The Oppression Of Women In Grimm's Fairy Tales

210 of the modern day fairy tales, originated from educated women recounting the stories to the brothers to add to the Grimm anthologies. Majority being from the sisters of the Wild, the Hassenpflug, the von Haxthausen and the von Droste - Hulshoff families. Volume one of the Children's and Household Fairy Tales was published in 1812 with Jacob and Wilhelm failing to credit any of their female sources by name. Rather than cite their female friends, the brother paid homage to their male literary predecessors taking a clam to an art that was in actuality practiced mainly by women.

The most common appearances of women in the tales can be traced back to the brother feminine influences throughout their youth. The tragedy of the widow; a stock
Tales were often told to an audience of young female listeners by their mothers, aunts, wet nurses, family housekeepers, and washerwomen. The unhappy lot of the heroine was a common fairy tale theme that bound them together in their own shared experience of
The story works on an implicit reference to a girl's sexual awakening with the child's pure curiosity leading her disobeying the virgin and opening 13 locked doors. Upon Earth she is barred from speech, sentenced to live out the remainder of her days mute. Her discovery by a King leads to her to wedd and thus making her a Queen. It does not bother the King that she cannot speak, her being “beautiful and exquisite. It is her silence -- or perhaps more fittingly, the absence of her opinions that's cause the King to “love her with all his heart”. With the birth of her first child, the Virgin Mary appears to claim the child offering her the chance to repent her sin in return for her newborn. The heroine denies her sin and the baby is whisked away. This stubbornness or Hartnackigjeit; the worst ills of women. The King accuses her of killing the infants and eating them up. With her inability to speak, the heroine is unable to defend herself she is sentenced to death by burning at the stake. Echoes of seventeenth - century European witch hunts lace the narrative. Silence and obedience were essential feminine virtues. Cautionary tales such as the “Child of Mary” seamlessly inscribed the rules of feminie secual conduct into the hearts and minds of young women. While performing tedious household chores together or