Nasty overtones seen in fairy-tales

Press, 7 March 1984, Page 6

Nasty overtones seen in fairy-tales

By

MICHAEL NORMAN,

of

“The New York Times” (through NZPA-AAP) Princeton, New Jersey Once upon a time, long before critics talked of “intertextuai analysis,” before feminism and Marxism, before Jung and Freud, some simple folk sat in circles and told stories about cinder maids and princes and houses made of. sugar and cake and snow-white birds that helped little children find their way out of the great green forest As the years passed, the stories continued. Good triumphed over evil, darkness became light, sadness surrendered to the happily ever after. In time, these simple folk tales and fairytales became literature and were taken up by scholars who, as is their custom,

began to read between the lines.

In a large room at Princeton’s university during the week-end, some of these scholars gathered to talk about their work. And when they were done, even the most common and uncomplicated of bed-time stories seemed to bulge with new meaning.

.For example, the story of the little girl with the red hood who went to her grandmother’s house and encountered a wolf was really “a narrative of rape in which the heroine is expected to bear the responsibility for sexual violation, said Jack Zipes, a self-described Marxist and a P r **sor of German at the PiP Ve £ lty of Wisconsin. It’s the sexual tension in all of us that to

' this tale time and time again.”

The occasion was a packed and lively conference entitled, “Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm.” And when it was over, it was clear that folklore is fast becoming a popular academic pursuit, one that is being examined by a wide range of scholars from different disciplines who bring with them varied beliefs and doctrines. With each speaker at Princeton University came a different point of view. Dr Simon Grolnick, a psychiatrict who teachers at the Cornell University Medical College, in Manhattan, said that Sigmund Freud was really “the universal story-teller,” relaying the stories of his patients. In the argot of the analyst, adults who tell their children fairv-tales *

are not called parents but “stable love narrators.” Gerhard Mueller, of the department of criminal justice at Rutgers University, in New Jersey, said that fairy-tales were in fact “law stories” an informal code of crime and punishment. The crimes in "Hansel and Gretel,” he said, were "witchcraft and cannibalism.” The punishment was “death by fire and incineration.” What was more, he said, “whenever you see the wolf as a perpetrator in fairy-tales, he is a human outlaw.”

In a humorous aside, Anthony Vidler, of the department of architecture at Princeton, said that he had noticed a “fatal architectural flaw” in the design of the. lock on Red Riding Hood’s grandmother’s cot-

“Any precinct captain in New York could have told the grandmother that latches of that nature could not guard against the wolf,” he said. He offered to submit a new design so that, “Grandma could be sure of a reasonable style of selfdefence.”

Ruth Bottigheimer, the organiser of the conference and a professor of Germanic languages and literature at Princeton, said that many of the tales had put a premium on the silent woman. “When a woman speaks she is almost always defined as wicked,” she said. Hence, the first time Gretel tried to speak, Hansel snapped, “Be quiet, Gretel.” As fairy-tales often are, the conference itself was filled with conflict First there were the literalists, those who based their

studies on the classic texts of Charles Perrault, the seventeenth-century French writer, and the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, who wrote in nineteenthcentury Germany. Perrault and the Grimms collected and published fables and stories that peasants had been telling for generations.

The literalists drew fire from the oralists, whose chief spokesman was Alan Dundes, an anthropology professor from the University of California, at Berkeley. With the passion of an angry Rumpelstiltskin he attacked his colleagues.

He called the conference “elitist,” and wondered what had happened to the notion of the common man. “The whole ' notion of writing down fairy-tales is nuts,” he said. “We’re talking about an oral tradition, but we

read academic papers. Fairy-tales are fantasy. What you have in these tales is what you can’t say directly.”

Others, who perhaps had not expected such a rigorous examination of bedtime stories, seemed disquieted by the proceedings.

"I’m startled,” said Catherine Brewer, a Princeton grandmother who said that she had been drawn to the conference out of curiosity. "There is so much emphasis on sex. I read these stories to my children and grandchildren.”

Her complaint was a familiar one to Professor Zipes, the Marxist. “I always get into trouble when I give these talks,” he said. “People say, ‘Why don’t you just shut your mouth, and let us enjoy our fairy tales’.”