How much truer both to the reality of life and to our inner experiences is the fairy tale when compared with Tootle, which uses realistic elements as stage props: trains running on tracks, red flags stopping them. The trappings are real enough, but everything essential is unreal, since the entire population of a town does not stop what it is doing, to help a child mend his ways. Also, there was never any real danger to Tootle’s existence. Yes, Tootle is helped to mend its ways; but all that is involved in the growth experience is to become a bigger and faster train—that is, an externally more successful and useful adult. There is no recognition of inner anxieties, nor of the dangers of temptation to our very existence. To quote Riesman, “there is none of the grimness of Little Red Riding Hood,” which has been replaced by “a fake which the citizens put on for Tootle’s benefit.” Nowhere in Tootle is there an externalization onto story characters of inner processes and emotional problems pertaining to growing up, so that the child may be able to face the first and thus solve the latter.
We can fully believe it when at the end of Tootle we are told that Tootle has forgotten it ever did like flowers. Nobody with the widest stretch of imagination can believe that Little Red Riding Hood could ever forget her encounter with the wolf, or will stop liking flowers or the beauty of the world. Tootle’s story, not creating any inner conviction in the hearer’s mind, needs to rub in its lesson and predict the outcome: the engine will stay on the tracks and become a streamliner. No initiative, no freedom there.
The fairy tale carries within itself the conviction of its message; therefore it has no need to peg the hero to a specific way of life. There is no need to tell what Little Red Riding Hood will do, or what her future will be. Due to her experience, she will be well able to decide this herself. The wisdom about life, and about the dangers which her desires may bring about, is gained by every listener.
Little Red Riding Hood lost her childish innocence as she encountered the dangers residing in herself and the world, and exchanged it for wisdom that only the “twice born” can possess: those who not only master an existential crisis, but also become conscious that it was their own nature which projected them into it. Little Red Riding Hood’s childish innocence dies as the wolf reveals itself as such and swallows her. When she is cut out of the wolf’s belly, she is reborn on a higher plane of existence; relating positively to both her parents, no longer a child, she returns to life a young maiden.
*Interestingly enough, it is the Perrault version Andrew Lang chose to include in his Blue Fairy Book. Perrault’s story ends with the wolf victorious; thus it is devoid of escape, recovery, and consolation; it is not—and was not intended by Perrault to be—a fairy tale, but a cautionary story which deliberately threatens the child with its anxiety-producing ending. It is curious that even Lang, despite his severe criticisms of it, preferred to reproduce Perrault’s version. It seems that many adults think it better to scare children into good behavior than to relieve their anxieties as a true fairy tale does.
*When Perrault published his collection of fairy tales in 1697, “Little Red Riding Hood” already had an ancient history, with some elements going very far back in time. There is the myth of Cronos swallowing his children, who nevertheless return miraculously from his belly; and a heavy stone was used to replace the child to be swallowed. There is a Latin story of 1023 (by Egbert of Lièges, called Fecunda ratis) in which a little girl is found in the company of wolves; the girl wears a red cover of great importance to her, and scholars tell that this cover was a red cap. Here, then, six centuries or more before Perrault’s story, we find some basic elements of “Little Red Riding Hood”: a little girl with a red cap, the company of wolves, a child being swallowed alive who returns unharmed, and a stone put in place of the child.
There are other French versions of “Little Red Riding Hood,” but we do not know which of them influenced Perrault in his retelling of the story. In some of them the wolf makes Little Red Riding Hood eat of Grandmother’s flesh and drink of her blood, despite warning voices which tell her not to.54 If one of these stories was Perrault’s source, one can well understand that he eliminated such vulgarity as unseemly, since his book was designed for perusal at the court of Versailles. Perrault not only prettified his stories, he also used affectation, such as the pretense that his stories were written by his ten-year-old son, who dedicated the book to a princess. In Perrault’s asides and the morals appended to the stories, he speaks as if he were winking at the adults over the heads of the children.
*Their collection of fairy stories, which contained “Little Red Cap,” appeared first in 1812—more than one hundred years after Perrault published his version.
*Two French versions quite different from Perrault’s make it even more obvious that Little Red Riding Hood chose to follow the path of pleasure, or at least of greater ease, although the path of duty was also brought to her attention. In these renderings of the story Little Red Riding Hood encounters the wolf at a fork in the road—that is, a place where an important decision has to be made: which road to follow. The wolf asks: Which road will you take, that of the needles or that of the pins? Little Red Riding Hood chooses the road of the pins because, as one version explains, it is easier to fasten things together with pins, while it is much harder labor to sew them together with needles.55 At a time when sewing was very much a work task expected of young girls, taking the easy way of using pins instead of needles was readily understood as behaving in accordance with the pleasure principle, where the situation would require acting according to the reality principle.
*It is not all that long since, in certain peasant cultures, when the mother died, the oldest daughter took her place in all respects.
*In some other renderings Little Red Cap’s father happens to come on the scene, cuts the wolf’s head off, and thus rescues the two females.58 Maybe the shift from cutting open the stomach to cutting off the head was made because it was Little Red Cap’s father who did it. A father’s manipulating a stomach in which his daughter temporarily dwells comes too close for comfort in suggesting a father in a sexual activity connected with his daughter.
