The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  We do not know whether Robert Southey, who published the story for the first time in printed form in 1837 in his book The Doctor, was familiar with any of these older tales. But he made an important change, since for the first time the intruder jumped out of the window and her further fate remained unknown. His story ends: “Out the little woman jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall; or ran into the wood and was lost there; or found her way out of the wood, and was taken up by the constable for a vagrant as she was, I cannot tell. But the Three Bears never saw anything more of her.” There was immediate positive response to this published version of the story.

  The next alteration was made by Joseph Cundall, as he explains in a dedicatory note of 1849 to the Treasury of Pleasure Books for Young Children, which appeared in 1856: he made the intruder into a little girl and called her “Silver-Hair” (“Silver-Hair” or “Silver-Locks” became in 1889 “Golden-Hair” and finally, in 1904, “Goldilocks”). The tale attained great popularity only after two more important changes. In Mother Goose’s Fairy Tales of 1878, “Great Huge Bear,” “Middle Bear,” and “Little Small Wee Bear” became “Father Bear,” “Mother Bear,” and “Baby Bear”; and the heroine simply disappears out of the window—no longer is any bad ending for her anticipated or told about.

  With this spelled-out designation of the bears as forming a family, the story unconsciously came to relate much more closely to the oedipal situation. While it is acceptable that a tragedy should project destructive results of oedipal conflicts, a fairy tale cannot. The story could become popular only because the outcome was left to our imagination. The reason such uncertainty is acceptable is that the intruder is seen to interfere with the integration of the basic family constellation, and thus is threatening the family’s emotional security. From a stranger who invades privacy and takes property she changed into one who endangers the family’s emotional well-being and security. It is this psychological underpinning which explains the sudden great popularity of the story.

  The relative shortcomings of a rather recently invented fairy tale as compared with an ancient, many-times-retold folk tale appear when one views “Goldilocks” in relation to “Snow White,” from which some details were lifted and modified to improve the original “Three Bears.” In both tales a young girl, lost in the woods, finds an inviting little house that is temporarily deserted by its inhabitants. In “Goldilocks” we are not told how or why the girl got lost in the forest, why she needed to seek refuge, or where her home is. We do not know the overt or the more important underlying reasons for her being lost.* Thus, from its inception “Goldilocks” raises questions which remain unanswered, while the greatest merit of a fairy story is that it gives answers, fantastic though these may overtly be, even to questions of which we are unaware because they perturb us only in our unconscious.

  Despite the historical vicissitudes which changed the intruder from a vixen to a nasty old woman to a young, attractive girl, she is and remains an outsider who never becomes an insider. Maybe the reason that this tale became so immensely popular at the turn of the century was that more and more persons came to feel like outsiders. We are made to feel for the bears whose privacy had been invaded, and we feel for poor, beautiful, and charming Goldilocks, who comes from nowhere and has no place to go to. There are no villains in the story, although Baby Bear is robbed of his food and has his chair broken. Unlike the dwarfs, the bears are not taken with Goldilocks’ beauty. Nor are they moved by a tale of woe, as the dwarfs are on hearing Snow White’s story. But then Goldilocks has no story to tell; her entering is as enigmatic as her leaving.

  “Snow White” starts with a mother who deeply desires a daughter. But the idealized mother of infancy disappears, and is replaced by a jealous stepmother who not only ejects Snow White from her home, but threatens her very life. Sheer need to survive forces Snow White to risk the dangers of the wild forest, where she learns to make a go of life on her own. The oedipal jealousy between mother and daughter is sketched clearly enough for a child to comprehend intuitively the emotional conflicts and inner pressures underlying the plot.

  The contrast in “Goldilocks” is between the well-integrated family represented by the bears, and the outsider in search of himself. The happy but naïve bears have no identity problems: each knows exactly where he stands in relation to the other family members, a fact made more obvious by naming them Father, Mother, and Baby Bear. While each has his individuality, they function as a threesome. Goldilocks tries to find out who she is, what role is appropriate to her. Snow White is the older child struggling with a particular phase of her unresolved oedipal conflicts: the ambivalent relation to the mother. Goldilocks is the pre-adolescent who attempts to cope with all aspects of the oedipal situation.

  This is symbolized in the significant role the number three plays in the story. The three bears form a happy family, where things proceed in such unison that no sexual or oedipal problems exist for them. Each is happy in his place; each has his own distinct dish, chair, bed. Goldilocks, on her part, is utterly confused as to which of the three will fit her. But in her behavior the number three appears long before Goldilocks encounters the three dishes, beds, chairs—for three separate efforts mark her entrance into the bears’ dwelling. In the Southey rendering, the old woman “first … looked in at the window, and then she peeped in at the keyhole; and seeing nobody in the house, she lifted the latch.” Some later versions have Goldilocks do the same; in others she knocks three times at the door before entering.

