DAVID BLAMIRES 33

The challenge of fairytales to

literary studies
For well over a hundred and fifty years fairytaleshave been a fertile source of
inspiration to British artists. When David Hockney published his thuzy-nine
etchings to Six Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm (London, Petersburg
Press, 1970),he knew himself to be following in the footsteps of such dis-
tinguished illustrators as George Cruikshank, Walter Crane, Arthur Rack-
ham and Edmund Dulac. Hockney speaks engagingly about the tales:
Id always enjoyed the fairy tales very much and thought Id like to illustrate
them . . .Theyre fascinating, the little stories, told in a very very simple, direct
straightforward language and style; it was this simplicity that attracted me.
They cover quite a strange range of experience, from the magical to the moral.
My choice of stories was occasionally influenced by how I might illustrate
them. For example, Old Rinkrank was included because the story begins with
the sentence, A King built a glass mountain. I loved the idea of finding how
you draw a glass mountain; it was a little graphic problem. I included other
stories simply because they were strange. The Boy Who Left Home to Learn Fear is
such a strange Gothic story; Id no idea how to illustrate it. I only knew I
wanted to do it.l
The enthusiasm of artists for fairytales, whether those of the Grimms, Per-
rault, Andersen or any others, does not, however, seem to be shared by liter-
ary critics. That admirable series The Critical Idiom (published by Methuen)
has slim volumes on almost every literary topic you can think of except fairy-
tales. They are a neglected area of study in most British secondary schools,
colleges and universities. Perhaps this is because they are usually thought of
as being simply for children and therefore to be put away, along with other
childish things, when one reaches adulthood. This is a sad deprivation.
Fairytales embody some of the deepest and finest elements in world lit-
erature. While being universal in theme and geographical distribution, they
have their own local dress. A fairytale underlies such vastly different literary
genres as King Leur,2 the Old English epic poem of Bemulf3 and the Old Tes-
tament apocryphal Book of Tobit.4 I am not saying, however, that it is impor-
tant to study fairytales because they help us to understand such mas-
terpieces more fully. No: fairytaleshave a claim to be studied in their own
right. A proper consideration of them would, for one thing, be an important
contribution to the appreciation of the range of literary forms.
I get the impression from many students that they are happiest when
dealing with works that fit broadly into the realist tradition. Fantasy and
symbolism, even for those whose leisure reading is Tolkien and science fic-
34 Critical Quarterly, vol. 21, no, 3

tion, are not easy modes to deal with from a critical or analytical viewpoint.
Indeed, such leisure readers often resent being asked to look at their
favourites in a critical way at all. The real difficulty about fairytales, though,
from the academic angle, is that they are concerned with feeling - not the
refinements of psychological portrayal on which academics enjoy shar-
pening their intellects and sensibilities, but primal, elemental feelings. The
fairytale demands the emotional involvement of the reader - something
which a child readily gives, but the average teacher or lecturer is reluctant to
do. The fairytale expects us to identlfy with the protagonist of the story and
to experience from the inside the unfolding of the plot, the dangers and
delights, and ultimately the reward that the hero or heroine unfailingly is
granted.5 If we omit this aspect of the fairytale from our reading, we shall
have missed its essence, no matter how sophisticatedour analyses of struc-
ture and language may be.
But I have already gone too far without making sufficiently clear what I
understand by the term fairytale. There are many different kinds of
folktale, of which the falrytale is only one. All these tales come originally
from oral tradition and are anonymous as far as authorship goes. Folklorists
like to have such tales straight from the tellers mouth with as little inter-
ference as possible from those who transfer them to print. They tend to look
down on theGrimms for touching up and improving on their transcriptions,
while the versions of the Neapolitan Giambattista Basile (c. 1575-1632),
Charles Perrault (1628-1703), Madame dAulnoy (c. 1650-1705) and the
German Johann Karl Augustus Mus%us(1735-87), all of whom have been
translated and adapted many times into English, in varying measure betray
too obvious literary pretensions to be regarded as straightforward folktales.
Whatever the folklorists strictures, these collections are fascinating in the
literary history of the fairytale for their demonstration of the diverse ways in
which folktalematerial has been shaped and adapted to different literary cir-
cumstances and ideals.
The first edition of the Kinder- und Hausmurchen of the Brothers Grimm
(Childrens and Household Tales) appeared in 1812-15. Wilhelm Grimm
worked at the collection throughout the rest of his life, adding more tales,
cutting out others, in particular making stylistic improvements. In its final
form (the seventh edition, 1857)the collection contains over two hundred
stories, of which about half are fairytales proper. The rest consist of animal
tales, jocular and religious tales, exempla, nursery tales, aetiological tales
(ie., tales which explain how something came to be as it is). The fairytale
(GermanMiirchen) is a carefully structured fiction in which magic in some
shape or form is taken utterly for granted.
The English term fairytale is actually rather misleading, since fairytales
 The challenge of fairytales to literary studies 35

