Hansel And Gretel Anxiety

The short story by the Grimm brothers, Hansel and Gretel, is about two young children who are abandoned in the woods by their parents because of the lack of food. They wonder around in the woods and they find a house made out of bread and candy. Starved and exhausted, the children begin to eat the house when a witch that they think is an old woman comes out and invites them into her house only to trick them into something much worse. It is possible that the story of Hansel and Gretel is a nightmare of Hansel due to children's’ fear or abandonment, belief in fictional things, and imagination.
Fear of abandonment, also known as separation anxiety, could have played into the child’s nightmare. “The role of anxiety has been considered central to the understanding of the entire range of childhood psychopathology” (Kashani). If Hansel had separation
This story was likely placed in Medieval times where it was not uncommon for parents to leave their children in the woods because of famine (Wells). If this is so, then the thought that Hansel was having a nightmare of being left in the woods does seem possible. He could have heard his parents talking about doing it to him and his sister, or he could have heard rumors about someone else doing that to their children. Either way, something traumatic like that, even the thought, could have invoked enough fear on Hansel for him to have a nightmare about it. Also, during the time period at which this story was said to have taken place, between the 16th century and the 17th century there were about twenty-six thousand witches burned in Germany and the majority of them were women (Wells). This could explain the witch in Hansel’s nightmare. He could have taken what was happening in reality and it could have been applied to his dreams and since the majority of people that were said to be witches were female, that is most likely why the witch is a woman in the story