The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  Thanks to his wife, in their marital bed the hero of this story finds what had been missing in his life. To the child even more than to the adult, it seems clear that one can find something only where one lost it in the first place. On a subconscious level the story suggests that the fearless hero lost his ability to shudder so that he would not have to face the feelings which overcome him in the marital bed—that is, sexual emotions. But without these feelings, as he asserts all along, he is not a full person; he does not even want to marry as long as he is unable to shudder.

  The hero of this story could not shudder due to repression of all sexual feelings—as demonstrated by the fact that once sexual fear was restored to him, he could be happy. There is a subtlety in this story that is easy to overlook consciously, although it does not fail to make an unconscious impression. The story’s title tells us that the hero went forth to learn fear. But throughout the story reference is made mostly to shuddering; the hero states that it is an art that remains beyond his comprehension. Sexual anxiety is experienced most often in the form of repugnance; the sexual act makes the person who is anxious about it shudder, but does not usually arouse active fear.

  Whether or not the hearer of this story recognizes that it was sexual anxiety that led to the hero’s inability to shudder, that which finally makes him shudder suggests the irrational nature of some of our most pervasive anxieties. Because it is a fear of which only his wife is able to cure him at night in bed, this is a sufficient hint of the underlying nature of the anxiety.

  To the child, who is most fearful at night in his bed, but eventually comes to realize how irrational his anxieties have been, this tale offers on an overt level the idea that behind a boastful absence of anxiety may be hidden very immature, even childish fears which are denied coming to awareness.

  However the story is experienced, it tells that marital happiness requires that feelings must become accessible to a person which up to the time of marriage were not available to him. It further tells that it is the female partner who finally brings out the humanity in the male—because to feel fear is human; not being able to feel it is inhuman. This tale reveals, in fairy-story fashion, that in the last transition needed for achieving mature humanity, repressions must be undone.

  THE ANIMAL GROOM

  Much more popular and numerous are tales which—without any reference to repression which causes a negative attitude to sex—simply teach that for love, a radical change in previously held attitudes about sex is absolutely necessary. What must happen is expressed, as always in fairy tales, through a most impressive image: a beast is turned into a magnificent person. Different as these stories are, a common feature to them all is the sexual partner first experienced as an animal; hence, in the literature on fairy tales this cycle has become known as that of the “animal groom” or “animal husband.” (For the stories, at present somewhat less well known, where the future female partner is first an animal, the cycle is that of the “animal bride.”*) The best-known of these tales today is “Beauty and the Beast.”105 This motif is so popular worldwide that probably no other fairy-tale theme has so many variations.106

  There are three typical features to the stories of the animal-groom cycle. First, it remains unknown how and why the groom was changed into an animal; and this although most fairy tales provide such information. Second, it is a sorceress who did this deed; but she is not punished for her evil doings. Third, it is the father who causes the heroine to join the Beast; she does it because of her love for or obedience to her father; overtly the mother plays no significant role.

  Applying insights of depth psychology to these three facets of the stories, one begins to see the subtle meaning of what at first appear as serious shortcomings. We do not learn why the groom was forced to take on the form of an ugly animal, or why this harm inflicted on him remains unpunished. This suggests that the change from the “natural” or beautiful appearance took place in the unfathomable past when we did not know why something happened to us, even when it had the most far-reaching consequences. Shall we say that repression of sex occurred so early that it cannot be recalled? None of us can remember at what moment in our life sex first took on the form of something animal-like, something to be afraid of, to hide, to shun; it usually is tabooed much too early. We might recall that not long ago many middle-class parents told their children that when they got married, then was the time to understand what sex was all about. It is hardly surprising in the light of this that in “Beauty and the Beast” the former Beast tells Beauty: “A wicked fairy had condemned me to remain under that shape until a beautiful virgin should consent to marry me.” Only marriage made sex permissible, changed it from something animal-like into a bond sanctified by the sacrament of marriage.

  Since our mothers—or nurses—were our earliest educators, it is likely that they first tabooed sex in some fashion; hence it is a female who turns the future groom into an animal. At least in one story of the animal bride we are told that it is the child’s naughtiness which causes the change into an animal, and that it is the mother who does it. The Brothers Grimm’s “The Raven” begins: “Once upon a time there was a queen who had a daughter, so little that she was still a babe in arms. At one time the child was naughty, would not give peace, the mother might say what she liked. Then the mother got impatient, and as ravens flew around the castle, she opened the window and said, ‘I wish you were a raven and flew away, then I had some peace.’ No sooner had she said it, the child was changed into a raven.…” It does not seem farfetched to think that it was unmentionable, unacceptable, instinctual sexual behavior which the child would not stop and which so disturbed the mother that she subconsciously felt the little girl was like an animal and thus might as well become one. If the child had only fussed or cried, the story might have told us so, or the mother would not have been so ready to give up on the child.

