Psychoanalytic Readings of The Snow White and Hansel and Gretel

The psychoanalytic reading of The Snow White and Hansel and Gretel is a stark manifestation of the widespread reductionism and adulteration which aim at comprehending the truth by dividing it into innumerable parts. Instead of looking at the bigger picture, trying to dig deep into the meaning, if any, of a story looks like to be a commendable path to take. But deciphering the meaning hidden in the cultural phenomena is one thing and attributing a meaning which is not there to them is another.

Freudian analysis of Snow White is one example of such imposition of a particular meaning that could easily be claimed not to be there at all. For instance, ascribing jealousy to the affection that a child feels more deeply toward one of his parents than the other is simply forcing some volatile interpretations into a concept developped over the centuries. This is nothing but 'psychological deception,' a tendency to reduce everything to psychological factors and to call into question not only what is intellectual, which is related to truth, or spiritual, which is related to life in and by truth (in Fairy Tales' case, they are surely more spiritual than simply intellectual), but also the human spirit, which is the core that makes one who he is and who he is not.

Psychoanalytical (Freudian, especially) reading of anything is meaningless enough and when it is applied to a realm that necessarily belongs to children(maybe this was not the case when fairy tales were first created but now they mainly function in the realm of children literature), it is dangerous, as well as totally meaningless. With its assault on human spirit, pschoanalysis also questions its capacity of being good and pure, and still more evidently, its interior illumination and heavenly transcendence. Unfortunately, this subversive tendency is easily noticeable in psychoanalytic readings of fairy tales.

As Schuon suggests, what gives psychoanalysis its sinister originality is its determination, as could widely be seen in the analysis of Bettleheim, to attribute every reflex (Hansel and Gratel's giving in to gluttony when they come across with the house built of bread, cake and sugar) and every disposition of the soul (Snow White's so called jeaolusy of her mother and fondness for her father) to mean causes and its exclusion and disregard of spiritual factors.

Daring to call a child's inclinations and preferences 'psychosexual' is but a notorious tendency to see health in what is commonplace and vulgar and to see neorosis in what is noble and profound. I believe it is of great necessity to keep, if possible, such kind of analysis away from the domain that belong to the children. Because, the traditonal interpretations of the fairy tales have in them what reductionist, unbalanced and sex addicted people have never grasped: the spirit which is both divine and mundane and which is capable of tilting towards both goodness or vice and/but which is always good and noble in its essence. Psychoanalysists have hardly grasped the truth that human being stands in balance only through disequilibrium.

Psychoanalytic avocations to decipher fairy tales like The Snow White or Hansel and Gretel from beneath simply undermines the wisdom that has been gathered thorughout the ages and instilled into the narratives. It is not that people do not ever have such instincts that are listed by the pschoanalysists. What is wrong is looking for vice and sexual anomalies in the children and then trying to heal it by means of overexposure. It is such a perverted approach to the most delicate aspects of mankind that, for example, instead of abolishing sin, psychoanalysis abolishes the sense of guilt, thus allow the patient to to go serenly to hell.

Fairy tales should remain in the realm there are meant to and should be let keep their innocence for children are innocent.

You're not a fan of psychoanalysis then?

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Psychoanalytical (Freudian, especially) reading of anything is meaningless enough and when it is applied to a realm that necessarily belongs to children(maybe this was not the case when fairy tales were first created but now they are mainly function in the realm of children literature), it is dangerous, as well as totally meaningless.

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I wouldn't agree. I see psychoanalysis, and any other form of literary theory for that matter, as just another "tool" in the arsenal of literary interpretation. Of course how someone uses that "tool" is up to them, and there are some interpretations which seem more successful than others, but isn't that life?

Of all the methods of interpretation or theories, psychoanalysis seems to really separate some people. Some people insist it is nonsense, others like it. Personally I dislike anything which devalues the interpretation of literature. So saying "this theory is meaningless" for me is reductive. For me any form of criticism stands, as that only helps to increases the value, depth and complexity of literature. It gives us more eyes to see from.

I think the important thing is to match the literature to the theory, and not the theory to literature. Use criticism and theory as an aid to reading literature (and the world?) but don't get too lost in the theory.

Of course if your post is an essay against psychoanalysis then it is perfectly valid argument none the same, you can't be docked marks for opinion.

