Children Need Both Sides

The fairy tale helps the child to understand a balance between the good and the evil; it gives him a hope for a good future.” Fairy tales assure the

The Disney version of the story, Cinderella, illustrates a different moral than that of the original story. This story believes an ideal child should do what they are told and follow directions and in the end they will reap the rewards. In this story, Cinderella’s mother dies and her father remarries to a woman who has two daughters. While the daughters are pampered, Cinderella must work to keep the house from falling into disrepair. She befriends the animals and they help her to get ready to go to the ball by finishing her chores and making her a dress. When the evil stepsisters discover the dress they become furious because the mice used trimming from their clothing when making the dress. In revenge, the stepsisters rip the dress, leaving Cinderella out of options and out of hope. Just as Cinderella is about to give up, her fairy godmother appears and with a wave of magic creates a dress and turns a pumpkin and the mice into a horse and carriage. The only problem is that everything will turn back to what it was beforehand at midnight. Cinderella and the Prince fall in love at the ball but she must quickly leave because the

Fairy takes are the primary information of the culture. They delineate the roles, interactions, and values which are available to us. They are our childhood models, and their fearful, dreadful, content terrorizes us into submission- if we do not become good, evil will destroy us; if we do not achieve the happy ending, then we will frown in the chaos (34-35).

The tradition of telling fairy tales to children effects not only the listener but also the reader. Maria Tatar, in her book Off with Their Heads!, analyzes how fairy tales instill and reaffirm cultural values and expectations in their audience . Tatar proposes that fairy tales fall into three different tale-types: cautionary tales, exemplary stories, and reward- and- punishment tales. These three types portray different character traits as desirable and undesirable. Due to the tale’s varying literary methods it can change the effectiveness of the tale’s pedagogical value. In Tatar’s opinion, all of these tales are similar in the way they attempt to use punishment, reward, and fear to encourage or discourage certain behaviors. In the cautionary fairy tale “The Virgin Mary’s Child”, the use of punishment and fear to discourage certain behaviors is enhanced by the Christian motifs and values employed by the tale. These literary devices encourage the audience to reflect on and internalize the lessons that are presented in the fairy tale.

There is nothing more precious and heartwarming than the innocence of a child. The majority of parents in society want to shield children from the bad in life which is appreciated. Within human nature exists desires of inappropriate behavior; envy, deceit, selfishness, revenge, violence, assault and murder. The most well-known fairy tales depict virtue and the evil in life. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give a better direction to his life. (Bettelheim).

In this twelve page article by, Armelle Hours, a correlation between fairy tales and treating abused children is investigated. Hours focuses her study on children in France that have been placed into foster care due to maltreatment. In this experiment, Hours, a youth worker, and psychology intern, work together to organize a playgroup at the foster home. The playgroup met once a week for an hour and involved six children, ranging from ages 6-12. Hours’ playgroup would start off by reading fairy tale classics, and then the children would have a chance to act out the story using clay models, drawings, and all other child appropriate materials within the room. Hours illustrates two of the playgroup sessions that were held. In the first playgroup session, they read the story Cinderella and Hours focuses on a six year old girl. The girl asked Hours to make her an elephant trunk before she participated in the Cinderella play, even though the elephant trunk had nothing to do with the original story. After having the trunk on her face, the girl became the leader of the play and made clay food for all the other children. Hours explains that the girl may have needed the mask in order to feel comfortable around her peers. The elephant trunk

Lady Tremaine acts benevolently to Cinderella in front of her, but she envies her for her beauty and wishes Cinderella's life to be miserable. Cinderella’s

Reading fairy tales or seeing them represented has become part of an everyday routine for children. As Baker-Sperry states, “Through interaction that occurs within everyday routines (Corsaro 1997), children are able to learn the rules of the social group in which they are a part” (Baker-Sperry 717-718). For example, through Red Riding Hood, children learn to listen to their parents and to be wary of strangers. Some of these messages are harmful though; not all girls have to be naive and weak while boys are predacious wolves. Not everyone has to play the role that society assigns them.

When imaging the ideal audience of fairytales, children are quick to come to mind, although, our perception of Little Red Riding Hood as an innocent fable is far from the truth. Alternatively, the origins of this story are derived from Italo Calvino’s “The False Grandmother”, a story immersed in symbolism and metaphorical symbols intended strictly for a mature audience. The preceding tale was “Little Red Cap “written by Charles Perrault and then later the “Little Red Riding” written by the Brothers Grimm. Although the details of these tales vary, they all maintain similar storylines. The stories revolve around the young female character Little Red Riding Hood who is sent off on a mission to bring her grandmother a basket of goods. During her adventure she encounters a wolf who engages in a hot pursuit to eat both the Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood, only to succeed in the earlier rendition of the story. In this essay I will prove that when the Grimm’s Brothers and Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood stories are critically analyzed, it becomes evident that they are inappropriate tales for children as they exemplify the consequences of a minor transgression by Little Red Riding Hood as being the misleading cause of the violence and seduction that occurs thereafter.

Negative female antagonist play a very particular role within fairy tales. The female antagonists are often very dominant, they are not married and unable to bare children due to the fact that they are usually old. However there are times in which the antagonist is a beautiful women who’s jealously often overbears her physical appearance. In “Snow White” Snow’s Step mother is constantly looking for assurance about her physical appearance, so she confides in her magic mirror, “Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?” (Grimm 54). Snow white’s stepmother is taken aback and enraged after later being told that she is no longer the prettiest woman. “You my queen, are fair; it is

Applebee’s theory of story-structure claims that younger children are more likely to focus on a character’s actions rather than the final goal of the story. As previously explained, this is due to their lack of cognitive capabilities to do so. This may be an explanation for why it is important for story-tellers to have the trickster portrayed the way that they are in children’s stories. In a children’s movie, for example, the trickster is characterized by being a liar, deceitful, or a bad guy. Parents are hoping to raise their child to be kind, independent, and loving.

Folktales has created men as the most powerful character in most stories but that does not mean always as there’s a difference in Grandmother’s tale and Little Red Riding hood. Different genders have different expectations according to their characteristics. The Red Riding Hood and Grandmother’s tale has produced ideas such as how a girl’s life is looked upon in the past and how the male has the upper hand in most situations according to the stories. This essay will argue about how the girl’s gender played a major role in the context of the story and how the wolf is represented by a male character and why the male is not always the most powerful character in all stories and the comparison

However, few realize that there are many communal ideas imbedded in the plots that often go unrecognized. Fairy tales, more often than not, highlight a multitude of social aspects which might seem inappropriate for children. Constantly evolving, fairy tales, as indicated by Yolen and Zipes, illustrate the sexist views of the dominating class, the societal beliefs as they change throughout history as well as the community’s values especially during crisis.

In every story there is always a person who everybody considers a villain. A villain isn't always the least favorite character in a story, but in most cases they're the one character most readers dislike. The evil step mother in Cinderella, Lady Tremaine is one of the best villains of all time in my perspective. She's a villain who has always caught my attention. She once said, "You needn't call me that. Madam will do." (Perrault). The evil stepmother had always been cruel even with her own two daughters, and their father. She's a high maintenance kind of women.

Fairy tales have been embedded into our culture and date back before recorded times, they provide a source of entertainment and imagination for children. Despite today’s fairy tales having positive moral intentions they have been adapted from earlier versions which often can be very different and much more sinister. The fairy tale “Sun, Moon, and Talia” by Giambattista Basile formed the basis for the more commonly known Disney interpretation called the “Sleeping Beauty” however they are vastly different, Basile’s original is a very dark and twisted story compared to the Disney version.