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Author
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Comment
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Gogogadget
Registered User
(3/4/02 7:13:38 am)
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The representation of monstrosity in fairy tales
Hello there,
I am a student in England studying for my dissertation i have found your site fascinating and i was just wondering if anyone could offer any help to this question, What is the meaning of monstrosity in fairy tales? What purpose did it serve originally and what purpose does it serve now?
I have been most interested in wicked stepmother and the representation of animals as wicked.
Thanks
jo
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Gregor9
Registered User
(3/4/02 8:57:22 am)
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Re: The representation of monstrosity in fairy tales
I guess I'd want a little clarification on your question. By monstrosity are you speaking of monstrous physicality? Or monstrous acts? Or both? The Beast in Beauty & the Beast may be monstrous in form, but nothing in his behavior comes close to the enormity of the acts committed by Bluebeard, a true monster.
GF
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Kyra238
Registered User
(3/4/02 2:16:47 pm)
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Re: The representation of monstrosity in fairy tales
There are two books dealing with analyzing fairy tales that I think you might find useful. I can't remember the names of the authors off the top of my head, but one is called "From the Beast to the Blonde" and the other is "The Witch Must Die." The first examines fairy tale conventions such as wicked step-mothers and practically nonexistent fathers. The second examines fairy tales on the basis of what the author calls the seven deadly sins of childhood (a slightly list than most of us know) and how this relates to their lasting impact on us through life.
Hope they help
Sarah
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Midori
Unregistered User
(3/4/02 5:03:40 pm)
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monsters
From the Beast to the Blonde is a huge favorite on the board--as is Marina Warner's second book, "No Go the Bogeyman,"--which you might find interesting for comparative purposes since Warner focuses her critical eye on the role of male "monsters" in their various forms in the tales.
Your question to us is still a bit too vague--as Greg pointed out. There is no one role for the fantastic in a narrative--and as the fantastic is often quite ambiguous--even monsters have their creative side as well as their terrifying side. Sometimes how they function in the tale has to do with what a protagonist (hero or heroine) needs to have happen at a certain moment in a rite of passage. Baba Yaga can kill, she can give the hero her magic horse--all depends on what part of the journey he is in--monsters eat and swallow bodies and identities, and then provide a "rebirth" of the same body, but now with a new identity and social role--gobbling up chiildhood and spitting out adults.
So what tales in particular are you working with for your dissertation? Maybe that would help the rest of us to make more specific remarks about those monsters?
Midori
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Gogogadget
Unregistered User
(3/5/02 11:29:04 am)
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Monstrous behaviour
Thank you very much for your comments.
I am focusing on, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast and many of the Grimm tales. Within these i am concentrating on monstrosity of animals and how it is only human reaction towards animals that makes them monstrous. The wolf in LRRH is shown to be a terrible creature, yet it is only our perception of it in this way that has led to the awful reputation of wolves.
I also wish to look at monstrous families. Reactions of Mothers and Fathers to their children, or step-children and why this behaviour was so prevalent in the tales, taking into consideration the works of Bettelhiem. I also think a fascinating part of fairy tales is the representation of monstrosity through cannibalism and what part this has in the monstrosity of families, The Juniper Tree being a focal point here.
I fear i am getting too broad but at the moment it is all fascinating to me!
Jo
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Gregor9
Registered User
(3/5/02 1:38:32 pm)
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Re: Monstrous behaviour
A couple of things: First, given that you're looking at the monstrous in families, is the point--made in any number of the books mentioned on this site--that the role of the cruel step-mother was often inhabited originally by the *real* mother, but her acts were so, well, monstrous, that her character was eventually placed at one remove from the core of the family.
Your topic reminds me of a G.K. Chesterton quote, too, from an article he wrote on Aesop, which goes something like:
For it to be a fable, it has to have animals in it, not humans.
But to be a fairy tale, it has to have a human in it.
