The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  The parents’ long wait for a child which finally arrives conveys that there is no need to hurry toward sex; it loses none of its rewards if one has to wait a long time for it. The good fairies and their wishes at the christening actually have little to do with the plot, except to contrast with the curse of the fairy who feels slighted. This may be seen from the fact that the number of fairies varies from country to country, from three to eight to thirteen.* The good fairies’ gifts of endowment to the child also differ in the different versions, while the curse of the evil one is always the same: the girl (in the Brothers Grimm’s story when she is fifteen) will prick her finger on a distaff (of a spinning wheel) and die. The last good fairy is able to change this threat of death into a hundred years’ sleep. The message is similar to that of “Snow White”: what may seem like a period of deathlike passivity at the end of childhood is nothing but a time of quiet growth and preparation, from which the person will awaken mature, ready for sexual union. It must be stressed that in fairy tales this union is as much one of the minds and souls of two partners as it is one of sexual fulfillment.

  In times past, fifteen was often the age at which menstruation began. The thirteen fairies in the Brothers Grimm’s story are reminiscent of the thirteen lunar months into which the year was once, in ancient times, divided. While this symbolism may be lost on those not familiar with the lunar year, it is well known that menstruation typically occurs with the twenty-eight-day frequency of lunar months, and not with the twelve months which our year is divided into. Thus, the number of twelve good fairies plus a thirteenth evil one indicates symbolically that the fatal “curse” refers to menstruation.

  It is very much to the point that the king, the male, does not understand the necessity of menstruation and tries to prevent his daughter from experiencing the fatal bleeding. The queen, in all versions of the story, seems unconcerned with the prediction of the angry fairy. In any case, she knows better than to try to prevent it. The curse centers on the distaff, a word which in English has come to stand for female in general. While the same is not true for the French (Perrault) or German (Brothers Grimm) word for distaff, until fairly recently spinning and weaving were considered as characteristically “woman’s” occupations.

  All the king’s painstaking efforts to forestall the “curse” of the malicious fairy fail. Removing all the distaffs from the kingdom cannot prevent the girl’s fateful bleeding once she reaches puberty, at fifteen, as the evil fairy predicted. Whatever precautions a father takes, when the daughter is ripe for it, puberty will set in. The temporary absence of both parents when this event occurs symbolizes all parents’ incapacity to protect their child against the various growing-up crises which every human being has to undergo.

  As she becomes an adolescent, the girl explores the formerly inaccessible areas of existence, as represented by the hidden chamber where an old woman is spinning. At this point the story abounds in Freudian symbolism. As she approaches the fateful place, the girl ascends a circular staircase; in dreams such staircases typically stand for sexual experiences. At the top of this staircase she finds a small door and in its lock a key. As she turns the key, the door “springs open” and the girl enters a small room in which an old woman spins. A small locked room often stands in dreams for the female sexual organs; turning a key in a lock often symbolizes intercourse.

  Seeing the old woman spinning, the girl asks: “What kind of thing is this that jumps about so funnily?” It does not take much imagination to see the possible sexual connotations in the distaff; but as soon as the girl touches it, she pricks her finger, and falls into sleep.

  The main associations this tale arouses in the child’s unconscious are to menstruation rather than intercourse. In common language, referring also to its Biblical origin, menstruation is often called the “curse”; and it is a female’s—the fairy’s—curse that causes the bleeding. Second, the age at which this curse is to become effective is about the age at which, in past times, menstruation most frequently set in. Finally, the bleeding comes about through an encounter with an old woman, not a man; and according to the Bible, the curse is inherited by woman from woman.