  Peeping through window and keyhole before lifting the latch suggests an anxious and avid curiosity about what goes on behind the closed door. What child is not curious about what adults do behind their closed door and would not wish to find out? What child would not delight in the temporary absence of the parents, which permits a chance to pry into their secrets? With Goldilocks having replaced the old woman as the main figure of the story, it becomes much easier to associate with her behavior a child’s peeping to discover the mysteries of adult life.

  Three is a mystical and often a holy number, and was so long before the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It is the threesome of snake, Eve, and Adam which, according to the Bible, makes for carnal knowledge. In the unconscious, the number three stands for sex, because each sex has three visible sex characteristics: penis and the two testes in the male; vagina and the two breasts in the female.

  The number three stands in the unconscious for sex also in a quite different way, as it symbolizes the oedipal situation with its deep involvement of three persons with one another—relations which, as the story of “Snow White” among many others shows, are more than tinged with sexuality.

  The relation to the mother is the most important in every person’s life; more than any other it conditions our early personality development, affecting to a large degree what our outlook on life and ourselves will be—whether optimistic or pessimistic, for example.* But as far as the infant is concerned, no choice is involved: the mother and her attitude to him are a great “given.” So, of course, are the father and one’s siblings. (And so are the economic and social conditions of the family; but these influence the young child only through the impact on his parents and their behavior toward him.)

  The child begins to feel himself as a person, as a significant and meaningful partner in a human relation, when he begins to relate to the father. One becomes a person only as one defines oneself against another person. Since the mother is the first and for a time the only person in one’s life, some very rudimentary self-definition begins with defining oneself in regard to her. But because of his deep dependency on the mother, the child cannot move out into self-definition unless he can lean on some third person. It is a necessary step toward independence to learn “I can also lean, rely, on some person other than Mother” before one can believe that one can manage without leaning on somebody. After the child has established a close relationship to one other person, he can begin to feel that if he now prefer
s Mother to this other person, it is his decision—no longer something about which he feels he has no freedom.

  The number three is central in “Goldilocks”; it refers to sex, but not in terms of the sexual act. On the contrary, it relates to something that must precede mature sexuality by far: namely, finding out who one is biologically. Three also stands for the relations within the nuclear family, and efforts to ascertain where one fits in there. Thus, three symbolizes a search for who one is biologically (sexually), and who one is in relation to the most important persons in one’s life. Broadly put, three symbolizes the search for one’s personal and one’s social identity. From his visible sex characteristics and through his relations to his parents and siblings, the child must learn with whom he ought to identify as he grows up, and who is suitable to become his life’s companion, and with it also his sexual partner.

  This search for identity is clearly alluded to in “Goldilocks” with its three dishes, chairs, and beds. The most direct image for a need to search is that something which has been lost must be found. If the search is for ourselves, then the most convincing symbol for this is that we have gotten lost. In fairy tales, being lost in the forest symbolizes not a need to be found, but rather that one must find or discover oneself.

  Goldilocks’ embarkation on her voyage of self-discovery begins with her trying to peek into the bears’ house. This evokes associations to the child’s desire to find out the sexual secrets of adults in general, and of the parents in particular. This curiosity often has much more to do with the child’s need to gain knowledge about what is involved in his own sexuality than with a wish to know exactly what his parents are doing with each other in bed.

  Once inside the house, Goldilocks explores three different sets of objects—dishes of porridge, chairs, and beds—in regard to their suitability. She tries them always in the same sequence: first Father’s, then Mother’s, and finally the child’s. One might view this as suggesting that Goldilocks investigates both which sex role fits her best, and which of the family positions: that of father, mother, or child. Goldilocks’ search for her self and role in the family begins with eating, as every person’s first conscious experience is being fed, and his relating to another person begins around being fed by Mother. But Goldilocks’ choice of Father Bear’s dish suggests that she wishes to be like him (male), or that she desires most to relate to him, as does her choosing first his chair and bed, although her experience with the porridge and the chair should have taught her that what belongs to him is not fitting for her. It is hard to come closer to a girl’s oedipal wishes than by suggesting that Goldilocks tries to share bed and board with a father figure.

  But, as the story tells, whether it is a wish to be male or to sleep in Father’s bed, this does not work. The reasons are that Father’s porridge is “too hot” and his chair “too hard.” So, disappointed that a male identity, or intimacy with Father, is not available to her, or is too threatening—one might get burned—and too hard to manage, Goldilocks, like every girl experiencing deep oedipal disappointment in the father, turns back to the original relation to the mother. But this does not work out either. What had once been a warm relationship is now found too cold for comfort (the porridge is too cold). And while Mother’s chair is not too hard to sit in, it is found to be too soft; maybe it envelops as Mother envelops the infant, and Goldilocks rightly does not wish to return to that.

