The Uses of Enchantment

by Bruno Bettelheim

  The wide distribution of the motif of “The Three Languages” and the many different versions in which it exists speak against a historical nucleus of this tale. On the other hand, it makes good sense that a story which begins in Switzerland stresses the importance of learning three different languages, and of the need to integrate them into a higher unit, since four language groups form the population of Switzerland: German, French, Italian, and Rhaeto-Romanic. Since one of these languages—in all likelihood German—was the native tongue of the hero, it makes good sense that he is sent to three different places and there learns other languages. What the Swiss listener to the story may overtly comprehend as the necessity of persons speaking different languages to form a higher unity—Switzerland—also refers on a covert level to the need for inner integration of the diverse tendencies residing within oneself.

  35. For the custom of blowing a feather into the air to reach a decision on where to go, see Bolte and Polivka, op. cit., vol. 2.

  36. Tolkien, op. cit.

  37. See, for example, the story of Joey in Bruno Bettelheim, The Empty Fortress (New York: Free Press, 1967).

  38. Jean Piaget, The Origins of Intelligence in Children (New York: International Universities Press, 1952) and The Construction of Reality in the Child (New York: Basic Books, 1954).

  39. Watty Piper, The Little Engine That Could (Eau Claire, Wisconsin: E. M. Hale, 1954).

  40. A. A. Milne’s poem “Disobedience” in When We Were Very Young (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924).

  41. The name of the horse Falada suggests an ancient origin of the tale. It is derived from the name of Roland’s horse, which in the Chanson de Roland is called Valantin, Valantis, Valatin, etc.

  Even more ancient is the motif of the talking horse. Tacitus reported that among the Germans horses were presumed to be able to predict the future and were used as oracles. Among the Scandinavian nations, the horse is viewed in similar ways.

  42. For “Roswal and Lillian,” see Briggs, op. cit.

  The motif of the true bride being supplanted by an evil usurper who is finally unmasked and punished, but not before the true bride has undergone severe trials which test her character, is worldwide. (See P. Arfert, Das Motiv von der unterschobenen Braut in der internationalen Erzählungsliteratur [Rostock: Dissertation, 1897].) Details vary both within a culture and between countries, as is true for fairy tales in general, since local features and customs are introduced into the basic motif.

  43. A few lines from the same cycle testify once more to the formative impact of fairy tales on poets. Heine, recollecting fairy tales, writes:

  My old nurse’s tales, how sweetly they ring,

  How dear are the thoughts they inspire!

  and:

  When the song I recall, the remembrance too

  Of my dear old nurse never ceases.

  I see once more her swarthy face,

  With all its wrinkles and creases.

  In the district of Münster she was born,

  And knew, in all their glory,

  Many popular songs and wondrous tales,

  And many a wild ghost story.

  The Poems of Heine (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1916).

  44. For these other versions of “The Goose Girl,” as for additional information on all other stories of the Brothers Grimm, see Bolte and Polivka, op. cit.

  45. Tolkien, op. cit.

  46. Mary J. Collier and Eugene L. Gaier, “Adult Reactions to Preferred Childhood Stories,” Child Development, vol. 29 (1958).

  47. Chesterton, op. cit.

  Maurice Maeterlinck, The Blue Bird (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1911).

  48. For the Turkish fairy tale, particularly the story of Iskender, see August Nitschke, Die Bedrohung (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1972). This book discusses various other aspects of fairy tales, particularly how the threat is part of the striving for self-realization and with it for freedom; and the role of the helpful friend.

  49.

  Vom Vater hab’ich die Statur,

  Des Lebens ernstes Führen,

  Vom Mütterchen die Frohnatur

  Und Lust zu fabulieren.

  Goethe, Zahme Xenien, vi.

  50. The manner in which Goethe’s mother told fairy tales to her son is described by Bettina von Arnim in Goethe’s Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde (Jena: Diederichs, 1906).

  51. “Wer vieles bringt, wird manchem etwas bringen”—Goethe, Faust.

  52. Charles Perrault, Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, avec des Moralitez (Paris, 1697). The first English translation which appeared in print was by Robert Samber, Histories or Tales of Past Times (London, 1729). The best known of these tales have been reprinted in Iona and Peter Opie, op. cit. They can also be found in Andrew Lang’s fairy books—“Little Red Riding Hood” is included among the tales of The Blue Fairy Book, op. cit.