  In animal-groom stories, by contrast, mothers are outwardly absent; they are present, however, in the guise of the sorceress who has caused the child to view sex as animal-like. Since nearly all parents taboo sex in some form or another, it is something so universal and, at least to some degree, unavoidable in the child’s education that there is no reason to punish the person who made sex appear animal-like. This is the reason the sorceress who turned the groom into an animal is not punished at the story’s end.

  It is the heroine’s affection and devotion that transform the beast. Only if she comes to love him truly will he be disenchanted. For the girl to love her male partner fully, she must be able to transfer to him her earlier, infantile attachment to her father. She can do this well if he, despite hesitation, agrees to her doing so—as the father in “Beauty and the Beast” does not at first want to accept her joining the Beast so that he may live, but permits himself to be convinced that she should do so. And the girl can transfer—and transform—this oedipal love for her father most freely and happily to her lover if, in sublimated fashion, it seems to offer a belated fulfillment of her childish love for her father, while at the same time it presents fulfillment of her mature love for an age-correct partner.

  Beauty joins the Beast only out of love for her father, but as her love matures, it changes its main object—although not without difficulty, as the story tells. In the end, through her love both father and husband regain their lives. If any further corroboration of this interpretation of the story’s meaning is necessary, it is provided by the detail of Beauty asking her father to bring her a rose, and he risking his life to comply with her wish. The wishing for a rose, the giving and receiving of it, are images of Beauty’s continuing love for her father, and his for her—a symbol that this love had been kept alive by both. It is this love that never stopped blooming which permits such an easy transfer to the Beast.

  Fairy tales speak to our unconscious mind and are experienced as telling us something important, irrespective of our sex and that of the story’s protagonist. Still it is worth remarking that in most Western fairy tales the beast
is male and can be disenchanted only by the love of a female. The nature of the beast changes from place to place according to the local situation. For example, in a Bantu (Kaffir) story a crocodile is restored to its human form by a maiden who licks its face.107 In other tales the beast appears in the form of a pig, lion, bear, ass, frog, snake, etc., which is restored to human form by the love of a maiden.* One must assume that the inventors of these tales believed that to achieve a happy union, it is the female who has to overcome her view of sex as loathsome and animal-like. There are also Western fairy tales in which the female has been bewitched into animal form, and then it is she who must be disenchanted by the love and determined courage of a male. But in practically all examples of animal brides there is nothing dangerous or repugnant in their animal form; on the contrary, they are lovely. “The Raven” has already been mentioned. In another Brothers Grimm tale, “The Drummer,” the girl has been changed into a swan. Thus, it seems that while fairy tales suggest that sex without love and devotion is animal-like, at least in the Western tradition its animal aspects are nonthreatening or even charming, as far as the female is concerned; only the male aspects of sex are beastly.

  “SNOW-WHITE AND ROSE-RED”

  While the animal groom is nearly always a disgusting or ferocious beast, in a few stories it is a tame animal, despite its savage nature. This is true in the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow-White and Rose-Red,” in which it is a friendly bear, not at all scary or disgusting. But these bestial qualities are not absent from the story—they are represented by an uncouth dwarf who has bewitched the prince into a bear. In this story both protagonists have been split into doubles: there are two rescuing maidens, Snow-White and Rose-Red, and there are the gentle bear and the obnoxious dwarf. The two girls, encouraged by their mother, befriend the bear; and they help the dwarf in its troubles despite its nastiness. They rescue the dwarf from great danger twice by cutting off part of its beard, and the third and last time by tearing off part of its coat. In this story the girls have to rescue the dwarf three times before the bear can kill it and become disenchanted. So while the animal groom is friendly and tame, the female(s) still have to exorcise its nasty nature in the form of the dwarf for an animal-like relation to become a human one. This story implies that there are both friendly and disgusting aspects to our natures, and when we rid ourselves of the latter, all can be happiness. At the story’s end the essential unity of the protagonists is restated by Snow-White’s marrying the prince, and Rose-Red his brother.

  The animal-groom stories convey that it is mainly the female who needs to change her attitude about sex from rejecting to embracing it, because as long as sex appears to her as ugly and animal-like, it remains animalistic in the male; i.e., he is not disenchanted. As long as one partner loathes sex, the other cannot enjoy it; as long as one partner views it as animal-like, the other remains partially an animal to himself and his partner.

