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| Translated, introduced and annotated by Jack Zipes |
Even though I do know about fairy tales I wanted to look at the original versions of them. This is because I want to see if there was any moral of the stories we were read to as a child, and just how much Disney has changed the original versions to suit their target market (children).
The best way to look at original versions was to look at the tales written and collected by the Brothers Grimm, who were notorious for all of the fairy tales we know today. Some of them I knew were going to be a bit gruesome as they were written many years ago, during darker times (and in fact there were a lot of cannibals and horrible deaths in this book).
This book has 279 stories within so I wasn’t able to read them all (although I did read quite a lot of them), and afterwards I picked out the “main” stories that we had actually heard of as a child. Such stories included Rumplestiltskin, Snow White, Rapunzel, Little Red Cap, The Frog Prince and Brier Rose (Sleeping Beauty). I wrote little notes for each of them so that I could see whether or not there were any similarities between each of these stories.
A handsome prince or a huntsman will always save the maidens in these stories, and they would quickly fall in love and have extravagant weddings. These maidens will not generally have an easy life as their stepmothers cruelly mistreated them, but something good always comes to them in the end. The moral of these stories could therefore be that something good will always happen to kind, innocent people, and that evil and twisted beings always have a cruel death… This could be connected to Karma, “what goes around comes around”.
I don’t want to include the good and the bad endings of each story in my design, so I have also taken a look at the important aspects of each story. There are quite a lot of interesting illustrations at the bottom of some of the tales that reminds me of the style seen in medieval books, so here I have taken pictures of the illustrations for the stories I am going to analyse and placed them at the top of each one. Most the stories don’t have illustrations to accompany them but I’ll take photos of whatever I can find for each one.
Rapunzel
One of the most important aspects in Rapunzel is her long, golden hair, and that she was a beautiful maiden trapped in a tower that had neither stairs nor doors. The only way out was through the window that she must drape her hair down so that the witch who looked after her could be pulled up and down the tower. One day a prince came along and he and Rapunzel fell in love, but the witch soon found out and banished Rapunzel and cut off her hair to deceive the prince. It ended with the prince being blinded by the thorns he fell upon but he and Rapunzel were soon reunited and her tears healed his sight.
Hansel and Gretel
The cottage made out of bread, cake and sugar was the most important part of the story as it led the children to the witch, and in the end they killed the witch and stole all of her treasure.
Another reason of why this cottage is so important was that the children were starved because their father and stepmother abandoned them in the forest, as they were too poor to afford any more food for the children. This story showed hints of child cruelty because the stepmother was the one who decided to abandon the children so that she and the father would have enough food for themselves.
So the cottage was their salvation in a way because it had given the children something to eat, despite it belonging to a cannibal witch!
Cinderella
Unlike most stories where it had been a glass slipper, in this version of Cinderella she had left a slipper of pure gold that was given to her by two doves instead of a fairy godmother. She had also attended three balls, not one, and her two stepsisters were in fact very beautiful but with wicked hearts.
What happened to the sisters was quite disgusting but when their feet couldn’t fit into the slipper they cut off parts of it (the first cut off her big toe, the second her heel). In the end their eyes were pecked out by the two doves who looked after Cinderella.
If I’m honest I much prefer Disney’s version of Cinderella, although I was interested when I saw that it was two white doves that helped Cinderella. The dove symbolised purity and innocence in Christianity, and this story showed that link as Cinderella had prayed beneath the hazel tree three times a day. So the doves could reflect God helping Cinderella through her miserable life, and in the end granting her wish and helping her to marry the prince.
Brier Rose
There weren’t many differences between this version and Disney’s version, although in this version there were 13 wise women instead of 4 fairies including the evil witch. The 13th wise woman was the one who was uninvited as the king and queen only had 12 gold plates, and so she cast a spell that makes Brier Rose die when she pricks her finger on a spindle.
So the spindle was the main focal point of this story as it says how the king and queen soon banned them from the kingdom so that their daughter wouldn’t prick her finger and fall into a 100-year old sleep. But in the end she did, but was saved 100 years later by a prince who had to pass the brier hedge surrounding the castle in order to save her.
Interestingly enough, the witch wasn’t mentioned any more in the story after the spindle incident unlike Disney’s version where she was so cruel that she tried killing Brier Rose and the prince.
Snow White
There are many versions of this story within the book although I picked out the one that greatly resembles the Disney version, with a young princess called Snow White who was looked after by seven dwarfs after she had to flee her wicked stepmother. The stepmother had tried to kill her three times; one with a stay lace, another with a poisonous comb, and finally the poisonous apple.
The apple was the one that finally “killed” Snow White, so that and the magic mirror are both the main objects in the story. In this story the whole apple was red with “white cheeks”, although in other stories one side was red and the other a different colour.
The Frog Prince
This was another story that I had heard of as a child although one of those that Disney hasn’t done. The golden ball was quite important to the story as it led the owner (the most beautiful princess in the kingdom) to a talking frog, and afterwards turned into a handsome prince.
While I was reading this I was also attracted to the carriage in the story as it was pulled by eight white horses with ostrich plumes. I could possible draw something like this for my wedding invitation!
Rumpelstiltskin
This story was one of my favourites because of the fact it was one of the most memorable, because it was very different to the other fairy tales. For the first time a beautiful maiden wasn’t saved or fell in love at first time with a handsome prince, but was forced to spin straw to gold by a greedy king. She did marry this king in the end but she was perhaps the only person in all of the fairy tales I have read so far within this book to be able to defend herself. She did have to have some help with guessing the man’s name but she in the end was the one who “killed him”.
This is the second story with the spindle as the main object of the story. I think I’m going to look into spindle designs, as it seemed to have been a popular craft in those days.
Little Red Cap
Also known as little red riding hood, there are many aspects in this story that I was attracted to: one of them was the evil wolf who had tricked Little Red Cap to telling him the whereabouts of the grandmother; the other was the red cap; and finally the cottage beneath three oak trees.
This wasn’t the only story to have a house in the woods, as many tales have the woods as a sort of haven for lost travellers or – like in Snow White – beautiful maidens escaping from their stepmothers.
Conclusion:
Looking at all of these stories I think I have decided to do little sketches for each of them, as it would be nice to incorporate fairy tales into my wedding invitation. Even though I have been doing a lot of design with castles in them I think it would be nice if I, for example, did the R.S.V.P in the shape of an apple with two different halves to say whether or not the guest could attend.
I think it was good that I looked into original fairy tales, as there is a lot more to them as it is in Disney films, and each story has a meaning of which I had mentioned right at the top.
The illustrations are quite interesting because although they are quite small, there is a lot of detail within that you don’t really notice because they are in black and white. I think I would like to do something like this if I do set out my invitation as a story.
The illustration for the front cover was what led me to research onto stencil drawing, and thus leading me to Jan Pienkowski!
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