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Author
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Comment
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LostBoyTootles
Registered User
(5/19/03 11:13 am)
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Happily Ever After
What do you think of the phrase "happily ever after"? A lot of people don't like it and say fairy tales should be more realistic. I know, I know, most fairy tales don't end with "and they all lived happily ever after." But still...
And what do you think about the princes? Cinderella married a guy she met at a ball and barely knows. Rapunzel married a man who eavesdropped on her and caused her pain (when he climbed her hair). Snow White and Sleeping Beauty married a man who kissed them and woke them up. I can go on and on...
Tootles~~If I can't be anything important, would you like to see me do a trick? |
Kevin
Smith
Registered User
(5/21/03 12:59 am)
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Historical context
You have to remember that marriage wasn't the same institution even a hundred years ago as it is now. Marina Warner makes a point of this by highlighting the way in which arranged marriage is reflected in the fairy tale: i.e. just as Beauty in beauty and the beast has no choice but to marry a beast, so most women had little or no choice in the man who they would marry. As the decision would be made on the basis of money, and not looks or suitability, it was entirely possible for audiences at the time of the salons, to empathise wholly with these heroines who were forced into marrying rich but aesthetically displeasing men.
Likewise, a look at older versions of the tale would help. For example, in the Basile version of Rapunzel you could say the "prince" and the girl with the long hair were somewhat more than passing acquaintances.
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denag
Registered User
(5/27/03 9:08 am)
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historical context
One thing I wonder about fairy tales with references to arranged marriages, is why they still seem so powerful to me. I grew up considering myself and my peer-group as free to marry - if, and whoever - we wanted (more-or-less). I wonder what is the relevance of this theme now, for people like me - is it just a window into history, or do the tales develop another kind of significance in our society?
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RymRytr1
Registered User
(6/4/03 6:51 am)
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Re: Happily Ever After
Asking Fairy Tales to be more "realistic" is a violation of
the idea of Fairy Tales! If one wants reaistic, then you
must drop most FT's to begin with. In "reality", there are
no talking wolves, magic bean stalks or 100-year-naps.
Lets not forget that the Fairy Tale as come around from
the original, verbal, adult tale told around the fire, to
a sweetened version to entertain children at bed time
(generalization).
You must have a happy ending for a child to have
pleasant dreams. Friday the 13th and F. Cruger are not
condusive to the advoidance of nightmares.
Many FT's were, in the earlier days, meant to "Teach".
Lessons about working hard, living within your social
position, facing the reality of what happens to those
that wonder off, into the woods alone (leave the family);
but always with that tiny bit of hope that one might,
just might, gain a bit above the current level of proverty
and restirction.
Cinder Ella (not CindeRella) ;) is an example of the daily
drugery of every young girls life in the 1500's. In order
to counter the absolute hoplessness of that position,
FT's gave that slight bit of hope that things might change.
Consider the life of a Kitchen Maid in the Victorian era.
Up before light to get the stove going, scrub pots and
floors all day, 18 hours days, at the whim of all the kitchen
staff, ... Things have changed so much in the last 100
years that few of us under 50 yrs of age, have any
concept of the drugery and hoplessness of life prior
to instant on TV's, Microwave Ovens and the Fast Food
Drive Up Window.
A "commoner" in many countries today, is at the whim
of the upper class. In small parts of Africa, a 12 yr old
girl is still sold into "slavery", to other, wealthy Africians.
They have no say in their lives and in most cases, the
parents have little if no choice on the sale.
Read a FT with these thoughts in mind. Put yourself in
a position of total reliance upon those who control your
life. You have no freedom to even go out and play,
you have chores to do and if you don't, you won't eat
and will be beat! :eek
OK, I'll lighten up now :D
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(6/9/03 5:13 pm)
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happily ever after
I personally think of it as meaning, the problem is resolved.
In real life, problems get un-resolved. But in fairy tale terms, this just means we turn back from the last page to some earlier page, where the witch is still threatening or the ogre is still coming. Or else we've picked up a new tale we haven't resolved yet.
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Midori
Unregistered User
(6/13/03 3:31 am)
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"happily" briefly
The tag endings of fairy tales are interesting because they are really quite varied--in many of the South African rites of passage tales what would be the "happily ever after ending" is replaced with some a bit more ambiguous--a comic moment, a slight chord in and different key. The aesthetic point here is I believe that peformers know that only in the story is the dialectical transformation of child into married adult so organized--but even as it gives the narrative "harmony" and balance, it also suggests that this is unstable--and that other moments of conflict/ change are there in the undercurrent waiting. The stories are momentary experiences of resolution--as the story is being told--but both audience and perfomer are well aware that there is no happily ever after--just the next transformation.
Sometimes this is accomplished in European tales with stock endings that story tellers use--to sort of shake us back into our more disappointing world--the Russians are great for this "there was so mead at the wedding but not one drop of it touch my mouth."
