Charles Perrault’s Fairytales

Maria Tatar’s “An Introduction to Fairy Tales” discusses the impact on how the stories help guide the children from their younger age. The first five paragraphs of the article mentioned about how the children can overflow with imagination, and can vividly see their reality of desire and also, fear. The fairytales can also corrupt the naïve minds of the child in a way of making them realize the reality of the world is unjustified, and people can be harsh. Moreover, Tatar gives an explanation on how people grow up with the same fairy tales with different versions; which gives an entirely different personal idea. Fairy tales also develop the child’s intellectual mind by reading various kinds of genre.

The fairy tale helps the child to understand a balance between the good and the evil; it gives him a hope for a good future.” Fairy tales assure the

If you think of any fairy-tale from your childhood, you will most likely think of princesses whose beauty is described before their name, who live awful lives until a man can control them, and the clichéd phrase “Happily Ever After”. A deeper look into each fairy tale’s history reveals an original piece of writing that explores different life lessons to those perceived by modern society, often through gruesome and seemingly horrific tales. Although all fairy-tales, original or otherwise, are make-believe stories, they are still fundamentally shaping the views of children and giving them an expectation of the world. ‘Sun, Moon, and Talia’ by Giambattista Basile, also known as the original Sleeping Beauty, versus modern-day Maleficent show very

The central focus of this unit is to identify the elements of stories and how their themes may relate to each other in a variety of ways. Students will be guided in a variety of comparison and contrasting activities in order to gain understanding of main ideas, characters, and cultural themes across similar fairy tales from different cultures. This unit focuses on three different versions of Cinderella from different cultures. I chose to focus on the common elements of the fairy tales and the cultural differences because this was something the students were struggling with previously.

Fairy Tales are not just stories that parents tell to their children, but stories with hidden valuable messages which are mostly left on a side. In the article “An Introduction to Fairy Tales,” Maria Tatar clearly explains how people need fairy tales in their lives. Tatar also states how fairy tales have the ability to take the listener, especially children’s, into a journey in which they can play with their imagination so that they can discover their deepest fears and wishes. Personally I agree with the author, because of the fact that in an individual’s lives as they get older, they will try to define themselves, sometimes comparing their own life with a character from their favorite story or Fairy Tale.

The tradition of telling fairy tales to children effects not only the listener but also the reader. Maria Tatar, in her book Off with Their Heads!, analyzes how fairy tales instill and reaffirm cultural values and expectations in their audience . Tatar proposes that fairy tales fall into three different tale-types: cautionary tales, exemplary stories, and reward- and- punishment tales. These three types portray different character traits as desirable and undesirable. Due to the tale’s varying literary methods it can change the effectiveness of the tale’s pedagogical value. In Tatar’s opinion, all of these tales are similar in the way they attempt to use punishment, reward, and fear to encourage or discourage certain behaviors. In the cautionary fairy tale “The Virgin Mary’s Child”, the use of punishment and fear to discourage certain behaviors is enhanced by the Christian motifs and values employed by the tale. These literary devices encourage the audience to reflect on and internalize the lessons that are presented in the fairy tale.

There is nothing more precious and heartwarming than the innocence of a child. The majority of parents in society want to shield children from the bad in life which is appreciated. Within human nature exists desires of inappropriate behavior; envy, deceit, selfishness, revenge, violence, assault and murder. The most well-known fairy tales depict virtue and the evil in life. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give a better direction to his life. (Bettelheim).

Reading fairy tales or seeing them represented has become part of an everyday routine for children. As Baker-Sperry states, “Through interaction that occurs within everyday routines (Corsaro 1997), children are able to learn the rules of the social group in which they are a part” (Baker-Sperry 717-718). For example, through Red Riding Hood, children learn to listen to their parents and to be wary of strangers. Some of these messages are harmful though; not all girls have to be naive and weak while boys are predacious wolves. Not everyone has to play the role that society assigns them.

