Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood [Paperback]

Maria Tatar (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691000883 | ISBN-13: 978-0691000886 | Publication Date: October 4, 1993

When Hansel and Gretel try to eat the witch's gingerbread house in the woods, are they indulging their "uncontrolled cravings" and "destructive desires" or are they simply responding normally to the hunger pangs they feel after being abandoned by their parents? Challenging Bruno Bettelheim and other critics who read fairy tales as enactments of children's untamed urges, Maria Tatar argues that it is time to stop casting the children as villians. In this provocative book she explores how adults mistreat children, focusing on adults not only as hostile characters in fairy tales themselves but also as real people who use frightening stories to discipline young listeners.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Provocative observations on the uses (and misuses) of ``classic'' fairy tales are overwhelmed by academic jargon in this oddly disjointed and disappointing study from Tatar (German Literature/Harvard). Expanding on her The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales (1987), Tatar examines the transformation of often ribald adult folk-tale prototypes into sometimes horrifyingly violent children's stories rooted in the assumptions and realities of a particular social context. At the time when such well-known collectors as the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen were combining folk legends with the children's literary conventions of ``cautionary'' and ``exemplary'' stories, Tatar says, infant death, abandonment by parents, and starvation were not uncommon. Today, Tatar advises, these ``cruel'' and ``sadistic'' tales, anachronistic at best, with heroines earning redemption through ``a servile attitude'' and obedience, should yield to ``a creative folklore...reinvented by each generation of storytellers and reinvested with creative social energy.'' The author fails to elaborate on this point, however, with more than sketchy suggestions about discussing stories with children. Tatar does provide a neat common-sensical corrective to the interpretive inversions of Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment (1976), in which child victims become psychologically muddled villains (the starving Hansel and Gretel, Tatar points out, have reasons to devour the witch's house far more compelling than Bettelheim's ``uncontrolled cravings''). The author also offers an interesting dissection of the pervasive sexism of many fairy tales (why all the female villains?). The dreary monograph form of much of the book never quite gels, unfortunately, with Tatar's practical, if undeveloped, popular exhortations. (Thirty illustrations--some seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

As provocative and stimulating as her The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, this book should give a salutary shock to everyone who brings children and tales together, convincing them that "every interpretation is a rewriting' and encouraging them "to identify what is transmitted in the stories we tell children.' -- Library Journal

Product Details

• Paperback: 332 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (October 4, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691000883
• ISBN-13: 978-0691000886
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #478,264 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Maria Tatar teaches folklore, children's literature, and German cultural studies at Harvard University. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology. She is the author of The Annotated Peter Pan, which will appear in October 2011 with W.W. Norton.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A stellar resource, October 23, 2006

By 

E. Carmichael "captain stardust" (Johnson City, TN USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood (Paperback)

Tatar's text discusses readers as an "interpretive community" of individuals who are responsible for distilling meaning from stories independently but within a cultural framework. She points to an agenda of socialization and acculturization in children's literature, and notes that the values meant to be conveyed have shifted over the centuries. Though some of the language follows the challenging tone of literary criticism, on the whole this is a very readable text filled with invaluable insights.

Of particular interest is a chapter devoted to the study of fairy tale heroines, in which Tatar asserts that the characters' roles were meant to groom them for marriage and subservience. The text is well-researched, well-written and thoroughly considered. Though it displays a clear feminist bias, the observations stemming from that bias help to make this book of particular use to anyone interested in exploring the use of fairy tales as a form of indoctrination for young girls, as well as the villainization of women in fairy tales.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly outstanding work on folklore and fairytales, July 3, 2009

By 

doc peterson (Portland, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood (Paperback)

Maria Tartar's _Off With Their Heads_ is a brillilant analysis of European folklore and fairytales, showing not only the surreptitious way in which familar stories were "sanitized" for publication by notable folklorists such as the Grimms, but also the way in which the messages of the stories subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) were manipulated to become cautionary tales and to frighten children into behaving as adults want them to.

As D.Blankenship points out, much of Tartar's analysis is through a feminist lens; this makes sense, as many of the stories examined have female protagonists (from Rapunzel to Cinderella to the lesser-known "Mother Holle.") The gist being that girls are taught from a young age (old enough to listen and understand children's stories) that (1) beauty wins over ugliness, (2) minding your parents - especially your father - is rewarded, and (3) not minding your parents typically results in a horrible punishment disproportionate to the act. Later chapters are analyzed with a more psych-analytical lens, but with similar conclusions regarding wish-fulfillment and child-parent relations.

What struck me most powerfully was the way in which folktales, which were originally very scatalogical and "earthy" were modified and re-written to become not only cautionary tales, but also tales to "improve the moral standing" of children. That particular emphasis was put on breaking the spirit of the child - the earlier the better - in order to make them malleable and manageable I found particularly interesting (and appalling.) Given the early stages of industrialization when many of these tales were put to print, this makes sense. Tartar doesn't go far enough, I think, in drawing the parallel that these ideas remain in some parenting books and in the way in which some children are instructed even today.

A fascinating read, and one which I strongly recommend, particularly to those who have children or teach.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Benefical or harmful?, June 5, 2010

By 

Zenon Lotufo Junior (São Paulo, São Paulo Brazil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood (Paperback)

This is a book that educators, therapists, parents and others interested in the welfare of children, need to read. This is an important counterpoint to the books of authors who believe the fairy tales useful for personality development of children. Maria Tatar shows that, emerged in a world in which terrorizing was considered a valid means to educate (see, for instance, the books of French historian Jean Delumeau about fear in the West between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries), many of these tales cannot be beneficial.