|
Author
|
Comment
|
briggsw
Unregistered User
(4/22/03 11:34 am)
|
Jung and the whole psychoanalysis stuff
My take on it is that fairy tales are about the powerful things children find in their lives, that is, families. Children don't know or care much about politics or class distinctions, but they are very invested in growing up, love or conflict with Mom, love or conflict with Dad, being safe, growing up. They also internalize messages from those around them; after a parent speaks, the child remembers, and tells self the same things; it's like the parent takes up residence in the child's mind. This and the child's own inner messages are both positive and negative; so we get witches and giants and wolves, but also fairy godmothers and kings and queens.
|
Angel
Feather
Registered User
(4/23/03 9:32 am)
|
Females as victims
I think your breakdown by gender is very interesting, especially in that there are so few tales of the boy overcoming the female "danger". I live in Oregon, and there has been so much in the news lately of male violence against women: 3 different men who have killed their wives and children in the last year, plus several girls killed by boyfriends, and two 13 year old girls by a neighbor. I think that the horrible and constant reality of male violence against females throughout history and the present makes fairy tales about the same not very interesting. They just reinforce a not very pleasant reality. Although there are all kinds of folk songs about this theme: "Polly Pretty Polly" where Polly is kidnapped and murdered, for an example. So Fairy Tales where the girl is empowered to defend herself are pretty powerful.
|
Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(4/26/03 9:14 pm)
|
Tiamat, Lilith, Apollo's female opponents, Medusa, Jadis
* boy defeats feminine danger -- so rare it took me 9 months (since posting a query here) to stumble across one!
All too much of this in Classical mythology. Apollo vs female monsters or evil goddesses. See also Marduk and Tiamat in the Enuma Elish. Also in Spenser a fecund female is evil. Lewis took it into Narnia, tho his White Witch isn't fertile. (I wonder which white witch came first, his or Graves's.)
R.
|
|
