In the Brothers Grimm’s version of “Rapunzel” we are told that the prince in his wanderings “at length came to the desert where Rapunzel, with the twins to which she had given birth, a boy and a girl, lived in wretchedness,” though no children had been mentioned before. When she embraces the prince, two of Rapunzel’s tears wet his eyes (which had been pierced and blinded) and cure his blindness; and “he led her to his kingdom where he was joyfully received, and where they lived happily for a long time.” Once they are united, no more is said about the children. They are only a symbol in the story of the bond between Rapunzel and the prince during their separation. Since we are not told of the two having been married, and there is no other suggestion of any form of sexual relation, this mention of children in fairy tales supports the idea that children can be gotten without sex, just as a result of love.
In the usual course of family life, the father is often out of the home, while the mother, having given birth to the child and nursed him, continues to be heavily involved in all child care. As a result, a boy can easily pretend that Father is not all that important in his life. (A girl cannot as readily imagine dispensing with Mother’s care, however.) That is why replacement of an original “good” father by a bad stepfather is as rare in fairy tales as the evil stepmother is frequent. Since fathers have typically given much less attention to the child, it is not such a radical disappointment when this father begins to stand in the child’s way, or to make demands of him. So the father who blocks the boy’s oedipal desires is not seen as an evil figure within the home, or split into two figures, one good and one bad, as the mother often is. Instead, the oedipal boy projects his frustrations and anxieties onto a giant, monster, or dragon.
In a girl’s oedipal fantasy, the mother is split into two figures: the pre-oedipal wonderful good mother and the oedipal evil stepmother. (Sometimes there are bad stepmothers in fairy stories with boys, such as in “Hansel and Gretel,” but such tales deal with problems other than oedipal ones.) The good mother, so the fantasy goes, would never have been jealous of her daughter or have prevented the prince (father) and the girl from living happily together. So for the oedipal girl, belief and trust in the goodness of the pre-oedipal mother, and deep loyalty to her, tend to reduce the guilt about what the girl wishes would happen to the (step)mother who stands in her way.
Thus, both oedipal girls and boys, thanks to the fairy tale, can have the best of two worlds: they can fully enjoy oedipal satisfactions in fantasy and keep good relations to both parents in reality.
For the oedipal boy, if Mother disappoints him, there is the fairy princess in the back of his mind—that wonderful woman of the future who will compensate for all his present hardships, and the thought of whom makes it much easier to bear up under them. If Father is less attentive to his little girl than she desires, she can endure such adversity because a prince will arrive who will prefer her to all competitors. Since everything takes place in never-never-land, the child need not feel guilty or anxious about casting Father in the role of a dragon or evil giant, or Mother in the role of a miserable stepmother or witch. The little girl can love her real father all the better because her resentment over his failure to prefer her to her mother is explained by his unfortunate ineffectuality (as with fathers in fairy tales), for which nobody can blame him since it is due to superior powers; besides, it will not prevent her from getting her prince. A girl can love her mother more because she puts out all her anger at the mother-competitor, who gets what she deserves—as Snow White’s stepmother is forced to put on “red-hot shoes, and dance until she dropped dead.” And Snow White—and with her the little girl—need not feel guilty because her love of her true mother (who preceded the stepmother) has never stopped. The boy can love his real father even better after having gotten out all his anger at him through a fantasy of destroying the dragon or the bad giant.
Such fairy-tale fantasies—which most children would have a hard time inventing so completely and satisfactorily on their own—can help a child a great deal to overcome his oedipal anguish.
The fairy story has other unequaled values in helping the child with oedipal conflicts. Mothers cannot accept their little boys’ wishes to do away with Daddy and marry Mommy; but a mother can participate with pleasure in her son’s imagining himself as the dragon slayer who gains possession of the beautiful princess. Also, a mother can fully encourage her daughter’s fantasies about the handsome prince who will join her, thus helping her to believe in a happy solution despite her present disappointment. Thus, far from losing Mother because of the oedipal attachment to Father, the daughter realizes that Mother not only approves of such wishes in disguise, but even hopes for their realization. Through fairy tales the parent can join the child in all voyages of fancy, while still retaining the all-important function of fulfilling the parental tasks in reality.
Thus a child can have the best of both worlds, which is what he needs to grow up into a secure adult. In fantasy a girl can win out over the (step)mother whose efforts to prevent her happiness with the prince fail; a boy can slay the monster and gain what he wishes in a far-distant land. At the same time, both girls and boys can retain at home the real father as protector and the real mother who dispenses all the care and satisfactions a child needs. Since it is clear all along that slaying the dragon and marrying the enslaved princess, or being discovered by the fairy prince and punishing the wicked witch, occur in faraway times and countries, the normal child never mixes them up with reality.