*That this interpretation is justified is borne out by the second version of the story presented by the Brothers Grimm. It tells how the second time around Grandmother protects Little Red Cap against the wolf, and successfully plans his demise. This is how a (grand)parent is supposed to act; if he does, neither (grand)parent nor child needs to fear the wolf, however clever it may be.
“JACK AND THE BEANSTALK”
Fairy tales deal in literary form with the basic problems of life, particularly those inherent in the struggle to achieve maturity. They caution against the destructive consequences if one fails to develop higher levels of responsible selfhood, setting warning examples such as the older brothers in “The Three Feathers,” the stepsisters in “Cinderella,” the wolf in “Little Red Cap.” To the child, these tales subtly suggest why he ought to strive for higher integration, and what is involved in it.
These same stories also intimate to a parent that he ought to be aware of the risks involved in his child’s development, so that he may be alert to them and protect the child when necessary to prevent a catastrophe; and that he ought to support and encourage his child’s personal and sexual development when and where this is appropriate.
The tales of the Jack cycle are of British origin; from there they became diffused throughout the English-speaking world.60 By far the best-known and most interesting story of this cycle is “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Important elements of this fairy tale appear in many stories all over the world: the seemingly stupid exchange which provides something of magic power; the miraculous seed from which a tree grows that reaches into heaven; the cannibalistic ogre that is outwitted and robbed; the hen that lays golden eggs or the golden goose; the musical instrument that talks. But their combination into a story which asserts the desirability of social and sexual self-assertion in the pubertal boy, and the foolishness of a mother who
belittles this, is what makes “Jack and the Beanstalk” such a meaningful fairy tale.
One of the oldest stories of the Jack cycle is “Jack and His Bargains.” In it the original conflict is not between a son and his mother who thinks him a fool, but a battle for dominance between son and father. This story presents some problems of the social-sexual development of the male in clearer form than “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and the underlying message of the latter can be understood more readily in the light of this earlier tale.
In “Jack and His Bargains” we are told that Jack is a wild boy, of no help to his father. Worse, because of Jack the father has fallen on hard times and must meet all kinds of debts. So he has sent Jack with one of the family’s seven cows to the fair, to sell it for as much money as he can get for it. On the way to the fair Jack meets a man who asks him where he is headed. Jack tells him, and the man offers to swap the cow for a wondrous stick: all its owner has to say is “Up stick and at it” and the stick will beat all enemies senseless. Jack makes the exchange. When he comes home, the father, who has expected to receive money for his cow, gets so furious that he fetches a stick to beat Jack with. In self-defense Jack calls on his stick, which beats the father until he cries for mercy. This establishes Jack’s ascendancy over his father in the home, but does not provide the money they need. So Jack is sent to the next fair to sell another cow. He meets the same man and exchanges the cow for a bee that sings beautiful songs. The need for money increases, and Jack is sent to sell a third cow. Once more he meets the man, and exchanges this cow for a fiddle which plays marvelous tunes.
Now the scene shifts. The king who rules in this part of the world has a daughter who is unable to smile. Her father promises to marry her to the man who can make her merry. Many princes and rich men try in vain to amuse her. Jack, in his ragged clothes, gets the better of all the highborn competitors, because the princess smiles when she hears the bee sing and the fiddle play so beautifully. She laughs outright as the stick beats up all the mighty suitors. So Jack is to marry her.
Before the marriage is to take place, the two are to spend a night in bed together. There Jack lies stock still and makes no move toward the princess. This greatly offends both her and her father; but the king soothes his daughter, and suggests that Jack may be scared of her and the new situation in which he finds himself. So on the following night another try is made, but the night passes as did the first. When on a third try Jack still does not move toward the princess in bed, the angry king has him thrown into a pit full of lions and tigers. Jack’s stick beats these wild animals into submission, at which the princess marvels at “what a proper man he was.” They get married “and had baskets full of children.”
The story is somewhat incomplete. For example, while the number three is emphasized repeatedly—three encounters with the man, three exchanges of a cow for a magic object, three nights with the princess without Jack’s “turning to her”—it remains unclear why seven cows are mentioned at the beginning and then we hear no more about the four cows remaining after three have been exchanged for the magic objects. Secondly, while there are many other fairy tales in which a man remains unresponsive to his love for three consecutive days or nights, usually this is explained in some fashion;* Jack’s behavior in this regard, however, is left quite unexplained, and so we have to rely on our imagination for its meaning.
The magic formula “Up stick and at it” suggests phallic associations, as does the fact that only this new acquisition permits Jack to hold his own in relation to his father, who up to now has dominated him. It is this stick which gains him victory in the competition with all suitors—a competition which is a sexual contest, since the prize is marrying the princess. It is the stick that finally leads to sexual possession of the princess, after it has beaten the wild animals into submission. While the lovely singing of the bee and the beautiful tunes of the fiddle make the princess smile, it is the stick’s beating up the pretentious suitors, and thus making a shambles of what we may assume was their masculine posturing, that makes her laugh.* But if these sexual connotations were all there was to this story, it would not be a fairy tale, or not a very meaningful one. For its deeper significance we have to consider the other magic objects, and the nights during which Jack rests unmovingly beside the princess as if he himself were a stick.
