What are Fairy Tales ?

In Grimm’s Fairy Tales, there’s a whimsical verse at the end of “Hansel and Gretel” that goes, “My tale is done, there runs a mouse, whosoever catches it, may make himself a big fur cap out of it.”

Fairy tales exist in every culture in the world and there are elements of the fairy tale going back for as long as people have been telling stories.

In Western culture, there are a few authors who were particularly important in the formal recording of fairy tales.

The Beauty and the Beast tales were originally written to help young girls cope with the idea of an arranged marriage, especially when their betrothed seemed “beastly,” whether in age or appearance.

In the original 1812 version of the Brothers’ Grimm’s Rapunzel, the prince visits Rapunzel in the tower every night to sleep with her, and the maternal fairy finds out when Rapunzel becomes pregnant.

In the Brothers’ Grimm’s Snow White, the prince falls in love with Snow White after seeing her already deceased in her coffin. The dwarves give him the coffin after he begs for it, and as his servants carry it back to the palace they trip on a tree stump and the apple comes out of Snow White’s throat, rendering her alive again.

In the same Snow White story, the evil queen’s punishment is to dance in red hot shoes at Snow White’s wedding until she dies.

Although about half of the Cinderella tales across cultures included an evil stepmother, the antagonist in the others was often Cinderella’s biological father, who would lust after and attempt to marry Cinderella after her mother died.

The Little Red Riding Hood was a popular story told as a lesson for women in the king’s court to stay celibate until marriage, as there are “wolves” out there just looking to use innocent girls for the wrong reasons

In several versions of The Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf would also trick the girl into eating parts of her grandmother as well, as cannibalism used to be a common occurrence in fairy tales.

The Bluebeard tales were commonly known but no longer circulate in pop culture, as they were deemed too disturbing for children. In the stories, a concealed murderer “Bluebeard” would search for a wife, then put her through a test of trust, where when broken she would either be killed, chopped into tiny pieces or eaten, along with all the other women he tried his luck on.

The fable goes that you kiss a toad and it turns into a handsome prince, right? Wrong. In the Grimm’s The Frog King, the princess is far from puckering up–instead, she hurls the “disgusting frog” against a wall in frustration and viola: her once slimy friend turns into a shiny new prince.