Clever Maids: The Secret History Of The Grimm Fairy Tales [Hardcover]

Valerie Paradiz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 2005

The famous fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm - stories like Snow White, Red Riding Hood, and Rumplestiltskin - are know to millions of people around the world and are deeply embedded in the collective psyche. In this charming account, writer and scholar Valerie Paradiz reveals the true story of how the fairy tales came to be. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, collectors and editors of more than 200 folk stories, were major German intellects of the nineteenth century, contemporaries of Goethe and Schiller. But as Paradiz reveals here, the romantic image of the two brothers traveling the countryside, transcribing tales told to them by peasants, is a far cry from the truth. In fact, more than half the fairy tales the Grimm brothers collected were actually contributed by their educated female friends from the bourgeois and aristocratic classes. While German folkloric scholars-all of them male-fancied themselves the keepers of the cultural flame, it was a handful of women who ensured that millions would know the stories of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella by heart. Set against the backdrop of the chaotic Napoleonic wars and the years of high German romanticism, Clever Maids chronicles one of the most fascinating literary collaborations in European history and brilliantly captures the intellectual spirit of the men and women of the age. Even more, it illuminates the ways in which the Grimm tales, with their mythic portrayals of courage, sacrifice, and betrayal, still speak so powerfully to us today.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Contrary to popular myth, the Brothers Grimm collected their stories not from peasants but from educated young women in their locale of Kassel, Westphalia. Paradiz (Elijah's Cup) has researched the lives of these feminine "fairytale think tanks" to whom the philologist brothers Grimm were so indebted. In doing so, she also details the family life of six Grimm children and their mother's struggles after the premature death of their lawyer father. Sketching in broad terms the Romantic German nationalist aims of the Grimm stories, Paradiz notes the irony that several of the tales were of French origin, having traveled to Germany through Huguenot immigration. She devotes a chapter to each woman contributor, among them the sullen lone Grimm sister, Lotte, burdened with the family's household chores; the much loved girl-next-door, Dortchen Wild, who contributed "Rumplestiltskin" and later married Wilhelm; the upper-class Hassenpflug sisters, who contributed a variety of tales, including "Puss in Boots" and "Little Red Riding Hood." Paradiz interestingly recounts how the Grimm brothers perceived some female contributors as threatening and unfeminine, while lauding others for their submissive, helpful personalities, and she mines the women's contributions for possible deviations from male stereotypes of the time. While her analysis is too tentative to amount to a coherent thesis, this accessible book brings unsung heroines of literature to light and will inform readers of women's history and literature.
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Review

"This accessible book brings unsung heroines of literature to light and will inform readers of women's history and literature." -- Publishers Weekly

"Well researched, well crafted: sure to be welcomed in women's-studies programs." -- Kirkus Reviews --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (January 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738209171
• ISBN-13: 978-0738209173
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,557,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Clever Women and Men Behind Some Favorite Tales, January 24, 2005

By 

Heidi Anne Heiner (SurLaLune Fairy Tales.com) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Clever Maids: The Secret History Of The Grimm Fairy Tales (Hardcover)

Scholars have long known the backstory to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's famous collection of fairy tales. Despite the legends, the brothers were not itinerant travelers collecting the tales from the German peasantry. (Unfortunately, this legend is soon to be perpetuated to a larger audience by Terry Gilliam's entirely fictional film, The Brothers Grimm.) In reality, the brothers mostly collected the tales from their sister, Lotte, and through her circle of friends and associates. The brothers then continously edited the tales for several years until we have the versions of Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, Puss in Boots, and many other tales that we know today.

Most of this backstory, especially that of the women tellers, has been scattered about in strictly academic works in English and mostly German. Valerie Paradiz has synthesized this material into one cohesive and highly readable book. While we have the stories of the women and the changes made to their tales, we also receive a sympathetic view of the two brothers, struggling to support a family hit by several tragedies by doing work they loved and valued. Neither the brothers' contributions nor those of the women collaborators are diminished.

While the book has an academic bent, it works best as general nonfiction and is highly recommended for a much larger audience. Paradiz's writing style is warm and approachable, making details interesting instead of trivial. A familiarity with the Grimms' tales is helpful, but not necessary, since she provides enough information about each to support her prose. Consequently, an interesting slice of German and folklore history is made accessible in a deceptively short book. Footnotes and a biliography are offered in the back of the book for further reading and research.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Maybe not THAT clever..., September 22, 2005

By 

J. Hess "Taugenix" (Livingston County, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Clever Maids: The Secret History Of The Grimm Fairy Tales (Hardcover)

Clever Maids by Valerie Paradiz is an important contribution to Grimm scholarship, and while Ms Paradiz certainly has credentials as a Germanist, she seems more interested in advancing a feminist point of view than truly following the material where it leads her. She deserves credit for using the Grimm correspondance to correctly attribute the female friends of the Grimms as the immediate sources of many of the famous Kinder und Hausmärchen, but this, as she notes in the prologue (p. xv) was already known to German researchers. What she seems to want to imply, but never outright states, is that the women the Grimms collected from may actually have composed some of the stories when prompted by Jacob and Wilhelm to tell stories from their childhood. Instead she gives lip service to the "oral tradition," while seeming to undermine it at every turn. Again and again she draws comparisons with the lives of the Grimms and their female contributors, always with an observation on the oppressed status of women in 19th Century Germany.

Consequently, I find her devotion to German literary scholarship just a little questionable. I recall hearing a radio interview with her on the local NPR affiliate, and she consistantly "americanized" the German names of the figures in her book, as if she was afraid she would lose potential readers by appearing too arcane.

Another (small) disappointing point of her research is her apparent unfamiliarity with scripture and the influence of scripture on the stories. On page 135, she states, "In the gospels, (St. Anne) is the mother of the Virgin Mary." In fact, the mother of Mary is neither named nor even mentiioned in either Matthew or Luke; the name "Anna" comes from non-canonical sources, and is most likely an imitation of Hannah, the mother of the Old Testament prophet Samuel, whose infancy narrative closely parralels that of Christ and John the Baptist. Furthermore, when discussing the typical Grimm plotline "of older brother(s) versus younger," (p. 107) she strains to make a biographical comparison to Jacob and Wilhelm's younger brother Ferdinand, while totally ignoring the more obvious parallel to Joseph and Jacob in the book of Genesis.

Nonetheless, Ms. Paradiz makes many valid points and certainly has performed a valuable service in bringing the real Grimms' lives into popular readership just when an excrable Hollywood movie has appropriated their names for the sake of brainless entertainment.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent Biography, May 6, 2009

By 

Deb Oestreicher (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales (Paperback)

Clever Maids is a decent read, about the female sources of the fairy tales we're accustomed to attributing to the Brothers Grimm, and has some biographical interest. But the author seems to have an axe to grind, which can get annoying. She keeps noting that the Grimms never thanked their female sources by name in their publications. Surely it would've been nice if they had, but I wonder if such public acknowledgment was really the custom in the early 1800s. The Grimms were folklorists--they never claimed to be the tales' original authors.

Still, nice to know a bit more about the Grimms and their process for collecting and setting down stories. The book is less interesting for its analysis of the tales, which is (to say say the least) not subtle. For fairy tale analysis, I prefer Maria Tatar's Off With Their Heads.