GF
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Midori
Unregistered User
(3/6/02 4:29:34 am)
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Ambiguity
I would like to suggest that you think about the odd narrative relationship between human and nature(which is often also the fantastic world). Although human beings are decidely part of the natural world, in narrative terms, human beings and nature(along with the fantastic) are often presented as two discreet entities. Stories begin within the human world--then travel out into nature where the protagonist more often has their fantastic encounters. Here too, one can see a parallel with the activities that occur in the human world--though now taking on larger metaphorical meanings as the protagonist engages with the fantastic. (for example--Tattercoats--the conflict between daughter and father preventing the girl's acceptable future identity is paralleled to the furred skin, which while enables her to get away, as long as its there, also prevents her from embracing the accepted adult identity) The return home (or to some aspect of the human world again) provides a moment of synthesis between the human and fantastic world--though I think even in the best of narratives, it is a fragile harmony. Nature and the fantastic world is an arbiter of order--and when conflict or contradictions arise in the human world, the fantastic (whether the glorious or the monstrous) push and pull those characters through the necessary dialectical changes. For instance, in a South African narrative where a girl is resisting puberty, a mountain appears to her, sending two small leaves as emissaries, captures her and then deposits her in the home of the cannibals--where she becomes a surrogate daughter to the Cannibal Queen. They feed her until she becomes enormous (a physical state that manages to parallel her selfishness at her human home). Of course they intend to *love* her into the cooking pot. The girl herself has become a physical monster, more associated with the fantastic monsters of the Veld. Nature steps in again and she goes through several more steps--moving interestingly enough in and out of monstrous states, until she is wiser and ready to return to the human world as an adult at last.
And then too, think of the dragons and swallowing monsters--they function as monsters--but usually to some specific purpose--for Beowulf the last moment of heroism that requires him to confront his death and the passing of the age--the dragon is monstrous, frightening--but necessary to enable him to confront this final rite of passage. (and of course Grendel is also somewhat perplexing--rendering Beowulf at times less heroic and more of an invader into nature's space)
well, these are a few random thoughts--you might want to hunt back a bit through the archives--there was a fascinating thread on cannibalism.
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eearth
Registered User
(3/6/02 2:15:04 pm)
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Monstrous Animals
Do you know Anthony Schmitz' book, Darkest Desire, about the wolf in Red Riding Hood? The Grimm Brothers try to analyze and "cure" him, but he is what he is . . .
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sonia789
Registered User
(3/9/02 3:35:18 pm)
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Re: The representation of monstrosity in fairy tales
Hi. I'm currently doing a PhD, specialising in fairy tales and their relationship to the horror film, so am naturally interested in your dissertation topic on monstrosity on fairy tales. As already mentioned, Marina Warner's book 'From the beast to the Blonde' is very informative, but you may want to read her other book: 'No Go the Bogeyman' which does trace the relationship between 'monstrosity' and fairy tales and 'monstrosity' in fairy tales. But 'monstrosity' is such a generalised term anyway and has varying interpretations from one person to the next. If fairy tales are commenting upon 'monstrous' human traits such as jealousy, revenge and greed etc, then their is a problem with their literary classification ie. 'fairy tale.' Aren't these troublesome 'monstrous' traits a part of everyday human existence? What do we see when we turn on the television for instance, but 'tales' about people who possess such 'monstrous' traits? 'Fairy tale' is a misleading term.
