A fairytale as we know it is meant to be an entertaining story of incredible and supernatural happenings. Its purpose is to stimulate the depths of a young mind in such a way as to make us a part of the environment, bound only by the limits of our own imaginations. However, it is this very wild fantasy land that yields a very real threat to its intended audience. Both traditional and contemporary fairytales experienced by children can have harmful effects on a child’s psyche. This is especially true when children are exposed to these fairytales during the early stages of psychological development.
Why do expose children to fairytales? Most often we use these tales to comfort young children or perhaps to calm them down, in the form of bedtime stories. However a closer analysis reveals some startling realities regarding the messages delivered to a child through the words of these fairytales. If one really examines Snow White for example, we could conclude that this fairytale advocates divorce and black magic. There are also overtones of homicide and cannibalism in Hansel & Gretel, rape in the original Sleeping Beauty(Grimm’s Briar Rose), as well as betrayal and pre-meditated murder in the ‘Lion King’. Is it any wonder, then, that a child comes to be afraid to be baked in an oven – or learn to fear villains in made-for-child movies.
For centuries, fairytales have long been criticized and praised by those at both ends of the psychological spectrum. Dr. Karl Oppel and Dr. Bruno Bettelheim, both considered experts in child psychology each have presented opposite views about fairytales. Dr. Oppel presented his findings in the early 1900’s in his book, The Parent’s Book: Practical Guidance for the Education at Home, Oppel made his strong argument against telling fairytales to children. He stated that we should “shelter children from the ugly, illogical, overly violent, and frightening nature of fairytales” (Oppel).
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In the text, Oppel goes on to recount a childhood story in which a young man is passing the time away under the gallows, and is amusing himself with several hanged corpses. Later, he takes the corpses from their coffins and lays them with him in bed. Surely this is not the type of image that we want to share with children.
Nor is that of the evil step-mom portrayed as being a blackened sorceress, giants living in the sky that are apt to eat you, or a little man that rips himself in two when you guess what his name is. Think about it: It’s a warm summer night and the children are all tired from the day’s events. Mom comes in, hushes them, and begins to tell a story of two young children who have become too expansive for their parents to support. This, therefore, justifies the stepmother’s decision to murder the two of them. She sends her husband to carry this out; however instead, he abandons them deep in the woods, where, by the way, they are lured to a cabin made entirely of sweets. This cabin, though, just happens to be the home of an evil witch who savors human flesh and whose only intention is to fatten the children, bake them in the oven, and eat them for dinner! And what is the moral of the story-? Stepmothers are evil, Daddy is weak and corrupt, and the child needs to fend for himself in an ugly wicked world! Why would we want to recite this horrific scenario to children? As entertaining as this fairytale known as ‘Hansel and Gretel’ may be, it seems that such a tale could cause nothing but chaos for a child’s fragile mind.
As people get older, they seem not to remember the world as young children. Children are dynamic parts of every second of everyday. Nothing escapes the attention of a child. Children experience everything with a heightened awareness simply because they are children (Brice, 73-75).
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They are eager to learn about their world, leaving no question unanswered. Everything that a child sees, hears, touches, and feels affects how they perceive the world that they are living in. Children begin this process the moment that they enter the world. Therefore, everything we present to a child is seen as the truth.
Now, when the child has recognized one set of supposed truths, and then presented with a fairytale, what are they to think? A child has no sense of fantasy and therefore assumes fairytales are real-life accounts. Then the fairytale truths are incorporated into the child’s current belief system. So now we have a child being handed ethics and morals from their parents, supernatural beliefs, and grotesque images of how they might be punished for wrong-doing. Let’s take the story of Jack and the Beanstalk; it is full of information that could confuse a child. They are taught that it is okay to give up friendships in the quest to gain something superficial. This story also could lead to a child generating supernatural beliefs. Is it not true that a very large portion of society bases a lot of their beliefs on superstition? This is coming from people from all walks of life, from the rich to the poor. Most of whom, can separate reality and fantasy.
Clearly, the images and messages like these have to affect a child psychologically emotionally and socially. Bettelhiem argues insistently of the reasons children need to experience fairytales. He feels that fairytales do not define or influence a child’s perception of reality, poking fun at parents who claim that fairytales do not render truthful pictures of life as it really is. Bettelhiem even goes as far as to scold parents for “further watering down of these tales to make them seem nicer or kinder, more child-friendly” (Bettelhiem, 117).
He claims that the only truth in fairytales is the truth of our imaginations, which is quite a contradiction on his part. The imaginations of children are limitless, and because they do not yet understand the concept of fantasy when they are young, their minds should not be led in such a way as to frighten or mislead them of the ‘real’ world. In Bettelhiem’s book, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, he has this to say:
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[…that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence – but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious. These are crucial issues that these tales teach our children…the fairy tale [fairytale]…confronts the child squarely with the basic human predicaments] (Bettelhiem, 9).
According to Dr. Bettelhiem, fairytales yield a good contrast between characters in both contemporary and traditional tales. The characters are either all good or all evil – never both at the same time. He says this allows the child to easily comprehend the difference between the two. However, people in the real world aren’t always just good or bad.
After reading some of Dr. Bettelhiem’s work, one would be inclined to strongly disagree that the fairytales, with all their negative influence, can help a child’s development in the grand way that he describes, especially the parts where he calls the reading of fairytales a necessity. Do we really want to tell a child about Frau Trude, the woman who turns disobedient children into logs and warms herself as they burn in the fire? Can we expect them to realize how odd it is for a woman whose husband is a mass murderer to cry and beg for forgiveness for opening the door that contains the evidence of his crimes?
Childhood is the most important time in a life. A child is fascinated with every aspect of each day that he experiences. This is the very reason that time moves more slowly during those childhood years. Think, for example, how long a summer seems between one school year to the next, or how long the actual school year seems compared to the last. The routine experiences in childhood are so vivid: when you were very happy, sad, or angry, those emotions color everything and effect how people, places, and events are perceived. This, in turn, creates disillusioned memories and misleads the child’s view of what is real and what is fantasy. Rie Nakayama writes that, “When I was a child, I experienced many fairytales in one form or another and was often scared by their horrible expressions” (Nakayama, Our World).
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The moral dilemma that one arrives at after examination of the fairytale is a difficult one. Many argue that there have been millions of children that have read fairytales and been just fine afterward. There are also many who would examine the infinite amount of fairytales that contain violence and subliminal messages and say that these stories can do nothing but utterly confuse a child and distort and real perceptions of what the world is like. As we have seen thus far, people such as Dr. Bettelhiem, believe that nothing but a disservice is being done to your child when you do not expose them to the fairytale world. Certainly the ultimate decision rest with the parent, however if the fairytale is such supposed to be such at great rouse; Why does society have to wrestle with the moral implications and ambiguities that they so often incur? That is something to think about.
Works Cited
• Bettelhiem, Bruno Dr. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York. Alfred A Knopf, Inc, 1975.
•Brice, Sandra P. Child Psychology 101. London: Pullox Press, 1996.
•Nakayama, Rie. Our World: Part Seven. Feb. 2002 <http://www.netlaputa.ne.jp/~gaigo/ourworld98p7.htm>
•Oppel, Karl Dr. Should children be told fairy tales? Feb. 2002. <http://www.socsci.kun.nl/ped/whp/histeduc/disc01.htm>