do not necessarily have fairies in them. The word is taken from the French
conte defies and entered the English language only in the eighteenth cen-
t u r y . 6 It does not come from Perrault, whose collection is now the most fam-
ous and widespread of English trhslations of French fairytales, for he
simply c d e d his storiesconfes du temps pass6 or tales of past times. It derives
rather from his younger contemporary, Madame dAulnoy, who was far
more popular than Perrault during the eighteenth century in England. Four
of her twenty-odd contcs des fies appeared in translation as early as 1699,
whereas Perrault had to wait until 1729 before his small book, originally
published in 1697, was rendered into English. All of Madame dAulnoys
tales do contain fairies, both good and bad, and thus merit their appellation.
Despite the fact that magical events and objects are not always specifically
associated with fairies in many other tales, the name of fairytale has stuck in
English.
Although the Grimms mentioned children as the audience of the tales in
the title they gave their collection, it is certainly not the case that all fairytales
were designed as amusement (and instruction) for children alone. Nursery
tales such as The Three Bears7 or Little Louse and Little F l e a 8 obviously appeal
primarily to small children, but the majority of folktales(including fairytales)
in their original oral form would be told to anyone who wished to listen, both
adults and children alike. The Grimms tale of The Valiant Little Tailor, for
example, was adapted by them from a tale in a collection of all manner of
entertaining stories and anecdotes put together by Martin Montanus (1559,
which was certainly not designed for children. Similarly, Bades Pen-
tamerone (1634-6) presupposes an adult readership in the extent of its liter-
ary and contemporary allusion, its rhetorical language and its attitude
towards sexuality. The tales of Madame dAulnoy, which dominated the
eighteenth century vogue for fairytales, obviously appealed greatly in court
circles and provided a good deal of instruction for young ladies in terms of
the social and moral norms to which they were expected to adhere. In addi-
tion their very length would militate against their appeal to younger chil-
dren. When we come to Mus%us,some of whose tales were translated into
English by that powerful advocate of German literature and culture,
ThomasCarlyle, there can be no doubt whatever that he intended hisPopular
Tales of the Germans (1782-6) for a highly sophisticated adult public.
Musauss literary ambitions, his satirical sense of humour and his extra-
ordinarily adept range of language and vocabulary have not endeared him
to folklorists or devotees of the Grimms fairytales, with the result that he is
nowadays unjustly neglected. The trouble is that most people do not realize
how much their view of what a true fairytale should be has been dictated by
the pattern set by the Grimms and, to a lesser degree, by Perrault.
36 Critical Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 3