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Midori
Unregistered User
(3/10/02 8:09:42 am)
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absract to concrete
I don't believe there is any problem in calling "fairy tales" such even though they deal with very human emotions and activities. Folk tales/ fairy tales/fantastic oral narrative traditions are primarily concerned with arenas of social tension in the community: rites of passage, marriage, child birth (and barrenness) in some societies co-wives, in European contexts stepwives and blended marriages. but what is specific to the nature of the genre is that it creates concrete images out of the fantastic to mirror metaphorically the abstract human emotion or journey toward maturation. You might find Harold Scheub's study of oral narratives called simply "Story" very interesting.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(3/10/02 9:45:59 am)
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A little off the thread
But, I am always interested in tales in which the "monstrous behaviour" is in the human (or human like)character, and where animals have the more human, or should that be humane, behaviour. Examples that quickly spring to mind are Snow White, Rose Red, Baba Yaga stories, and of course, Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
I think Midori's point about the term "fairy tales" seems consistent with the discussions on this board at least. The term "fairy tale" is a bit of a misnomer since very few actually have fairies in them. It is more in the telling, the use of the fantastic to describe somewhat universal feelings, that defines them. Magic or the otherwise unbelievable (i.e. talking wolves) being merely a device. One could easily transform "real life" monstrosities into symbolic ones. I suppose that is why these stories continue to have influence today.
Jess
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sonia789
Registered User
(3/10/02 10:19:41 am)
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Re: absract to concrete
Thanks for your comment! I'll certainly follow up your recommended reading. The problem I have I suppose is that 'fantasy' and 'fairy tale' are nearly always intertwined, and 'fairy tale' conjures up a 'fantasy' narrative. Maria Tatar and Carol Clover both argue that this labelling is misleading - especially in the context of the horror genre. Horror films like The Blair Witch Project and Ring use Hansel and Gretel to tell their horror stories, but do it in such a way as to make you question just how 'fantastical' is the fairy tale and isn't Hansel and Gretel quite a monstrous story anyway? Both films are about very real, raw emotions and fears which is hardly the realm of the fantastic - and I think this is what both Clover and Tatar are trying to argue as well. But feel free to reply...
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Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(3/10/02 4:48:04 pm)
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Re: absract to concrete
I haven't yet read Clover or Tartar so can't comment on their perspectives, but I would disagree that fantasy and fairy tales necessarily exclude real raw emotion and fears. I would agree with Jess that the fantastical aspects in stories are often metaphors that further delve into the meaning of raw emotions, fears, desires, etc. For example, The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy adventure tale with fantasy and folkloric creatures and beasts. But it is also a tale of a small flawed creature, a hobbit, who must find the strength and integrity to bear a great and corrupting power, and in the end is sorely tempted by that power, even succumbs to it - not so unfamiliar a story in contemporary fiction or even non-fiction biographies. To take an example from YA literature, McKinley's Hero and the Crown has dragons and magic. Yet the dragon is not just a horrible monster, it also embodies the heroine's self-loathing and insecurity. The fantasy stories and fairy tale retellings I put down after the first few pages are the ones that are filled with fantastical creatures but are empty of any real meaning.
Just my 2 cents. Laura Mc
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catja1
Registered User
(3/23/02 10:45:34 pm)
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monstrosity
You've probably read this, but it's worth mentioning: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's _Monster Theory_, especially the first esssay, "Monster Culture (Seven Theses)" might be useful. Also, Bettelheim is widely reviled for his shoddy folklore scholarship, questionable methodology, and light-fingeredness when it comes to other people's work; have you checked out Julius Heuscher's _A Psychiatric Study of Myth and Fairy Tale_, which was the main source Bettelheim cannibalized? Also, for better, or at least more folklorically informed, psychoanalytic criticism, check out the work of Alan Dundes (although he still swallows uncritically some of Freud's sexism and blame-the-child mindset), and Marie Louise von Franz.
Catja
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swood
Unregistered User
(3/25/02 9:32:52 am)
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monstrosity - both animal and human variety
I'm still not sure we've narrowed the field enough.
What makes the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood monstrous is not its wolfish behavior, but its non-wolfish behavior i.e. dressing up like the grandmother and the whole "what big teeth you have" routine.
Similarly, the monstrous behavior of humans in wonder tales is not their un-humane behavior. Mothers or fathers acting in a way that is not consistent with the behavior of an altruistic, caring, being that desires the maturation of its offspring.
In other words, loosely speaking, and merely as a devil's advocate, monstrosity is actions "against nature" which include animals acting in an non-natural way, and humans participating in taboo behavior.
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