Oedipal-conflict stories are typical of a large class of fairy tales that extend the child’s interests outside the immediate family. To make his first steps toward becoming a mature individual, the child must begin to look to the larger world. If the child does not receive support from his parents in his real and imaginary investigation of the world outside his home, it is at the risk of impoverishing the development of his personality.
It is not wise to urge a child in so many words to begin to enlarge his horizons, or to inform him specifically how far to go in his explorations of the world, or how to sort out feelings about his parents. If a parent verbally encourages a child to “mature,” to move out psychologically or geographically, the child interprets this as meaning “they want to get rid of me.” The result is the direct opposite of what is intended. For the child then feels unwanted and unimportant, and such feelings are most detrimental to the development of his ability to cope with this wider world.
The child’s learning task is precisely that of making decisions about moving out on his own, in his own good time, and into the areas of living he himself selects. The fairy tale helps in this process because it only beckons; it never suggests, demands, or tells. In the fairy tale all is said implicitly and in symbolic form: what the tasks for one’s age might be; how one might deal with one’s ambivalent feelings about one’s parents; how this welter of emotions can be mastered. It also warns the child of some of the pitfalls he can expect and perhaps avoid, always promising a favorable outcome.
FEAR OF FANTASY
WHY WERE FAIRY TALES OUTLAWED?
Why do many intelligent, well-meaning, modern, middle-class parents, so concerned about the happy development of their children, discount the value of fairy tales and deprive their children of what these stories have to offer? Even our Victorian ancestors, despite their emphasis on moral discipline and their stodgy way of life, not only permitted but encouraged their children to enjoy the fantasy and excitement of fairy tales. It would be simple to blame such a prohibition of fairy tales on a narrow-minded, uninformed rationalism, but this is not the case.
Some people claim that fairy tales do not render “truthful” pictures of life as it is, and are therefore unhealthy. That “truth” in the life of a child might be different from that of adults does not occur to these people. They do not realize that fairy tales do not try to describe the external world and “reality.” Nor do they recognize that no sane child ever believes that these tales describe the world real
istically.
Some parents fear that by telling their children about the fantastic events found in fairy tales, they are “lying” to them. Their concern is fed by the child’s asking, “Is it true?” Many fairy tales offer an answer even before the question can be asked—namely, at the very beginning of the story. For example, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” starts: “In days of yore and times and tides long gone.…” The Brothers Grimm’s story “The Frog King, or Iron Henry” opens: “In olden times when wishing still helped one.…” Such beginnings make it amply clear that the stories take place on a very different level from everyday “reality.” Some fairy tales do begin quite realistically: “There once was a man and a woman who had long in vain wished for a child.” But the child who is familiar with fairy stories always extends the times of yore in his mind to mean the same as “In fantasy land …” This exemplifies why telling just one and the same story to the neglect of others weakens the value fairy tales have for children, and raises problems which are answered by familiarity with a number of tales.
The “truth” of fairy stories is the truth of our imagination, not that of normal causality. Tolkien, addressing himself to the question of “Is it true?” remarks that “It is not one to be rashly or idly answered.” He adds that of much more real concern to the child is the question: “ ‘Was he good? Was he wicked?’ That is, [the child] is more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear.”
Before a child can come to grips with reality, he must have some frame of reference to evaluate it. When he asks whether a story is true, he wants to know whether the story contributes something of importance to his understanding, and whether it has something significant to tell him in regard to his greatest concerns.
To quote Tolkien once more: “Often enough what children mean when they ask: ‘Is it true?’ [is] ‘I like this, but is it contemporary? Am I safe in my bed?’ The answer: ‘There is certainly no dragon in England today’ is all that they want to hear.” “Fairy stories,” he continues, are “plainly not primarily concerned with possibility, but with desirability.” This the child clearly recognizes, since nothing is more “true” to him than what he desires.
Speaking of his childhood, Tolkien recalls: “I had no desire to have either dreams or adventures like Alice, and the account of them merely amused me. I had little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd of the Voelsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were preeminently desirable. I never imagined that the dragon was of the same order as the horse. The dragon had the trademark Of Faerie written plainly upon him. In whatever world he had his being it was of Other-world.… I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood, intruding in my relatively safe world.”36
In reply to the question whether the fairy story tells the truth, the answer should address itself not to the issue of truth in factual terms, but to the child’s concern of the moment, be this his fear that he is apt to be bewitched, or his feelings of oedipal rivalry. For the rest, an explanation that these stories do not take place in the here and now, but in a faraway never-never-land is nearly always sufficient. A parent who from his own childhood experience is convinced of the value of fairy tales will have no difficulty in answering his child’s questions; but an adult who thinks these tales are only a bunch of lies had better not try telling them; he won’t be able to relate them in a way which would enrich the child’s life.
