Fairy Tales: 16th Century, Italy and France
Rape, child abuse and abandonment are the stuff of contemporary head-lines and feature films. But they are also themes central to many of our most beloved fairy tales - as they were originally conceived.
The original "Sleeping Beauty" does not end happily once the princess is awakened with a kiss; her real troubles just begin. She is raped and abandoned, and her illegitimate children are threatened with cannibalism. And In the authentic version of "Little Red Riding Hood” the wolf has yet to digest the grandmother when he pounces on Red, ripping her limb to limb. Many artists of the day, believing that the two violent deaths were too much for children to endure, refused to illustrate the tale. To make it more pal¬atable, one illustrator introduced a hunter, who at the last minute slays the wolf, saving at least Little Red.
In the present century, numerous critics continue to argue that many fairy tales and nursery rhymes read to children and repeated by them ¬are quintessentially unsavory, with their thinly veiled themes of lunacy, drunkenness, maiming of humans and animals, gross dishonesty, and blatant racial discrimination. And the stories do contain all these elements and more - particularly if they are recounted in their original versions.
Why did the creators of these enduring children's tales work with immoral and inhumane themes?
One answer centers around the fact that from Elizabethan times to the early nineteenth century, children were regarded as miniature adults. Families were confined to cramped quarters. Thus, children kept the same late hours as adults, they overheard and repeated bad language, and were not shielded from the sexual harassment of their elders. Children witnessed drunkenness and drank at an early age. And since public floggings, hangings, disembowelments, and imprisonment in stocks were well attended in town squares, violence, cruelty and death were no strangers to children. Life was harsh. Fairy tales blendet blissful fantasy with that harsh reality. And exposing children to the combination seemed perfectly natural then, and not particularly harmful.
One man more than any other, Charles Perrault,is responsible for immortalizing several of our most cherished fairy tales. However, Perrault did not originate all of them, as we'll see, many existed in oral tradition, and some had achieved written form. "Sleeping Beauty', 'Cinderella," and "Little Red Riding Hood" are but three of the stories penned by this seventeenth-century Frenchman - a rebellious school dropout who failed at several professions, then turned to fairy tales when their telling became popular at the court of King Louis XIV.
Charles Perrault was born in Paris in 1628. The fifth and youngest son of a distinguished author and member of the French parliament, he was taught to read at an early age by his mother. In the evenings, after supper, he would have to render the entire day's lessons to his father in Latin. As a teenager, Perrault rebelled against formal learning. Instead, he embarked on an independent course of study, concentrating on various subjects as mood and inclination suited him. This left him dilettantishly educated in many fields and well-prepared for none. In 1651, to obtain a license to practice law, he bribed his examiners and bought himself academic credentials.
The practice of law soon bored Perrault. He married and had four children - and the same number of jobs in government. Discontent also with public work, he eventuallv turned to committing to paper the fairy tales he told his children. Charles Perrault had found his “métier”.
In 1697, his landmark book was issued in Paris. Titled “Tales of Times Passed”, it contained eight stories, remarkable in themselves but even more noteworthy in that all except one became, and remained, world renowned. They are, in their original translated titles: "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood." "Little Red Riding Hood," "BIue Beard," 'The Master Cat or Puss in Boots," "Diamonds and Toads", "Cinderella or ‘The Little Glass Slipper," and "Hop o’my Thumb." The eighth and least famous tale, ‘Riquet a la Houppe, was the story of a deformed prince's romance with a beautiful but witless princess.
Perrault did more than merely record stories that were already part of popular oral and written tradition. Although an envious contemporary criticized that Charles Perrault had "for authors an infinite number of fathers, mothers, grandmothers, governesses and friends, Perrault's genius was to realize that the charm of the tales lay in their simplicity. Imbuing them with magic, he made them intentionally naive, as if a child, having heard the tales in the nurcery, was telling them to friends.
Modern readers, unacquainted with the original versions of the tales, recorded by Perrault and others, may understandably find them shocking. What follows are the origins and earliest renditions of major tales we were told as children, and that we continue to tell our own children.
