THE GOTHIC AND THE FAIRY TALE: THE UNIFIED GENRE

Transcription

1 THE GOTHIC AND THE FAIRY TALE: THE UNIFIED GENRE

2 Fairy tales are often viewed as harmless stories that people read to their children at bedtime every night. The fairy tale proceeds in a manner which conforms to the way a child thinks and experiences the world; this is why the fairy tale is so convincing to him. When talking about literature, critics do not call fairy tales gothic and they do not include them in said gothic category. However, each fairy tale that has many of the telltale elements of a gothic novel: isolation, revenge, violence and abuse.

3 When looking at gothic novels in the context of the many timeless fairy tales in literary history, gothic novels are the grown up version of the fairy tale. Gothic novels are stories that affect adults the way that fairy tales affect children, scaring them and teaching them moral lessons. One can also look at many gothic novels in a sort of fairy tale context. Emily Bronte s Wuthering Heights is a story full of the fairy tale elements that Emily and her siblings used in their collaborative stories as children. Gothic novels are not exactly bedtime reading material, but if one looks closely at fairy tales throughout the centuries, one can find that the two genres are really connected.

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5 Born in 1785 and 1786, the Grimm brothers were said to have loved a good story and compiled collections of folk tales drawn mostly from oral narratives told to them over the years. The Grimm Brothers compiled and rewrote several volumes of fairy tales in the early nineteenth century, many of their stories containing gothic elements that could be found in several famous novels of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

6 Aschenputtel (the story of Cinderella) and both of the Grimm Brothers Bluebeard tales, The Robber Bridegroom and Fitcher s Bird, can clearly be seen as shorter versions of the gothic novel. Many gothic works have a solid acceptance of the cruel as normal (Moers 99), and a number of Grimm s fairy tales also fit this description. The majority of fairy tales are stories with several gothic elements embedded into their plotlines, reminding the reader of the many gothic novels that came before and after the Grimm brothers wrote their grotesque tales. Fairy tales today are often seen as harmless children s stories with happy endings.

7 Grimm s works are gothic pieces with underlying allegorical lessons. The fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers are ironic fairy tales in that they are actually quite grim and violent. Although they include the obvious fairy tale elements of vengeance for the wronged, true love, and of course, the underlying lesson always reminiscent of Aesop, they are gory, dark and just plain scary at times. The stories were told to children to teach them morals; convincing motivation for good behavior evil is punished with pain, violence, dismemberment and even death. They read like horror stories with happy endings.

8 The stories collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the early 1800s serve up life as generations of central Europeans knew it capricious and often cruel ( Grimm, National Geographic). Charles Perrault, a French lawyer and writer, originally compiled many of these fairy tales in 1697, with the publication of his book, Stories or Tales from Times Past, with Morals: Tales of Mother Goose. In Perrault s versions, the tales were a little less grisly, as in the tale of Cinderella, but his Bluebeard tale was frightening and bloody. When the Grimm brothers got hold of the tales more than a century later, they were even further transformed into mini-horror stories, keeping the lessons and the main plotlines in place.

9 A fairy tale is defined as: a tale about fantastic magical beings set vaguely in the distant past. Fairy tales include shape-shifting spirits with mischievous temperaments, superhuman knowledge, and far-reaching power Other conventions include magic, charms and a hero or heroine who overcomes obstacles to live happily ever after many critics note that fairy tales often contain psychological depth, especially in terms of childhood anxiety.

10 Aschenputtel teaches children not to be mean to their siblings and not to be greedy and selfish. The two Bluebeard tales, The Robber Bridegroom and Fitcher s Bird, teach children not to talk to strangers and not to let curiosity get the best of them. If the Grimm brothers had taken the time, they may have been able to write the most magical gothic novel of all time.