Jean Cocteau’s classic film La Belle et la Bêete (1946), based on the story of Beauty and the Beast, itself inspired an opera by Philip Glass (La Belle et la Bêete, 1994). Stephen Sondheim’s Tony Award-winning musical Into the Woods (1987) weaves together the stories of “Cinderella,” “Little Red-Cap,” and “Rapunzel,” among others, and follows them through to consequences ignored in the original tales.
Comments & Questions
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Grimm’s Fairy Tales through a variety of voices and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
COMMENTS
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW
Of wild and weird stories, such as take hold with intense strength on the imagination of children, and have an indescribable charm for such as have outgrown other childish things, the collection of the Brothers Grimm is probably the richest extant.
—January 1861
NEW YORK TIMES
It was the brothers Jacob Ludwig and Wilhelm Karl Grimm who, in 1812, first published their “Kinder und Hausmaörchen,” after having devoted 13 years to the collecting of these stories. From the lips of people living in Hesse and Hanau, word by word the stories were taken down, the wife of a cowherd in the village of Neiderzwehrn, near Cassel, “who kept a firm hold on all sagas,” being the principal contributor. It is to the brothers Grimm that the study of folk lore owes its origin, and the fidelity of the brothers Grimm in their work is unmistakable. To them it was not the bringing together of stories for the amusement of children, but the “storing up materials for students of folk lore.”
—June 1, 1885
OSCAR FAY ADAMS
There is something very attractive to most people in the thought of literary companionship extending over a long period of years, or for a lifetime even, and the names thus linked together have a double claim upon our remembrance. Who ever thinks of Beaumont without Fletcher, of Erckmann apart from Chaôtrian, of William Howitt and not at the same time of Mary Howitt his wife?
It is thus we think of Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm and of Wilhelm Karl Grimm his brother. It is not easy, so intimately were they associated in their life-work, to always think of them as two men with separate and distinct individualities; it is rather of one delightful personality that we speak when we name “the brothers Grimm. . . . ”
Of their own part in [the Kinder- und Hausmärchen], that of putting these tales into permanent form, the brothers tell us:—
“Our first aim in collecting these stories has been exactness and truth. We have added nothing of our own, have embellished no incident or feature of the story, but have given its substance just as we received it. It will of course be understood that the mode of telling and carrying out particular details is due to us, but we have striven to retain everything that we knew to be characteristic, that in this respect also we might leave the collection the many-sidedness of nature.”
It is the simple style in which the brothers cast these tales that has invested them with so great a charm, the homely directness which has lost nothing in its translation from the peasant dialects in which they were first heard, to the polished High German tongue.
But the Grimms had something more in mind than simply the collection of a number of curious peasant nursery tales. They believed that in the study of the history of nations the humbler spheres of life must not be disregarded. Before their day history concerned itself very little with the life of the common people. Their existence was not considered to have any bearing upon the nation’s life and it is for this reason that we search in vain in the histories written previous to this century for any glimpses of the actual life of the people who form the major part of any nation. Modern history in the main is written from a different stand-point and does not disdain to show us something of the life of the yeoman as well as of that of the rulers and nobles. To this change in the manner of writing history the Grimms were most important contributors, since they were practically the first to recognize the importance of considering the humbler walks of life as an aid in the study of history.
—from Dear Old Story-Tellers (1889)
W. H. AUDEN
Many deplorable features of modern life, irrationalism, nationalism, idolization of mass-feeling and mass-opinion, may be traced back to the Romantic reaction against the Enlightenment and its Polite Learning; but that same reaction is also responsible for the work of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm who, with their successors, made the fairy story a part of general education, a deed which few will regret.
—from his introduction to
Tales of Grimm and Andersen (1952)
QUESTIONS
1. Would you say these tales worked more to socialize, even indoctrinate, the young, or instead to liberate them from the mores of their milieu—at least in their imaginations? Is the tales’ tendency to increase or decrease conformity?