I have to disagree too, I'm afraid.

Clearly, as adults used to tell fairytales to one another, there is a meaning in them. Psychoanalysis can actually shed a light on that. To put everything in a sexual context migt be a little too easy, but to finish it all off by saying that it is meaningless is also a little too easy.

Fairytales have gone down to cildren's literature,but they were not. As a result their ends have been changed by Disney most prominently. Although fairytales have gone from western adult culture almost entirely, they are still present in Eastern-Europe, Russia and parts of Scandinavia where people still tell each other stories, folktales. Now, they must have a meaning for those adults that goes beyond the mere story. Otherwise there would not occur the same kind of figure, the same tool, the same prince and princess...

Strangely enough, for the psychoanalysist, a complex is bad because it is a complex; he refuses to see that there are complexes which honor man or are natural to him by virtue of man's deiformity ( his being innately good) and consequently there are disequilibriums that are necessary and that must be resolved above ourselves, not from beneath. Psychoanalysis (Freudian, mainly, not Jungian psychoanalysis) tends to reduce evey human disorder to Oedipal anomalies whose roots, they claim, go to the childhood desires and dreams.

Limiting or wholly imprisoning the hugeness of fairy tales in non-empirical psychoanalytic readings would leave part of the truth away from our comprehension and this should not be an option in this era of information and in-depth analysis. We need different readings of fairy tales today as our problems are more varied than those of the people of the past. This does not mean that the nature of their problems were less adamant or less formidable whereas we are required to deal with problems of utmost sophistication, rather, it means that they had less problems and those were easier to handle because human and nature were then in a relatively more harmonious interaction. Today we have lost our chance of summoning nature to the solutions of our problems because in the root of our anomalies lays our disconnection with nature, as well as our destructive manipulation of it. Fairy tales can still be of a great help if we are able to look them deeper than some impractical schools of thought do.

One of these impractical schools of thought is Freudian psychoanalysis, which aims at disclosing man’s subconscious mainly through dreams and childhood anomalies. That psychoanalysis lacks scientific evidence and substantiation could be seen as its largest dilemma in its claim of being an authentic commentator of fairy tales. Psychoanalytic readings of fairy tales often opt for digging into the subconscious of the characters to see what sort of complex and repressed sexual and traumatic memories of childhood or adulthood might have happened in that realm. However, this approach is not supported by scientific researches as it is not experiment friendly. If this is the truth, how is it possible to talk about a dogmatic belief without plunging into some dogmatic thoughts? Still, I would not like to disregard the entire corpus of psychoanalytical thought, but when it comes to the interpretation of fairy tales, we should have more options than just one fixed point of view. It would harm first this school of thought itself to aggrandize it to a level equal to that the Darwinian Theory of Evolution enjoys today, which is almost a dogma and an untouchable postulation in the academic circles.

I agree with both of the above posters that it is for our betterment to have different readings/perspectives of a given subject. However, it is mostly opting for the easiest way to call for Freudian analysis when some anomali occurs in real life or in fairy tale.

Fairy tales could as well be treated as a form of sacred art produced by people who were the main receivers of the Divine Revelations.

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Originally Posted by beroq

Fairy tales could as well be treated as a form of sacred art produced by people who were the main receivers of the Divine Revelations.

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Just when I was about to give up trying to figure out what your point was, you gave it away.

Snow White and Hansel and Gretel is describing social reality of early modern history - a high quote of maternal deaths, patchwork families and stepmothers abusing or neglecting their unloved stepchildren. There's no need for a psychoanalytical interpretation. Science should better attend to Pinocchio, the guy who gets a boner when he lies. Ha!

Just a couple of short points:

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That psychoanalysis lacks scientific evidence and substantiation could be seen as its largest dilemma in its claim of being an authentic commentator of fairy tales

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However, this approach is not supported by scientific researches as it is not experiment friendly.

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Literature is not a science. None of it is provable, that's not the point of it. I can't understand your argument here at all.

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when it comes to the interpretation of fairy tales, we should have more options than just one fixed point of view.

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Who said that the only way to interpret fairy tales is through psychoanalysis? Feel free to interpret them however you wish. However I can't see the point in disregarding psychoanalysis (or any other theory) just for the sake of it.