  Bleeding, as in menstruation, is for the young girl (and for the young man too, in a different manner) an overwhelming experience if she is not emotionally ready for it. Overcome by the experience of sudden bleeding, the princess falls into a long sleep, protected against all suitors—i.e., premature sexual encounters—by an impenetrable wall of thorns. While the most familiar version stresses in the name “The Sleeping Beauty” the long sleep of the heroine, the titles of other variants give prominence to the protective wall, such as the English “Briar Rose.”*

  Many princes try to reach Sleeping Beauty before her time of maturing is over; all these precocious suitors perish in the thorns. This is a warning to child and parents that sexual arousal before mind and body are ready for it is very destructive. But when Sleeping Beauty has finally gained both physical and emotional maturity and is ready for love, and with it for sex and marriage, then that which had seemed impenetrable gives way. The wall of thorns suddenly turns into a wall of big, beautiful flowers, which opens to let the prince enter. The implied message is the same as in many other fairy tales: don’t worry and don’t try to hurry things—when the time is ripe, the impossible problem will be solved, as if all by itself.

  The long sleep of the beautiful maiden has also other connotations. Whether it is Snow White in her glass coffin or Sleeping Beauty on her bed, the adolescent dream of everlasting youth and perfection is just that: a dream. The alteration of the original curse, which threatened death, to one of prolonged sleep suggests that the two are not all that different. If we do not want to change and develop, then we might as well remain in a deathlike sleep. During their sleep the heroines’ beauty is a frigid one; theirs is the isolation of narcissism. In such self-involvement which excludes the rest of the world there is no suffering, but also no knowledge to be gained, no feelings to be experienced.

  Any transition from one stage of development to the next is fraught with dangers; those of puberty are symbolized by the shedding of blood on touching the distaff. A natural reaction to the threat of having to grow up is to withdraw from a world and life which impose such difficulties. Narcissistic withdrawal is a tempting reaction to the stresses of adolescence, but, the story warns, it leads to a dangerous, deathlike existence when it is embraced as an escape from the vagaries of life. The entire world then becomes dead to the person; this is the symbolic meaning, and warning, of the deathlike sleep into which everybody surrounding Sleeping Beauty falls. The world becomes alive only to the person who herself awakens to it. Only relating positively to the other “awakens” us from the danger of sleeping away our life. The kiss of the prince breaks the spell of narcissism and awakens a womanhood which up to then has remained undeveloped. Only if the maiden grows into woman can life go on.

  The harmonious meeting of prince and princess, their awakening to each other, is a symbol of what maturity implies: not just harmony within oneself, but also with the other. It depends on the listener whether the arrival of the prince at the right time is interpreted as the event which causes sexual awakening or the birth of a higher ego; the child probably comprehends both these meanings.

  Awakening from a long sleep will be understood differently by the child depending on his age. The younger child will see in it mainly an awakening to his selfhood, the achievement of concordance between what had been his inner chaotic tendencies—that is, as an attaining of inner harmony between his id, ego, and superego.

  After the child has experienced this meaning until he reaches puberty, in adolescence he will gain additional understanding of the same fairy tale. Then it becomes also an image of achieving harmony with the other, as represented by a person of the other sex, so that the two, as told at the end of “The Sleeping Beauty,” may live enjoy ably together till their end. This, the most desirable goal of life, seems to be the most significant c
ommunication which fairy stories transmit to the older child. It is symbolized by an ending in which the prince and princess find each other “and they lived happily until their death.” Only after one has attained inner harmony within oneself can one hope to find it in relations with others. A preconscious understanding of the connection between the two stages is gained by the child through his own developmental experiences.

  The story of Sleeping Beauty impresses every child that a traumatic event—such as the girl’s bleeding at the beginning of puberty, and later, in first intercourse—does have the happiest consequences. The story implants the idea that such events must be taken very seriously, but that one need not be afraid of them. The “curse” is a blessing in disguise.

  One more look at the earliest known form of the motif of “The Sleeping Beauty” in Perceforest some six hundred years ago: it is Venus, the goddess of love, who arranges for the sleeping girl’s awakening by having her baby suck the splinter out of her finger, and the same happens in Basile’s story. Full self-fulfillment of the female does not come with menstruation. Female completeness is not achieved when falling in love, not even in intercourse, nor in childbirth, since the heroines in Perceforest and in Basile’s story sleep all through it. These are necessary steps on the way to ultimate maturity; but complete selfhood comes only with having given life, and with nurturing the one whom one has brought into being: with the baby sucking from the mother’s body. Thus, these stories enumerate experiences which pertain only to the female; she must undergo them all before she reaches the summit of femininity.