Foreign translators are more easily in a position to adapt fairytales than

publishers who continue to reprint tales in their original language. The ear-
liest English translator of the Grimms,Edgar T a y l ~ rdid
, ~ not hesitate to alter
the sense or wording of the original when he considered something
unsuitable for British children. Other translators followed suit. The history
of English versions of Grimm is thus a fascinating study in social manners
and literary taste, for every generation has selected, adapted and
bowdlerised in its own way, being perhaps particularly concerned about the
incidence of horror, cruelty and violence that is supposed to be the peculiar
mark of the Grimmscollection. Nonetheless, today the Grimms remain
popular as never before, and there is a healthy return to and respect for the
original wording of the German texts. In formulating attitudes towards
fairytales, then, it is important to know what kind of text or translation you
are dealing with. Even Ladybird books have their interest as illustrating
what some people nowadays think to be safe for small children, but it would
be unwise to use them as a standard for judging fairytales in general.
Despite all these cautions I propose still to regard the tales of the Grimms
and Perrault as a norm. Their universal popularity in the Enghsh-speaking
world over a period of 150and 250 years respectively entitles them to such a
position. In structure and language they are basically simple, but though
simple they are never trivial or superficial. On the contrary, the stories they
tell deal with matters of such profound and elemental importance that they
can easily hold their own beside the rival claims of TV serials and cartoons.
Fairytales are concerned with questions that affect every child and every
adult - the processes of maturation, relationships with father and mother,
jealousy, wickedness, determining priorities, how to cope with fear and
anxiety, natural justice, sufferingand death. Such themes are not, of course,
treated as problems encountered by a particular individual and investigated
with the subtlety or detail of the modem psychological novel, but they are
presented as typical of humankind.
As is frequently the case with medieval romances and epics, the hero or
heroine is a representativetype, a prince or a peasants son, a miller or a sol-
dier, a princess or a goose-girl. Where the protagonist is actually named, the
name is generally a common one. In this way the fairytale allows the max-
imum identification of the reader or listener with the protagonist. The qual-
ities of the characters are generalised and determined by their function
within the framework of the plot. Thus, the fairytale articulates social, com-
munity values rather than finely differentiated individual values. Snow-
White is not a morally different character from the Sleeping Beauty: both are
supremely beautiful, both suffer from the jealousy of displaced mother-
figures, both are rescued by intrepid princes; they are distinguished not by
 The challenge of fairytales to literary studies 37

innate qualities, but by the deeds which happen to them. In general faj.tale
heroines and heroes embody such qualities as kindness and generosity,
patience, resourcefulness and determination.
A common modem criticism of them is that the sex-roles are narrow and
stereotyped. The young hero is shown as active, brave, strong, ready to take
on any and every kind of adventure, whereas the heroine is always merely
beautiful and depicted as passive, the victim of evil forces, who has to wait to
be rescued by a handsome prince. There is, of course, an element of truth in
such a contention, since traditional fairytales reflect the values of a pre-
industrial society where social and sexual roles are more closely defined
than is the case in our highly differentiated, pluralistic Western society. But
the matter is not as black and white as it may at first appear. In the story of
Hansel and Gretel, to choose one very well known example, it is Gretel who
rescuesHanse1from the machinations of the witch by using her wits to push
the latter into the oven. Again, the Grimms tale of Fitchers Bird, which has
much in common with Perraults Bluebeard, has a resourceful heroine who
manages to rescue her sisters and herself very well from the clutches of a ter-
nfying wizard. Such examples could easily be multiplied. It needs always to
be remembered that no single fairytale can be taken as representative of the
immense variety that exists in any one country. Moreover, different tales
will make a different appeal or impact according to the stage of emotional or
mental development of the reader.
Much has been written during the present century in terms of a psy-
chological or psycho-analytical interpretation of particular fairytales. Both
Freudian and Jungian practitioners have attempted to analyse the con-
stellation of child- and parent-figures, the threats, taboos and tasks with
which the protagonists are confronted, the symbolism of magic objects and
helpers. Bruno Bettelheims book, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and
Importance of Fairy Tales,O is the most recent major essay in this direction,
and he provides a great deal of provocative and stimulating food for
thought, even if one cannot agree with every detail of his neo-Freudian
interpretations.This kind of approach tends to be viewed with caution, if not
with actual disdain or repugnance, by many literary scholars and folklorists,
but it seems to me to go a long way towards accounting for the curiously
compelling and enduring quality of the genre. The fairytale represents an
exploration of important, usually subconscious processes in human
development, most frequently focussing on the growth of personal worth,
identity and sexuality. The childs feelings towards its parents are inves
tigated through the split of mother-figures into natural mothers and fairy-
godmothers on the one hand, witches, stepmothers and mother-in-law on
the other, whereas the father-figureresolves itself into natural fathers pitted
38 Critical Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 3

