The Witch Must Die: How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives [Hardcover]

Sheldon Cashdan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1999

What accounts for the enduring charm of fairy tales? The answer, says the author of this enchanting and insightful book, lies in the way these stories help children deal with classic psychological conflicts. The tales do this by projecting the child’s own internal struggle between good and evil onto the battles between the characters in the stories. Cinderella, Rumpelstilskin, and Pinocchio vividly dramatize envy, deceit, gluttony, lust, and sloth, giving children a safe stage on which to confront their own “deadly sins.” When good triumphs over evil, readers also vanquish their sinful tendencies. Cashdan elegantly analyzes how fairy tales speak to human concerns, highlighting the roles played by iconic images like glass slippers and gingerbread houses, stepmothers, and sorcerers. He shows how fairy tales differ from culture to culture (in the Grimm version of Cinderella birds pluck out the stepsisters’ eyes but in Japan the stepsisters apologize and are forgiven); what happens when the tales are “Disneyfied”; and how fairy tales can have a surprisingly salutary effect on adult readers. Along the way he probes the eternal questions: Why does Snow White eat the poison apple? Why is the stepmother so mean? Why is Cinderella’s father never around when she needs him? The Witch Must Die recalls a time in all our lives when fantasy was king and life’s important lessons emerged from magical tales.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a thematic survey of the stories the world tells its children, noted psychologist Cashdan (Abnormal Psychology) explores why fairy tales maintain their enduring power. Despite the elaborate Technicolor animation in which traditional stories often appear, most are watered-down forms of original versions that were devised not for the moral education of children but for the entertainment of adults. According to Cashdan, this partly explains the lifelong attraction of the deeper psychological journeys and moral quandaries that fairy tales address. Focusing on the drama of basic human attachments and temptations (abandonment, vanity, greed, envy, lust, slothAeach of which he examines in individual chapters), Cashdan interprets fairy-tale plot elements in relation to basic psychological development while discounting psychoanalytic interpretations as convoluted and at times illogical. Ultimately, Cashdan contends that fairy tales work their magic by acknowledging our identification with the darker parts of ourselves. In order "for a fairy tale to have a lasting effect on young readers," he writes, "the hero and heroine must... be tempted by the same temptations [as the witch]." Though some of his insights are fresher than others, one of the pleasures of his study is the breadth of his examples: Cashdan offers not just familiar Disney, Grimm and Perrault tales but lesser-known variations, some of which have not survived the delicate sensibilities of the modern age, fueled as they are by adultery and aggression. Agent, Linda Chester. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Fairy tales introduce fiction and moral lessons to youngsters, but originally they were written for adult entertainment and were often gruesome and immoral. This is a scholarly analysis of familiar fairy tales and their audience, origins, and impact. The work evaluates traditional narratives, showing them to be ancient in origin, often changed in the historical continuum, and endlessly interesting to artists, writers, teachers, and audiences of all ages. Extraordinary motifs follow the common introduction "Once upon a time," including ancient superstitions, archetypal fears, contemporary folk beliefs, exotic conventions, symbolism, enduring wishes, and social commentary. Cashdan, a noted psychologist, works on three major levels, providing an original understanding of these eloquent tales, investigating subtle meanings that were glossed over when we were young, and introducing readers to tales that never found their way into standard children's literature. This rich cultural panorama is an excellent companion to Bruno Bettelheim's classic The Uses of Enchantment (LJ 6/1/76) and should join the standard studies of this beloved literature.ARichard K. Burns, MSLS, Hatboro, PA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465091482
• ISBN-13: 978-0465091485
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #348,810 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some good points, but really "educational theory"ish., December 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning Of Fairy Tales (Paperback)

I just learned that the author is some sort of bigshot psychologist somewhere. I suppose that should not surprise me. This book is full of modern American "education theory" and all sorts of pop child-psychology tidbits, and it grated on me immensely.

Kirkus Reviews put it best, and to that review, I will add this: Fairy tales were not written for children originally. The oldest, the most beloved ones, were written by glittering, fashionable adults, for equally glittering and fashionable adults. They're gruesome, complex, complicated, and sometimes they just don't have morals, other than the beauty of a well-told story. Sometimes they have lots of morals. They're like life, which also can be gruesome, complex, complicated, morality-laden or morality-bankrupt. But one thing they weren't, and that was kid stuff.