  It is the infant’s sucking the splinter out from under the mother’s nail which brings her back to life—a symbol that her child is not just the passive recipient of what the mother gives to him, but that he also actively renders her great service. Her nurturing permits him to do so; but it is his nursing from her which reawakens her to life—a being reborn, which, as always in fairy tales, symbolizes the achievement of a higher mental state. Thus, the fairy tale tells parent and child alike that the infant not only receives from his mother, but also gives to her. While she gives him life, he adds a new dimension to her life. The self-involvement which was suggested by the heroine’s long-lasting sleep comes to an end as she gives to the infant and he, by taking from her, restores her to the highest level of existence: a mutuality in which the one who receives life also gives life.

  In “The Sleeping Beauty” this is further emphasized because not only she but her entire world—her parents, all inhabitants of the castle—returns to life the moment she does. If we are insensitive to the world, the world ceases to exist for us. When Sleeping Beauty fell asleep, so did the world for her. The world awakens anew as a child is nurtured into it, because only in this way can humanity continue to exist.

  This symbolism got lost in the story’s later forms which end with the awakening of Sleeping Beauty, and with it her world, to a new life. Even in the shortened form in which the tale came down to us, in which Sleeping Beauty is awakened by the kiss of the prince, we feel—without it being spelled out as in the more ancient versions—that she is the incarnation of perfect femininity.

  *By that time it was already an old motif, as there are French and Catalan renderings from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries which served as Basile’s models, if he did not rely on folk tales of his own time as yet unknown to us.72

  *Since Talia’s children are called the sun and moon, there is the possibility that Basile was influenced by the story of Leto, one of the many loves of Zeus, who bore him Apollo and Artemis, the sun god and the moon goddess. If so, we may assume that, as Hera was jealous of those whom Zeus loved, the queen in this tale is a distant memory of Hera and her jealousies.

  Most fairy tales of the Western world have at some time included Christian elements, so much so that an account of those underlying Christian meanings would make another book. In this tale Talia, who does not know that she has had intercourse or that she has conceived, has done so without pleasure and without sin. This she has in common with the Virgin Mary, as she, like the Virgin, in such manner becomes the mother of God(s).

  *Perrault, speaking to the courtiers he had in mind as his readers, made fun of the fairy stories he told. For example, he specifies that the queen-ogress wishes to have the children served her “with Sauce Robert.” He thus introduces details which detract from the fairy-story character, as when he tells that on her awakening Sleeping Beauty’s dress was recognized as old-fashioned: “she was dressed as my great-grandmother, and had a point band peeping over a high collar; she looked not a bit the less beautiful and charming for all that.” As if fairy-tale heroes would not live in a world where fashions do not change.

  Such remarks, in which Perrault indiscriminately mixes petty rationality with fairy-story fantasy, grossly detract from his work. The dress detail, for example, destroys that mythical, allegorical, and psychological time which is suggested by the hundred years of sleep by making it a specific chronological time. It makes it all frivolous—not like the legends of saints who awake from a hundred years of sleep, recognize how the world has changed, and immediately turn into dust. By such details, which were meant to amuse, Perrault destroyed the feeling of timelessness that is an important element in the effectiveness of fairy tales.

  *In the Anciennes Chroniques de Perceforest of the fourteenth century (printed for the first time in France in 1528) three goddesses are invited to the celebration of the birth of Zellandine. Lucina confers health on her; Themis, angry because there is no knife beside her plate, utters the curse that while spinning Zellandine will pull a thread off the distaff and push it into her finger; she will have to sleep until it is pulled out. Venus, the third goddess, promises to arrange for the rescue to happen. In Perrault, there are seven invited fairies and one uninvited, who utters the well-known curse. In the Brothers Grimm’s story there are twelve benevolent fairies and one malevolent one.

  *The German name of girl and tale, “Dornröschen,” emphasizes both the hedge of thorns and the (hedge) rose. The diminutive form of “rose” in the German name stresses the girl’s immaturity, which must be protected by the wall of thorns.