against ogres and tyrannical kings. Through this kind of symbolism prob-
lematic relationships and feelings can be explored in ways that are not cut
and dried, that open up different possibilities of association and reflexion
and that are psychologically safe.
All of this happens within a framework of formula and order. The basic
structure of the fairytale, as seen in the constituent elements of the plot and
their sequential arrangement, is, as Vladimir Propp demonstrated in his
influential book, Morphology of the Folktale,'l astonishingly consistent and
clear-cut, though the details obviously vary enormously from one tale to
another. At the beginning a problem is indicated, at the end the problem is
happily solved. It is extremely rare to have a fairytale with a tragic ending.
Where such does occur, there has usually been contamination with another
genre. Perrault's Little Red Riding Hood, which ends with the wolf devouring
the little girl, is a moral tale with a warning. The Grimms' story of The Singing
Bone is more concerned with folk-belief about the power of the dead to bring
injustice to light and elicit retribution; a true fairytale would have restored
the murdered brother to life, as is the case with the little boy murdered in The
Juniper Tree. The sense of justice which pervades the fairytale as a genre
reflects the concern for moral order. It guarantees the security of the reader
or listener and thus permits the most horrifying happenings to be depicted,
because the audience knows that everything will work out correctly in the
end.
Unlike folk-legends(German Sagen), which retail events that purport to be
true and to have actually occurred, fairytales are clearly understood to be fic-
tions. The'once upon a time' formula and the general avoidance of historical
or geographical specificity point immediately in this direction. Folk-legends
provoke an awareness of mystery and uncover human anxieties about
uncontrolled forces and the supernatural, whereas fairytales demonstrate
that boys and girls, men and women can and do successfully overcome
apparently insuperable opposition. The mature adult of course realises that
not all the problems of life are superable, but the growing child or ado-
lescent, the typical protagonist of the fairytale, needs to be reassured that the
world can be coped with. It is the function of magic to penetrate the opacity
of the world and to make it transparent for him or her. The incidence of
such magic objects as rings of invisibility, nuts that contain marvellous dres-
ses or phials containing the water of life point to the fact that life is not
explained simply through the power of reason, but that there are powers
beyond the scope of reason, which may be given to the protagonist because
of certain positive qualities of character or even entirely gratuitously.
Animals are a frequent source of such power, and many fairytales tell how
the hero gains the assistance of birds, fish or ants in a moment of crucial
 The challenge of fairytales to literary studies 39

need, as a result of some earlier spontaneous act of kindness towards them.