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Originally Posted by amarna

a high quote of maternal deaths, patchwork families and stepmothers abusing or neglecting their unloved stepchildren.

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That is not totally true. there are indications as to earlier versions that in the 19th century, the mother was substituted by a stepmother to make the stories more acceptable. In earlier versions, it is mostly the mother who takes Snowwhite and Hansel and Gretel away. In the first case, the three-way 'sleep' indicates an initiation into the world of woman (laces to get the shape, hair to get the beuty and the apple, possibly an inidcation of sexuality, like in Sleeping Beauty after which the prnce, her husband, kisses her and she awakes) and in the second it could be down to late medievel history when plague, hunger etc moved parents to get rid of their children.

The fact that in folk tales regularly the same characters (the witch, the abandoned children, the hag, the ogre, the wood, the sleep, the house of bread etc) crop up, and across Europe or the world even, indicates to me that there is more to this type of tale than is on the surface.

What exactly do you want to prove? The bad stepmother is a very common motif, basing on everyday experiences. It occurs not only in H&G and in Snow White but in many other tales too (Brüderchen und Schwesterchen, Frau Holle, Die drei Männlein im Walde, Die weiße und die schwarze Braut, Der liebste Roland, Der Herrgott vom Bäuchlein, Aschenputtel...) and not only in those of the Grimm brothers.

(edit: found an interesting article on bad stepmothers in sueddeutsche. The mortality of motherless children in Ditfurt/Quedlinburg in the 17th-19th cent. increased from 10% to 15% when they got a stepmother.)

I do not want to prove anything.

In older versions, before the 19th century when the craze for fairytales began and even in an earlier edition of the Grimms' fairytales, and in versions of other cultures it is the mother who takes the children away. Not the stepmother. It was more easily comprehensible for a 19th century public that a stepmother was the evil one, rather than the mother herself. And anyway, what would the children have thought of their mother if it was the mother in the fairytale who abandoned her own children? On top of that some scholars have claimed that the Grimms had a personal problem with their stepmother and their father had died prematurely. Hence the evil stepmother and the loving father...

And, the stepmother is not always originally the mother though. In the Grimms' Cinderella there is the stepmother and the mother who helps Cinderella. The witch is not always a bad woman. By the way, the witch, in former days, was more of an amibuous figure, because she was essentially a fairy and fairies could be bad or good, either way. Hence, Baba Yaga the with in her hut of chicken legs, occurs in certain tales as a helping figure and in other tales as an evil hag.

And what do you want to prove?

As Neely said, literature is not a science.

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Originally Posted by kiki1982

And what do you want to prove?

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That fairy tales and legends are reflecting the social reality of the mileu they are invented in.
The bad stepmother is a common and popular literary stereotype, I can't see where your problem is.

I do not have a problem. It passes me where I actualy showed to have one.

In Brüderchen und Schwesterchen it is peculiar that it is actually the stepmother, who was wicked in the beginning, is the means of changing Brüderchen into a deer which leads to the king coming to the house to take Schwesterchen as his wife. Furthermore, it is she who 'kills' Schwesterchen after she has given birth to end Schwesterchen's speech with 'Ja, ich bin deine Frau!' ('Yes I am your wife') when he professes after the third nght of her appearance, that she is his loving wife.

The stepmother is in this tale at least essentially the means of first isolation through which Schwesterchen learns to be resourceful and self-sufficient, and second of her getting to know her husband. This does not sound as a truly wicked stepmother. Questions need to be asked whether that stepmother was indeed the witch or not. True, the story starts with a stepmother. I never said that they did not exist, but the one stepmother is original (as in Cinderella) and the other is not (as in Snowwhite where the earlier version of the Grimms states that the mother takes Snowwhite to the wood).

The quiet mother-role is the same role as Frau Holle in a story about a maiden and a spindle where the maiden asks Frau Holle for help after which the spindle flies out of her hand, intrigues a prince who follows it and ends in he taking the maiden for his wife. It is quiet role of help, also present in Cinderella of the Grimms where she gets her clothes for the ball from her mother's grave and in a Rusian tae with a magic doll.

The 'death' of Schwesterchen makes me think about Basile's version of Sleeping Beauty where sleeping beauty gets two children of a knight who raped her while she was sleeping. The tale also ends in her 'resurrection' together with her children, after being 'eaten' by him.

