Oedipus marries a woman who is his mother, so obviously she is much older than he. The fairy-tale hero, whether male or female, marries a partner of about the same age. That is, whatever oedipal attachment the fairy-tale hero may have had to his parent, he has successfully transferred it to a most suitable non-oedipal partner. Again and again in fairy tales an unsatisfactory relation to a parent—such as an oedipal relation invariably is—is replaced, like Cinderella’s link to a weak and ineffective father, by a happy relation to the rescuing marital partner.
The parent in such fairy tales, far from resenting the child’s transcending his oedipal attachment to him, is delighted that he has and often is instrumental in arranging it. For example, in “Hans, My Hedgehog” and in “Beauty and the Beast” the father (willingly or unwillingly) causes his daughter to marry; relinquishing his oedipal attachment to his daughter and inducing her to give up hers to him lead to a happy solution for both.
Never in a fairy tale does a son take his father’s kingdom away from him. If a father gives it up, it is always because of old age. Even then the son has to earn it, by finding the most desirable woman for himself, as in “The Three Feathers.” This story makes it quite clear that gaining the kingdom is tantamount to having reached moral and sexual maturity. First one task is demanded of the hero which he must perform to inherit the kingdom. When the hero succeeds, this turns out to be not sufficient. The same thing happens the second time. The third task is to find and bring home the right bride; when the hero manages to do this, the kingdom is finally his. Thus, far from projecting the son’s being jealous of his father, or the father’s resenting his son’s sexual endeavors, the fairy story tells the opposite: when the child has reached the right age and maturity, the parent wants him to come into his own sexually also; in fact, he will accept his son as a worthy successor only after he has done so.
In many fairy stories a king gives his daughter in marriage to the hero and either shares his kingdom with him or installs him as the eventual successor. This is, of course, a wishful fantasy of the child. But since the story assures him that this is indeed what is going to happen, and since in the unconscious the “king” stands for one’s own father, the fairy tale promises the highest possible reward—a happy life and the kingdom—to the son who through his struggles has found the right solution to his oedipal conflicts: to transfer his love for his mother to a suitable partner of his own age; and to recognize that the father (far from being a threatening competitor) is really a benevolent protector who approves of his son’s finding adult fulfillment.
Gaining his kingdom through being united in love and marriage with the most appropriate and desirable partner—a union which the parents thoroughly approve and which leads to happiness for everybody but the villains—symbolizes the perfect resolution of oedipal difficulties, as well as the gaining of true independence and complete personality integration. Is it really all that unrealistic to speak of such high achievement as coming into one’s own kingdom?
This may also suggest why the achievements of the heroes in “realistic” children’s stories often seem ordinary and trite by comparison. These stories also offer assurance to the child that he will solve important problems he encounters in his “real” life—as adults define these problems. In doing so, the stories have definite but limited merits. But what problems could be more difficult to grasp, and more “real” to the child, than his oedipal conflicts; integration of his personality; and gaining maturity, which includes sexual maturity—what it consists of, and how to gain it? Since detailing what these matters entail would overwhelm and confuse the child, the fairy tale uses universal symbols that permit the child to choose, select, neglect, and interpret the tale in ways congruent with his state of intellectual and psychological development. Whatever this state of development may be, the fairy tale intimates how the child may transcend it, and what may be involved in reaching the next stage on his progress toward mature integration.
A comparison of two well-known children’s stories with a fairy tale may illustrate the relative shortcomings of the modern realistic children’s story.
There are many modern children’s stories, such as The Little Engine That Could, which encourage the child to believe that if he tries hard enough and does not give up, he will finally succeed.39 A young adult recalled how impressed she had been when her mother read her this story. She became convinced that one’s attitude indeed affected one’s achievements; that if she would now approach a task with the conviction that she could conquer it, she would succeed. A few days later this child encountered in first grade a challenging situation: she was trying to make a house out of paper, gluing various sheets together. But her house continually collapsed. Frustrated, she began to doubt seriously that her idea of building such a paper house could be realized. But then the story of The Little Engine That Could came to her mind; twenty years later she recalled how at this moment she began to sing to herself the magic formula “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.…” So she continued to work on her paper house, and it continued to collapse. The project ended in complete defeat, with this little girl convinced that she had failed where anybody else could have succeeded as the Little Engine had.
Since The Little Engine That Could is a story set in the present, using such common props as engines that pull trains, this girl had tried to apply its lesson directly in her daily life, without any fantasy elaboration, and had experienced a defeat which still rankled twenty years later.
