Scary Ever After : Are the Original Macabre Fairy Tales Suitable for Children?

Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you . . . .

But if you read the original versions of those tales, you might not want them to.

After all, in the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, the stepsisters sliced off their heels and toes in their efforts to make that slipper fit. In the Grimm’s version of Snow White, the huntsman was dispatched by the wicked queen not to bring back Snow White’s heart--which was grisly enough--but to get her lungs and liver. And when the huntsman tricked the queen by substituting the innards of a boar, “the wicked woman ate them up.”

Yikes.

Original fairy tales are rife with torture, torment, mayhem, rape (Charles Perrault’s 1697 “Little Red Riding Hood” was an adult tale of rape and seduction) and other horrors--usually capped off with an abrupt “and they lived happily ever after.” Events are often so depraved that, at least in the eyes of many adults, they would seem better bedtime stories for Hannibal Lechter than for little kids.

But are some of the original, more macabre versions being unfairly maligned? Don’t most kids like to be scared, anyway? Fairy tales--and the folk tales and myths from which they evolved--were meant to be spellbinding.

Until the Brothers Grimm compiled and wrote their “Kinder und Hausmarchen” (Nursery and Household Tales) collections in 1812 and 1814, fairy tales were primarily an oral tradition. And that tradition relied on a simple formula still in evidence around today’s campfires: The weirder and more gruesome the yarn, the more rapt the audience.

Sanitized versions of the originals--with some of the most gruesome stuff excised--did not appear until early in this century. More recently, there has been a feminist-led movement away from even these cleaned-up versions, in favor of politically correct new tales that feature strong, heroic female figures.

Are such alternatives much ado about nothing?

“This whole question--are fairy tales harmful for children--goes in cycles, like everything. Just like skirt hems,” says Rennie Day, senior librarian in the Los Angeles Central Library’s children’s literature department.

Day, a children’s literature specialist for 25 years, calmly defends the traditional tales, flaws and all:

“Bruno Bettelheim, the child psychologist whose writing is really the pivotal work on this subject . . . says in today’s world it’s far better for children to be exposed to so-called violent fairy tales than to the violence of the everyday world.”

“A child can cope with an imaginary evil,” says Day. “When Jack climbs up the beanstalk and meets the giant, that’s imaginary evil, which is much less frightening to a child than the real evil that we all feel around us, which is drive-by shootings and drugs and abused children.

“ ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ is an evil that they can enjoy because they know there is no giant in the neighborhood and there is no beanstalk.”

Macabre or violent incidents are inappropriate if a child finds them unduly frightening, Day allows, but she stresses that a sense of struggle and its inherent drama are essential if a fairy tale is to make a point.

“There is the whole point of the quest, “ she says. “Fairy tales present in a story format the problems of life. They show a young child or a young powerless person who, because his or her heart is pure, and because he or she tries hard, overcomes through hard work, kindness, good fortune. . . . They achieve, and they conquer or vanquish the evil.”

Parents fall on all sides of the issue.

Leticia Kollgaard did not shelter her 9-year-old son Chris from the more sanguinary stories--for much the same reasons outlined by Day.

“I prefer the older (tales) that give kids a model of carrying on despite the unfairness of life and the horror,” says the Santa Monica resident. “Also, I still have some vestige of childlike wonder and awe that if it’s not ‘happily ever after,’ at least that there are some happy endings along the way.”

Chris’ favorite tale turns out to be “St. George and the Dragon” because, as he puts it, “the dragon hurts him, and he hurts the dragon, and there’s lots of blood and gore and stuff.”

Kollgaard doesn’t even object to gory little subplots, such as Cinderella’s sisters sawing their toes off.

“Now my son finds that hilarious because he himself will say things like that. . . . Also, those sisters were trying to cheat their other sister out of the slipper, and they’d do anything. What’s the difference between that and lying on your income taxes? When you cheat, it’s wrong. That’s the message.”

Then there are parents like Caryn Ograskin, a San Fernando Valley artist, who vigorously protects her two daughters from “scary stories”:

“We don’t even allow those versions in the house!” she says. “We have the Disney versions, which are beautiful. The others are not acceptable in this household. Why scare them? There’s already too much violence around--on TV, even in cartoons, and it’s damaging to my children. . . . It gets you in a fear mode and holds you back. I think it’s evil. “

For Jeannine Mendoza, a veteran teacher at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School in the Koreatown area, the message of the tale takes precedence over the gore. She would not avoid a creepy narrative just because it’s, well, creepy, as long as the message is positive.