Kiki, is there any factual reason in discussing every single occurrence of the bad stepmother motif in literary history? Could you outline a thesis if you have one? Generalize a little? Refer on causalities? Maybe literature is no science, but abstraction has it's advantages.

It is just as I said: there seem to be two kinds of stepmothers in fairytales, the original one and the later added one.

The original one mainly occurs as bad opposite the real (dead) mother who is deemed good and sometimes helps the child from the other world to overcome the hardships. The Grimms' Cinderella is a good example.

The later added one occurs as a single being without being contrasted by the good mother. She was an easy replacement for the mother who abandoned her children. A good example is the stepmother in Schneewittchen. In the first edition it is Schneewittchen's mother who grows jeaous of her beauty and not her stepmother. Although the mother had been replaced by the stepmother, the initial scheme of first getting laced up, then having her hair done and then the apple, does not change. As such the good mother is never opposed to the evil stepmother and is as such not essential to the plot. What's more is that mothers are usually rhe ones to perform the 'evil' acts of lacing up, making beautyful and educating their daughters in sexual matters. It remains a question why the evil stepmother comes to make Schneewittchen beautyful by combing her hair. The poisoned comb... The question remains why she had to be laced up and combed if that was no down to her womanhood...

The notion of the evil stepmother is as much down to these faiytales as it could have been down to real evil stepmothers. Nothing says that there have not been evil stepmothers, but there have been as many good ones. I regard it as extremely unlikely that people would start willingly discrediting their own role, unless, like Bettelheim actually uttered, the relation mother-stepmother is the result of the projection of good and bad feelings on those mother-figures. I am not sure if I would agree with that, but there are clearly fairytales where the two figures are contrasted and where the good mother helps and others where that contrast is no longer there. As such, in the collective mind, it more probable that a mother would represent our own positve feelings towards our mother and the stepmother the negative feelings towards that same mother. It is furthermore the case that literature was heavily influenced by these written down fairytales, mainly Perrault, the Grimms and Andersen and that they largely are responsible for the notion 'evil stepmother'. So there is probably mutual influence going on, so what was first? the chicken or the egg?

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Originally Posted by amarna

Snow White and Hansel and Gretel is describing social reality of early modern history - a high quote of maternal deaths, patchwork families and stepmothers abusing or neglecting their unloved stepchildren.

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Agreed. Socio-economic point of view can be of a great help to decipher some dark points in fairy tales.

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Originally Posted by Neely

Literature is not a science. None of it is provable, that's not the point of it. I can't understand your argument here at all.

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The problem is that, like Evolution, Freudian Psychoanalysis is treated like a empirical science and that it tries to heal people with psychological problems despite of its shortcomings.

Fairy tales often include unbalanced personalities such as cannibal step-mothers or fathers with incest inclinations. By becoming one of the lynchpin interpretators of fairy tales, Psychoanalysis also claim a right to treat actual people.

If it is not empirical, it is dogmatic or inspirational. That's why one finds it hard to counteract psychoanalytic claims.

Hi Kiki, thank you for your answer! Yes, I agree with you that there are good stepmothers as well (would be a dreadful world if not :) ) and that there is a lot of projections and emotions influencing the notion of stepmothers as bad.
Otherwise you'll find the evil stepmother theme even in ancient Greek myths, so I do not believe that the reputation of stepmothers was ruined by the written fairy tales of modern Europe. I think the origin of this notion is much older and much better grounded. I'd put it rater down to dynastic interests and inheritance conflicts and the biological fact that brood care behavior is influenced by genetic similiarity. Furthermore in socities with high infant mortality infanticide is hardly detectable and therefore factually not sanctioned.
Well, finally there might be a whole bunch of causes for this notion, economical and psychological as well.

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Originally Posted by beroq

The problem is that, like Evolution, Freudian Psychoanalysis is treated like a empirical science...
If it is not empirical, it is dogmatic or inspirational. That's why one finds it hard to counteract psychoanalytic claims.

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Yepp, Freudian psychoanalysis would be nothing without the Forer effect. Same with horoscopes. But though, I like psychoanalysis. It may be placebo, but a lot of hypochondriacs are healed by placebos. :D