Grim Times
It
would be an interesting school project to correlate the release of new
collections of the Grimm Brothers’ tales with the economic and social climate
of the time. In these times of cautious hope and widespread misery, there are
two that I know of: a large illustrated reissue of Maria Tater’s The Annotated Brothers Grimm with an
introduction by A.S. Byatt put out by Norton in
October, and a thick, densely researched retelling by Phillip Pullman, newly
published by Viking.
I realize when I
reread these stories that somehow they helped form my world-view, even though I
have no memories of my parents using them either as instructional literature or
a scare tactic. I have no experience whatever with fish who grant wishes or
talking foxes, or houses made of candy and gingerbread, but I do remember
reading the stories aloud to my daughter when she was seven or eight, along
with Perrault’s Fairy Tales and a collection of folk tales from all over the
world that she got for Christmas that year. She was the one who initially saw
patterns common to all of these tales, and together we began to verbalize the
rules of magical living: events always happen in threes; the youngest son is
always the smartest; take the advice of any animal that talks to you; people
always get what they deserve; death is no barrier to justice.
The tales told by
the Grimm brothers always seemed to illustrate life’s most difficult truths. In
them mother’s love is sweet, but fleeting; men hardly ever pay attention except
in the moment of conquest, and will sell their own brothers for gold; and the overwhelming
need to get something good to eat knows no bounds. Women rarely fare will in the
Grimm stories. The reign of the stepmother is long and hard. Virgins are never safe
from being ravished, even in the tallest tower. The spinning wheel may be
banished in hopes of holding off a spindle prick, but blood will out. And if
the childbearing years are survived, appetites often turn monstrous, and the
witch is not averse to using the dark arts of concealment and trickery to possess
what she desires.
But
there is also an inherently renewing element in many of them—the forest, where
anything can happen. It can be a place of safety, a refuge from the casual
cruelty of everyday family life. It is by turns abundant, dangerous, mystical.
To find your fortune, you must pass through it, and trust that you will be
clever enough find your way out of it without losing sight of your new-found
knowledge you have gained in the little huts of society’s misfits, be they
bandits, witches, or little men. In the forest, the world is revealed as not
merely human and responds to rules not written by man. There is no power but
what comes naturally—the wolf must eat Red Riding Hood, just as the huntsman
must kill the wolf. Phillip
Pullman’s retelling of the Grimm stories is serviceable. He understands their
internal logic, and doesn’t attempt to modernize or ornament them. He seems to
relish the inevitable retribution meted out in more and more fantastic way and
empathizes the strict morality of the tales. His notes on provenance and the
intricacies of the original German mark this as a scholarly volume, although it
is not ponderous or boring in any way. Yet he seems unwilling to attach any but
the most obvious meaning to the stories, which denies their magical nature.
And, despite his scrupulous cataloguing of similar stories from sources other
than Grimms’, he declines to speculate
on the universality of the subject matter. I suppose this resolute rationalism
is a turning away from the overwrought romanticism of previous interpretations.
He seems to be saying that these tales, as clever and satisfying as they may
be, are best seen as simple renditions of traditional storytelling, nothing
more. It is not magic fish or disguised witches that we need fear, he seems to
be saying, but other people, in all of their non-magical duplicitousness.
