Featured Posts

From The Court of King Mark:

Creepy Fairy Godmothers

I looked at the illustrations of Cinderella on the Sur La Lune website. After looking at many of the different drawings done to accompany Cinderella I noticed that there were many different depictions of the fairy godmother. Some of the illustrations showed the godmother to be rather evil looking, almost as if she appeared as a witch. But we all know that the fairy godmother is good and actually helps Cinderella so I thought it was interesting to portray her in this dark, ominous way. For example in Arthur Rackman’s drawing the godmother appears darkly cloaked and boney, almost as one would picture the witch in Hansel and Gretel to look like. She does not appear jolly and bright like the Disney fairy godmother. There is another illustration done by Paul Woodroffe which shows the fairy godmother with a black witch’s hat on. She is wearing a red cloak and a tight black dress. Her face is very pale and almost skeletal looking and she hovers creepily over Cinderella. She really does appear more like an evil sorcerer than a gift bearing godmother. I wondered why the illustrators chose to draw the godmother in this way. If I were a child reading these stories and viewing these pictures I would immediately associate the pictures of the godmothers as evil due to the way the illustrators drew them. Perhaps these artists were hinting at the moral that Perrault highlights at the end of his story, that beauty isn’t everything, but rather graciousness and a good heart. Although these fairy godmothers appear wicked, they have inner goodness and grant dear Cinderella’s wishes.
Posted by Holly Meehl



From The Swindlers’ Cave:

Fair, Brown, and Trembling

Fair, Brown, and Trembling is a story from Ireland. It begins as a seemingly normal "Cinderella" tale, but has some strange deviations throughout in the text. One interesting aspect is that it concentrates on color throughout the story. Trembling (the Cinderella character) goes to mass (ball) three times, and each time, her attire is described in a full paragraph. Colors are included in every description, even insignificant parts. Not only are colors described in detail, but other small aspects o the story are intricately explained (for example, a specific mark of the belly of a whale...). Also, after the wedding of the prince and Trembling, the story is only half complete. There is an entire second story-line where the prince fights for the hand of Trembling and saves her from an enchanted whale. Yeah, I know. Weird. She is swallowed by the whale after her sister pushes her into the ocean (her sister is in love with her husband) and a little cowboy must alert the prince to rescue her. Finally, the story doesn't include a parental unit of any sort, which deviated from normal Cinderella stories, where the evil stepmother is a key player in the plot. This eliminates any oedipal ties that some Cinderella tales have and make it more about clear-cut good versus evil.
Posted by Emily Hogan


Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl (A Georgian Tale)

This tale is quite a departure from Perrault and Grimm's versions of Cinderella, although it has the element of the cow as a guardian seen in many of the Asian versions of Cinderella we read in class for this week. First, it is interesting to note that the tales including the cow as the mother-like provider of food and comfort were from Asia and the Middle East because many of those cultures saw the cow as a symbol of wealth and, in the case of the Indian version, as a sacred animal. Second, the story is not a riches-to-rags-to-riches tale as the Cinderella figure is the daughter of a poor peasant, not a gentleman. Cinderella is also not emphasized as the "most beautiful creature ever seen" like in many of the other Cinderella versions- she is not the slender female of the courtly French Cinderella. Rather, she is described as plump because of her nourishment from the cow, and her virtues rest in her ability to cope with her stepmother's abuse, her cleverness to get the king to notice her (by pricking him with a needle through the basket in which she is trapped), and her kindness to the devil woman (who is by every means a horrifying creature.) This Cinderella's hardiness, not dantiness, is what earns her her freedom from her mother and her rise in rank as a queen.

The effect of all these element acting in concert is that this tale is about a girl learning how to earn her own way in life by appreciating the things in life that will earn her wealth in her culture. When the girl takes care of the cow it is hard work, but she learns that her efforts pay off in nourishment and protection. Therefore, the cow becomes a symbol of wealth that has to be protected. The girl's encounter with the old devil woman is where the girl learns to appreciate the older generation's wisdom. Despite some of its knowledge of horrific events in the course of a lifetime, the wisdom of old women and their knowledge of how to become a successful woman in their culture is worth more than its weight in gold to a girl who has to learn how to become a woman on her own. It is with the old woman's wisdom of the springs that the girl acquires her ability to distinguish herself and to earn her greater wealth through marriage. The girl's cleverness is what enables her to take advantage of her newly aquired appreciation of wealth (from the cow) and wisdom (from the hag) by escaping the wiles of her stepmother through pricking the seat of her eventual husband.
Posted by Marion


From The Tomb of Hermes:

Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl

I read an Georgian version for my Cinderella version called Conkiajgharuna, the Little Rag Girl. It basically had the same story line as the conventional Cinderella that we are all very familiar with. The characters are similar as well, with a widowed father who lived with his biological daughter. He takes another wife that already had a daughter of her own, whom she loved dearly. And she comes to view the other daughter as something to hate and wanted to get rid of her. She lavished her own daughter and treated her stepdaughter, Little Rag Girl, miserably and tried to starve her. The fairy godmother from the conventional fairy tales is now instead a talking cow. Although the person in the position as the fairy god mother is different, they both still encompass that aspect of magic that helps to grant Cinderella/Little Rag Girl’s wishes. In this version, there is another pseudo fairy godmother, the old woman devi. Little Rag Girl is very much like Cinderella for she was filled with goodness in her heart. Just in like the Perrault’s version where Cinderella forgives her evil sisters and offers them lodging at the palace and even marries them off to great lords of the courts. Little Rag Girl helps the old woman devi clean her head of the worms- the conduct pleased her so she tells Little Rag Girl to washed her hair and her hands. In doing so, her hair and hands became golden. There is a more religious aspect to Little Rag Girl, as they are going to a church instead of a ball at a palace. But she still drops a golden slipper that becomes the standard and way of choosing a wife. Two very different aspects of this version of Cinderella is that it mentions race- the evil step sister becomes dark and African in ethnicity when she is tricked to washed in the black river and Little Rag Girl is more proactive and takes matters into her own hands by pricking the king with the needle- she didn’t just hide in the corner while her step sister tried on the slipper. She made herself known and went for what she wanted.
Posted by vanessayu

Assignment: 24 February 2009

Look through the sites below and choose either an illustration(s) or a version of the Cinderella story which we have not read for class and respond to it.

• D. L. Ashliman’s folktale site
• Sur La Lune
• The Cinderella Project at the University of Mississippi

No posts this week

Good luck on your exams!

Weekly Assignment

First, please identify the thesis of the Zipes article from this week’s reading. Then, respond to his thesis: do you agree or disagree, and why?

Don’t forget to post two comments by Wednesday at midnight.

Weekly Assignment

Here is the assignment for the 27th, which is posted to your sub-group pages. Please post your response by midnight. On Wednesday, read over the other posts in your sub-group and comment on at least two.

You have read Shavit's essay comparing the Perrault and Grimm versions of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Using Shavit's method, consider one of the other versions you read for this week (Dahl, Calvino, Thurber, Chiang Mi). With a little research (you may use Wikipedia, since this is not a research paper), outline who you think the audience is and what the fairy tale’s retelling says about the culture and time in which it was written.

Featured Posts from 20 Jan.

Great assignments, everyone! I enjoyed reading all of your creative takes on this classic tale. Below are some especially imaginative twists--if you haven't read these posts yet, you should really check them out.

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From the Tomb of Hermes:

Movie pitch

These children come from a place where bread, cake, and sugar is sparse, correct? Hansel and Gretel come from the island of Sansnom, off the coast of what people call "the mainland." They are island children, dressed in leaves with tanned skin, and dine totally (under normal island circumstances) on tropical fruits, birds, and lizards. They do not have grain on the island. Alas, no bread. No cake. And no red meat.

The witch, of course, is fat and fair-skinned, for she comes from the forest. She lures the children in with the promise of bread and meat...little do they know that they are to be the main course. In exploring the topic of cannibalism, the children will actually eat the witch after she is cooked to a medium-well temperature, because they want to know what red meat tastes like.
Posted by Ellie at 12:06 AM

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From the Tomb of Hermes:

Hansel and Gretel

Tatar says that “Hansel and Gretel” “mirror[s] the hard facts of the premodern era” (pg. 180). And so, I would want to bring those difficulties into the film to show that life for children was hard and that they could not expect their parents to take care of them until they were older. Here is the idea that I would pitch:
Hansel and Gretel are both fairly young, no younger than 6 and no older than 10. They are the two oldest children in a large peasant family who struggle daily to find their next meal and keep a roof above their heads. Since the father and mother cannot afford to feed all of the children they send Hansel and Gretel, being the most capable of the children, out into the streets to fend for themselves. Hansel and Gretel beg for food for a few days until they find a bakers shop. They steal some bread that is cooling on the windowsill and when the old baker’s wife catches them she brings them in and makes them apprentices to the baker. While the children are given plenty of food, they are unhappy because the baker and his wife are cruel to them. However, they know that they are lucky to be off of the streets and so they continue to work as hard as they can.
Posted by Laurie at 11:39 PM

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From the Peasants’ Hut:

January 20, 2009 "Hansel and Gretel"

Since "Hansel and Gretel" and stories related to it deal almost exclusively with lack of food and hardship, there was obviously some sort of famine occurring at the time. The references to cannibalism make it seem that the famine had drawn on for a long period of time, and people were desperate.
If I were to make a movie about the world that created "Hansel and Gretel," the main characters would be around nine or ten. Hansel and Gretel would be the two oldest children of a large peasant family that was struggling to make ends meet. The supporting cast would consist of the large peasant family who were hard working and practical, and a richer, aristocratic family that had not been greatly affected yet by the famine.
The peasant family's struggle for money and food would be the main problem that fed the storyline. In order to survive the family would sell Hansel and Gretel to a rich family as servants. In return, the family would receive money to buy food, and also have less mouths to feed because Hansel and Gretel would be at the richer family's home.
The fairy tale could serve as the warnings that their parents gave Hansel and Gretel about how they should behave as servants: always be prepared like Hansel in the story with his pebbles, do not go looking for trouble like the children in the story did when they began to eat the house, and always keep your wits about you like Hansel in the tale by using the bone as his finger and Gretel did by pushing the witch into the oven. If the children obeyed their parents and behaved, they could return home someday like the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel".