“I like the morality of the stories,” says Mendoza, who has two children. “I like ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ and ‘The Magic Fish.’ You know, the farmer finds a fish that will grant wishes, and when his wife asks for too much, the fish says they must go back to living a poor farmer’s life in a hut. I like the lesson of that.”

Mendoza points out that most of her students have liked the “weird ones” and adds: “The weirder they are, seemingly the better they are.”

Many parents do indeed complain that the old tales are sexist, ageist, racist and violent, says Sherry Sanchez, a children’s literature librarian at the Central Library.

“The feminist literature . . . said people shouldn’t read this stuff to children,” Sanchez says, “because it brainwashes them with this notion that it’s perfectly rational for well-to-do young women to mutilate their feet in order to be a prince’s wife. That sort of message is somewhat repugnant to the liberated mothers of today.”

What alternatives do parents have? Many are turning to tales--like “Princess Smartypants” by Babbette Cole--written by socially conscious revisionists.

“Smartypants” features a princess so reluctant to marry that she puts her many suitors to various tests. All fail except for one Prince Swashbuckle, and Smartypants, fearing she will be obliged to marry him, kisses Swashbuckle and turns him into a frog. She lives happily ever after--alone.

“Oh, it’s wonderful--wonderful!” says Barbara Schneyer, who ran the feminist Bread and Roses bookstore in Sherman Oaks for 10 years (it just closed, she said, because of “the economy”). “Every feminist bought it. I think parents are more aware of what they buy in the fairy tales. The children’s books we sold, which was a very small but strong part of the store, were books that dealt with non-sexist and multicultural fairy tales.”

Another alternative story, by Linda Kavanaugh, is titled “The Ugly Sisters Strike Back:”

“Once upon a time there were two sisters who lived in a kingdom far away. It was doubtful if either of them would have won a beauty contest since they did not even try to conform to the currently accepted image of female pulchritude. . . . While the two sisters were studying law and politics, respectively, Cinderella didn’t want to do anything but paint her face (and) practice seductive poses in front of a mirror. . . .”

But Mendoza, for one, objects to works like “Ugly Sisters:”

“They seem to be written for grown-ups who think they’re doing a child a favor,” she says. “Somebody probably wrote that to massage her ego, or to make herself feel better about not being Cinderella-like or something.

“You know, a lot of people identify with characters for different reasons, maybe they’re not even pretty. I have a friend who loved Cinderella, and it turns out her dad died when she was 12, and she felt like Cinderella because of that.”

Day, who has taught the history of folk tales at USC and UCLA (and has written extensively in scholarly journals), points out that there are exceptions to the weak-woman fairy tale stereotype.

In “Cap o’ Rushes,” a 17th-Century English version of Cinderella, a girl works as a castle maid and falls in love with a prince. Wearing one of her late mother’s dresses, she dances with the prince at a ball. He becomes smitten with her.

When Cap disappears and returns to work as a maid, the prince becomes ill from unrequited love. Cap uses her knowledge of herbal cures to heal him with a special soup. He figures out the woman he loves is a lowly maid and marries her, despite her station. And . . . they live happily ever after.

“She engineered the whole thing,” says Day, “and was not dependent on a fairy godmother.”

Neil and Ruth Cuadra, who have two sons, ages 6 and 10, live in the Westdale area of Los Angeles. They like the idea of multicultural awareness and stories that show strong female figures. But they do not like the idea of doctoring existing stories.

“I wouldn’t make it ‘Jill and the Beanstalk,’ ” says Neil. “We should tell them the original story, and if we want to tell them ‘girls can chop down beanstalks too,’ that’s fine. I suspect we’d be doing more of that if we had girls.”

Day says the best answer to the multicultural issue--and even to the questions of sexism, ageism, mayhem, etc.--can be found in any good library.

“There are many more fairy tales than the few that the average person thinks of, and these tales cross all cultures,” she says. “There are over 400 versions of a Cinderella-like tale alone. There’s a Cinderella tale in every culture--African, Egyptian, Turkish, Korean, Chinese. There are Native American tales. Also there are tales where a young man is rescued by a young woman, although they are less prevalent.

“These tales,” she adds, “have been carried for hundreds of years by merchants and travelers. Many of the stories are so universal in appeal. Everybody likes to think of virtue being rewarded. And honesty achieving over skulduggery.”