The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  In general, the less a person has been able to resolve his oedipal feelings constructively, the greater the danger that he may be beset by them again when he becomes a parent. The male parent who has failed to integrate in the process of maturation his childish wish to possess his mother and his irrational fear of his father is likely to be anxious about his son as a competitor, and may even act destructively out of this fear, as we are told King Laius did. Nor does the child’s unconscious fail to respond to such feelings in a parent, if they are part of his relation to his child. The fairy story permits the child to comprehend that not only is he jealous of his parent, but that the parent may have parallel feelings—an insight that can not only help to bridge the gap between parent and child, but may also permit dealing constructively with difficulties in relating which otherwise would not be accessible to resolution. Even more important, the fairy tale reassures the child that he need not be afraid of parental jealousy where it may exist, because he will survive successfully, whatever complications these feelings may create temporarily.

  Fairy tales do not tell why a parent may be unable to enjoy his child’s growing up and surpassing him, but becomes jealous of the child. We do not know why the queen in “Snow White” cannot age gracefully and gain satisfaction from vicariously enjoying her daughter’s blooming into a lovely girl, but something must have happened in her past to make her vulnerable so that she hates the child she should love. How the sequence of the generations can account for a parent’s fear of his child is illustrated in the cycle of myths of which the story of Oedipus is the central part.61

  This mythic cycle, which ends with The Seven Against Thebes, begins with Tantalus, who as a friend of the gods tried to test their ability to know everything by having his son Pelops slain and served to the gods as dinner. (The queen in “Snow White” orders that her daughter be killed, and eats what she believes to be part of Snow White’s body.) The myth tells that it was Tantalus’ vanity which motivated his evil deed, as it is vanity which spurs the queen to commit her villainy. The queen, who wanted to remain fairest forever, is punished by having to dance to her death, in red-hot shoes. Tantalus, who tried to fool the gods with his son’s body as food, suffers eternally in Hades, by being tempted to satisfy his unending thirst and hunger with water and fruits which seem within his grasp but recede as soon as he tries to seize them. Thus, punishment does fit the crime in myth and fairy tale.

  In both stories also, death does not necessarily signify the end of life, as Pelops is restored by the gods, and Snow White regains her consciousness. Death is rather a symbol that this person is wished away—just as the oedipal child does not really wish to see his parent-competitor die, but simply wants him removed from the child’s way of winning his other parent’s complete attention. The child’s expectation is that, much as he has wished a parent out of the way at one moment, the parent should be very much alive and at the child’s service in the next. Accordingly, in the fairy tale a person is dead or turned into stone at one moment, and comes to life in the next.

  Tantalus was a father ready to risk his son’s well-being to feed his vanity, and this was destructive to him, and also to his son. Pelops, having been used thus by his father, later does not hesitate to kill a father to gain his goals. King Oenomaus of Elis selfishly wished to keep his beautiful daughter, Hippodamia, all to himself, and he devised a scheme by which he disguised this desire while making sure that his daughter would never leave him. Any suitor for Hippodamia had to compete with King Oenomaus in a chariot race; if the suitor won, he could marry Hippodamia; if he lost, the king gained the right to kill him, which he always did. Pelops surreptitiously replaced the brass bolts in the king’s chariot with wax ones, and in this deceitful way he won the race, in which the king was killed.

  So far the myth indicates that the consequences are equally tragic if a father misuses his son for his own purposes, or if a father should, out of an oedipal attachment to his daughter, try to deprive her of a life of her own, and her suitors of their very lives. Next the myth tells of the terrible consequences of “oedipal” sibling rivalry. Pelops had two legitimate sons, Atreus and Thyestes. Out of jealousy, Thyestes, the younger of the two, stole Atreus’ ram, which had a fleece of gold. As retribution, Atreus slaughtered Thyestes’ two sons, and fed them to Thyestes in a big banquet.