  53. There is a considerable literature dealing with Perrault and his fairy tales. The most useful work—comparable to what Bolte and Polivka did for the Brothers Grimm’s tales—is Marc Soriano, Les Contes de Perrault (Paris: Gallimard, 1968).

  Andrew Lang, Perrault’s Popular Tales (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1888). There he writes: “If Little Red Riding Hood ended, in all variants, where it ends in Perrault, we might dismiss it, with the remark that the machinery of the story is derived from ‘the time when beasts spoke,’ or were believed to be capable of speaking. But it is well known that in the German form, Little Red Cap (Brothers Grimm 26), the tale by no means ends with the triumph of the wolf. Little Red Cap and her grandmother are resuscitated, ‘the wolf it was that died.’ This may either have been the original ending, omitted by Perrault because it was too wildly impossible for the nurseries of the time of Louis XIV, or children may have insisted on having the story ‘turn out well.’ In either case the German Märchen preserves one of the most widely spread mythical incidents in the world—the reappearance of living people out of the monster that has devoured them.”

  54. Two of these French versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” are published in Melusine, vol. 3 (1886–7) and vol. 6 (1892–3).

  55. Ibid.

  56. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (New York: New Directions, 1937). T. S. Eliot, Introduction to Nightwood, ibid.

  57. Fairy Tales Told Again, illustrated by Gustave Doré (London: Cassel, Petter and Galpin, 1872). The illustration is reprinted in Opie and Opie, op. cit.

  58. For alternate versions of “Little Red Cap,” see Bolte and Polivka, op. cit.

  59. Gertrude Crampton, Tootle the Engine (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1946), a Little Golden Book.

  60. For the various Jack stories, including the different versions of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” see Briggs, op. cit.

  61. For the various myths forming the cycle which begins with Tantalus, centers on Oedipus, and ends with The Seven Against Thebes and the death of Antigone, see Schwab, op. cit.

  62. For the various versions of “Snow White,” see Bolte and Polivka, op. cit.

  63. The discussion of “Snow White” is based on its rendering by the Brothers Grimm.

  64. “The Young Slave” is the Eighth Diversion of the Second Day of Basile’s Pentamerone, which was first printed in 1636 (The Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile [London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1932]).

  65. For a discussion of why in the unconscious the number three often stands for sex, see p. 219 ff.

  66. Dwarfs and their meaning in folklore is discussed in the article “Zwerge und Riesen,” and in many other articles found in Hans Bächtold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927–42). It also contains interesting articles on fairy tales and on fairytale motifs.

  67. Anne Sexton, Transformations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971).

  68. For the first printed version of “The Three Bears,” see Briggs, op. cit.

  69. Erik H. Erikson, Identity, Youth and Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968).

  70. For Perrault’s “La Belle au bois dormant,” see Perraul
t, op. cit. English translations of “The Sleeping Beauty” are in Lang, The Blue Fairy Book, and Opie and Opie, op. cit. For the Brothers Grimm’s tale “Dornröschen,” see Brothers Grimm, op. cit.

  71. Basile, op. cit. “Sun, Moon and Talia” is the Fifth Diversion of the Fifth Day of the Pentamerone.

  72. For the precursors of “The Sleeping Beauty,” see Bolte and Polivka, op. cit., and Soriano, op. cit.

  73. For the fact that “Cinderella” is the best known of all fairy tales, see Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary of Folklore (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1950). Also Opie and Opie, op. cit.

  For its being the best loved of fairy stories, see Collier and Gaier, op. cit.

  74. For the earliest Chinese story of the “Cinderella” type, see Arthur Waley, “Chinese Cinderella Story,” Folk-Lore, vol. 58 (1947).

  75. For the history of footwear, including sandals and slippers, see R. T. Wilcox, The Mode of Footwear (New York, 1948).

  For an even more detailed discussion, including the edict of Diocletian, see E. Jaefert, Skomod och skotillverkning fran medeltiden vara dagar (Stockholm, 1938).

