Creative Revision of the Brothers Grimm "The Old Man and His Grandson"

“Mommy, Daddy,” begins the young boy, “Why do people take their pets to the pound?”

His mother was the first to respond. “Oh, sweetie. Those cruel people just don’t love their p-”

“They’ve abandoned their pets, son,” the father interrupts.

This seemingly random outburst was a result of an advert for the local pound encouraging pet adoption. The boy, whose curiosity is now sated, finds himself dozing off in his booster seat; his fading consciousness picking up words and phrases from his parents’ conversations.

“What’s a nursing home…” he begins before falling completely out of consciousness. He jerks awake suddenly as he hears his father’s door closing with significant force. As he wipes the yawning-tears from his eyes, he becomes especially aware of his location; he is filled with a sudden excitement.

“GRANDPA!!!” he shouts. He is quick to unbuckle and fly to his grandfather’s side. It is obvious, however, that his grandfather is being scolded, once again for mistaken action. The boy looks up and notices the two cars in the driveway are closer than usual.

“Daddy, why are Mommy and Grandpa’s car touching?”

“Because, son, some one,” this last word said with an especial pointed annoyance, “has decided to, against our best wishes, attempt to drive around town!”

“Daddy, are you angry?”

“Honey,” began the Mother, “better leave your father alone.”

The boy, at his Mother’s behest, is taken inside and instructed to play with his toys. He can hear intense and frustrated discussion between his Mother and Father through the walls. Eventually, his curiosity gets the best of him; he must investigate. He quietly trots within hearing distance of his parents’ conversation. He doesn’t understand what is being said.

“We have all the paperwork filled out. We can put your father in the nicest home in the area. It will be better for him. He will be cared for and will not be such a burden on our family.”

The boy did not understand who they were talking about, or what a “home” was. He knew that Grandpa was his Mother’s father. “Maybe,” he thought, “they are planning to take him somewhere as a surprise!”

Within a matter of days, the Grandfather is transitioned to a local nursing home. The boy, although sad to see his Grandfather leave, is excited for his surprise trip.

As several months pass and the boy finds himself in grade school with homework and projects, he begins to think less and less of his grandfather. One day, for the boy’s last homework assignment of the school year, he has to map out his dream life. While imagining how happy his life could be, the boy remembers his Grandfather.

“OH!” he exclaims. He knows exactly how he would plan his life.

As the boy is finishing his life map, his parents came to check on his work. Noticing an interesting section of the map, his mother asks, “Honey, what does this part mean? Where are your Father and I going when you grow up?”

“Mom, Dad, you will love that! I’m going to send you both on an extended and happy vacation like you did for Grandpa!”

The child’s naiveté pangs the parents. Following their evaluation of the boy’s work, the Mother and Father, after some long and difficult discussions, come to their decision.

The following day, the Father, while packing up his car for a trip, calls the nursing home.

Puss in Boots: Acknowledging the Censorship of Violent, Sexual Language

While I am certainly familiar with the name Puss in Boots and Antonia Banderas's role in Shrek, the origins and history of this character and fairy tale of the same name are wholly foreign to me. In "The Poor Miller’s Boy and the Cat," the Brothers Grimm 1812 edition of this classic fairy tale, a miller's apprentice is sent out to find a valuable horse. While searching, this boy is enlisted to work for a tabby cat for seven years; the prize for this work is "a really fine-looking horse ... that is more beautiful than anything you have ever seen" (347-348). This young miller's assistant works tirelessly for seven years and is ultimately rewarded, not with the horse, but with the hand of the cat-turned- princess in marriage. As a break from the traditional narrative instituted by Giovanni Francesco Straparola in 1550, the Brothers Grimm present a story wherein the tabby cat is the princess by which the miller's assistant finds economic salvation. The more traditional interpretations follow a young miller's assistant who solicits aid from a conniving feline in boots in order to win the heart of a princess; the Brothers Grimm break from this more sexualized tradition. In her article "Sex and Violence: The Hard Core of Fairy Tales," Maria Tatar notes that "when it came to passages colored by sexual details or to plots based on Oedipal conflicts, Wilhelm Grimm exhibits extraordinary editorial zeal. Over the years, he systematically purged the collection of references to sexuality" (452).