  This was not the only instance of sibling rivalry in the house of Pelops. He also had an illegitimate son, Chrysippus. Laius, Oedipus’ father, as a youth found protection and a home at the court of Pelops. Despite Pelops’ kindness to him, Laius wronged Pelops by abducting—or ravishing—Chrysippus. We may assume that Laius did this out of his jealousy of Chrysippus, who was preferred to him by Pelops. In punishment for such acted-out rivalry, the oracle at Delphi told Laius he would be killed by his own son. As Tantalus had destroyed, or tried to destroy, his son, Pelops, and as Pelops had arranged for the death of his father-in-law, Oenomaus, so Oedipus would come to kill his father, Laius. In the normal course of events, a son replaces his father—so we may read all these stories as telling about the son’s wish to do this and the father’s trying to forestall it. But this myth relates that oedipal acting-out on the part of the fathers precedes oedipal acting-out on the part of the children.

  To prevent his son from killing him, Laius on Oedipus’ birth had the infant’s ankles pierced and his feet tied together. Laius ordered a shepherd to take the child Oedipus and leave him in the wilderness to die. But the shepherd—like the hunter in “Snow White”—took pity on the child; he pretended to have deserted Oedipus, but gave the boy over to the care of another shepherd. This shepherd took Oedipus to his king, who raised Oedipus as his son.

  As a young man, Oedipus consulted the oracle of Delphi and was told that he would slay his father and wed his mother. Thinking that the royal pair who had raised him were his parents, Oedipus did not return home but wandered off, to prevent such horror. At a crossroads he slew Laius, unaware that he was his father. On his wanderings Oedipus came to Thebes, solved the riddle of the Sphinx, and thus delivered the city. As reward, Oedipus married the queen—his widowed mother, Jocasta. Thus the son replaced his father as king and husband; the son fell in love with his mother, and the mother had sexual relations with her son. When the truth of it all was finally discovered, Jocasta committed suicide and Oedipus blinded himself; he destroyed his eyes in punishment for not having seen what he was doing.

  But the tragic story does not end there. Oedipus’ twin sons, Eteocles and Polynices, did not support him in his misery, and only his daughter Antigone stayed with and by him. Time passed, and in the war of the Seven Against Thebes, Eteocles and Polynices killed each other in combat. Antigone buried Polynices against King Creon’s orders, and was killed for it. Not only does intense sibling rivalry devastate, as shown by the fate of the two brothers, but over-intense sibling attachment is equally fatal, as we learn from Antigone’s fate.

  To sum up the variety of death-bringing relations in these myths: instead of lovingly accepting his son, Tantalus sacrifices him to his own ends; so does Laius in respect to Oedipus; and both fathers end up destroyed. Oenomaus dies because he tries to keep his daughter all to himself, as does Jocasta, who attaches herself too closely to her son: sexual love for the child of the other sex is as destructive as acted-out fear that the child of the same sex will replace and surpass the parent. Doing away with the parent of the same sex is Oedipus’ undoing, as it is that of his sons who desert him in his distress. Sibling rivalry kills Oedipus’ sons. Antigone, who does not forsake her father, Oedipus, but on the contrary shares his misery, dies because of her too great devotion to her brother.

  But still this does not conclude the story. Creon, who as king condemns Antigone to die, does so against the entreaties of his son, Haemon, who loves Antigone. In destroying Antigone, Creon also destroys his son; once more, here is a father who cannot give up ruling his son’s life. Haemon, in despair over Antigone’s death, tries to kill his father and, failing to
do so, commits suicide; so does his mother, Creon’s wife, in consequence of her son’s death. The only one to survive in the family of Oedipus is Ismene, Antigone’s sister, who has not attached herself too deeply to either of her parents, nor any of her siblings, and with whom no member of the immediate family had become deeply involved. According to the myth, there seems to be no way out: whoever by chance or his own desires remains too deeply entangled in an “oedipal” relation is destroyed.

