Traditional tales were not originally written for young audiences. As a result, we
find a high content of sex,
violence and sadism in them.Thus, in versions such as "Hansel and Gretel", it is the mother of the children who forces her husband to abandon them in the forest due to food shortages. The same thing happens in "Snow White", as it is her mother, and not her stepmother, who wants to end the life of the beautiful young girl because of sexual rivalry. Finally, the mother is forced to dancing to death wearing heated iron shoes. In "Cinderella", the stepsisters, induced by their mother, cut their toes and heel to fit into the golden slippers. Some birds and the blood reveal the imposters, who are hardly punished, as their eyes are ripped by some pigeons. In the traditional version of "Rapunzel", the young girl is given to a witch by her parents in exchange of food. The witch locks her up in a tower, but a prince discovers her and climbs up every night using her long braids. The result of these visits is Rapunzel’s pregnancy, who later on gives birth to twins.
Little by little, these texts were adorned
and sometimes censored from edition to
edition, since they reflected the
extreme harshness of life in the Middle Ages. The authors of these stories had to change several details
of the originals, in order to satisfy the demands of the
bourgeois public.
Although today's children know about the existence of evil,
death, violence... These
stories are too cruel to be shown to the students in their original
versions, because rather than presenting the reality to our students, we run the risk
of fostering these attitudes.
However, the versions we know present to our
children have a lack of realism
and show a fantasy world where there is always a happy ending. Therefore,
we may make our children believe that
if they behave well and do everything they should do, the result will
always be success and happiness.
Perhaps the best option is a mixture of both versions. A version which promotes the values presented in the adapted stories,
but at the same time prepares our children to face the reality of life found in the original tales.
Hello dear classmate !!
ResponderEliminarI like so much your post so I would like to comment it. This topic is very interesting to my mind, because I do not know about these original versions until now.
Firstly, the last day a searched more information about fairy tales and their origin versions and I found the original version of "Sleeping Beauty" so I would like to share it with you. Sleeping Beauty did not wake up for the kiss of prince but she woke up by the nudges of her twins. Sleeping Beauty was raped while she was sleeping by a king who was married. The wife tried to kill them but finally Sleeping Beauty and the king married.
I cannot believe how these tales that I know and read since I was little change form their first version. For me are very different stories, the original contains a lot of violence, sex and sadism while the Disney's versions censure all of these contents and the fantastic and magic elements are the main character. Moreover, there is always a happy ending.
Finally, I totally agree with you! NOwadays, Disney stories contain a fantastic world with beautiful princess and handsome and strong princes and not all the stories need to have these characteristics. We need to show to students a real world in order to prepare children to face the reality of life and we can achieve that by mixing both versions. Moreover, children need realism so the main objetive that children's tales have to achieve is to promote values and show a real world by adapting the different stories with different ages.
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ResponderEliminarMarta, I am absolutely shock with your post. I think you have made a deep research on all those tales. Congratulations!!!
ResponderEliminarI totally agree with your point of view. I think that those stories are very hard for small children, so they can´t be tell in that way. Nevertheless I think that some of the new versions only show a wonderful world without evil and bad things, which is not true.
The idea of mix both things is not bad, but is difficult to make an appropriate balance between both. It is a hard task we cannot forget, and try to improve each day.
Thanks for your post.