the right, and the pigeons picked out the other eye of each of them. And so they were condemned to go blind for the rest of their days because of their wickedness and falsehood.”
Similarly, I was surprised to learn the fate of good ol’ Rumpelstiltskin. If memory serves me right, Rumpelstiltskin simply disappeared after the Queen managed to correctly guess what his name was, thus saving her child from his possession. I do recall him being rather peeved, but I don’t recall this happening to him:
“In his anger he stamped with his right foot so hard that it went into the ground above his knee; then he seized his left foot with both his hands in such a fury that he split in two, and there was an end of him.”
Cannibalism is a theme I didn’t quite catch when hearing some of these fairy tales for the first time. On my most recent visit, I noticed the act of eating human meat was quite a central theme in some of our most loved fairy tales.
Sure, in Hansel and Gretal, I’ve always known that the witch’s intention was to eat the children she had captured. But it sounds all too Hannibal Lector when written down as follows (the witch to Gretal):
“Get up lazy bones, fetch water, and cook something nice for your brother; he is outside in the stable, and must be fattened up. And when he is fat enough I will eat him.”
Luckily for Hansel, he was, at this point of the story, far too skinny to be cooked. A few weeks later, the witch changed her mind and said:
“…Be Hansel fat or be he lean, tomorrow I must kill and cook him.”
And perhaps I’m reading too far into this but after Gretal successfully shoved the witch into the oven to “burn miserably”, she released Hansel, and in their joyful state, they “fell each on the other’s neck and danced about, and kissed each other!”
By the same token, Snow-White and The Seven Dwarfs also has its cannibal tendencies. Stricken with rage and jealousy, the Queen sends Snow-White into the woods to be killed, in hopes that she may be the ‘fairest of them all’. She orders a huntsman to:
“Take the child out into the woods, so that I may set eyes on her no more. You must put her to death, and bring me her heart for a token.”
When the huntsman brought Snow-White into the woods, he took pity on her and did not kill her. Instead, he let her go, and at around the same time, a wild boar came running towards him. He killed the boar and carved out its heart before delivering it as a token to the Queen:
“It [the wild boar’s heart] was salted and cooked, and the wicked woman ate it up, thinking that there was an end to Snow-White.”
In the Disney version of this tale, Snow-White falls into a deep sleep after eating a poisonous apple given to her by the Queen. In order to break the spell, Snow-White had to be kissed by her one true love, which we all know happens in the end. The Queen, on the other hand, falls off a cliff and dies.
In the Grimm’s version, Snow-white’s poisonous-apple-induced-sleep is broken only when the pall bearers of her coffin accidentally trip over, causing the piece of apple lodged in her throat to fly out of her mouth. Indeed, there is no sign of a heroic magical kiss. As for the Queen:
“They had ready red-hot iron shoes, in which she had to dance until she fell down dead.”
The last classic tale that I read was Little Red Riding Hood, or as she was originally name, Little Red Cap. I remember being told that Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother was locked up in a cupboard whilst the wolf lay in her bed. In actual fact, the wolf ate the grandmother whole, before swallowing Little Red Riding Hood as well. However, that was not the end of both those characters as I later learned that a huntsman had caught the wolf, and: “…Took a pair of shears and began to slit up the wolf’s body,” and out came Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother.
The wolf later drowned from falling into a trough of boiling water.
Despite discovering the gruesome nature of these classic fairy tales, and recognising all at once that perhaps in its original form, they probably aren’t suitable for children, it was another tale that I had never heard of before that sent a shiver down my spine. The tale I am referring to is the spin-chilling, single paragraph story called, The Shroud.
The Shroud is a short tale about a young seven-year-old boy, who was greatly loved by his mother and by everyone who met him. Very suddenly, the boy fell ill, and soon after, died.
Enveloped in grief, the boy’s mother spent every waking hour crying over her loss. “But soon afterwards, when the child had been buried, it appeared by night in the places where it had sat and played during its life; and if the mother wept, it wept also, and when morning came it disappeared.”
One night, the boy appeared at the foot of his mother’s bed, covered in the white shroud he was buried in, and with a wreath of flowers around its head. Turning to his mother, he, or rather, ‘it’ said:
“Oh mother, do stop crying, or I shall never fall asleep in my coffin, for my shroud will not dry because of all thy tears, which fall upon it.”
Maybe it was her son’s plea, or maybe she had been scared out of her wits, but the boy’s mother never wept again. However you want call it, the message of this eerie tale is clear, that is, of the importance of letting go of the dearly departed. Though I think you might agree that the story sort of scares the attachment out of you, rather than compassionately tells you to move on.
To me, fairy tales have always been the cornerstone of my childhood. To a greater extent, I once believed that they were to be left behind in a more innocent time of our lives. However, upon reading these tales in its original form, I was able to fully discover the richness of its allegoric nature, and have their less idealistic complexion revealed to me even though in most cases, a happily ever after was still the end of the beautiful protagonist.
Above all, what I have found most enlightening from reading these stories is not the discovery of its true form, but instead, the reassertion of growing up. When we are younger, as a means to preserve our innocence, we are often sheltered from the true nature of things, which in this instance, is the watered down, Disney version of fairy tales. But as we grow older, whether we like it or not, we come to discover the sometimes bleak and less perfect reality of the world. And that is probably the main difference between childhood and adulthood – our ability to face and acknowledge the harshness of the real world, along with its beauty.