Many tales recount incidents where the protagonist is imprisoned,
enchanted or transformed into a bird or animal, e.g., Rapunzel, The Sleeping
Beauty, The Frog Prince. Such devices symbolise the often long periods when
despair or fear so overwhelm one that one has no capacity for independent,
self-motivated action. Because the symbolism can rarely be satisfactorily
analysed by rationality alone, it is far more suggestive and can be assimilated
in many more ways and at many more levels than any direct statement.
The story of The Frog Prince is told from the viewpoint of the princess and
is clearly concerned with the sexual anxieties of the adolescent girl,
exploring the situation in terms of feeling, not thinking. But it is important
not to forget the prince here, for surely the fact that he is transformed into
the shape of a frog indicates feelings of disgust at himself, which no amount
of personal effort can overcome, but only the totally unexpected and violent
reaction of the princess in throwing him against the wall and thus bringing
him out of himself. The role of the princess's father is also important, for he
encourages and indeed compels the princess to carry out what she has
promised the frog, despite her reluctance to do so. The symbolic associations
of the frog with sex and fertility, but also with physical disgust through its
sliminess makes the whole story far more telling than any attempt to state
the problem intellectually. In fact it transcends rational analysis.
In terms of structure and style the farytale operates in binary polar terms.
Heroes and heroines are opposed to villians; the youngest and least gifted
son of a peasant moves up the social scale to the very top and acquires a
kingdom through marrying a king's daughter; kindness is rewarded with
the ultimate in success, while wickedness is punished with the most savage
retribution. There are no ordinary people with mousy hair and average
abilitiesin fairytales, and there is no middle class. The consequenceof tests is
always either marriage or death, and the hero recognizes and accepts this.
But the test is generally made a threefold one, for a first success could be a
fluke, a second one is not sufficient indication of solid ability, but three SUC-
cesses in a row are absolute proof of lasting achievement.
The classic fairytale is told without frills. The plot is what matters, and
description is sufficient to evoke the right atmosphere; it is never self-
indulgent. Visualisation is left to the imagination of the audience, which is
probably one reason why artists respond so sympathetically to fairytales.
The fairytale invites active participation from the audience's imagination: it
does not do all the work itself, It is full of action and feeling, apt at creating
suspense and working up to a climax. In essence it is an extended dynamic
metaphor, full of reverberations in its rhythms and subconscious asso-
ciations. Perhaps more than any other form of literature it is calculated to
40 Critical Quarterly, voL 21, no. 3

capture the whole person and to transport him or her into another world,
where hero and heroine can achieve their inner aspirations.

Notes
1 David Hockney by Dmid Hockney, edited by Nikos Stangos(London,Thamesand
Hudson, 1976), p. 195.
2 'Love like Salt', related to the English 'Cap 0' Rushes'; see Stith Thompson, The
Folktale (New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1946; reprinted Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1973, p. 128. For a text of 'Cap 0' Rushes' see
English Fairy Tales, edited by Joseph Jacobs (London, Bodley Head, 1968), pp.
3 4 7 and notes on pp. 296-7.
3 'The Three Stolen Princesses'; see Gwyn Jones, Kings Beasts and Heroes (Lon-
don, Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 7-11.
4 'The Monster in the Bridal Chambei; see Stith Thompson, op. cit., pp. 51-3.
5 For a detailed exposition of this approach to the fairytale see Anne Wilson,
Traditional Romance and Tale: How Stories Mean (Ipswich,D. S. Brewer, 1976).
6 See IOM and Peter Opie, The Classic Fairy Tales (London, Oxford University
Press, 1974), pp. 14-15.
7 For many years Robert Southefs prose version of The Three Bears (1837) was
thought to be the earliestform of this celebrated nursery tale, but that honour is
now accorded to the verse version written by EleanorMurein September 1831,
the original manuscript of which belongs to the Osborne Collection of Early
Children's Books in the Toronto Public Library. The Story of the Three Bears by
Eleanor Mure is available in a facsimile edition (Toronto, Oxford University
Press, 1967, for the Friends of the Osborne and Lilian H. Smith Collections),
8 Kinder- und Hausmiircien, no. 30; the Brothers Grimm, Popular Folk Tales,
translated by Brian Alderson (London, Gollancz, 1978), pp. 17-20.
9 German Popular Stories, translutedfmm the Kinder und HausMiirchen collectedby M .
M . Grimmfromoml tradition (London, 1823and 1826), 2vols. A paperbackfac-
simile reprint is now available from the Scolar Press, 1977.
10 London, Thanes and Hudson, 1976; Penguin Books, 1978.
11 Original Russian edition, Leningrad, 1928; English translation 1958, revised
1968, Austin and London, University of Texas Press.
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