Why we still need fairy tales
“Fairy tales are and will remain a part of our literary history and avoiding them because they create discomfort is no way to face the dragon, let alone slay it.”
Once upon a time, people sat around a hearth or fire, or at a tavern and told stories to each other about the people who had lived before; of the myths, legends, and heroes, of gossip that had travelled from mouth to ear. The stories were embellished, some parts omitted, some parts added, some stories merged to form new tales and importantly, they travelled across the world influencing different communities in different ways. Eventually, some were written down (and NO, the Grimms weren’t the first to do so), and they became permanent features in our collective literary landscape, our values, and our popular culture. (Not all of them achieved the level of recognition as Cinderella. A few, mostly from Charles Perrault’s collection, became household stories).
We need fairy tales more than ever, for we have lost our way in the forest and there are no breadcrumbs to trail with the inevitable future we are dream-walking into, whether it’s climate change, AI or some other dystopian future, humans have lost our way. We need the lessons of the forest, of the hardships, and how to slay the ‘dragon’, or as the magnificent Neil Gaiman (2002) says (paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton): “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” But in our culture, we no longer tell fairy tales because it might scare children. But what happens when they reach adulthood and difficult things happen, when a health or other crisis happens, when someone dies, or they are facing a mid-life crisis and have to find the breadcrumbs out of the forest? Will they just give up?
Probably, if they have not seen that is possible to find your way out of the forest and that not all stories end with a happily ever after (not all fairy tales have a happy ending, for example, the Little Mermaid dies). In the 20th century, many of the endings were rewritten to soften the blow. But are we doing children, or anyone, any favours by NOT telling universal truths about death, grief, and sad endings?
Fairy tales were written down hundreds, in some cases thousands, of years ago* and tell stories of people, real and imagined defeating their own inner and outer challenges. So, when we share fairy tales with children and adults, teaching the CONTEXT of when and why they were told is just as important - about stereotypes, why violence is not the answer, why women need to be careful of Bluebeard (1 in 3 women experience domestic abuse), and how far we have come for equality and repairing the damage of the colonial mindset on non-Europeans - built out of the Catholic church’s adaption of Aristotle’s Great Chain of Being in the Middle Ages (we are still dealing with the consequences of this deep-seated philosophy today).
Teaching context is essential for critical thinking and having perspective about the HUMAN experience throughout history; of how far society has shifted from rigid gender norms and racial superiority and while we still have a distance to travel with this, fairy tales can help us to imagine possible futures. Critical thinking is essential in our media-saturated world where news, images, and voices can be manipulated. As Albert Einstein supposedly said: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales,” critical thinking is essential to develop intelligence that we need for finding the path out of the forest.
I heard someone say yesterday that we shouldn’t be using fairy tales with children because of stereotypes, discrimination, and violence. I am not denying that those things exist in fairy tales, but I disagree that we should shield children from them. Children today in Australia have to be explicitly taught resilience, courage, and self-esteem in the curriculum by teachers who grew up on a healthy diet of fairy tales. What better way to teach values, moral lessons, and dilemmas than through stories of people of a time in the past, who are unknown to us all, not attached to a particular family (usually) or universal stories of humanity? What better way to teach resilience, courage, and self-esteem than through stories of people who have those things?
What was omitted from fairy tales is similarly important in their relevance today. The interaction in Persinette (Rapunzel) led to the birth of twins, but you won’t see Disney showing a pregnant 16-year-old in Tangled. Many sexual elements were removed from European folk and fairy tales during the religious and pious period after the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches) in 1486 and even more so with the Grimms. Women’s sexuality and pleasure were increasingly suppressed and this was the period when definite male and female stereotypes began to emerge. Prior to the 1550s bodily functions, including sex, were perceived as normal and Bottigheimer argues that it is this submission of women’s sexuality that led to the emergence of the literary fairy tale in the 1600s and later. "Once the majority of early modern women had lost control over their own fertility, old concepts took on a new force and came to dominate the sexual discourse. Women in tale collections no longer survived by their wits and had sexual pleasure along the way. Instead, their bodies became vehicles of 'honor’ and ‘dishonor’” (p. 50). Understanding the history and context of fairy tales and of the world they evolved in helps to understand society better. And, in many ways, restoring sexuality to fairy tales helps women reclaim our sexual power and realise we were not stereotypes absent from history, but ever-present.**
Finally, fairy tales teach values, and as Albert Einstein supposedly said: “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.” Whether implicit or explicit the tale “tells” and not shows, breaking the main “rule” of modern literature, but instead gives a simple plot, minimal characters, and metaphorical descriptions relevant to the society in which the story was created, motifs and symbolism are there for more mature understandings. This minimalist storyline allows room for the listener or reader to imagine or fantasise about themselves or the characters in the place, to easily identify who is “good” and “bad”, what we may do in similar situations, and most importantly to believe in wonder and have a genuine curiosity about the world.
Fairy tales have been analysed for their treatment of women, sexual orientation, disability, and violence by academics for years, but rather than cancelling them for what is uncovered, let’s talk about it. Let’s endeavour to deeply understand the context in which they were written (and by whom) to help us understand what it is we need to do to shift humanity onto the path out of the forest. As Michael Crichton said: “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” Fairy tales are and will remain a part of our literary history and avoiding them because they create discomfort is no way to face the dragon, let alone slay it. Fairy tales are fantasy and as a result, we can all discern the difference between real and imaginary, but the truths in them (love, grief, compassion, friendship, honesty) are not fantasy, they are an extension of the human experience, and that is why we still need fairy tales to lead us through the forest.
Author’s note: The author loves dragons and has no problem with dragons, it’s a metaphor! No dragons were harmed in the making of this blog.
*The term “fairy tale” was first coined by Madame D’Aulnoy in 1697, prior to that, the tales were predominantly folktales, myths, elements of mythology, and legend.
**Stay tuned for my book of Charlotte-Rose de La Force’s fairy tales with sexuality included in late 2024, early 2025
References:
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. (2009). Fairy tales: a new history. Albany, N.Y.: Excelsior Editions/State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4416-0869-7. OCLC 320967720.
Gaiman, N. (2002). Coraline. New York, Ny: Harper, An Imprint Of Harpercollins Publishers.
Virginia Frances Sterrett’s illustration from Comtesse DeSegur’s Old French Fairy Tales from 1920