  “THE FROG KING”

  Some fairy stories emphasize the long and difficult development which alone permits gaining control over what seems animalistic in us, while conversely other tales center on the shock of recognition when that which seemed animal suddenly reveals itself as the source of human happiness. The Brothers Grimm’s story “The Frog King” belongs to the latter category.*

  While it is not as ancient as some stories about animal grooms, a version of “The Frog King” is mentioned as early as the thirteenth century. In the Complaynt of Scotland in 1540 a similar tale is called “The Well of the World’s End.”111 A version of “The Frog King” printed by the Brothers Grimm in 1815 begins with three sisters. The two older ones are haughty and insensitive; only the youngest is ready to listen to the frog’s entreaties. In the Grimm version presently best known, the heroine is also the youngest of sisters, but it is not specified of how many.

  “The Frog King” begins with the youngest princess playing with her golden ball close by a well. The ball falls into it, and the girl is heartbroken. A frog appears, asking the princess what troubles her. It offers to restore the golden ball to her if she will accept it as the companion who will sit beside her, drink from her glass, eat from her plate, and sleep with her in her bed. She promises this, thinking to herself that no frog could ever be a person’s companion. The frog then brings her the golden ball. When it asks to be taken home with her, she rushes away and soon forgets all about the frog.

  But the next day when the royal court is eating dinner, the frog appears and asks to be let in. The princess closes the door on it. The king, who observes her distress, asks about its cause. She tells him, and he insists that her promises must be kept. So she opens the door to the frog, but still hesitates to lift it up to the table. Again the king tells her to keep her promise. The princess tries once more to renege when the frog asks to join her in bed, but the king now angrily tells her that those who have helped her when she was in need must not be despised. Once the frog joins the princess in her bed, she gets so disgusted that she hurls it against the wall, and then it turns into a prince. In most versions this happens after the frog has spent three nights with her. An original version is even more explicit: the princess must kiss the frog while it lies at her side in bed, and then it takes three weeks of sleeping together until the frog turns into a prince.112

  In this story the process of maturing is enormously speeded up. At the beginning the princess is a beautiful little girl carelessly playing with a ball. (We are told that not even the sun had seen anything as beautiful as this girl.) Everything happens because of the ball. It is doubly a symbol of perfection: as a sphere, and because it is made out of gold, the most precious material. The ball stands for an as yet undeveloped narcissistic psyche: it contains all potentials, none yet realized. When the ball falls into the deep, dark well, naïveté is lost and Pandora’s box is opened. The princess mourns the loss of her childish innocence as desperately as that of the ball. Only the ugly frog can restore perfection—the ball—to her out of the darkness into which the symbol of her psyche has fallen. Life has become ugly and complicated as it begins to reveal its darker sides.

  Still beholden to the pleasure principle, the girl makes promises in order to gain what she wants, with no thought of the consequences. But reality asserts itself. She tries to evade it by slamming the door on the frog. But now the superego in the form of the king comes into play: the more the princess tries to go against the frog’s demands, the more forcefully the king insists that she must keep her promises to the full. What started playfully becomes most serious: the princess must grow up as she is forced to accept the commitments she has made.

  The steps toward intimacy with the other are clearly sketched: first the girl is all alone as she plays with her ball. The frog begins conversing with her when it asks what troubles her; it plays with her as it returns the ball. Then it comes to visit, sits by her, eats with her, joins her in her room and finally in her bed. The closer the frog comes to the girl physically, the more disgusted and anxious she gets, particularly about being touched by it. The awakening to sex is not free of disgust or of anxiety, even anger. Anxiety turns into anger and hatred as the princess hurls the frog against the wall. By thus asserting herself and taking risks in doing so—as opposed to her previous trying to weasel out and then simply obeying her father’s commands—the princess transcends her anxiety, and hatred changes into love.

  In a way this story tells that to be able to love, a person first has to become able to feel; even if the feelings are negative, that is better than not feeling. In the beginning the princess is entirely self-centered; all her interest is in her ball. She has no feelings when she plans to go back on her promise to the frog, gives no thought as to what this may mean for it. The closer the frog comes to her physically and personally, the stronger her feelings become, but with this she becomes more a person. For a long stretch of development she obeys her father, but feels ever more strongly; then at the end she asserts her independence in going against his orders. As she thus becomes herself, s
o does the frog; it turns into a prince.

  On another level the story tells that we cannot expect our first erotic contacts to be pleasant, for they are much too difficult and fraught with anxiety. But if we continue, despite temporary repugnance, to permit the other to become ever more intimate, then at some moment we will experience a happy shock of recognition when complete closeness reveals sexuality’s true beauty. In one version of “The Frog King,” “after a night in bed, when awakening she saw by her side the handsomest gentleman.”113 Thus in this story the night spent together (and we may surmise what happened during this night) makes for the radically changed view of what has become the marital partner. The various other tales in which the timing of the events varies from the first night to three weeks all counsel patience: it takes time for closeness to turn into love.