Angela Carter, in keeping with the more traditional, complex and sexualized nature of the Puss in Boots fairy tale, reinvents this narrative in her own "Puss-in-Boots." In her reimagination of this classic tale, Carter injects that which Wilhelm censored: sexuality and violence. This violent and sexual language is most noticeable when Signor Furioso and Signora Panteleone are consummating their love and Puss in Boots is commanded to "'mimic the murder of rats, Puss! Mask the music of Venus [sex] with the clamour of Diana [the hunt]!'" (78). Here Carter, as a revisitation of the fairy tale's older elements, uses violent language as a mirror for sexual intercourse. Violence is, for Signor Furioso, the necessary action needed to deceitfully conceal the clamour of adulterous sex. Carter, in stark contrast to the Brothers Grimm, presents the tale in an unedited, truer form.

The question that one must raise following an analysis of edited and unedited folk tales is: which is more appropriate for a child? Bruno Bettelheim, in his article "The Struggle for Meaning," asserts that "nothing can be as enriching and satisfying to child and adult alike as the folk fairy tale" (270). He continues to acknowledge that "[the child's] life is often bewildering to him, [because of this] the child needs even more to be given the chance to understand himself in this complex world with which he must learn to cope" (270). Bettelheim seems to believe that the complex nature of fairy tales, in their unedited forms, serve as the best form of entertainment and learning for children and their parents. Following this logic, Angela Carter's more worldly and true-to-form version of Puss in Boots trumps Wilhelm's edition. I, however, remain hesitant to provide entertainment to my children that, like Carter's edition, promote deception, infidelity, and murder. When it comes to finding stories and lessons for my [future] children, I much prefer the moral given in Wilhelm's "The Poor Miller’s Boy and the Cat": "don't let people tell you that a simpleton will never amount to anything in life" (353).

A History of Snow White's Immaculate Conception

Dawson Shannon

English 575

Dr. Rufleth

4/16/17

An History of Christian Thought in Snow White

            Snow White is one of the most beloved and well-known stories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although Disney is responsible for this modern resurgence in fame, Snow White has endured and survived for centuries. This story, with its many iterations and reinterpretations, serves to inspire and awe audiences of all ages; this is true regardless of the reader’s age. When analyzing the effect and power of a story like Snow White, one must always look to its conception. By tracing an historical line through major works and iterations based on the Snow-White tale, one can see how trends and beliefs evolve over time. By comparing Giambattista Basile’s “The Young Slave” (1634), the Brothers Grimm “Snow White” (1812), Anne Sexton’s Snow “White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1928), and Neil Gaiman’s “Snow, Glass, Apples” (1994) one can see how perceptions of Snow White and her trials evolve and, arguably, devolve from iteration to reiteration.

            Those editions of Snow White that were written before the mid-twentieth century serve similar purposes. Basile, Brothers Grimm, and Sexton all retell a story wherein Snow White is a representative Christ figure. This young, innocent girl experiences, as Steve Swann Jones acknowledges, “birth, jealousy, expulsion, adoption, renewed jealousy, death, exhibition, resuscitation, and resolution” (85). Much like Christ, Snow White stands as a rod by which readers of all ages may measure themselves. One such area of reflection these stories allow for is the role of a fatherless birth. How does the shifting view of immaculate conception in Snow White allow for an understanding of shifting views of religiosity and morality?

 Consider Basile’s 1634 “The Young Slave Girl” wherein the young woman, named Lisa, is pure and wholly innocent. Much like Christ, Lisa is a product of immaculate conception after her mother “picked [a leaf] up from the ground … and swallowed it” (92). This reference to the natural, yet supernatural conception of Lisa is a clear comparison to Christ. Lisa, much like Jesus, is a product of the will of God and must be, according to the minds of the readers, an innocent creation. By the utilization of plant metaphors, Basile allows for Lisa to exist as a simple, yet necessary creation in the world. She is not, as is the rest of humanity, a creation of mutual effort between two human beings. Instead, Lisa is a simple seedling. This plant imagery invokes biblical thoughts of agriculture; the Apostle Paul, when addressing the Church at Corinth reminds his parishioners that “so then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase” (King James Bible, 1 Cor. 3.7). The use of plant imagery serves to remind the readers that the growth of plants, both in the ground and in Lilla’s womb, is God’s will, and that God works “all things together for good” (King James Bible, Rom. 8.28). The rest of Lisa’s life serves as a story of perseverance, patience, and godliness for those reading. Basile’s story is one of moral hope; a hope that begins with an immaculate conception.

