Posted on 04/09/2023 12:16:29 PM PDT by Twotone
When growing up, there are certain stories children are told. These stories are typically whimsical, often magical, and sometimes even spooky. However, these stories almost all the time convey a moral lesson that could be useful in later life, ending on an educational but heartwarming note.
For example, “friendship makes life fuller,” “stealing is wrong,” or even “doing the right thing can be difficult, but it is always the correct choice.” The lessons vary depending on the tale, but typically, the lesson learned is the central reason the story is told.
In the case of Hansel and Gretel, children learn several moral lessons from the siblings, the most important of which is not to trust or speak to strangers, no matter how kind they may appear to be.
It is a useful lesson, but the story was not always kid-friendly. The true story of Hansel and Gretel is closer to a horror story than one involving a moral lesson.
With an unrelenting famine, child abandonment, and even attempts at cannibalism, the true story of Hansel and Gretel by the Brothers Grimm is haunting and gruesome.
Before we begin, it would be helpful to learn who the Brothers Grimm – or the Brüder Grimm in German – were.
As their name suggests, the two authors of this tale – and so many others adapted into the tales we know and love today – are brothers from Germany.
Their names are Wilhelm Carl Grimm and Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm. Together, they wrote and published over 200 stories.
They never intended to create entertaining moral lessons for children but to preserve German folklore during the Napoleonic Wars, where their culture was being overrun and potentially forgotten, with the domineering French more than prepared to take their place.
(Excerpt) Read more at historydefined.net ...
A five year old once asked me out of the blue, one day out doing errands, ‘why was the witch going to put Hansel and Gretel in the oven?”
I said “she want Ted to cook them. To eat them’
She said, “Whoah!”
The other lesson is: Your step mom wants you dead.
Third lesson is birds like bread
Or maybe, “Don’t be greedy” and/or, “Be wary of strangers”?
Many folk/fairy tales are universal. Some, like CINDERELLA and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST come down to us from the ancient Greek Myth CUPID AND PSYCHE ( which was split in two, for those named fairy tales ) and were originally tales told by and to adults. They were then sort of cleaned up and told to children, getting more and more sanitized as years passed.
Historically, many women died in childbirth, husbands remarried, so step mothers were much more of a norm, than they are today. And these stepmothers often cared much more for their own biological children than the step ones.
Famines and plagues were also common, so there are some fact based, though by now clouded versions of what happened at those times,
Tales of adoptive parents also are included in some fairy tales, as are childless couples, because there was NO medical for the barren back then.
Most children can hear the less cleaned up/more gory versions without having nightmares/being scared, than adults might care to believe; though the sexual overtones in some of them ( SLEEPING BEAUTY ), should be left out!
And all of them, like Aesop's Fables, do teach lessons that children need to learn.
The TV show was good (Grimm)
The Brothers Grimm did not like stepmothers
Another freeper wrote awhile ago how these stories were a way to tell kids that there are REAL monsters out there in the form of terrible people.
Nowadays they could be listening to “Mr. Ballen”.
(A youtube guy that tells stories of real-life crimes, etc. Does a GREAT job. “Tommy on the outside looked like any other 16 year-old kid, well-like by his friends and family and did well in school....(10 minutes later)... His father was found dead in the garage, and his mother had been dismembered with her body parts scattered around the house...)
Today the most dangerous person in a child's world is mommy's new friend and the second most dangerous is daddy's new friend.
Or Stepdad and Stepmom as it was back then.
A few of those are a bit risque as well but they are also good lesson stories.
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