It took the Victorian age to turn fairy tales into morality-laden warning stories, and the modern age to sanitize fairy tales into kid stuff, and Cashdan has taken that sanitization one step further, by insisting that parents can ego-search their kids using these tales as launching points.

He takes complex and beautiful stories like Snow White and reduces them to one-line Sailormoon-style morals, tacking them onto the story like fig leaves on Greek statues ("Don't be vain!"). Chapters explore each "sin", with suggestions for parents on how to use the suggested fairy tales to explore those "sins". (Apply X story to Y child for Z condition, and voila! Kid is fixed! What better way to illustrate the shortfalls of modern education theory?)

Cashdan does make some interesting points, in all that psychobabble -- I loved reading about his thoughts on why the bad guys have to die in these stories, why the stories *are* so violent. Honestly, that's why I bought the book, and I wasn't disappointed at all with it because he does explore those issues in detail. But there's a lot of New Agey stuff to wade through to get to it.

I'd consider it a useful and thought-provoking addition to a fairy-tale researcher's library, but not a must-have resource.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes you think twice about the fairy tales., May 22, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Witch Must Die: How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives (Hardcover)

As a child you are brought up on fairy tales like Cinderella,Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Pinocchio. We read aboutthe Mirror on the wall, the glass slipper, and the big bad wolf. Giants and magic beans and so many others. Now read the book that will have thinking differently about what the underlying message really means.

What Cashdan does with this book is shows you how lust, greed, sloth and other deadly sins are ways in which children can learn about themselves and how to deal with reality. Cashdan's ability to create a convincing argument lends creditability to the book. Cashdan may just have hit upon the secret and unlocked it for everyone.

Using the seven deadly sins to illustrate his points, Cashdan takes you on a magical journey down the fairy tale path to show that even the simplest good story has a message for each of us. Cashdan holds nothing back and gives the reader a complete look and in most cases also an understanding that what you read isn't always what you read.

With chapter on deceit, using the Pinocchio and Greed, lust and envy with several different fairy tales the once used bedtime stories take on a whole new meaning. Also Cashdan's trip down the yellow brick road will have looking at OZ in a completely different light.

Cashdan doesn't leave you hanging trying to figure out what to do after you have read the book, in fact he includes and appendix on using the fairy tales and choosing the fairy tales to read and explain to children. Cashdan's book is one that I found very enlightening and hove shared with several friends. The old school ideas about Jack and Beanstalk are about to be dispelled.

29 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly researched and misogynistic, October 23, 2006

By 

E. Carmichael "captain stardust" (Johnson City, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning Of Fairy Tales (Paperback)

Early in the text Cashdan makes clear the fact that fairy tales were never intended as children's stories, nor were they meant to convey lessons. Rather, they were a source of entertainment and adventure for adults - characteristics that made the same stories viable later to be adapted for children. He asserts that, rather than teaching specific moral lessons, fairy tales do help children learn to deal with the struggles of everyday life, particularly struggles with what he terms "the seven deadly sins of childhood:" vanity, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, lust, and deceit. He asserts that the tales teach children through subtle means to resolve "struggles between the positive and negative forces in the self."

Cashdan characterizes the witch-villain as an external manifestation and magnification of the child-hero/ine's inner flaws. Later he states that good and bad female figures relate to the child's positive and negative experiences with the mother figure in her life (never addressing the fact that the good mother is almost always dead or absent in the stories). Cashdan quickly dismisses the possibility of misogyny in the negative portrayal of stepmothers and female villains simply because fairy tales aren't meant to be taken as faithfully realistic.

Later still he returns to the idea of the witch as representative of the hero/ine's sinful characteristics. The primary premise of his text is that the "Witch must die because the witch embodies the sinful parts of the self." This concept reinforces the patriarchal implication that evil is feminine in nature and suggests that it is the "negative" female aspects of the child's character which must be annihilated in order for her to live happily ever after.

Cashdan also claims that witches in fairy tales are often depicted as cannibalistic in order to identify them as fully repugnant and therefore deserving of annihilation; in fact, cannibalism was perceived as an earmark of witchcraft during the European witch hunts. This simple statement (as well as his flaccid bibliography) betrays the fact that Cashdan's text is poorly researched and that he often substitutes speculation for informed observations. Due to its inherent inconsistencies and oversights, Cashdan's text is utterly useless unless to provide points to argue against.