Like Basile’s rendition, the later Brothers Grimm 1812 story, “Snow White,” details the conception of Snow White through a gentle prick of a thorn. The Brothers Grimm note that “a queen was sitting and sewing by a window … [and] while she was sewing … she pricked her finger with a needle … [and] soon thereafter she gave birth to a child” (95). While it is true that more modern feminist readings of this exchange see the prick of the finger, and subsequent blood, as a metaphorical allusion to sexual penetration, the prick of the needle serves spiritual significance. For the queen, Snow White is a blessing that originates from pain. This idea of suffering to bear fruit is common and known to those of the Christian faith. Consider the words of the Apostle Paul when he tells the Church at Corinth that “there was given to me a thorn in the flesh … [and] I am become a fool in glorying” (King James Bible, 2 Cor. 12.7, 11). Paul notes that although he is pricked by a thorn and suffers, he is glad to bear fruit and glorify God in doing so.

As a break, both in time and in literary style, from the previous two interpretations of the Snow-White fairy tale, Anna Sexton, in her 1928 poem “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, poetically reminds the readers of Snow Whites immaculate conception. Sexton attributes the supernatural creation of Snow White to the thrust of a unicorn. Again, feminist interpretations may assert the sexualized and phallic nature of a unicorn thrust, but the following lines serve to disprove such notions. Sexton notes that the queen’s eyes are “shut for the thrust / of the unicorn. / She is unsoiled / She is as white as a bonefish” (102). By acknowledging the supernatural pick necessary to conceive Snow White and the following assertion that the queen remains pure, Sexton proves to the readers the divine, immaculate conception of Snow White. Much like Christ’s conception through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the unicorn serves as a divine being who, through the puncture of his horn, impregnates the queen. While further parallels between punctures and Paul’s thorn are easily drawn, the comparison between the divine nature of conception by divine beings evidences the supernatural nature of Snow White conception.

Marianne Stoke’s Snow White, 1900

            Whereas Basile, Brothers Grimm, and Anne Sexton all portray the conception of Snow White as small supernatural or divine acts, Neil Gaiman, in his 1994 story “Snow, Glass, Apples,” creates, in Snow White, a damnable beast. Gaiman, when describing the birth of Snow White and beginning his short story, notes, through the eyes of Snow White’s step-mother, or evil witch, that “I do not know what manner of thing she is. None of us do. She killed her mother in the birthing, but that’s never enough to account for it” (106). Gaiman, in a seeming departure from classical understandings of Snow White’s birth as being positively divine, notes that Snow White is the cause of her mother’s death. Unlike the usual description of death in childbirth, Gaiman utilizes the active verb “killed.” The birth of Snow White is not what kills her mother; she does. This breaks from the God-given and ordained birth of Snow White in earlier stories. By observing the transition from ancestor to modern, readers see the shift from religiously moral, to modern secular amoralism.

            When observing the shift in Snow-White type tales, one may not notice a shift in moral religiosity between Basile’s seventeenth century work and Sexton’s early twentieth century work; the true shift between classical and modern fairy tales, regarding Snow White, is seen in the years between Sexton (1928) and Gaiman (1994). This shift marks a rise in secularist literature and a departure from religiously inspired morality within the literature. Whereas Snow White, being a type of Christ, as is seen in her virgin birth, stands as a measuring rod of patient morality in the earlier works, Gaiman’s modern rendition serves as a shift and break from tradition. Through this break, one sees that history is not always as it seems; perhaps Gaiman’s interpretation also serves to set a foundation for future editions to classical fairy tales.

Critical Mischief?

When analyzing a work of literature, context and history are absolutely necessary. This basic guideline changes neither from topic to topic nor genre to genre; fairy tales are no different. One such example, wherein context and history are necessary, is the Cinderella type, or, according to Arne Thompson, the AT510 (376). Many cultures have their own Cinderella story; by understanding the history and context of these stories, analysts and critics can better grasp and understand the evolution these stories take.

When observing the AT510 story, the oldest known edition, "Yeh-hsien," written around 850 A.D., contains noticeable differences from the modern, albeit Disney-perverted, renditions. Consider the role of the animals to whom Cinderella relies on? According to the Chinese tale, Yeh-hsien relies on a fish who she personally raises (146). This sharply contrasts to the Brothers Grimm "Cinderella," wherein Cinderella is aided by anonymous birds. The Brothers note that when Cinderella needed aid she simply said, "O tame little doves ... come and help me ... [and then] two white doves came flying in ... followed by turtle doves" (150). Unlike the fish in "Yeh-hsien," the reader is not given any prior knowledge of Cinderella and the birds' relationship. This short section allows for the reader to notice a significant difference that a millennia and continental separation can play within the evolution of a tale. This observation, however, is not possible within a collection of assorted tales such as The Annotated Brothers Grimm. For the literary critic and analyst, the comparisons of topics within shifting works of the same story type allow for the ability to observe literary evolution takes place. If a collection only contains one sample of specific type works, then research, and further literary understanding, cannot take place. This ability to analyze and observe shifts in the overall narrative allow for a greater understanding of the work, even among those uninterested in scholarly criticism.

