During the Early Modern Era in Europe, death was a very common experience, where people didn’t care much when someone close to them died. The next child born into the family would take on the name of the dead loved one, replacing them. The main causes of death for peasants during this time were hunger, disease, poor living conditions, and lack of knowledge about health and living. Death was so common; it was a main theme for entertainment in fairy tales. Fairy tales were not the same as they are today. Our society, has adapted them to revolve around a hopeless princess or a damsel in distress. In reality, fairy tales are much darker, extra violent, and gruesome. After all, fairytales are created to scare kids into behaving for their …show more content…
In general, disease was kept close. Pierre Goubert states, “…Often there would only be one bed, in which case everyone would share the same warmth, the same fleas, and the same outpourings...” Almost everything done happened ins the dirty, diseased, and poorly air flowed home. Without airflow, disease and germs were extremely easy to pass to one another. Since there was only one bed, the leading cause of infant death was babies being suffocated in the bed with their parents. Additionally, children were dying in the first days, weeks, and months of their lives. Because of death was so common in young children, and religion was very important, the parents felt the need to baptize their children right away. But during the fall and winter months this easily killed their children. The weather was cold and the churches did not have heat, in result, the baby certainly got sick and most likely died, due to the very little knowledge of health care. Children were also susceptible to die from accidents because of the lack of supervision and older siblings or grandparents. Since the mortality rate was so high and the average life span was so low, no one was around to help parents take care of their kids. Peasants were not even alive to make it to their fiftieth birthday. When parents turned
“Children abandoned the father, the husband the wife, wife the husband, one brother the other, one sister the other.” (document 4) Children were also unable to take care of themselves, even after they had survived the disease. (document 5) Many died with no one looking after them. Strangers would carry the dead around to a burial, and
There are numerous genre’s in literature, but the level of importance and influence on an individual will differ. Exposure to books and stories is especially important for children because it their chance to acclimate themselves to written language and in turn create their own visuals for the toneless words. “Why Fairy Tales Matter: The Performative and the Transformative”, by Maria Tatar contains an ample amount of textual evidence from author’s research into fairytales, as well as writer’s personal experiences with fairytales. Although Tatar supports her claims with evidence, her resources are not concrete, and seems excessive at times. Also, her assertions are weakened by her failure to defend her conclusion against competing beliefs.
More issues such as sickness, and death arose due to the overcrowding of people and the unsanitary conditions they lived in. Thomas B. Macaulay, a social historian, states people live longer because they are better fed, better lodged, better clothed, and better attended in sickness. (Doc 3) This without a doubt means that if people had better conditions in living, and not as much overcrowding, they would live longer. One big issue that was an ongoing problem during this time was disease and infection. Disease would take a lot of lives, and people could not do anything about it because, because they did not know how to fight it. Edwin Chadwick stated that the annual loss of life from filth and bad ventilation is greater than the loss from death or wounds in modern wars. (Doc 6) With foods being contaminated, it was obvious that people would have died from infection and disease. In Manchester during this time, people were dying rapidly due to many reasons. The Lancer, a British medical journal, published a work stating the average death in certain places. More of the working class would be likely to die faster than a regular artisan or trader. (Doc 8) The main reason this happened is obvious. It was because the working class would live in poor conditions, and would be overcrowded. With this being said, the workings’ class condition was not any better than how they
Once upon a time, there was a literary genre commonly know as fairy tales. They were mystical and wonderful and a child’s fantasy. These fairy tales were drastically misunderstood throughout many centuries, however. They endured a hard life of constant changing and editing to fit what the people of that time wanted. People of our own time are responsible for some of the radical changes endured by this undeserved genre. Now, these fairy tales had a young friend named Belle. Belle thought she knew fairy tales very well, but one day she found out just how wrong she was.
