The Brothers Grimm
We all know the stories of the Brothers Grimm. We’ve seen them brought to life in films, cartoons and plays, but the true Grimms’ tales are pure folklore, passed down from generation to generation and, like all the best stories, they were spoken.
It was that oral tradition of storytelling that first drew the brothers to these classics. Jacob and Wilhelm were tremendously proud of their national heritage, and collecting fairy tales was an opportunity to preserve and celebrate a popular German tradition.
The enduring image of the Grimms is of two travelling scholars, journeying far and wide across the land to track down these stories and record them for posterity. The truth, of course, is somewhat different.
“The popular image of the Grimms travelling about and gathering folk tales from the people is totally false and ridiculous,” says Jack Zipes, professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota. “The Grimms did, in fact, collect tales from young women in Kassel and also from some peasant storytellers in and near the city. However, most of the tales in their Kinder- und Hausmärchen were sent to them by friends and colleagues throughout the German principalities. They generally noted their sources, and they had numerous contacts in central Europe. They also took tales from ancient collections.”
Their first book was published in 1812, and it contained 86 tales, including stories like Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Little Briar-Rose (a version of the Sleeping Beauty story). Although it wasn’t a huge success at first, a second volume followed in 1815. These collections would be republished several times as their popularity grew, and the style would evolve with each subsequent edition.
The first is generally regarded as being a relatively straightforward telling – a simple collection of stories. With each new reprinting, the Grimms’ talent as writers became more apparent.
These stories, particularly in their first editions, are notably darker than the versions that we know today. There is blood, murder and sex. Small children are killed, damsels are impregnated by their princes and parents are at best neglectful and, at worst, murderous.
Indeed, parents are some of the primary figures of danger in the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Interestingly, while later versions took steps to (slightly) tone down the horror with wicked stepmothers, the earliest versions feature biological parents taking the most drastic, terrifying measures. Take Hansel and Gretel, for example. These days, it’s the woodcutter’s new wife who is largely responsible for abandoning the children in the woods, with the husband a reluctant and remorseful accomplice who later comes back for his children. In the earliest version, it is the unlucky siblings’ own mother who propels this evil plan, and their father is just as complicit. Similarly, we all think of the wicked queen in Snow White as being an evil interloper into a happy family, but in the original, the monster who orders the Huntsman to kill Snow White is actually the maiden’s own mother.
Brutal events and punishments abound in the rest of the collection. “There is a strong sense of social justice in almost all of the tales,” says Zipes. “And despite some violence, most of the tales end on a happy note. The difficulty is that most people do not read all 210 tales of the final edition to see how diverse, and to a certain extent, how humorous the tales are. The notion that the Grimms’ tales are dark is derived from the ignorance of critics, teachers and parents.”
It has been noted that a possible reason for the recurring villainy of women and the tragic absence of father figures is a reflection of the Grimms’ own loss of their father and grandfather. Whether they made those alterations themselves or not, the themes of famine found throughout these stories are certainly a reflection of the times in which they originated. In subsequent editions, the Grimms began to edit these stories to make them more suitable for their younger readers, as a reflection of their enormous success, and began adding more Christian elements. The themes of punishment are present right from the start and the villains’ deeds are certainly wicked, but the reprisals are often more severe.