The Erl-King

The Erl-King

A Brief History of Snow White: Its Relation to Christian Thought

One need not be a theologian or a literary critic to notice and appreciate the obvious Christian motifs present in many Fairy Tales. Although many of these Fairy Tales are known through their modern Disney retellings, most of these popular tales, those finding their conception in Europe especially, hold strong Christian values and beliefs. One powerful and easily discernible case is Snow White. This story, and its many branches and spin offs, boast strong Christian, albeit medieval, theological thoughts and beliefs. These elements are seen in the purity of Snow White and the antithetical and total depravity of the Step-Mother/Queen/Witch, as well as through a plethora of other, more obscure Christian imagery.

The blatant purity associated with Snow White allows for her to be a metaphorical, or arguably allegorical, Christ figure or representative. Although, unlike the Biblical Christ, Snow White is altogether immobile, she continues to radiate and exude innocence, naivete, and purity. Steve Swann Jones acknowledges that Snow White's life follows a sequence of "birth, jealousy, expulsion, adoption, renewed jealousy, death, exhibition, resuscitation, and resolution" (85). This sequence of events, Jones asserts, is "the reflection of a young woman's development". I believe this sequence to be representative of much more. Consider the life and upbringing of the Biblical Jesus. He is born and must flee due to Herod's jealousy; rejected and accepted; crucified, put on show and buried; raised from the dead and, ultimately, ascends to Heaven. Snow White appears to be closely related to the Biblical Christ in reference to her sequential life and blatant purity. One cannot help but notice the innate purity referenced by the name Snow White. According to Christian theology, Christ, as predicted by Isaiah, washes sinners and makes them "white as snow"(King James Bible, Isaiah 1:18).

Snow White's Step Mother/Queen, on the other hand, serves to hold the traits that belong to Eve instead of Christ. Consider how Giambattista Basile describes the Queen in his Snow White-type tale, The Young Slave, following the King's order to stay away from Lisa's tomb, a parallel character to Snow White. Basile writes that "[the Queen] began to feel suspicious, and impelled by jealousy and consumed by curiosity, which is woman's first attribute, took the key and went to open the room" (93). Basile stereotypes all women as being consumed by curiosity. This stereotype is firmly rooted in the innate curiosity of Eve as she listened to the Serpent in the Garden of Eden; this curiosity drives Eve to take the forbidden fruit just as the Queen is driven to disobey the King. The Queen, following her blatant disobedience, is cast out of her kingdom. Basile notes that the King "drove his wife away, sending her back to her parents" (94). This expulsion of the Queen mirrors Eve's (and Adam's) expulsion from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3. The reference to the Queen's parents can also, though possibly a stretch, be seen, by the audience, as an acknowledgment of the Queen's theological lineage. Jesus, when rebuking the religious leaders of his day, references their "father the devil" as a means of signifying their wickedness (King James Bible, John 8:44). Basile, through this small reference, lays the foundation for further acknowledgment of the Queen's wickedness.

Although the Queen holds many future Eve-parallels, Snow White, although a seemingly exalted Christ-figure, is, as a woman, not exempt from the European Christian view of womanhood. In their well-known Snow White, the Brother's Grimm remind the readers that White is still a woman descending from Eve. They note that "[she] felt a craving for the beautiful apple, and ... she could no longer resist ... but no sooner had she taken a bite when she fell down on the ground dead" (100). White, like Eve, sees that the fruit is good for food and consumes it. For White, this move results in her temporary demise. For Eve, this consumption of forbidden fruit allows for the entrance and consequential inheritance of Sin in the world. This Original Sin, according to Christian theology, leads to death. In both cases, a curious woman consumes fruit and beckons death; these parallels, in the minds of European Christian audiences, are undeniable.

While not all of the Christian elements present within the Snow White-type, the foiled characteristics of the immaculate Snow White and the totally depraved Queen serve as metaphorical, and possibly allegorical insights into the thoughts and beliefs of both European Christian authors and audiences. These thoughts and beliefs, when contrasted with the evolution of the tales, culminating in modern Disney interpretations, allow for an historical analysis of what the base, or original audiences believed and how these beliefs were distilled through popular story-telling.