Triumphant reward in spite of unjust punishment is a universal sentiment that transcends languages and cultures. There are thousands of folktales and fairy tales that are firmly rooted in individual cultures, yet the tale of Cinderella has been told through many centuries and throughout the far corners of the world. With thousands of versions of this classic tale in print worldwide, the tale is believed to have originated with the story of Rhodopis, a Greek slave girl who is married to an Egyptian King. The story of Rhodopis, which means rosy-cheeks, dates back to 7 BC and is attributed to a Greek geographer named Strabo. The Chinese variation of this fairy tale is named Yeh-hsien. The Chinese version is traceable to the year 860 and appears in Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang by Duan Chengshi. Yeh-hsien is a young girl, motherless and in the control of her stepmother, who befriends a treasured fish. The jealous step-mother kills the fish, but it’s bones provide Yeh-hsien with magical powers, eventually enabling Yeh-hsien to escape the control of her step-mother for a royal life. The Story of the Black Cow which is found within the pages of Folk Tales from the Himalayas by John Murray, published in 1906, the child who is mistreated by a stepmother is a male and the role of savior is portrayed by a snake, with a cow serving as the moral of the story, faithfulness. These two versions of Cinderella carry many common threads that are
Firstly, access to medical care. Years ago medical care in the 19th century was not very good. The hospitals were very basic, many beds in a large room (ward) there were very rarely curtains around the beds for privacy because in those days clothes were short and extra material would be made into clothing. Also, they may not have been very clean, they were hygienic to work in but for people that were very ill they may of made that person more poorly. Clinics were similar; they had the basic bed to check patients on and the small amount of medicines. Not all the time did they have the correct suitable medication for patients. So some patients may have had to suffer for longer than what they should off because it was hard to get medication that was going to cure
The atmosphere was not sanitary and made people sick. Document six is an example as to why disease and poor health led to a shorter life span. “Diseases caused or aggravated by atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close and overcrowded dwellings, prevail among the laboring classes. The annual loss of life from filth and bad ventilation is greater than the loss from death or wounds in modern wars. The exposed population is less susceptible to moral influences, and the effects of education are more temporary than with a healthy population.
First, one way their living condition was harsh according to the first article was that they had to live and sleep in unsanitary and crowded
There are three types of infection associated with the Black Death: bubonic, pneumonic and septicemic. Bubonic, the least deadly of the infections, was when a person had black puss filled sacs or ‘bubo(es)’ on their lymph nods around their armpits, neck and groin. Pneumonic was an infection in the lungs, it was air born and could spread through coughing or sneezing. This type was found in cooler climates in the north. Septicemic was infection in the blood and the most deadly form of the plague.. The variations in the form of the plague lead to terror among the population because one day a person would be healthy but the next day or week they would be dead laid on the street along with the rest of their family. The commonness of death is portrayed in art pieces such as the Roundel with Vanitas. The sight of bodies laid on the street lead to a feeling of numbness among survivors: “the catastrophe was so unimaginably great that nobody really cared.” () The disease had the ability to obliterate entire family’s: “a single funeral bier would carry two or three people at the same time, but rather one frequently saw on a single bier a husband and a wife, two or three brothers, a father and a son, or some other relatives.”() . The death of entire families was particularly devastating due to the immense amount of value placed on the continuation of family lines and the inheritance of wealth down through those lines during the Middle Ages. This lead to the surviving population to become numb to the death of others but obsessive over their own family and death.
Going through the paper, “Double Standards throughout the Ages,” I never realized how accurate these fairytales are in the real world. Women tend to have it easier to find someone royalty because men who are royalty are looking for someone who is kindhearted. Though, men who are not royalty, but do good deeds, tend to find someone that isn’t royalty. This paper reminds me of how it is right now, men have a tendency to get more money than women do, it’s not fair, but it’s how it is, same goes for women finding royalty and men not finding royalty.
Living standards as described by Blainey (2000) were bleak. Most people lived in one roomed, small stone houses, often with four or more sharing one bed. Homes often remained unheated due to scarcity of wood (Blainey 2000, p. 423). People were largely uneducated and knew little about healthcare. Sewerage was disposed of in the same rivers that were used to drink and wash from. These contaminated rivers were used to supply water to the growing crops. This had a huge impact on health, causing infection in around two out of every three people in rural areas (Blainey 2000, p. 415). Lack of hygiene and knowledge of healthcare led to shorter lifespans.
"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.
Their livestock provided them with milk, cheese and meat. Peasants died when there was low production, famines or crop failure. For both the peasantry and the nobility, childbirth was dangerous and the infant death rate was high. Also, situations where the infant was left alone or in the care of a sibling because the family has to work increased the death rate. During childbirth, the mother would be in company with a midwife. Peasants and lords followed the same procedures in regards to childbirth and baptisms. Children played with what toys were available to them and did small chores such as tending to the livestock until the age of seven. At the age of seven, males would received formal education led by the church and become an apprentice to learn the work of his father so they could support the family. Girls stayed home to help with the household and did not attend school. Even if people were peasants, their parents still arranged their marriages, however, the couple knew each other before unlike the nobility. Generally, girls married at the age of seventeen or eighteen and the husbands were usually older than the
When I first decided on a topic I wanted to make sure I made my fairy tale version more modern day. The story is somewhat based off of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale. I didn’t pick one specific version to follow but wanted to incorporate the theme of kids overcoming an obstacle to return home to their parents. The Fantasyland Park sounds like a place where you can go and find magic and is a world based on a fantasy. The castle was an important part and was made to look like this mysterious place from the outside but like a witch house on the inside. I got this idea from the candy house that Hansel and Gretel came across in the woods when they were stranded by their parents.
1. What is the genre of this story? Are there any other possible genres this story could fall into?