When imaging the ideal audience of fairytales, children are quick to come to mind, although, our perception of Little Red Riding Hood as an innocent fable is far from the truth. Alternatively, the origins of this story are derived from Italo Calvino’s “The False Grandmother”, a story immersed in symbolism and metaphorical symbols intended strictly for a mature audience. The preceding tale was “Little Red Cap “written by Charles Perrault and then later the “Little Red Riding” written by the Brothers Grimm. Although the details of these tales vary, they all maintain similar storylines. The stories revolve around the young female character Little Red Riding Hood who is sent off on a mission to bring her grandmother a basket of goods. During her adventure she encounters a wolf who engages in a hot pursuit to eat both the Grandmother and Little Red Riding Hood, only to succeed in the earlier rendition of the story. In this essay I will prove that when the Grimm’s Brothers and Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood stories are critically analyzed, it becomes evident that they are inappropriate tales for children as they exemplify the consequences of a minor transgression by Little Red Riding Hood as being the misleading cause of the violence and seduction that occurs thereafter.

"Once upon a time," the most used introduction phrase in common fairy tales used to start an adventure. These adventures have been around for years. The importance of some tales might be more significant than others, also based on culture. My goal for this paper is to educate my readers with the importance of fairy tales, especially for younger children. Fairy tales have been around for centuries from generations to generations. Different cultures, such as the Japanese and Western, have also expressed them differently. All these fairly tales teach children different aspects of life, which make these tales so important.

Fairy tales like Snow White and Cinderella both contain the struggle of good vs. evil. The struggle of good vs evil in these tales teaches us that good always prevails over evil. The fairy tales often times contain common elements that represent good and evil in the story. Both of these tales show the good and evil elements in similar forms. Both tales have the same outcomes where good prevails and they live happily ever after. These tales expose important concepts like good and bad for young readers. Tales such as these two can also teach young readers about good and bad things in life and ways of handling them.

Fairy tales make an important part of cultural prophecy, because they contain wisdom which is passed from parents to their children. They contain basic moral and ethical guidelines for children. Images and symbols used in fairy tales can help to judge about cultural, ethical, social and moral values popular in the contemporary society. Changes and similarities, which can be found in the popular fairy tale Cinderella by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, version of 1812 and the Disney version of Cinderella (2015), can help to realize the changes in cultures and historical epochs.

Fairy Folk Tales are the most popular types of literature. The tale is an orally transmitted tradition by generations through the time; some events are changed to fit reality and society. Folk fairy tales deal with the dualism of the good and the evil. They are basing on a conflict between the good and the evil forces. The conclusion comes from aspirations of the human desire to achieve the justices. There are no known authors and sources for ancient’s literature. We have many versions of the story; they are credited by many authors later. Each tale is very like some other culture’s tale. Each culture has own tales, but all the tales are similarities and differences in some points. This essay will compare between two fairy tales, “Cinderella” and “In the Land of Small Dragon”. The tale of Cinderella is a French tale. It is credited by Charles Perrault; it is published in 1697. The in the Land of Small Dragon is a Vietnamese folktale; it is told by Dang Manh Kha in 1979.

As we grow up, we hear fairy tales and we read them into our lives. Every word and every image is imprinted into our minds. The fairy tales we read are never abandoned. They grow with us and our dreams become molds of the many morals and happily ever afters fairy tales display. We tell children fairy tales when they go to sleep and they read them in school and we even have them watch Disney adaptions that reinforce them further. Generally, they were everywhere while we grew up and they continue to be present while children are growing up now. But what influence do these stories have? We casually expose our children to these tales, but in some cases they can have particularly, harmful personal effects on them, although there is nothing completely or visibly “bad” about them or about the characters in them. Before we divulge our youth to these stories, we should assess their substance and see what sort of effect they may be having on them. They have received so much scrutiny and have been studied by many. Recognizing fairy tales effects on the minds of children is vital in their development. This paper will focus on the underlying messages that the average person wouldn’t recognize in these everyday stories. There’s a modern distort with fairy tales because while they still are widely popular with the youth, they influence children’s self images, outlooks on reality and expectations for their futures, especially for young women.

Fairy tales are something that everyone has read or seen, they all seem to have important lessons at the end of each one to teach young children some of the lessons they need for life. These fairy tales when we were younger all seemed innocent and something we all hoped that would happen to us. Little did we know as we got older that the fairy tales we all knew and loved when we were younger, weren't as innocent as they seemed.