  Nearly all types of incestuous attachment are found in this cycle of myths, and all types are intimated also in fairy tales. But in fairy tales the hero’s story shows how these potentially destructive infantile relations can be, and are, integrated in developmental processes. In the myth, oedipal difficulties are acted out and in consequence all ends in total destruction, whether the relations are positive or negative. The message is clear enough: when a parent cannot accept his child as such and be satisfied that he will have to be replaced by him eventually, deepest tragedy results. Only an acceptance of the child as child—neither as a competitor nor as a sexual love object—permits good relations between parents and children, and between the siblings.

  How different are the ways the fairy tale and this classic myth present oedipal relations and their consequences. Despite her stepmother’s jealousy, Snow White not only survives but finds great happiness, as does Rapunzel, whose parents had given her up because satisfying their own cravings had been more important to them than keeping their daughter, and whose foster mother tried to hold on to her for too long. Beauty in “Beauty and the Beast” is loved by her father, and she loves him equally deeply. Neither of them is punished for their mutual attachment: on the contrary, Beauty saves her father and the Beast by transferring her attachment from father to lover. Cinderella, far from being destroyed by her siblings’ jealousy as were Oedipus’ sons, emerges victorious.

  It is thus in all fairy tales. The message of these stories is that oedipal entanglements and difficulties may seem to be unsolvable, but by courageously struggling with these emotional familial complexities, one can achieve a much better life than those who are never beset by severe problems. In the myth there is only insurmountable difficulty and defeat; in the fairy tale there is equal peril, but it is successfully overcome. Not death and destruction, but higher integration—as symbolized by victory over the enemy or competitor, and by happiness—is the hero’s reward at the end of the fairy tale. To gain it, he undergoes growth experiences that parallel those necessary for the child’s development toward maturity. This gives the child the courage not to become dismayed by the difficulties he encounters in his struggle to become himself.

  *As with wishing, the fairy tale has full understanding that the child cannot help being subjected to the oedipal predicaments, and hence is not punished if he acts in line with them. But the parent who permits himself to act out his oedipal problems on the child suffers severely for it.

  “SNOW WHITE”

  “Snow White” is one of the best-known fairy tales. It has been told for centuries in various forms in all European countries and languages; from there it was disseminated to the other continents. More often than not, the story’s title is simply the name “Snow White,” although there are many variations.* “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the name by which the tale is now widely known, is a bowdlerization which unfortunately emphasizes the dwarfs, who, failing to develop into mature humanity, are permanently arrested on a pre-oedipal level (dwarfs have no parents, nor do they marry or have children) and are but foils to set off the important developments taking place in Snow White.

  Some versions of “Snow White” begin: “A count and a countess drove by three mounds of white snow which made the count say, ‘I wish I had a girl as white as this snow.’ A short while later they came to three holes full of red blood, at which he said, ‘I wish I had a girl with cheeks as red as this blood.’ Finally three black ravens flew by, at which moment he desired a girl ‘with hair as black as these ravens.’ As they drove on, they encountered a girl as white as snow, as red as blood, and with hair as black as the raven; and she was Snow White. The count immediately made her sit in the coach and loved her, but the countess did not like it and thought only about how she could get rid of her. Finally she dropped her glove and ordered Snow White to look for it; in the meantime the coachman had to drive on with great speed.”