Very different was the impact of The Swiss Family Robinson on another child. The story tells how a shipwrecked family manages to live an adventurous, idyllic, constructive, and pleasurable life—a life very different from what this child’s existence was like. Her father had to be away from home a great deal, and her mother was mentally ill and spent protracted periods in institutions. So the girl was shuttled from her home to an aunt, then to a grandmother, and back home again as the need arose. During these years the girl read over and over again the story of this happy family who lived on a desert island, which prevented any member from ever being away from the rest of the family. Many years later she recalled what a warm, cozy feeling she had when, propped up by a few large pillows, she forgot all about her present predicament as she read this story. As soon as she had finished it, she started to read it all over again. The happy hours she spent with the Family Robinson in that fantasy land kept her from being defeated by the difficulties which reality presented to her. She was able to counteract the impact of harsh reality by imaginary gratifications. But since the story was not a fairy tale, it did not hold out any promise that her life would take a turn for the better—a hope which would have made life much more bearable for her.
Another graduate student recalled that as a child “I thrived on fairy tales, traditional ones as well as ones of my own creation. But ‘Rapunzel’ dominated my thoughts.” When this woman was still a little girl, her mother had died in a car accident. The girl’s father, deeply upset by what had happened to his wife (he had been driving the car), withdrew entirely into himself, and handed the care of his daughter over to a nurse, who was little interested in the girl. When the girl was seven, her father remarried, and, as she recalled it, it was around that time that “Rapunzel” became so important to her. Her stepmother was clearly the witch of the story, and she was the girl locked away in the tower. The girl recalled that she felt akin to Rapunzel, since the “witch had forcibly” obtained her, as her stepmother had forcibly worked her way into the girl’s life. The girl felt imprisoned in her new home, as the nurse who had cared little had given her complete freedom to do as she wanted. She felt as victimized as Rapunzel, who, in her tower, had so little control over her life. Rapunzel’s long hair was the key to the story for her. The girl wanted her hair to grow long, but her stepmother cut it short; long hair in itself became the symbol of freedom and happiness to her. As an adult, she realized that the prince for whose coming she had pined was her father. The story convinced
her that he would come someday and rescue her, and this conviction sustained her. If life became too difficult, all she needed to do was to imagine herself as Rapunzel, her hair grown long, and the prince loving and rescuing her. And she gave “Rapunzel” a happy ending. In the story the prince was blinded for a time—this meant to her that her father had become blinded, by the “witch” with whom he lived, to how preferable his daughter was—but eventually her hair which the stepmother had cut grew long again, and the prince came to live with her happily forever after.
A comparison of “Rapunzel” with The Swiss Family Robinson suggests why fairy tales can offer more to the child than even such a very nice children’s story. In The Swiss Family Robinson there is no witch whom the child can discharge her anger against in fantasy, and on whom she can blame the father’s lack of interest. The Swiss Family Robinson offers escape fantasies, and it did help the girl who read it over and over again to forget temporarily how difficult life was for her. But it offered no specific hope for the future. “Rapunzel,” on the other hand, offered the girl a chance to see the witch of the story as being so evil that, by comparison, even the “witch” stepmother at home was not all that bad. “Rapunzel” also promised the girl that her rescue would be effected by her own body, when her hair grew long. Most important of all, it promised that the “prince” was only temporarily blinded; that he would regain his sight and rescue his princess. This fantasy continued to sustain the girl, though to a less intense degree, until she fell in love and got married, when she no longer needed it.
We can understand why at first glance the stepmother, if she had known the meaning of “Rapunzel” to her stepdaughter, would have felt that fairy tales are bad for children. What she would not have known was that unless the stepdaughter could find that fantasy satisfaction through “Rapunzel,” she would have tried to break up her father’s marriage; and without the hope for the future which the story gave her, she might have gone badly astray in life.
It has been argued that when a story raises unrealistic hopes, the child will necessarily experience disappointment and suffer the more because of it. But to suggest to the child reasonable—that is, limited and provisional—hopes for what the future has in store is no palliative for the child’s immense anxieties about what will happen to him and his aspirations. His unrealistic fears require unrealistic hopes. By comparison with the child’s wishes, realistic and limited promises are experienced as deep disappointment, not as consolation. But they are all that a relatively realistic story can offer.
The fairy tale’s extravagant promise of a happy ending would also lead to disenchantment with the child’s real life if it were part of a realistic story, or projected as something that will happen where the real child lives. But the fairy story’s happy ending occurs in fairyland, a country that we can visit only in our minds.
The fairy tale offers the child hope that someday the kingdom will be his. Since the child cannot settle for less, but does not believe that he can achieve this kingdom on his own, the fairy tale tells him that magic forces will come to his aid. This rekindles hope, which without such fantasy would be extinguished by harsh reality. Since the fairy tale promises the type of triumph the child wishes for, it is psychologically convincing as no “realistic” tale can be. And because it pledges that the kingdom will be his, the child is willing to believe the rest of what the fairy story teaches: that one must leave home to find one’s kingdom; that it cannot be gained immediately; that risks must be taken, trials submitted to; that it cannot be done all by oneself, but that one needs helpers; and that to secure their aid, one must meet some of their demands. Just because the ultimate promise coincides with the child’s wishes for revenge and a glorious existence, the fairy tale enriches the child’s fantasy beyond compare.
