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Wed 23 Feb, 2005 09:26 am
I seem to remember reading about an alternative ending to Snow White.Something to do with someone being punished by having to wear shoes that had been heated over the fire.
Does anybody know of any dark sides to fairy stories and where i can read them?
Thanks
Some of the original Grimm fairy tales were dark and not appropriate for younger children.
Not all of the stories have unhappy endings but they are more graphic in their telling.
Here is a link to some of Grimm's tales
Perhaps, material girl, you are really referring to the original Grimm's version of Snow White.
Here it is with some more similar fairies.
Im stunned and sickened.Ive just read Cinderella and Snow White.
The endings are horrid.Was it Snow White and her husband that made the queen dance in the hot shoes til her death??!!If so, they are as bad as her!!
And the ugly sisters punishment in Cinderella was awful,I never knew that!!
It seems Cinderella that the sisters made up her name.Do you know what her real name was?
You haven't read mayn fairy tales before, have you :wink:
Ive read the popular ones like Cinderella/snow white/goldilocks etc where it ends with the wedding but its the horrid twist at the end thats evil..pure evil I tell you!!!!!
I once found an original Grimm's when I was about 8 and read a story were they put the villain in a barrel driven with nails so they stuck into the interior. The barrel and enclosed man were then rolled down and hill and the man was basically punctured to death- it's been many years since reading that, but it has stayed with me. Those brothers had the right last name.
A little footnote: almost all the evil people in Grimm's are old women or Jewish males.
Jewish males? How often does this happen within those 239 "Children's and Household Tales"?
Walter, I don't know the exact number - it might be interesting to find out. I once took a class on "Jews in German Literature" and I remember the professor mentioning it. He claimed the Jewish references were mostly edited out of non-German editions. Sorry, I can't find a more substantial answer.
Green Witch-the 'punctured guy' story is sick.They definately were apropriately named.
Im not surprised the story has stayed with you.
Its amazing how they have changd over the years.
In fact, when you find a version of "Cinderella", "Snow-White", "Little Red Ridding Hood", "The Little Mermaid", etc... that has a perfect and happy ending, that means that you are not reading the original tale!
A "too happy" ending should ring a bell.
With time, the target of the tales has become the children, but at the time they were written, the tales were mainly for adults. It came from an oral tradition, and the tales were told to anybody, and not only to children.
In fact, our generation (20th-21st century) is influenced by the Disney versions of famous fairy-tales, and not only concerning their happy endings, but also their origins.
For example, if you ask an american kid (or even an adult sometimes) on "Where does "Beauty and the Beast" comes from?", he would answer: "The United States!" (Which is false, of course, as this tale has been written by a French lady: Mme Leprince de Beaumont.)
It is funny to see how the tales have changed, and how the countries have managed to appropiate the tales, and to modify it, in order to make them correspond to their culture.
It would be sooo cool to have a dark version of Cinderella made with the original ending!!Darker than the Sigourney Weaver version of Snow White.
Walter Hinteler wrote:
Quote:The tale of Beauty and the Beast was first collected in Gianfranceso Straparola's Le piacevolo notti (The Nights of Straparola) 1550-53.
...
Charles Perrault popularized the fairy tale with his collection Contes de ma mere l'oye (Tales of Mother Goose) in 1697.
Oups! I was talking about the Disney version of "Beauty of The Beast" (the creators said that they had adapted the tale of Mme Leprince de Beaumont).
Charles Perrault popularized it, yes, but he just included the tale as it was written by Mme Leprince de Beaumont in his collection.
Of course, the "classic" tales (collected by the Grimm brothers, Perrault, Andersen...) have ancient origins (most of them were the result of a long oral tradition), but som versions were "fixed" by the fact that they were printed and published.
@material girl: a Dark version of Cinderella? Like a horror movie or something?
Thinking about it already gives me nightmares!
Modern fantasy writers have been using traditional fairy tales as a jumping off point for their own imaginations. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have created at least four anthologies:
Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears
Black Thorn, White Rose
Snow White, Blood Red
Black Swan, White Raven.
As for the grisly traditional endings for the traditional stories. When I read them as a child, I felt justice had been served.
If you are interested in fairy tales, you might want to read the work of Marina Warner and . . . . menopausal memory . . . can't remember her name . . . she wrote, "Off with their Heads." Will return with her name later, unless Walter beats me to it!
Maria Tatar: Off with Their Heads! - Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood, 1993, Princetown University Press
:wink:
Aah! Walter, how well I know you! I kept thinking that there was a T in her name, only I had the T in the first name and the only first name I could think of was Tara -- which isn't far from Tatar, but is wrong. Thanks!
Since I've read one of her books some time ago, too (in German), I just had to turn around to look for her name in the bookshelf ... :wink:
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