2. Is the cumulative effect of these tales to “keep women in their place”?
3. Is there one virtue, or perhaps two, that more than any other help the hero and heroines of these tales to prevail?
4. Could it be true that some of these tales are disguised parables of incest between parents and children, of matricide, of parricide, and other abysmal longings?
5. What is it above all about these tales that makes them delight or at least engross children?
For Further Reading
BIOGRAPHIES
Hettinga, Donald R. The Brothers Grimm: Two Lives, One Legacy. New York: Clarion Books, 2001. For young people; readable and well done, with chronology and illustrations.
Michaelis-Jena, Ruth. The Brothers Grimm. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970. Somewhat uncritical but readable illustrated biography with details about the Grimm family.
BIO-CRITICISM
Zipes, Jack. The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World. New York: Routledge, 1988. Good overview of the brothers’ life and work.
CRITICISM
Antonsen, Elmer H., ed. The Grimm Brothers and the Germanic Past. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins, 1990. Articles on their philological and linguistic work.
Bettelheim, Bruno. 1976. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. The classic psychoanalytic work on fairy tales.
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. Grimms’ Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987. Useful criticism on social issues, including presentation of female and Jewish characters.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Pan theon, 1949. Classic Jungian interpretation of the Grimms’ tales and other works of legend and fantasy.
Ellis, John M. One Fairy Story Too Many: The Brothers Grimm and Their Tales. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Skep tical analysis of the Grimms’ use of sources.
Kamenetsky, Christa. The Brothers Grimm and Their Critics: Folktales and the Quest for Meaning. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992. Rigorous, readable, and comprehensive account of the Grimms, the tales, and the criticism.
McGlathery, James M., ed. The Brothers Grimm and Folktale. Ur bana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Articles on current controversies by distinguished critics and scholars.
———. Grimms’ Fairy Tales: A History of Criticism on a Popular Classic. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993. Useful summaries of critical theories and commentary on famous tales.
Opie, Iona, and Peter Opie. The Classic Fairy Tales. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Earliest English texts and history of some famous tales, with beautiful illustrations.
Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. Origina
lly published in Russian, 1928. Translated by Laurence Scott. Second revised edition. Edited by Louis A Wagner. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Important formalist and structuralist classification of narrative patterns.
Tatar, Maria. The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. Interesting study of backgrounds and interpretations of tales focusing on sex, violence, monsters, and other “hard facts.”
Thompson, Stith. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955-1958. Scholarly study of motifs in six volumes.
Tolkien, J. R. R. “On Fairy-Stories.” In The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine, 1966. Argument on the significance of fairy tales by a creator of fantasy.
Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. London: Chatto and Windus, 1994. Interesting study focusing on the treatment and role of the feminine in fairy tales.
Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. New York: Routledge, 1991. Essays on fairy tales by the Grimms and others as part of the discourse on socialization of children.
———. Fairy Tale as Myth, Myth as Fairy Tale. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. Consideration of the origins of tales, their ideological function in culture, and some contemporary American versions.