  A parallel version differs only in the detail that the couple drive through a forest and Snow White is asked to descend to gather a bunch of beautiful roses which grow there. As she does so, the queen orders the coachman to drive on, and Snow White is deserted.62

  In these renderings of the story, the count and countess or king and queen are thinly disguised parents, and the girl so admired by a father figure and found by chance is a surrogate daughter. The oedipal desires of a father and daughter, and how these arouse the mother’s jealousy which makes her wish to get rid of the daughter, are much more clearly stated here than in more common versions. The now widely accepted form of “Snow White” leaves the oedipal entanglements to our imagination rather than forcing them on our conscious mind.*63

  Whether openly stated or only hinted at, oedipal difficulties and how the individual solves them are central to the way his personality and human relations unfold. By camouflaging the oedipal predicaments, or by only subtly intimating the entanglements, fairy stories permit us to draw our own conclusions when the time is propitious for our gaining a better understanding of these problems. Fairy stories teach by indirection. In the versions just mentioned, Snow White is not the count’s and countess’ child, deeply desired and loved though she is by the count, and jealous though the countess is of her. In the well-known story of Snow White, the jealous older female is not her mother but her stepmother, and the person for whose love the two are in competition is not mentioned. So the oedipal problems—source of the story’s conflict—are left to our imagination.

  While, physiologically speaking, the parents create the child, it is the arrival of the child which causes these two people to become parents. Thus, it is the child who creates the parental problems, and with these come his own. Fairy tales usually begin when the child’s life in some manner has reached an impasse. In “Hansel and Gretel” the children’s presence creates hardships for the parents, and because of this, life turns problematic for the children. In “Snow White” it is not any external difficulty such as poverty, but the relations between her and her parents which create the problematic situation.

  As soon as the position of the child within the family becomes a problem to him or to his parents, the process of the child’s struggle to escape the triadic existence has begun. With it, he enters the often desperately lonely course to find himself—a struggle in which others serve mainly as foils who facilitate or impede this process. In some fairy tales the hero has to search, travel, and suffer through years of a lonely existence before he is ready to find, rescue, and join one other person in a relation which gives permanent meaning to both their lives. In “Snow White” it is the years Snow White spends with the dwarfs which stand for her time of troubles, of working through problems, her period of growth.

  Few fairy tales help the hearer to distinguish between the main phases of childhood development as neatly as does “Snow White.” The earliest, entirely dependent pre-oedipal years are hardly mentioned, as is true of most fairy tales. The story deals essentially with the oedipal conflicts between mother and daughter; with childhood; and finally with adolescence, placing major emphasis on what constitutes a good childhood, and what is needed to grow out of it.

  The Brothers Grimm’s story of “Snow White” begins: “Once upon a time, in the middle of winter when the snow flakes fell like feathers from the sky, a queen sat at a window which had a frame of black ebony. And as she was sewing while looking at the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle and three drops of blood fell on the snow. The red looked so beautiful on the white snow that she thought to herself, ‘I wish I had a ch
ild as white as snow, as red as the blood, and with hair as black as the wood of the window frame.’ Soon after she got a little daughter who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and had hair as black as ebony, and she was therefore called Snow White. And when the child had been born, the queen died. After a year had passed, the king took himself another wife.…”

  The story begins with Snow White’s mother pricking her finger so that three drops of red blood fall upon the snow. Here the problems the story sets out to solve are intimated: sexual innocence, whiteness, is contrasted with sexual desire, symbolized by the red blood. Fairy tales prepare the child to accept what is otherwise a most upsetting event: sexual bleeding, as in menstruation and later in intercourse when the hymen is broken. Listening to the first few sentences of “Snow White,” the child learns that a small amount of bleeding—three drops of blood (three being the number most closely associated in the unconscious with sex65)—is a precondition for conception, because only after this bleeding is the child born. Here, then, (sexual) bleeding is closely connected with a “happy” event; without detailed explanations the child learns that without bleeding no child—not even he—could have been born.

  Although we are told that her mother died when she was born, during her first years nothing bad happens to Snow White, despite the fact that her mother is replaced by a stepmother. The latter turns into the “typical” fairy-tale stepmother only after Snow White reaches the age of seven and starts to mature. Then the stepmother begins to feel threatened by Snow White and becomes jealous. The stepmother’s narcissism is demonstrated by her seeking reassurance about her beauty from the magic mirror long before Snow White’s beauty eclipses hers.