Things I Like - Books

Most adults probably remember fairy tales from their childhood – I never liked them. They didn’t make any sense (seriously, who ever heard of a wolf dressing up in Granny’s clothing?).

Even more annoying, the girls in the tales were 1) always helpless and 2) always being oppressed or cursed or physically harmed, usually by OTHER WOMEN. What is up with that?? Stepmothers, queens, witches and hags. They don’t go after the boys, noooo. But put an innocent young maiden in the story and one of them is sure to turn up. Clearly, fairy tales were written by men.

And it turns out that the fairy tales I remember, which were disturbing enough, were actually watered down! If made into a movie today, the originals would warrant at least an R rating. Check out the original Sleeping Beauty. What was wrong with these storytellers?

A recent article in the Telegraph reported on an interesting study of folk tales:

Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world.

Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf.

In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy. [LFW: this makes more sense to me]

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.

“Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like an biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations.

“By looking at how these folk tales have spread and changed it tells us something about human psychology and what sort of things we find memorable”
~ Telegraph

As if we needed more proof that human psychology can be really warped.