I think the older versions of the tales tend to have these funny, quirky endings more often than their later more didatic interpretations--with "happily ever after" being slapped on like those dreadful tag "morals" (as if after all the glorious story telling we really needed to have the experience reduced to a single meaning for us!)
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denag
Registered User
(6/13/03 3:59 am)
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happy endings
drifting slightly off fairytales - short stories often seem to avoid the happy ever after thing. Instead they often appear to subvert/twist, leaving you hanging.
I'm sure there are millions of exceptions, but many of the short stories that have made an impression on me are of this kind, particularly for eg those of Sake (Saki?) and also Rudyard Kipling. I read these when I was in my early teens - probably a bit too young - and although I've long forgotten the stories, I still can still bring to mind the feeling of delicious, terrible uncertainty. I even dreamed about them, following the stories to find an ending which would resolve matters.
And now, I think I still prefer to have a few doors left open for my imagination to go through, than to have all loose ends neatly tied up, even if the story ending is not actually disturbing or subversive.
But I don't think that's always appropriate. It's one thing to scare myself for fun, but I think probably there's a need to judge the audience a bit (it seems to me rather cruel to deliberately subvert/scare in a tale for very young children, for eg).
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crceres
Unregistered User
(7/1/03 1:09 pm)
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beauty and the beast
I disagree that beauty has no option other than marrying the beast. After all, when she returns home for a visit, he's the one that sickens and almost dies. Although many of those stories reflect the attitudes of the time towards marriage and the mercantile attitude towards women, beauty and the beast is one of the few in which your happy couple gets to know eachother before marriage, and in which the woman is more than a pretty prop.
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(7/1/03 7:51 pm)
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random tags
[[ Sometimes this is accomplished in European tales with stock endings that story tellers use--to sort of shake us back into our more disappointing world--the Russians are great for this "there was so mead at the wedding but not one drop of it touch my mouth." ]]
Some of those could be read as hints that the storyteller wants a drink. :-)
Lewis said, also about "happily ever after", that some of those tags were neutral, random, like "There goes a mouse, whoever can catch it can make a cap of its skin."
Rosemary
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Gregor9
Registered User
(7/2/03 7:04 am)
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Re; "happy" briefly
Tootles wrote: And what do you think about the princes? Cinderella married a guy she met at a ball and barely knows. Rapunzel married a man who eavesdropped on her and caused her pain (when he climbed her hair). Snow White and Sleeping Beauty married a man who kissed them and woke them up. I can go on and on...
Regarding this, and linking perhaps to what Midori said about quirky older versions, your descriptions here are for the most part of later revisions upon the original stories where the interaction with the prince was sexual, and either desired or not. (EX: Rapunzel's prince didn't eavesdrop upon or cause her pain by climbing her hair; but he and she did have sex a lot, and she was made pregnant by this. After both are discovered by Mother Gothel and punished (banishment/blindness), the prince actively searches for his lost love for years until he finds her...which casts him much more favorably in fact than most of the princes in these stories).
There are 'happily ever afters' and ludicrously sexist morals (see Perrault, over and over again), and stories that have neither; so I think it's too much of a generalization to make a blanket statement about the tag lines or the roles of the princes, as they vary significantly. (And this, of course, is just within the European canon.)
Greg
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RymRytr1
Registered User
(7/2/03 7:13 am)
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unknown ending
Fairy Tale or Story, I truly enjoy the unpredictable ending. It's the "A Team" TV Plot that has driven us to accept "amusement" as our daily dose. (A= no and muse = thinking, in the Greek).
Every week Captain Kirk and the gang were saved at the last moment, so they could be back next week.
Every Disney movie ... etc
Anyhow, I can't read without assuming I know what is coming, and when I'm wrong, I'm well entertained!. "Walk Two Moons" is a prime example. It won awards for Children's Lit, and is well worth the read. The begriming is a bit slow, but you must hang in there, to the end.
When I write, I try, (as often as I can) to have an unpredictable ending. It can still be "good over evil", but not necessarily that Beauty and the Beast are together. For the younger mind, uncluttered by years and years of reading, a book such as Treasure Island was intriguing, in that I could read it all in one sitting, and I was "scared" and entertained throughout.
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denag
Registered User
(7/2/03 8:21 am)
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Re: unknown ending
I'm undecided whether it's better to have an unpredictable ending or not. I think it might just depend on the story.
I'm not really thinking of predictable as boring here. I'm not even sure if I can explain what I do mean. Umm.
I suppose what I'm getting at is that there can be a certain pleasure for me as a reader, in passing through familiar stages on the way to a resolution. Almost like a ritual. For eg, I love James Bond films, partly because they are a new twist on something so familiar. So that when , for eg, the villain appears with his inevitable entourage, it is funny, and very right, although his face and name and brand of villainy etc are different. I sometimes want to give a welcoming shout of "it's about time you appeared!" or "it's about time that happened!", when certain types of events/characters pop up. A bit like a pantomime, now that I think of it.