  “CINDERELLA”

  By all accounts, “Cinderella” is the best-known fairy tale, and probably also the best-liked.73 It is quite an old story; when first written down in China during the ninth century A.D., it already had a history.74 The unrivaled tiny foot size as a mark of extraordinary virtue, distinction, and beauty, and the slipper made of precious material are facets which point to an Eastern, if not necessarily Chinese, origin.* The modern hearer does not connect sexual attractiveness and beauty in general with extreme smallness of the foot, as the ancient Chinese did, in accordance with their practice of binding women’s feet.

  “Cinderella,” as we know it, is experienced as a story about the agonies and hopes which form the essential content of sibling rivalry; and about the degraded heroine winning out over her siblings who abused her. Long before Perrault gave “Cinderella” the form in which it is now widely known, “having to live among the ashes” was a symbol of being debased in comparison to one’s siblings, irrespective of sex. In Germany, for example, there were stories in which such an ash-boy later becomes king, which parallels Cinderella’s fate. “Aschenputtel” is the title of the Brothers Grimm’s version of the tale. The term originally designated a lowly, dirty kitchenmaid who must tend to the fireplace ashes.

  There are many examples in the German language of how being forced to dwell among the ashes was a symbol not just of degradation, but also of sibling rivalry, and of the sibling who finally surpasses the brother or brothers who have debased him. Martin Luther in his Table Talks speaks about Cain as the God-forsaken evildoer who is powerful, while pious Abel is forced to be his ash-brother (Aschebrüdel), a mere nothing, subject to Cain; in one of Luther’s sermons he says that Esau was forced into the role of Jacob’s ash-brother.76 Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau are Biblical examples of one brother being suppres
sed or destroyed by the other.

  The fairy tale replaces sibling relations with relations between step-siblings—perhaps a device to explain and make acceptable an animosity which one wishes would not exist among true siblings. Although sibling rivalry is universal and “natural” in the sense that it is the negative consequence of being a sibling, this same relation also generates equally as much positive feeling between siblings, highlighted in fairy tales such as “Brother and Sister.”

  No other fairy tale renders so well as the “Cinderella” stories the inner experiences of the young child in the throes of sibling rivalry, when he feels hopelessly outclassed by his brothers and sisters. Cinderella is pushed down and degraded by her stepsisters; her interests are sacrificed to theirs by her (step)mother; she is expected to do the dirtiest work and although she performs it well, she receives no credit for it; only more is demanded of her. This is how the child feels when devastated by the miseries of sibling rivalry. Exaggerated though Cinderella’s tribulations and degradations may seem to the adult, the child carried away by sibling rivalry feels, “That’s me; that’s how they mistreat me, or would want to; that’s how little they think of me.” And there are moments—often long time periods—when for inner reasons a child feels this way even when his position among his siblings may seem to give him no cause for it.

  When a story corresponds to how the child feels deep down—as no realistic narrative is likely to do—it attains an emotional quality of “truth” for the child. The events of “Cinderella” offer him vivid images that give body to his overwhelming but nevertheless often vague and nondescript emotions; so these episodes seem more convincing to him than his life experiences.

  The term “sibling rivalry” refers to a most complex constellation of feelings and their causes. With extremely rare exceptions, the emotions aroused in the person subject to sibling rivalry are far out of proportion to what his real situation with his sisters and brothers would justify, seen objectively. While all children at times suffer greatly from sibling rivalry, parents seldom sacrifice one of their children to the others, nor do they condone the other children’s persecuting one of them. Difficult as objective judgments are for the young child—nearly impossible when his emotions are aroused—even he in his more rational moments “knows” that he is not treated as badly as Cinderella. But the child often feels mistreated, despite all his “knowledge” to the contrary. That is why he believes in the inherent truth of “Cinderella,” and then he also comes to believe in her eventual deliverance and victory. From her triumph he gains the exaggerated hopes for his future which he needs to counteract the extreme misery he experiences when ravaged by sibling rivalry.