Alphabetical Listing of the Fairy Tales
Allerleirauh (Many Furs) 252
Ball of Crystal, The 497
Bearskin 337
Blue Light, The 359
Boots Made of Buffalo-Leather, The 504
Briar Rose 167
Brother Lustig 272
Catherine and Frederick 215
Cinderella 86
Clever Alice 118
Clever Grethel, The 265
Donkey Cabbages, The 380
Dwarfs, The 293
Evil Spirit and His Grandmother, The 375
Experienced Huntsman, The 330
Faithful John 29
Feather Bird, The 160
Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful 366
Fir-Apple 213
Fisherman and His Wife, The 73
Fox and the Geese, The 286
Frog Prince, The 15
Giant with the Three Golden Hairs, The 107
Glass Coffin, The 436
Godfather Death, The 147
Godfather, The 146
Going Out A-Travelling 416
Gold Children, The 267
Golden Bird, The 150
Golden Goose, The 248
Golden Key, The 508
Goose Girl, The 350
Goose-Girl at the Well, The 459
Handless Maiden, The 113
Hans in Luck 281
Hans the Hedgehog 341
Hansel and Grethel 56
Hare and the Hedgehog, The 476
Herr Korbes 144
How Six Traveled Through the World 239
Idle Spinner, The 378
Iron Stove, The 407
Jew Among Thorns, The 346
Jorinde and Joringel 210
Jungfrau Maleen 499
Juniper Tree, The 198
King Thrush-Beard 171
Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn, The 187
Lazy Harry 441
Little Ass, The 417
Little Brother and Sister, The 43
Little Elves, The 138
Little Farmer, The 206
Little Lamb and the Little Fish, The 412
Little One-Eye, Little Two-Eyes, and Little Three-Eyes 385
Little Red Riding Hood 101
Man of Iron, The 400
Master Cobblersawl 449
Master-Thief, The 488
Musicians of Bremen, The 35
Nix in the Pond, The 452
Old Griffin, The 420
Old Hildebrand 309
Old Mother Frost 96
Old Rinkrank 495
Old Woman in the Wood, The 398
Peasant’s Wise Daughter, The 297
Pink, The 261
Poor Boy in the Grave, The 468
Presents of the Little Folk, The 457
Professor Know-All 335
Queen Bee, The 243
Rapunzel 66
Raven, The 305
Riddle, The 93
Robber and His Sons, The 482
Robber Bridegroom, The 141
Roland 195
Rumpelstiltskin 192
Seven Crows, The 99
Shoes Which Were Danced to Pieces, The 370
Shreds, The 435
Simeli Mountain 414
Singing Bone, The 105
Six Servants, The 392
Six Swans, The 163
Snow-White and Rose-Red 425
Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs 178
Spindle, the Shuttle, and the Needle, The 479
Spirit in the Bottle, The 318
Star Dollars 434
Straw, the Coal, and the Bean, The 85
Strong Hans 443
Table, the Ass, and the Stick, The 121
Tale of One Who Traveled to Learn 18
Three Army Surgeons, The 363
Three Birds, The 300
Three Brothers, The 373
Three Feathers, The 245
Three Little Men in the Wood, The 49
Three Luck-Children, The 257
Three Snake-Leaves, The 63
Three Spinsters, The 54
Thumbling 131
Travels of Thumbling, The 156
True Bride, The 470
Turnip, The 431
Twelve Brothers, The 38
Twelve Hunters, The 175
Two Brothers, The 221
Two Wanderers, The 321
Valiant Little Tailor, The (Seven at One Blow) 78
Valiant Tailor, The 357
Water of Life, The 313
Water-Sprite, The 271
Wedding of Mrs. Fox, The 136
White Snake, The 70
Wolf and the Fox, The 259
Wolf and the Seven Little Goats, The 26
Young Giant, The 287
a All excerpts from the Grimms’ prefaces are from Maria Tatar, The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), Appendix B, pp. 203-222; see “For Further Reading”.
b Official who maintains church property.
c One who drives a wagon.
d Bowling.
e Soup.
f Part of the membrane enclosing the fetus left over the baby’s head at birth, once thought to bring good luck.
g Carpenter.
h One who turns objects on a lathe in order to shape them.
i Person, fellow.
j A stolen child secretly put in the place of another.
k Face.
l Stiffened strips used in a corset.
m Representation of notes of birdsong.
n Deer.
o Made of all kinds of fur (German).
p Five-petaled flower, pale red or pink in color.
q Leftover material from the tree bark—“tanbark”—used in tanning hides for leather.
r Dark red gems.
s Bullets.
t Our Father (Latin)—the Lord’s Prayer.
u Small mammal with quills, like a porcupine.
v Coins.
w One who buys and slaughters worn-out horses and sells the flesh for dog-food, etc.
x Mythical beast with head, wings, and claws of an eagle and hindquarters of a lion.
y A cobbler’s awl is a small, pointed tool for making holes in leather; thus the name is appropriate for a cobbler, or shoemaker.
z Reference to the Bible, Matthew 7:3: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (King James Version).
aa Water spirit.
ab A coin.
ac Maiden, young girl.
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Brothers Grimm, Grimm's Fairy Tales (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
Grimm's Fairy Tales (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Page 63