And I think that sometimes, the ending can be just as important a "stage" as any other in the plot. To end a James Bond film by killing off Bond? Well that wouldn't do at all, for me. That's not what I watch a Bond film for.
In my own stories (still fledgling), the endings seem to grow out what feels right for the characters and the situation, rather than by conscious design. This might be a feature of being a beginner - I do veer about from happy to sad to ambiguous endings, and find it hard to settle on any one for long.
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Helen
Registered User
(7/2/03 12:11 pm)
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Alternate interpretation ...
The stock endings of Russian fairy tales are actually subject to
a fair bit of controversy: in light of the fact that many of these
tales were regarded as "true" (a point that Jack Haney
makes in his wonderful _Introduction to the Russian Folktale_, corroborated
by Linda Ivanits in _Russian Folk Belief_), I've always thought
of the alcoholically based ones as being rather pointed jibes at
any members of the audience who might not be properly suspending
their disbelief. :)
An alternate Russian ending (to circle back round to the original point) can be rougly translated as "And they lived as happily as they could, till they died," which I've always found to be somewhat pessemistic ... but certainly realistic.
Some of the best retellings that I've read - Emma Donoghue's _Kissing the Witch_, for example - have fun playing with turning the cycle of "happily ever after" happily on its head. There seem to be two ways to deal with the issue: to either consider each tale to be a closed unit ... or to accept the fact that happiness ebbs and flows. Once the tale moves beyond the page, who's to say how things go? All a matter of perspective ...
Helen, Eternal Cynic
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Mary
Unregistered User
(7/2/03 4:14 pm)
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American Jack tales
I read a collection of tales about Jack, collected in America, where a popular ending was that Jack and the princess got married, "and last time I saw them they were doing all right."
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(7/2/03 6:50 pm)
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unknown ending
<i>
I'm undecided whether it's better to have an unpredictable ending or not. I think it might just depend on the story.</I>
I think that's right.
<i>
I suppose what I'm getting at is that there can be a certain pleasure for me as a reader, in passing through familiar stages on the way to a resolution. Almost like a ritual.</i>
Yes, definitely! It's like a sonnet, where you know when the rhymes are coming. That's part of the charm of fairy tales, which follow a definite pattern. Also books like Georgette Heyer's. The most popular books are like this.
<i>
In my own stories (still fledgling), the endings seem to grow out what feels right for the characters and the situation, rather than by conscious design.</i>
That's very good, that's wonderful. It means the ending fits the story and the characters.
<i>
This might be a feature of being a beginner - I do veer about from happy to sad to ambiguous endings, and find it hard to settle on any one for long. </i>
Later if you do decide to specialize in one 'ritual' pattern -- or your muses and your characters do it for you -- you'll be able to choose characters and a beginning that will grow into an end that fits that pattern. You'll never have to force anything.
Rosemary
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(7/3/03 5:34 pm)
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unknown ending
I'm reminded that there are some fairy tales w/o "happily ever after."
Goldilocks
Ivan and the Witch, I think it is (he escapes a witch, but she's still out there wanting to get him)
some I can't remember where the girl gets eaten by the witch
I think those are about problems not yet resolved.
Teeny-Tiny -- I think life just goes on as before.
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alethio
Unregistered User
(7/4/03 12:29 pm)
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the ORIGINAL brothers grimm
does anyone know how hard it is to find the original brothers grimm on google or any other search engine? you can't. it's practically impossible. finding adult versions of the classic fairytales is literally hard.
but why have happily ever after? to appease children when they ask for a bedtime story every night? at least the original brothers grimm tales were talking about life. is it better to have children believing in fantasies or educating them about what truly happenes?
take cinderella for instance. her stepsisters carved their own feet with a butcher's knife so they could fit into the glass slipper, only to be had by a self-centered prince only interested in looks. the fairytale that we hear now ends with happily ever after and the stepsisters having to cook and clean without a servant. what's the point of that? not everything ends happily ever after. not in my world, anyway.
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Mary
Unregistered User
(7/4/03 3:30 pm)
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Fairy tales vs. real life
"not everything ends happily ever after. not in my world, anyway."
If fairy tales were just like real life, what would be the point of reading them, when we could just live some real life?
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RymRytr1
Registered User
(7/7/03 11:11 am)
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Re: unknown ending
denag:
I have to agree with most of your point! I think that I was speaking too much from my "adult" point of view. As for kids, you remind me that they need stability. A good, predictible ending, gives the youngest that reassurance that all will be well at the end. Good point!
And I'm a bit jealous about the ending, working it'self out. :D
I belabor mine sometimes, and get disgusted and... But then, I write for myslef anyway; that and for my 2 Nieces and one Great-Nephew!
"Keep on keeping on", as we used to say back in the 70's. Write to please yourself and your following will find you!
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