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Author
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Comment
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(6/17/03 2:41 pm)
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Fairy tales with terrified hero/heroine?
...are there any?
Maybe there can't be. A terrified protagonist might be unable to take action, so you'd have an action-less story. But it seems we're always encountering children who can step right up to the witch or the giant, always taking the risk, never running away. Thanks in advance; I'm writing an article and this is a small but important question -- how, and which, fairy tales deal with pathological fear.
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Midori
Unregistered User
(6/18/03 3:46 am)
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reverse possibility
Hmm..interesting enough I immediately thought of those stories where the protagonist has no fear--and that is the problem! The young boy who must learn to fear (the stories are usually titled "The boy who didn't know fear"--handily enough--or "the boy who wanted to know fear"). It is as though fear is a given in these stories--and the heroic action is the standing up to those fears. However, fear in the stories where the child must learn it, sugggests that it is regarded as an important survival mechanism--and the absence of fear is also the absence of common sense in the face of danger. We spend our lives trying to make our children feel "safe" and unafraid. Yet in the world of the fairy tale to not have fear is considered problematic.
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Jess
Unregistered User
(6/18/03 5:59 am)
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Fear implied?
When I first read your question, my thoughts were "oh, I can think of a hundred tales". But then, I went back to the tales themselves and found little explicit discussion of fear. I expected it in Donkeyskin, Bluebeard (or other versions), Vasalisa the Fair, the Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty (the second half), Beauty and the Beast, the Seven Swans, the Juniper Tree, the Green Serpent, etc. Which makes me wonder, perhaps fear is such an automatic response that we read it into the stories. In all of these stories, the characters did what they had to do to survive or acted out of a greater sense of duty or love. They often elicited counsel or assistance too, but not always. Maybe that is part of the lesson. I will keep looking though.
Jess
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(6/21/03 6:18 pm)
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Fairy tales with terrified hero/heroine?
That's enough info for my current needs -- that it's rarely the topic -- so I can say so in my paper. But by all means, if anyone has one, post it!
Thanks.
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Nalo
Registered User
(6/21/03 6:29 pm)
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Re: Fairy tales with terrified hero/heroine?
How about Tom Tit Tot? Though I can't remember whether fear's actually described there, or whether I'm just reading in the fear that the description of the creature is supposed to elicit. I do remember that that story has always stuck out to me, because it's easier to imagine being told/performed by someone. It zings off the page. "Then that twirled that's tail, and said, "Nimmy nimmy not, my name's Tom Tit Tot."" It's got a narrator implied, where so many others feel as though they've been rewritten to be read.
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Rosemary
Lake
Registered User
(6/21/03 7:17 pm)
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Rumpelstiltskin etc
The women in "Name of the Helper" tales are quite distraught, do a lot of weeping, till they find out the name they need to get out of trouble. Then they become teasing.
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0500.html
RL
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Mary
Unregistered User
(6/22/03 7:33 am)
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Three Spinners
In all the Rumpelstiltskin and variants, she is quite terrified when faced with the impossible spinning task.
Even "The Three Spinners" which has a rather different ending. (The three spinners who help her don't regard it as an oppurtunity to perform extortion.)
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Valkith
Registered User
(6/22/03 1:04 pm)
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Re: Fear implied?
I like Jess's take that that fear is such an automatic responce that we might read it into the story.
Examples that I can think of where the hero/heroine were scared:
Golidlocks: Perhaps not until until the three bears came home, but when they did, she ran away so fast that she never looked behind her. Though I am unsure if a child who enters someones home and has her way with it qualifies as a heroine.
Hansel and Gretel: Gretel cried bitterly when the witch caught them.
Teeny-Tiny - "The Teeny-Tiny woman was a bit more teeny-tiny frightened"
Again I am going to say I think Jess's idea hold water with me. A main character who is not the least bit frightened of say a magical ogre, or a witch or a giant or a troll is not a hero, but a fool.
Val
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Mary
Unregistered User
(6/22/03 1:18 pm)
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Wonderful Birch
Well, in "The Wonderful Birch" (a Cinderella variant) the heroine is described as terrified: her witch-stepmother had poured milk into the ashes and threatened to make her suffer if she didn't get the milk back into the bowl, and she was frightened.
At least in Lang's version:
www.classicreader.com/rea...24/sec.11/
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briggsw
Unregistered User
(6/24/03 7:54 pm)
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Teeny-Tiny
I'd forgotten Teeny-Tiny. Such a cool story! And she is DEFINITELY a teeny-tiny bit afraid!
An "unresolved" fairy tale, like Goldilocks, in that the danger was evaded rather than conquered (like in Jack, Cinderella, Snow White, Bluebeard, etc.). But maybe it's OK to evade the GIVE ME MY BONE thing!
It's a little off-topic but I'll be brief. I like to use pop culture for the same purposes as fairy tales, and in my paper I was saying that maybe fairy tales are for everyone, and child abuse survivors might need stories to deal with something different. One of those things is pathological fear. There's a Star Trek Voyager episode, The Thaw, about confronting personified Fear. I think your usual fairy tale protagonist just sucks it up and does what has to be done. This Trek episode was for people who can't just suck it up and take on the ogre. Hear, the fear IS the ogre.
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