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The Brothers Grimm's The Stepmother

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Perhaps one of the most unnatural and mad behaviors is devouring human flesh, being a cannibal. Besides the cannibalistic witches there are also other cannibals. An incomplete tale from the Brothers Grimm, “The Stepmother”, is also wildly horrific. The story is about an evil mother-in-law. After her son goes off to war she locks her daughter-in-law and grandchildren in a damp cellar. She eventually grows hungry for human flesh and requests her cook to slaughter and cook one of the children. The cook does not go through with this and instead cooks a pig. The mother-in-law craves flesh again and asks for the second child and then the queen herself. The cook tricks her each time and cooks a pig instead; the story ends with the queen trying to muffle her children’s screams so they are not discovered. When a maiden goes to meet her “Robber Bridegroom” at his home she comes to realize the den belongs to a group of murderers, her bridegroom being one of them. They bring home maidens and, “...chop them up to pieces without …show more content…

His most recent wife runs into a locked, forbidden room full of corpses. When she opens the door, “a stream of blood flowed toward her, and she saw dead woman hanging along all the walls, some only skeletons.” (610). This is a man who kills and keeps his victims in his home to look at. If this isn’t madness, then what is? Madness is thought to be today's mental illness. However, madness can be whatever you need it to be and mostly can be separated from mental health. A nonconformist is mad; a mass murderer is mad. A father not looking out for his children and a cannibal is mad. Within fairy tales all villains in the stories are suffering from madness whether it is the stepmother or the bridegroom. This is how madness is depicted in fairy tales- the violence of madness. Most come to face the consequences. And so they lived happily ever after… or so they

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