  76. For the origin and meaning of “Aschenbrödel,” and for many other details of the story, see Bolte and Polivka, op. cit., and Anna B. Rooth, The Cinderella Cycle (Lund: Gleerup, 1951).

  77. Barnes, op. cit.

  78. B. Rubenstein, “The Meaning of the Cinderella Story in the Development of a Little Girl,” American Imago, vol. 12 (1955).

  79. “La Gatta Cenerentola” is the Sixth Diversion of the First Day of Basile’s Pentamerone, op. cit.

  80. The idea of letting the lid of a chest fall on a person’s neck to kill him is extremely rare, although it appears in one of the Brothers Grimm’s stories, “The Juniper Tree,” in which an evil stepmother thus kills her stepson. It probably is of historical origin. Gregory (St. Gregorius) of Tours in his History of the Franks (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916) tells that Queen Fredegund (who died in 597) tried to kill her own daughter Rigundis in this manner, but the daughter was saved by servants rushing to her aid. The reason Queen Fredegund tried to kill her daughter was that Rigundis asserted that she should be in her mother’s place because she was “better”—that is, born as a king’s daughter, while her mother had started life as a chambermaid. Thus, oedipal arrogance of a daughter—“I am better suited than my mother for her place”—leads to the mother’s oedipal revenge by trying to eliminate the daughter who wished to replace her.

  81. “La mala matrè” in A. de Nino, Usi e costumi abruzzesi, vol. 3: Fiabe (Florence, 1883–7).

  82. Various tales in the center of which stands the Cinderella motif are discussed in Marian R. Cox, Cinderella: Three Hundred and Forty-five Variants (London: David Nutt, 1893).

  83. This can be illustrated by a famous error which occurred during the early days of psychoanalysis. Freud, on the basis of what his female patients told him while in psychoanalysis—their dreams, free associations, recollections—concluded that as small children they all had been seduced by their fathers, and that this was the cause of their neuroses. Only when patients whose early life histories were well known to him had similar memories—although he knew that no such seduction had occurred in these cases—did Freud realize that paternal seduction could not possibly be as frequent as he had been led to believe. It then became apparent to him—and since then it has been corroborated in innumerable instances—that what his female patients recollected was not something that had happened, but what they wished would have happened. As young girls, during their oedipal period, they had desired that their fathers would be deeply in love with them and so wish to have them for wives, or at least lovers. They had wished it so passionately that they vividly imagined that it was so. Later, when they recalled the content of these fantasies, it was with such intensity of feeling that they were convinced that this could only be because of events which actually had taken place. They themselves had done nothing to provoke the paternal seduction, so they claimed and believed; it had been all their fathers’ doing. In short, they had been as innocent as Cinderella.

  After Freud had realized that these memories of seduction did not refer to things that had happened in reality, but only to fantasies, and therefore helped his patients to probe more deeply into their unconscious, then it became apparent that not only had a wish been taken for its having been fulfilled, but that the patients when little girls had been far from innocent. They had not only desired to be seduced and imagined that this was so, but also had tried to seduce their fathers in their childish ways—for example, by displaying themselves or in many other ways courting Father’s love. (Sigmund Freud, “An Autobiographical Study,” New Introductory Lectures to Psychoanalysis,” etc., op. cit., vols. 20, 22.)

  84. For example in “Cap o’ Rushes,” Briggs, op. cit.

  85. Perrault’s “Cinderella” is reprinted in Opie and Opie, op. cit. Unfortunately, as in nearly all other English translations, the verses setting forth the story’s moral are not included.

  For the Brothers Grimm’s “Aschenputtel,” see Grimm, op. cit.

  86. “Rashin Coatie,” Briggs, op. cit.

  87. Stith Thompson, Motif Index …, op. cit., and The Folk Tale (New York: Dryden Press, 1946).

  88. For the ritual meaning of ashes, and for the role of ashes in purifications and in mourning, see the article “Ashes” in James Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New York: Scribner, 1910). For the meaning and uses of ashes in folklore, and its role in fairy tales, see the article “Asche” in Bächtold-Stäubli, op. cit.

  89. “Rashin Coatie,” or a tale much like it, is mentioned in the Complaynt of Scotland (1540), edited by Murray (1872).

