Fairy Tales

Suzie Eisfelder

Things have changed but fairy tales used to be our first stories. The first stories we heard and then read. Here I briefly mention how they’ve morphed over time and how they used to be much more gory with the object lesson being easy enough to spot.  The Brothers Grimm changed them making them more palatable for people to read and changing the message…I mean who doesn’t want to be a princess and get the prince when they grow up?

Oh hang on, some people are male and look towards the prince. Rewrite that. I mean who doesn’t want to be a prince and get the gorgeous girl when they grow up?

We’re currently looking at changing this mantra and having the personality be the thing that people look towards, it’s taking a while but I’m sure we’ll get there…maybe. Until then, at least you know who is superficial and not looking at your brain or personality.

What brought all this up again is this news article about fairy tales and political correctness. I think it’s less about political correctness and more about showing people they should be looking below the surface. Anyway, the article is slightly clickbait as what they’re teaching in schools is to think critically about fairy tales. If they’re thinking critically about fairy tales then that should follow into other parts of life and things will improve. As I said, I have hopes.

The link in that article is to this which mentions the book I spoke about a few months ago, I’ve already linked to it but here it is again, just in case of something or other. It’s Stories From the Penatmerone by Giambattista Basile and is a good starting point if you want to find out what they used to be like. My memory tells me that most of the stories were about males making the trek for some reason, but I didn’t notate this and I’m not picking up the book again. It only took me two weeks to read a small book, I don’t love you that much.

What I will do is leave you with is a link to Neil Gaiman’s Sleeper and the Spindle. I love how he takes a fairy tale and subverts it to be something totally other and much more believable to me.


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