Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm by Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm (Penguin 2013)

Author:Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm (Penguin, 2013)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

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Tale type: ATU 410, ‘Sleeping Beauty’

Source: a story told to the Grimm brothers by Marie Hassenpflug

Similar stories: Giambattista Basile: ‘Sun, Moon and Talia’ (The Great Fairy Tale Tradition, ed. Jack Zipes); Italo Calvino: ‘The Neapolitan Soldier’ (Italian Folktales); Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: ‘The Glass Coffin’ (Children’s and Household Tales); Charles Perrault: ‘The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood’ (Perrault’s Complete Fairy Tales)

Bruno Bettelheim, as might be expected, takes a thoroughly Freudian view of this tale. According to him, the sleep of a hundred years that follows the unexpected loss of blood ‘is nothing but a time of quiet growth and preparation, from which the person will awake mature, ready for sexual union’ (The Uses of Enchantment, p. 232).

Furthermore, it’s no use trying to forestall what is bound to happen to a growing child. The king tries to destroy all the spindles in the kingdom ‘to prevent the princess’s fateful bleeding once she reaches puberty, at fifteen, as the evil fairy predicted. Whatever precautions a father takes, when the daughter is ripe for it, puberty will set in.’

Bettelheim’s interpretation is persuasive. But whether it’s the underlying symbolism that is responsible for the enduring popularity of this story or the wealth of delightful detail (the poor little kitchen boy, doomed to wait a hundred years for the clout the cook is lining up), it remains one of the most well loved of all the Grimms’ tales.

And the princess needs her hundred years and her hedge of thorns. At fifteen, she’s not grown up yet; or as Louis Jordan used to sing: ‘That chick’s too young to fry.’

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