Growing Up Grimm

Advanced middle age appears to be a popular time for admitting interest in fairy tales. At age fifty-five, George Bernard Shaw declared that he still considered “Grimm” to be “the most entertaining of German authors.” C.S. Lewis confessed to reading fairytales on the sly for years; only after turning fifty did he feel free to acknowledge his addiction to the genre. Compelling in their simplicity and poignant in their emotional appeal, fairy tales have the power to stir long-dormant childhood feelings and to quicken our sympathies for the downtrodden. They also offer wit and wisdom in the trenchant formulations of the folk. There is something in them for every age and generation. It is hardly surprising that the Grimms’ Nursery and Household Tales ranks, by virtue of the number of its German editions and translations, as the runaway best seller of all German books.

Folklorists are quick to point out that fairy tales were never really meant for children’s ears alone. Originally told at fireside gatherings or in spinning circles by adults to adult audiences, fairy tales joined the canon of children’s literature (which is itself of recent vintage) only in the last two or three centuries. Yet the hold these stories have on the imagination of children is so compelling that it becomes difficult to conceive of a childhood without them. Growing up without fairy tales implies spiritual impoverishment, as one writer after another has warned.

Just how powerfully fairytales stir the imagination of children, inspiring strong passions and loyalties in them, is best captured by Charles Dickens’ confession of his weakness for one figure in particular. Little Red Riding Hood was “my first love,” he avowed. “I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.” Even as an adult, Dickens was by no means immune to the spell cast by fairy tales. His recollections of the powerful attraction of fairy-tale figures confirm the now tired cliché that these stories incarnate our deepest hopes and most ardent desires. Yet along with the daydream and its fulfillment comes the nightmare. Wishes and fantasies may come to life in the fairy tale, but fears and phobias also become full-blooded presences….

The question of the merits of fairy tales as children’s literature has been debated endlessly over the years. As one critic frames the question: ‘Do children need horror in stories? If so, how much and how soon?’ One camp of educators and psychologists rallies to the side of censorship, perfectly prepared to remove the Nursery and Household Tales—even in its adulterated versions—from the shelves of libraries and nurseries. The other camp, whose most eloquent spokesman is Bruno Bettelheim, argues for the civilizing power of the Grimms’ tales and sees in them instruments of enlightenment. Children Need Fairy Tales, the German title of Bettelheim’s volume states. Even before the Grimms started collecting their tales, Samuel Johnson had proclaimed that “babies do not want to hear about babies; they like to be told of giants and castles, and of somewhat which can stretch and stimulate their little minds.” Whether he would have approved of man-eating giants and cannibalistic witches is another question.

It is not easy to take sides in this debate. Fairy tales may constitute the childhood of fiction, but they are not necessarily the fiction of childhood. Although the stories often side with the child-hero in his struggle against powerful adversaries and culminate in the triumph of the young and weak, they put a good deal of pain and suffering on display along the way. The degree to which that pain and suffering dominate the tale varies greatly depending on cultural norms, pedagogical demands, and individual preferences. No fairy tale was ever meant to be written in granite. Like all oral narrative forms, the fairy tale has no ‘correct,’ definitive form. Instead it endlessly adjusts and adapts itself to every new culture as it takes root….

Few people look to fairy tales for models of humane, civilized behavior. The stories have taken hold for a far more important reason: the hard facts of fairytale life offer exaggerated visions of the grimm realities and outlandish fantasies that touch and shape the livesof every child and adult.

Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology, where she teaches courses in German Studies, Folklore, and Children’s Literature.