  As for the beds, Goldilocks finds Father Bear’s bed too high at the head, and Mother Bear’s too high at the foot, showing that both their roles and intimacy with them are out of reach for Goldilocks. Only Baby Bear’s things fit her “just right.” So nothing seems left to her but the role of the child. But not quite: as Goldilocks sits in Baby Bear’s chair, which we are told “was neither too hard, nor too soft, but just right, the bottom of the chair came out, and down came hers, plump upon the ground.” So, obviously, she has outgrown the small child’s chair. The bottom indeed dropped out of her life because she could not find success in being or relating to, first, Father and, second, Mother; but it did so only when after these failures Goldilocks reluctantly tried to return to an infantile, babylike existence. For Goldilocks there is no happy ending—from her failure to find what is fitting for her, she awakes as if from a bad dream, and runs away.

  Goldilocks’ story illustrates the meaning of the difficult choice the child must master: is he to be like father, like mother, or like child? To decide who he wants to be in respect to these basic human positions is indeed a tremendous psychological battle, an ordeal every human being has to undergo. But while the child is not yet ready to be in Father’s or Mother’s place, just accepting that of the child is no solution—this is why the three tests are not sufficient. For growth, realization that one is still a child must be coupled with another recognition: that one has to become oneself, something different from either parent, or from being merely their child.

  In folk fairy tales, as distinct from an invented one such as “Goldilocks,” things do not end after three efforts. At the end of “Goldilocks” no resolution of the identity problem is projected, no self-discovery, no becoming a new and independent person. Still, Goldilocks’ experience in the bears’ house at least teaches her that regression to infantilism offers no escape from the difficulties of growing up. Becoming oneself, the story suggests, is a process begun by sorting out what is involved in one’s relations to one’s parents.

  The bears in “Goldilocks” do not provide help; on the contrary, they are appalled and critical that a little girl should try to fit herself into Papa’s bed and try to take Mama’s place. The opposite happens in “Snow White”: the dwarfs, far from finding fault with Snow White for tasting from their seven plates and glasses and trying seven beds, admire the little heroine. While the bears awaken Goldilocks with their dismay, the dwarfs make sure that Snow White’s sleep remains undisturbed, even if they have to inconvenience themselves. Much as the dwarfs are taken with Snow White’s beauty, they tell her right from the start that if she wants to remain with them, she has to accept obligations: if she wants to become a person, she has to act maturely. The dwarfs warn her of the dangers which growing up may entail, but even when Snow White goes against their advice, they repeatedly help her out of her troubles.

  Goldilocks receives no help with her growing-up problems from the bears, so all she can do is to run away, scared by her own daring, defeated in her efforts to find herself. Running away from a difficult developmental task hardly encourages a child to pursue the hard labor of solving, one at a time, the problems which growing up presents to him. Further, Goldilocks’ story does not end with any promise of future happiness awaiting those who have mastered their oedipal situation as a child, and again as an adolescent when these old difficulties recur, now to be solved in more mature ways. “Goldilocks” is sadly lacking in this respect, since only great hopes for the future provide a child with the courage which enables him to go on struggling until he achieves selfhood.

  Despite the shortcomings of “Goldilocks” when compared to other folk fairy tales, it has considerable merit, otherwise it would not have gained such popularity. The story deals with the difficulties in achieving sexual identity, and the problems created by oedipal desires and efforts to gain first one and then the other parent’s undivided love.

  Because “Goldilocks” is an ambiguous story, much depends on how it is told. The parent who, for his own reasons, delights in the idea that children should be scared off from peeping into adults’ secrets will tell it with a different emphasis than a parent who has empathy with a child’s desire to do so. One person will be in sympathy with Goldilocks’ difficulties in making her peace with being a girl; another will not. Some people will feel more deeply for Goldilocks’ frustration when she must accept that she is still a child, but also that she must grow out of childhood, though she may wish not to do so.

  The story’s ambiguity permits telling it with emphasis on sibling rivalry—its other main motif. Here mu
ch depends on how, for example, the incident with the broken chair is told. It can be told with empathy for Goldilocks’ shock when the chair which seemed so fitting suddenly breaks down; or in the opposite way, with glee either about Goldilocks’ pratfall or the fact that she broke Baby Bear’s chair.

  When the story is told from the perspective of Baby Bear, Goldilocks is the intruder who suddenly comes from nowhere, as did the next younger sibling, and usurps—or tries to usurp—a place in a family which, to Baby Bear, was complete without her. This nasty intruder takes away his food, ruins his chair, even tries to drive him out of his bed—and, by extension, to take away his place in his parents’ love. Then it is understandable that it is not the parents’ but Baby Bear’s voice that “was so sharp, and so shrill, that it awakened her at once. Up she started … and ran to the window.” It is Baby Bear—the child—who wants to get rid of the newcomer, wants her to go back where she came from, never to see “anything more of her.” Thus the story gives imaginative body to the fears and wishes a child has about an imagined or real new arrival in the family.

  If, seen from the viewpoint of Goldilocks, Baby Bear is the sibling, then we can empathize with her wish to take away his food, destroy his toy (the chair), and occupy his bed so that he will no longer have any place in the family. Interpreted thus, the story becomes again a cautionary tale, now warning against giving in to sibling rivalry to the degree that one acts destructively against the sibling’s possessions. If one does this, one might find oneself left out in the cold, with nowhere to go.