  90. This Egyptian tale is reported in René Basset, Contes populaires d’Afrique (Paris: Guilmoto, 1903).

  91. Erik H. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle, Psychological Issues, vol. 1 (1959) (New York: International Universities Press, 1959).

  92. In an Icelandic “Cinderella” story, the dead mother appears to the mistreated heroine in a dream and provides her with a magic object which keeps her going until a prince finds her shoe, etc. Jon Arnason, Folk Tales of Iceland (Leipzig, 1862–4) and Icelandic Folktales and Legends (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).

  93. For the various tasks asked of Cinderella, see Rooth, op. cit.

  94. Soriano, op. cit.

  95. This ridiculing of the Cinderella story he just told is highlighted by what Soriano calls “the bitter irony” of the second morality with which Perrault concludes his tale. In it he says that while it is advantageous to possess intelligence, courage, and other good qualities, these do not amount to much (“ce seront choses vaines”) if one does not have godfathers or godmothers to make them count.

  96. Cox, op. cit.

  97. Bruno Bettelheim, Symbolic Wounds (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1954).

  98. The story of Rhodope is told by Strabo in The Geography of Strabo, Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1932).

  99. Rooth, op. cit.

  100. Raymond de Loy Jameson, Three Lectures on Chinese Folklore (Peiping: Publications of the College of Chinese Studies, 1932).

  Aigremont, “Fuss- und Schuh-Symbolik und Erotik,” Anthropopyteia, vol. 5 (Leipzig, 1909).

  101. “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams,” from the poem “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” in William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems (New York: Macmillan, 1956).

  102. One might rightly be worried, for example, if a child consciously recognized that the golden slipper could be a symbol for the vagina, as one would be concerned if he consciously understood the sexual content of the well-known nursery rhyme:

  Cock a doodle do!

  My dame has lost her shoe;

  My master’s lost his fiddle stick;

  And they don’t know what to do!

  And this although the slang meaning of the first word is by now quite well known even to children. In the rhyme the shoe is used in the same symbolic
meaning as in “Cinderella.” If the child understood what this nursery rhyme is all about, he would indeed “not know what to do!” And the same would be true if he understood—as no child does—all the hidden meanings of “Cinderella,” only some of which I have tried to spell out, and even those only to a certain degree.

  103. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle, op. cit.; Identity, Youth, and Crisis, op. cit.

  104. “Cinderella” stories in which a ring and not a slipper leads to her recognition are (among others) “Maria Intaulata” and “Maria Intauradda,” both in Archivio per lo Studio delle Tradizioni Populari, vol. 2 (Palermo, 1882), and “Les Souliers,” in Auguste Dozon, Contes Albanais (Paris, 1881).

  105. “Beauty and the Beast” is now best known in the version of Madame Leprince de Beaumont, first translated into English in The Young Misses Magazine in 1761. It is reprinted in Opie and Opie, op. cit.

  106. The wide distribution of the motif of the animal groom is discussed in Lutz Röhrich, Märchen und Wirklichkeit (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1974).

  107. For the Kaffir story, see Dictionary of Folklore, op. cit., and G. M. Teal, Kaffir (London: Folk Society, 1886).

  108. Die Märchen der Weltliteratur, Malaiische Märchen, Paul Hambruch, editor (Jena: Diederichs, 1922).

  109. Leo Frobenius, Atlantis: Volksmärchen und Volksdichtungen aus Afrika (Jena: Diederichs, 1921–8), vol. 10.

  110. Opie and Opie, op. cit.

  111. “The Well of the World’s End” in Briggs, op. cit.

  112. For the original version of “The Frog Prince” which the Brothers Grimm failed to publish, see Joseph Lefftz, Märchen der Brüder Grimm: Urfassung (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1927).

  113. Briggs, op. cit.

  114. Sexton, op. cit.

  115. For “Cupid and Psyche,” see Erich Neumann, Amor and Psyche, op. cit. For the many versions of the story, see Ernst Tegethoff, Studien zum Märchentypus von Amor und Psyche (Bonn: Schroeder, 1922).

  A good enumeration of fairy tales of this motif is presented in the discussion of the Brothers Grimm’s tale “The Singing, Hopping Lark” in Bolte and Polivka, op. cit.