Some parents fear that their children may get carried away by their fantasies; that when exposed to fairy tales, they will come to believe in magic. But every child believes in magic, and he stops doing so when he grows up (with the exception of those who have been too disappointed in reality to be able to trust its rewards). I have known disturbed children who had never been told fairy stories but who invested an electric fan or motor with as much magic and destructive power as any fairy story ever ascribed to its most powerful and nefarious figure.37
Other parents fear that a child’s mind may become so overfed by fairy-tale fantasies as to neglect learning to cope with reality. Actually, the opposite is true. Complex as we all are—conflicted, ambivalent, full of contradictions—the human personality is indivisible. Whatever an experience may be, it always affects all the aspects of the personality at the same time. And the total personality, in order to be able to deal with the tasks of living, needs to be backed up by a rich fantasy combined with a firm consciousness and a clear grasp of reality.
Faulty development sets in when one component of the personality—id, ego, or superego; conscious or unconscious—overpowers any of the others and depletes the total personality of its particular resources. Because some people withdraw from the world and spend most of their days in the realm of their imaginings, it has been mistakenly suggested that an over-rich fantasy life interferes with our coping successfully with reality. But the opposite is true: those who live completely in their fantasies are beset by compulsive ruminations which rotate eternally around some narrow, stereotypical topics. Far from having a rich fantasy life, such people are locked in, and they cannot break out of one anxious or wish-fulfilling daydream. But free-floating fantasy, which contains in imaginary form a wide variety of issues also encountered in reality, provides the ego with an abundance of material to work with. This rich and variegated fantasy life is provided to the child by fairy stories, which can help prevent his imagination from getting stuck within the narrow confines of a few anxious or wish-fulfilling daydreams circling around a few narrow preoccupations.
Freud said that thought is an exploration of possibilities which avoids all the dangers inherent in actual experimentation. Thought requires a small expenditure of energy, so we have energy available for action after we have reached decisions through speculating about the chances for success and the best way to achieve it. This is true for adults; for example, the scientist “plays with ideas” before he starts to explore them more systematically. But the young child’s thoughts do not proceed in an orderly way, as an adult’s do—the child’s fantasies are his thoughts. When a child tries to understand himself and others, or figure out what the specific consequences of some action might be, he spins fantasies around these issues. It is his way of “playing with ideas.” To offer a child rational thought as his major instrument for sorting out his feelings and understanding the world will only confuse and restrict him.
This is true even when the child seems to ask for factual information. Piaget describes how a girl not yet four years old asked him about an elephant’s wings. He answered that elephants don’t fly. To which the girl insisted, “Yes, they do; I’ve seen them.” His reply was that she must be joking.38 This example shows the limits of a child’s fantasies. The little girl was obviously struggling with some problem, and factual explanations were no help at all, because they did not address themselves to that problem.
If Piaget had engaged in conversation about where the elephant needed to fly to in such a hurry, or what dangers he was trying to escape from, then the issues which the child was grappling with might have emerged, because Piaget would have shown his willingness to accept her method of exploring the problem. But Piaget was trying to understand how this child’s mind worked on the basis of his rational frame of reference, while the girl was trying to understand the world on the basis of her understanding: through fantasy elaboration of reality as she saw it.
This is the tragedy of so much “child psychology”: its findings are correct and important, but do not benefit the child. Psychological discoveries aid the adult in comprehending the child from within an adult’s frame of reference. But such adult understanding of the machinations of a child’s mind often increases the gap between them—the two seem to look at the same phenomenon from such different points of view that each sees something quite different. If the adult insists that the way he
sees things is correct—as it may well be, seen objectively and with adult knowledge—this gives the child a hopeless feeling that there is no use in trying to arrive at a common understanding. Knowing who holds the power, the child, to avoid trouble and have his peace, says that he agrees with the adult, and is then forced to go it alone.
Fairy tales underwent severe criticism when the new discoveries of psychoanalysis and child psychology revealed just how violent, anxious, destructive, and even sadistic a child’s imagination is. A young child, for example, not only loves his parents with an incredible intensity of feeling, but at times also hates them. With this knowledge, it should have been easy to recognize that fairy tales speak to the inner mental life of the child. But, instead, doubters claimed that these stories create or at least greatly encourage these upsetting feelings.
Those who outlawed traditional folk fairy tales decided that if there were monsters in a story told to children, these must all be friendly—but they missed the monster a child knows best and is most concerned with: the monster he feels or fears himself to be, and which also sometimes persecutes him. By keeping this monster within the child unspoken of, hidden in his unconscious, adults prevent the child from spinning fantasies around it in the image of the fairy tales he knows. Without such fantasies, the child fails to get to know his monster better, nor is he given suggestions as to how he may gain mastery over it. As a result, the child remains helpless with his worst anxieties—much more so than if he had been told fairy tales which give these anxieties form and body and also show ways to overcome these monsters. If our fear of being devoured takes the tangible form of a witch, it can be gotten rid of by burning her in the oven! But these considerations did not occur to those who outlawed fairy tales.
The Uses of Enchantment Page 16