Phallic potency, the story implies, is not enough. In itself it does not lead to better and higher things, nor does it make for sexual maturity. The bee—a symbol of hard work and sweetness, as it gives us honey, hence its delightful songs—stands for work and its enjoyment. Constructive labor as symbolized by the bee is a stark contrast to Jack’s original wildness and laziness. After puberty, a boy must find constructive goals and work for them to become a useful member of society. That is why Jack is first provided with the stick, before he is given the bee and fiddle. The fiddle, the last present, symbolizes artistic achievement, and with it the highest human accomplishment. To win the princess, the power of the stick and what it symbolizes sexually is not sufficient. The power of the stick (sexual prowess) must become controlled, as suggested by the three nights in bed during which Jack does not move. By such behavior he demonstrates his self-control; with it he no longer rests his case on the display of phallic masculinity; he does not wish to win the princess by overpowering her. Through his subjugation of the wild animals Jack shows that he uses his strength to control those lower tendencies—the ferocity of lion and tiger, his wildness and irresponsibility which had piled up debts for his father—and with it becomes worthy of princess and kingdom. The princess recognizes this. Jack at first has made her only laugh, but at the end when he has demonstrated not only (sexual) power but also (sexual) self-control, he is recognized by her as a proper man with whom she can be happy and have many children.*
“Jack and His Bargains” begins with adolescent phallic self-assertion (“Up stick and at it”) and ends with personal and social maturity as self-control and valuation of the higher things in life are achieved. The much-better-known “Jack and the Beanstalk” story starts and ends considerably earlier in a male’s sexual development. While loss of infantile pleasure is barely hinted at in the first story with the need to sell the cows, this is a central issue in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” We are told that the good cow Milky White, which until then had supported child and mother, has suddenly stopped giving milk. Thus the expulsion from an infantile paradise begins; it continues with the mother’s deriding Jack’s belief in the magic power of his seeds. The phallic beanstalk permits Jack to engage in oedipal conflict with the ogre, which he survives and finally wins, thanks only to the oedipal mother’s taking his side against her own husband. Jack relinquishes his reliance on the belief in the magic power of phallic self-assertion as he cuts down the beanstalk; and this opens the way toward a development of mature masculinity. Thus, both versions of the Jack story together cover the entire male development.
Infancy ends when the belief in an unending supply of love and nutriment proves to be an irrealistic fantasy. Childhood begins with an equally irrealistic belief in what the child’s own body in general, and specifically one aspect of it—his newly discovered sexual equipment—can achieve for him. As in infancy the mother’s breast was symbol of all the child wanted of life and seemed to receive from her, so now his body, including his genitals, will do all that for the child, or so he wishes to believe. This is equally true for boys and girls; that is why “Jack and the Beanstalk” is enjoyed by children of both sexes. The end of childhood, as suggested before, is reached when such childish dreams of glory are given up and self-assertion, even against a parent, becomes the order of the day.
Every child can easily grasp the unconscious meaning of the tragedy when the good cow Milky White, who provided all that was needed, suddenly stops giving milk. It arouses dim memories of that tragic time when the flow of milk ceased for the child, when he was weaned. That is the time when the mother demands that the child must learn to make do with what the
outside world can offer. This is symbolized by Jack’s mother sending him out into the world to arrange for something (the money he is expected to get for the cow) that will provide sustenance. But Jack’s belief in magic supplies has not prepared him for meeting the world realistically.
If up until now Mother (the cow, in fairy-tale metaphor) has supplied all that was needed and she now no longer does so, the child will naturally turn to his father—represented in the story by the man encountered on the way—expecting Father to supply magically to the child all he needs. Deprived of the “magic” supplies which up to then have been assured, and which he has felt were his unquestionable “rights,” Jack is more than ready to exchange the cow for any promise of a magic solution to the impasse in living in which he finds himself.
It is not just Mother who tells Jack to sell the cow because it no longer gives milk; Jack also wants to get rid of this no-good cow that disappoints him. If Mother, in the form of Milky White, deprives and makes it imperative to change things, then Jack is going to exchange the cow not for what Mother wants, but for what seems more desirable to him.
To be sent out to encounter the world means the end of infancy. The child then has to begin the long and difficult process of turning himself into an adult. The first step on this road is relinquishing reliance on oral solutions to all of life’s problems. Oral dependency has to be replaced by what the child can do for himself, on his own initiative. In “Jack and His Bargains” the hero is handed all three magic objects and only by means of them gains his independence; these objects do everything for him. His only contribution, while it shows self-control, is a rather passive one: he does nothing while in bed with the princess. When he is thrown into a pit with the wild animals, he is rescued not by his courage or intelligence, but only by the magic power of his stick.
The Uses of Enchantment Page 25