Audra Crosby
Posted by AudraC at 7:34 PM

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From the Peasants’ Hut:

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel (2009) is the dark origin story behind the beloved fairy tale. The titular characters are ten and eight, respectively. Their mother, shown in flashbacks as a loving woman, died during the birth of Gretel. Their step-mother, younger and meaner, walks all over their father, who is in his early thirties (but looks about sixty).

One day, while going to the market, Hansel begins imagining a land of candy and sweets. One house in particular, made of gingerbread, stays in his mind. Before going to bed that night, he tells Gretel what he had imagined. He goes to sleep, and imagines the house again. Hansel and Gretel walk inside, only to be tormented by their step-mother. She is about to kill them, but he wakes up in a cold sweat.

The next morning, he tells the family what he had dreamed. To avoid being beaten, he changes the step-mother into an old witch. To seem more heroic (and to tell a good story), he also adds in a new ending, where he and Gretel foil the witch, and throw her in the oven. The parents smile at the ending, where the children come home with a pile of gold. After the story ends, their parents send them back to the market.
Posted by Michael Hetrick at 11:35 PM

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From the Court of King Mark:

The 3rd darkest screenplay ever

Hansel and Gretel starts, “At the edge of a great forest, there once lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and two children.” Obviously, this is the sugar-coated fairy tale version. The house should be a small wooden cottage in a dark forest. The trees should be huge; while the setting cannot be so specific as to name a place one should think wonder what part of the Black Forest this is supposed to be in. It should also be completely isolated. As the father is a woodcutter, there should be plenty of crude, sharp, terrifying tools lying around as a motif.

There is a small cast. Brother Hansel and sister Gretel, close in years, a father, and possibly a stepmother. The stepmother role, which commentary points out was a much more common part of life, makes for an easy explanation as to why the mother is willing to abandon the children. I think one important addition is a bird, probably Hansel’s pet.

I don’t see much need for a specific instance (a famine) to cause the parents to abandon Hansel and Gretel. Since the movie is supposed to highlight the fear, ignorance, and need for storytelling in the real world at the time, stressing how hard life is should be good enough. Since the house is in the forest, the land for crops would only be what they cleared and supplemented with game from the forest. In such a harsh world and dealing with a stepmother, it would make sense for Gretel to get upset at something and convince Hansel to run away with her; only by quick thinking does he mark the trail so when they decide to return home they are able to. The second time they run away, Hansel only uses breadcrumbs which are eaten by forest animals.

After wandering in the forest lost for a while Hansel’s bird leads them to another cottage. An old woman lives alone; she is not a witch, but she is mean. She lets them stay with her but forces them to work for her and abuses them verbally and physically. The old woman eats well, mocking the children. After a month or so after some display of extreme brutality, probably threatening to kill them with some terrifying sharpened antique, Gretel yells back and forces the woman to impale herself accidentally. They take her money and Hansel’s bird leads them home. The movie ends there; it does not display a happy ending.

Stories are an important escape from realism in this dark, bleak world. One is told in the forest when Hansel and Gretel are lost, and at least one more is told while at the old woman’s cottage. I think the rose-tree should be told verbatim; it obviously contains themes similar to Hansel and Gretel to be grouped together and also incorporates the unsavory theme of cannibalism. I also think a story incorporating ogres and outwitting them by switching headgear with the ogre’s own children while they sleep is important because it brings up ideas of magical creatures and intelligence in children.

Song of the blog: “Zombie,” by The Cranberries.
Posted by Chester at 9:42 PM

Assignment: 20 January 2009

Here is the assignment for today, which has also been posted to your sub-group pages. Later this week, featured entries from the sub-groups will be quoted here on the main page.


Keene imagines the world that created the fairy tales we read today in The Juniper Tree. Considering this Ur-world, full of poverty, fear, ignorance, and a need for storytelling, imagine what factors would lead to a story like Hansel and Gretel.

Pretend you want to pitch a movie that shows the world that produced Hansel and Gretel. How old would the main characters be? What would your supporting cast look like? And perhaps most importantly, what sorts of problems would feed into the Hansel and Gretel story? Use the week's readings to guide your thinking; consider the themes which appear in the various fairy tales from England, France, and Germany.