The trouble with some of what is considered “good children’s literature” is that many of these stories peg the child’s imagination to the level he has already reached on his own. Children like such a story, but benefit little from it beyond momentary pleasure. From such stories the child gains neither comfort nor consolation in regard to his pressing problems; he only escapes them for the moment.
For example, there are “realistic” stories in which the child takes his revenge on a parent. When the child moves out of the oedipal stage and is no longer utterly dependent on the parent is when his desire for revenge is most acute. Revenge fantasies are something every child entertains at this time in his life, but in his more lucid moments he recognizes them as extremely unfair, since he knows that the parent provides him with all he needs to survive, and works hard to do so. Ideas of revenge always create guilt, and anxiety about retribution. A story which encourages this fantasy of actually taking revenge increases both, and all the child can do on his own is to repress such ideas. Often the result of such repression is that a dozen years later the adolescent acts out in reality these childish revenge fantasies.
There is no need for the child to repress such fantasies; on the contrary, he can enjoy them to the fullest, if he is subtly guided to direct them to a target which is close enough to the true parent but clearly not his parent. What more suitable object of vengeful thoughts than the person who has usurped the parent’s place: the fairy-story step-parent? If one vents vicious fantasies of revenge against such an evil usurper, there is no reason to feel guilty or need to fear retaliation, because that figure clearly deserves it. If it is objected that thoughts of revenge are immoral and the child should not have any such thoughts, it should be stressed that the idea that one should not have certain fantasies has never stopped people from having them, but only banished them into the unconscious, where the resulting havoc to the mental life is much greater. Thus, the fairy story permits the child to have the best of both worlds: he can fully engage in and enjoy revenge fantasies about the step-parent of the story, without any guilt or fear in respect to the true parent.
Milne’s poem in which James James Morrison Morrison warns his mother not to go to the end of the town without him because she might never find her way back but disappear forever, which in the poem then actually happens, is a delightfully funny story—to adults.40 To the child, it gives body to his worst nightmarish anxiety about desertion. What seems funny to the adult is that here the roles of guardian and guarded are reversed. Much as the child may wish that this were so, he cannot entertain the idea when permanent loss of the parent is projected as the outcome. What the child takes pleasure in, on hearing this poem, is the warning to parents never to go without him. He does enjoy that, but then he has to repress the much deeper and greater anxiety that he will be permanently deserted, which is what the poem suggests will happen.
There are quite a few similar modern stories in which the child is more able and more intelligent than the parent, not in never-never-land, as in the fairy tale, but in everyday reality. The child enjoys such a story because it is in line with what he would like to believe; but the ultimate consequences are distrust of the parent on whom he still has to rely, and disappointment—because, contrary to what the story makes him believe, parents remain superior for quite some time.
No traditional fairy tale would rob the child of the needed security he gets from the knowledge that the parent knows better, with one crucial exception: when the parent turns out to have been in error about the child’s abilities. The parent in many fairy tales thinks little of one of his children—often called simpleton—who, as the story proceeds, proves the parent wrong in this evaluation of him. Here again the fairy tale is true psychologically. Almost every child is convinced that his parents know better about nearly everything, with one exception: they do not think well enough of him. To encourage this thought is beneficial because it suggests to the child that he should develop his abilities—not to do better than the parent, but to correct the parent’s low opinion of the child.
In respect to excelling the parent, the fairy story frequently uses the device of splitting him into two figures: the parent who thinks little of t
he child, and another figure—a wise old man, or an animal the youngster encounters, who gives him sound advice on how to win out, not over the parent, which would be too scary, but over a preferred sibling. Sometimes this other figure aids the hero in achieving a nearly impossible task, which shows the parent that his low opinion of his child was wrong. The parent is thus split into his doubting and supporting aspects, with the latter winning out.
The fairy-tale rendering of the problem of the competition of the generations, of the child’s wish to surpass his parent, is that when a parent feels that the time has become ripe for it, he sends his child (or children) out into the world to prove himself, and thus demonstrate his ability and worthiness to take over from the parent, to replace him. The extraordinary feats which the child performs on his errands, while objectively beyond belief, are not any more fantastic to the child than the idea that he possibly could be superior to his parent and hence replace him.
Tales of this type (which, in different forms, can be found all over the world) begin quite realistically with a father who is getting old and has to decide which of his children is worthy of inheriting his wealth, or of otherwise replacing him. On being presented with the task he has to perform, the story hero feels exactly as the child does: it seems impossible to carry out. Despite this conviction, the fairy tale shows that the task can be mastered, but only through the help of superhuman powers or some other intermediary. And indeed only a most extraordinary achievement can give a child the feeling that he is superior to his parent; to believe in it without such proof would be empty megalomania.
The Uses of Enchantment Page 18