Children's stories with adult messages?

[kelby_lake]

According to my one-time drama teacher, Red Riding Hood is about 'stranger danger'. And Peter Pan is arguably a Freudian casebook.

Are these things intentional, teaching important facts about life into children's subconscience? Or are we just cynical?

[kiki1982]

I don't know about Peter Pan, but I do tend to believe that there are certain things in fairy tales which must have a purpose.

I mean, firstly, the same kind of story crops up across Europe, the world even. That's strange as cultures did not so much intermingle in earlier times. Secondly, the same kind of figures move in them, the same kind of situations crop up as well. Why would that be if there was no purpose to those figures? Thirdly, those stories have develped over a long period of time, centuries, millennia in some cases. If those stories did not have a purpose, why were they told? I mean, why would anyone start to tell a story to one's child about a girl who meets a woolf in a wood if he/she did not want to tell their child anything apart from a nice story?

On top of that, some of those fairy tales are no Disney tales at all. They do not all end well, but some end gruesomely. Why? There must be a reason for it.

Whether it is the reasons that some researchers give to them, is another question, though, but there must be one.

[breathtest]

This is quite an interesting topic. I agree with Kiki that they have developed over decades and millenia and that there must have been a reason for parents to tell these stories to their kids. I happen to think it's quite a practical way of giving kids much needed warnings, like as you say Kelby Lake about red riding hood being about stranger danger. Because we remember these stories so well, don't we? They are told to us many times as we grow up and become ingrained on our consciousness.

[OrphanPip]

Folk and fairy tales didn't just serve as stories for children though. Often they were told as entertainment for adults as well, so it's to be expected that there is more to them than simple entertainment for children.

Of course, later versions, like Perrault's, are often intentionally didactic, with a moral lesson stated at the end.

I read a Medieval Italian version of Red Riding Hood where the wolf feeds the girl her grandmother's meat without her knowledge, I'm not sure that would fly in contemporary entertainment for children. Apparently, several of the early Italian versions have the antagonist be an ogre instead of a wolf.

Riding Hood tale seems to originate in Northern Italy and moved to France, and it became popularized by Perrault.

[PeterL]

Many fairy tales were teaching stories with their roots in the times before literacy was common. The stories of pre-literate peoples are usually entertaining as well as teaching something. There are also elements of history in some of the stories. For example, the Volsunga Saga has pieces about the travels of the Goths in Eastern Europe.

I have been told that in the Russian version of Red Riding Hood, the wolf died from eating someone, probably the stepmother, she wasn't palatable.

[dafydd manton]

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, another one with a moral?

[Mr.lucifer]

Dr.seuss had some books with messages for all ages. One even about the cold war.

[.Kafka]

Calvin & Hobbes. Think about it, and while you are at it, think of schizophrenia, psychosis, and the bipolar disorder. Think of Camus and of alienation, and of sunshine.

[JuniperWoolf]

Little girl in red carrying a basket? There's sexual symbolism there. The wolf that wants to devour her, you could see how that would be sexual maturation/men (hey big hungry wolf, you want a peak into my basket?).

[brave new tony]

I think we pull more from the story than what the writer intended to put in. Or perhaps every writer subconsciously puts such meanings and complexes in his or her work. Didn't Freud study literature in order to find trends for his psychological theory?

[OrphanPip]

I think we pull more from the story than what the writer intended to put in. Or perhaps every writer subconsciously puts such meanings and complexes in his or her work. Didn't Freud study literature in order to find trends for his psychological theory?

Ya, but there certainly is a trend of sexuality being associated with the Red Riding Hood stories. The French had a tendency to take folk stories and write them down in precious moralizing ways, which is what we owe our contemporary conception of fairy tales to. Originally though, these stories were told specifically as moral lessons and entertainment for all present.

It's important that Red Riding hood is alone and is prayed on by a bestial male figure, although I think the intended moral is something along the lines of "beware of strange men".

I'm scratching my head to try and remember the name of the author who has rewritten a number of the tales with feminist twist.

Edit: Found her, Angela Carter, I've read a few of her versions and they're not bad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bloody_Chamber

[JuniperWoolf]

Yeah, and old word-of-mouth stories are cool like that because before they were written down they would change with each telling (instead of it being just one author and having people always argue "yeah, but I don't think that's what he meant to say"). Theoretically, you could catch a glimpse at the subconscious of a huge group of people. Or not, maybe it's our own subconscious that we're looking into. Stories aren't a one-way road from teller (writer) to listener (reader). The reader changes the text.

[hazelk]

The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas was written for the young adult reader, so says the author.

Oh what a sad message for all adults'.

[country doctor]

'charlotte's web'...

[Yon Lee]

sorry to bring up and old post! But I had just read Charlotte's Web for the first time in my 27 years of life and my what a book! And I couldn't agree more to most people's point that Fairy tales weren't meant for kids to begin with. I think it's so interesting to watch the shift in the ways people tell story from one time period to another. If I'm not wrong I think Children literature didn't come until much later in the early 19th century or was it 18th? someone correct me i'm wrong.

Anyway, when was it that writers started writing children literature to instill good moral values in children and how did that transformation take shape from "entertainment" to "education"? Does anyone know?

[FrankMarcopolos]

Anything by Hans Christian Andersen will fall into this category. And any Brothers Grimm story, too, most likely.

[ennison]

As soon as collectors of traditional tales started transcribing tales they started adding, subtracting, conflating, adding "missing" bits. It's what we do I guess. The tales the Brothers Grimm collected were grim and gruesome but they or their editors (Probably themselves) realised pdq that there were changes that could make these essentially adult tales more "child-friendly". The Disneyfied modern versions are a long way off the tone and purpose of the published originals. But the "originals" were what were told to collectors like the Grimms. The methodology of collecting, the attitudes of the collectors and the climate of opinion among the literati of the day would all influence what came out of the pipe.
This is true of most cultures.
I think we should be grateful to collectors of folk tales, ballads, songs from all cultures. Even if they are prejudiced or seeking to refine and "improve" they have kept some worthwhile things that would otherwise have been lost.

[Yon Lee]

I think we should be grateful to collectors of folk tales, ballads, songs from all cultures. Even if they are prejudiced or seeking to refine and "improve" they have kept some worthwhile things that would otherwise have been lost.

beautifully put!

[Whifflingpin]

"The Disneyfied modern versions are a long way off the tone and purpose of the published originals. "
The best Disney films can be very close in tone and purpose to early folk tales. Just to mention "Snow White" as an example, all the darkness of any Grimm tale is there, accentuated even by the jolly "Hi Ho, Hi Ho" dwarfs. (Of course, those Disney dwarfs are now folklore in their own right.)