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Author
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Comment
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Andrew630
Registered User
(2/18/06 11:30 pm)
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Grimm Brothers (Grimm Experts WELCOME)
So I watched the Grimm brothers and started to think about the morals of their stories and what they really mean. Then I start to think back to how kids never really want to learn at young ages and just read and listen to fairy tales for their own enjoyment. So I did i bit of research on the Grimm Brothers and found this in their Nursery and Household Tales...
"...we see the basis for the moral precept or for the relevant object lesson that can be derived so readily from these tales; it was never their pupose to instruct, nor were they made up for that reason, but a moral grows out of them, just as good fruit develops from healthy blossoms without help from man."
So if the morals weren't made for children to learn, what were the made for? Just curious...
...but the way, the movie was a disgrace to the Grimm Brothers.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(2/19/06 12:04 am)
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Re: misc
I don't agree that children never want to learn at young ages--in my experience, kids are ravening to learn at young ages, which is how so many of them end up being able to rattle off the name and habits of every single dinosaur that ever walked the earth, and imitating adult activities, and have so many accidents that are the result of not quite knowing what happens when you do x, but being willing to find out.
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Andrew630
Registered User
(2/19/06 12:35 am)
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Re: misc
any insight towards the question i asked though?
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(2/19/06 9:34 am)
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Re: misc
Well, my opinion, or that of the Grimms'? I'd think that it depends on the story in question.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(2/19/06 10:16 am)
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Re: misc
I'm no expert here, but all good stories, whether or not they are fairy tales, tap readers' or listeners' moral values. We recognize injustice without being told. We feel a sense of rightness when the bad guy loses out, or when the good guy does well in the end. There are some basic good deeds (generosity) and bad deeds (killing/maiming), and then there are individual societal mores (in the U.S. a husband and wife move out into their own home; in India, they move in with the husband's family). All of these (moral values and mores) are mixed into the tales, and as your quote points out, we can pull these all out by reading carefully. For me, the best stories do it without hitting me over the head, without a "this is how you must behave" line.
Best,
Alice
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(2/19/06 11:05 am)
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Re: misc
They aren't saying that morals aren't for children, they're saying that the stories aren't necissarily intended to be morality lessons. And while the Grimms did try to soften the stories to make them more child-friendly, the stories themselves weren't necissarily intended for children.
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Andrew630
Registered User
(2/19/06 12:11 pm)
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Re: misc
Well for the story I'm reading, it is Cinderella. So how would I discuss the moral in light of the Grimms assertion regarding the "moral" of their tales.
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Rosemary Lake
Registered User
(2/21/06 9:33 pm)
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Re: misc
I'm not sure I understand this question, but perhaps it would help to distinguish 'the moral sentence the Grimms added' from 'a moral lesson that grows out of the story.' It might be said that the Grimms added the sentence to a story for a purpose of teaching, tho the original stories did not have that purpose.
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Andrew630
Registered User
(2/25/06 8:51 pm)
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Re: Grimm Brothers (Grimm Experts WELCOME)
anyone else?
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princessterribel
Registered User
(2/26/06 4:48 am)
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grimm
I think you should read Jack Zipes he has written a lot on the Grimm brothers. In my opinion the Grimms decared that they would make their writing suitable for children.
The stories have morals behind them, whether the child picks up on those or not is another matter entirely, usually when a parent reads their child a story they emphasise the moral at the end. However, the Grimms' stories also had a huge protestant ethic that runs throughout them and this is very clear in their 'Cinderella'.
I don't agree that the Grimm brothers movie was a disgrace. I really enjoyed it, especially the way that they encorporated so many of the tales. Besides, you must remember that the Grimm's took most of 'their' stories from the Italian and French that were written centuries before.
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jaspersen
Unregistered User
(3/6/06 8:19 pm)
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morals in Grimm
I'm new to this, but I was browsing and came across your question about morals in the Grimm tales. Have you read "The Uses of Enchantment" by Bruno Bettelheim? I don't think the Grimm brothers meant to advocate anything with those stories, they just collected them, so I think what you quote is a disclaimer in an effort to sell the stories. Of course there are morals in such stories and that is why they exist, even though the Grimms quote appears to differ. Maybe they weren't made up at all, but evolved, like most oral literature, into something everyone could use. Also, I have to disagree with the idea that people naturally recognize injustice; I think left to our own devices, we are very nasty, and that's why you have such stories to tell children: to teach them right from wrong and that there are consequences to their actions. I hope that helps.
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(3/6/06 8:31 pm)
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Grimms
It's something of a myth that the Grimms "just collected" their stories from some romanticized German peasant population; the stories came from a variety of places (many previously written) and the brothers certainly did rewrite things, sometimes multiple times over the various editions. I quite agree that the stories 'evolved into something everyone could use' (or rather through different things different people could use at different times ;) )-- the Grimms versions just represent what was 'useful' in their historical moment. Not least of which was that very myth of the romanticized German "volk." The Grimms, remember, collected their stories before there was an official German nation, and part of the purpose of the collection was selling the idea of a single ethnic identity, a shared cultural heritage of stories to justify the nation-in-formation.
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