Friday, January 7, 2011

Fairy Tale Fridays - Can You Tell A Fairy Tale By The Ending?

As I've begun reading fairy tales, I'm trying to read with an eye toward what things they might have in common, perhaps a moral to the story.  This week I began reading from Grimms Complete Fairy Tales, the compilation that my son and his girlfriend gave me for Christmas.

I started with the first story in the book, not because it was the first story but because it was The Frog Prince" and I collect frogs. When a princess agrees to become a friend to a frog if he will rescue her beloved golden ball, she doesn't think there will be any way for him to follow her and hold her to her promise. But eventually he does make his way to the castle.  When the princess confides to the King why the frog is there, the King insists that the princess make good on her promise.  He forces her to let the frog up onto the table and to share her dinner.  But when she is forced to take the frog up to her bedroom, she is repulsed by the idea of sleeping with the frog and throws him at the wall.  Before he hits the wall, though, he turns into a prince and then marries the princess.  What?  He marries the girl who broke her promise, whined about keeping it and then tried to injure him?  Okay, I know some cases where this really has happened but I don't think of that as much of a moral.
Some of the stories don't even seem to have endings.  For example, The Golden Key tells the story of a poor boy who discovers a key and an iron chest.  After much trouble, he finds the lock, fits the key in and turns it and then..."we must wait until he is quite unlocked it...and then we shall learn what wonderful things were lying in that box."  Except we don't.  That is the ending of the story.  In The Old Beggar Woman an old beggar woman (surprise!) who is always exceedingly grateful for any kindness shown her, gets too near a blaze and her skirt catches on fire.  The "friendly rogue of a boy" who invited her to join him by the fire could not find any water but still might have "wept all the water in his body out of his eyes" to put her out.  But the story ends without the reader knowing whether or not he did that.

Just when I began to believe that there really were no morals to the stories, I read Sharing The Joy and The Sorrow, about a man who abused his wife but was punished by the magistrates, and The Nail, about a man who was in such a hurry to get somewhere that he didn't put a nail in his horse's shoe which eventually caused the horse to go lame and his leg to break causing the man to be very late.

The funniest story I read this week was Fair Katrinelje and Pif-Paf-Poltrie.  A young man is made to ask permission of an entire family before he will be allowed to marry the youngest daughter.  After he has gotten all of the permissions, he asks her about her dowry.  She has almost none but that's okay because he has almost nothing to offer in return.

11 comments:

  1. Lisa, those are definitely some funny stories. What a treat to read them! I especially like The Frog Prince and The Nail. And by the by, I collect frogs, too! How funny!

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  2. Funny when reading the stories as a child I never thought they had a moral to the story. I just thought they were fairy tales to show life had a magical twist.

    I prefer Hans Christian Anderson to the Brothers Grim.

    Have you ever read the YA novel, The True Story of Hansel and Gretel? What a great twist on that story. I loved it.

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  3. It doesn't seem like there is any stock ending to the fairy tales you have been reading, and it almost seems like some of them cut off abruptly right before the ending as well. I sometimes like stories that force you to draw your own conclusions, but I am not sure if this tactic within the structure of the fairy tales would annoy me or please me!

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  4. The interesting thing about fairy tales is how they change with the times. Each generations tweaks the fairy tales to reflect the times.

    I believe that Little Red Riding Hood originally ended with her and her grandmother getting eaten by the wolf.

    It seems horrible to us, but if you lived 500 years ago in a European forest, getting eaten by wolves was a real threat.

    http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

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  5. These sound great...I have to crack open the book I brought home. I hope to have something to contribute on the 21st!! Next week I'll be in San Diego seeing my new Marine Son!!

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  6. My husband and I used to read these tales out loud when we were first dating. We would do it before bedtime. We have the Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm Collection edited by Jack Zipes. Fond memories. I haven't read them in years.

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  7. I found out something new about you - that you collect frogs! Cool!

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  8. my sis and i had a similar book growing up but only liked a few of the stories...now i see why! did you read this book straight through or was it a stop and start?

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  9. I also never understood why the frog turns into a prince after getting chucked at the wall, nor why he would even want to be with a spoiled princess who didn't even want to repay him... But that's how some fairy tales are. Some are just stories, with no actual moral or meaning behind them (or even logic...) and others are heavy with meaning and importance. I actually like that about them.

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  10. I remember really enjoying The Grimms Fairy Tales because of how different they were from Disney ones. Especially with all the blood, murder and violence in there, quite grim (suitable to the name, I suppose).

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  11. Some of Grimm's tales are my favorites, despite the blood and gore at times!

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