It's always fun to read things that make you angry. One of those things is, consistently, Lisa Belkin's Motherlode blog. Oh, Lisa Belkin. It is strange that our last names be so similar when we are so different.
Here, Lisa Belkin wonders whether fairytales are bad for kids. You know - bad depictions of gender roles and women in general, absent mothers, scary, racist, unrealistic. And some of her readers agree: "I think these fairytales are terrible - the mother dies, the stepmother is evil, people are locked in their rooms etc" and "I thought that infusing them early with the outdated and dangerous idea that Prince Charming would come along and fix everything would encourage them to become passive adults who didn’t know how to take responsibility for their own lives" and best of all, "the treatment of princess is beyond pathetic!!"
Did I just have a better reading of fairytales than these people? I grew up on the non-sanitized, gross, awful, sad versions, by the way, because my parents basically would just see, "oh, a book in English that looks vaguely familiar, and there are pictures inside. Look at the pictures, they're so pretty/colorful. Here ya go, little girl!" And I think the non-sanitized versions are better for kids - yeah, it's not so happy that Ariel turns into sea foam, but it makes for a better story, and actually presents a more moving depiction of love - in the original, the Little Mermaid is told by her sisters that the only way she can regain her fins and not lose her soul to the sea witch is for her to kill the Prince (who has willingly married some other princess), but the Little Mermaid refused and stabbed herself. Great story. Did it teach me that women should kill themselves for men? Uh, no. It's just a damn good drama. And that's what fairytales are supposed to be - rich in detail and fantasy, exciting and grotesque and frightening and enticing all at once. Like J.M. Barrie described Neverland (in the original!):
"When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights... In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a little dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose in it and spread, black shadows moved about in them, the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win."
That's a man with a (scarily) good grasp on childhood culture.
Maybe parents - at least Lisa Belkin - are way too preoccupied with motifs of beauty and "who gets who" in these stories. Which I think says something about the parents, not the fairytales. Are we really going to obsess about what our daughters learn about beauty from when they are
four? God knows they will learn to obsess about that on their own.
Anyway, here's a few fairytales that I will be passing down to my own kids:
1.
The Town Musicians of Bremen - the best fairytale ever. hands down. forever.
2.
Beauty and the Beast - I don't know how anyone could object to this one,
especially the gory original.
3.
Hansel and Gretel - too creepy to deny!
4.
The Little Mermaid - so tragic, so gothic.
5.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin - there's no moral to this story (except... pay the exterminator?). it's just scary as fuck.
6.
Puss in Boots - cats! boots! what's not to like? God, I fucking love cats.
7.
The Ugly Duckling - the complete version is gorgeous and heart-wrenching and just, "I'm a swan! Fuck yeah!"
8.
Thumbelina - cute, mature themes. how's that for a juxtaposition.
9.
The Red Shoes - hello, traumatizing! but what an original story.
10.
The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids - one tough mama. quit your complainin' about absent mothers.
11.
Mother Hulda - preachy, but creepy and impeccably detailed.
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