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Bookish: Fairy Tale Friday – Hansel and Gretel
Please tell me you know what this is referring to, otherwise I’m going to look like a creep on the internet.
No? Zoolander. And I have evidence.
Now that I’ve gotten that burning movie reference out there (seriously, it’s all I hear when I hear the name ‘Hansel’) I can actually move onto the chosen fairy tale of this Friday.
Ok, so it’s not quite Friday in the UK yet but on account of me flying tomorrow I have done this today. But hey… it’s Friday somewhere in the world right?
It’s another story where I take you down the dark path and into the woods because if you know anything about me, you know I like to take you down the dark path and into the woods.
Gosh. I am a creep on the internet.
Hansel and Gretel was written by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 but shares similarities with Charles Perrault’s ‘Hop O’ My Thumb’ because as we know – the Grimm’s looked to Perrault’s work a lot.
The difference is that Hop O’ My Thumb has seven children instead of two, there is no house made of delicious items and there’s an ogre instead of a witch. Oh, and that ogre is outsmarted by the youngest of the children and ends up accidentally killing his daughters.
What still remains the same is the child abandonment.
at the edge of a forest lived a woodcutter, his wife and his two children; Hansel and Gretel. Times were incredibly hard and because of a famine people were starving.
The woodcutter’s wife decided that the only way she and her husband would survive would be to get rid of the two extra mouths to feed and so convinced her husband to leave his children in the woods to die.
Luckily, Hansel overhears this plan and somehow collects a bunch of white pebbles. Maybe they had an ornamental rockery? We’ll never know.
The next day the children are led into the woods but Hansel discretely drops the pebbles as they walk. The children are told to lie down beside the fire where they fall asleep. When they wake up, they are cold and alone and Gretel starts to cry.
But Hansel’s pebble trick works and the children find their way back to their home. Dad is pleased, step-mum not so much.
Time passes and the food situation gets worse. Once again, the woodcutter’s wife convinces the woodcutter to abandon the children and once again, the woodcutter’s spine makes a hasty retreat to places unknown.
It’s a good thing that the parents didn’t learn their lesson from the first time around and keep having these conversations by the children’s open bedroom door (I’m assuming) because Hansel hears everything again.
Unfortunately this time he can’t collect the pebbles (probably didn’t have time to keep up the ornamental rockery) and so the next morning he has to use the bread he’s been given and leaves a trail of breadcrumbs.
Same thing happens – the children are told to lie down beside the fire where they fall asleep. When they wake up, they are cold and alone and Gretel starts to cry. At this point you’re probably thinking, ‘Jeez, Gretel. All she does is cry.’ It’s ok though, she eventually comes into her own. Anyway….
Ruddy birds have eaten their breadcrumbs and they can’t find their way back. This time it really does look like they’re going to die until a bird leads them through the forest where they find The Most Amazing Thing in the form of a gingerbread house.
They’re starving so they set about doing what you’re supposed to do with gingerbread houses and eat it. This gets the attention of the near-blind witch who lives in the house and she invites the children in for dinner.
Turns out they are dinner and the witch traps Hansel in a cage and begins to fatten him up while Gretel becomes her slave. Each day the witch tests how fat Hansel is getting by getting him to hold his arm out of the cage but instead Hansel holds out a bone (of another dead child no doubt, so no trauma there or anything) and the witch thinks he’s as scrawny as ever.
The time comes when the witch can’t wait and decides to eat him anyway. The oven is burning and she tries to get Gretel to check it’s hot enough but this is where Gretel has her moment to shine by convincing the witch to check it herself and then shoving her in to burn to death.
That’s right. That sweet, crying little Germanic child has just murdered someone. Gretel frees Hansel, they raid the witches jewels and then head home via a duck… honestly, don’t ask.
When they get home they discover that their wicked stepmother is dead, their father is chuffed to see them and they live happily ever after.
Isn’t it everything you want in a fairy tale? Wicked stepmother, wicked witch, innocent children that overcome all odds?
It’s so violent though. We’re talking child abandonment, poverty and famine, cannibalism and straight up witch burning. Though to be fair to Gretel, if I was a lawyer I would convince the jury she acted in self defence.
The version above is the common second version where the Grimm’s play up the angle of the sad woodcutter who doesn’t want to send his children to their deaths but has to due to the conniving manipulations of his second wife. This version helps cement the ‘wicked stepmother trope’ even more. Thanks, Grimm’s.
In the original version the children are abandoned by their birth parents who both agree that sending the children into the woods is for the best. So instead of leaving it as ‘adults are murderous,’ they turned it into ‘adults are murderous and useless to protect you.’
The ideas within Hansel and Gretel are not necessarily unique ones though.
The idea of using inanimate household and garden objects to escape sticky situations have been used in Greek mythology with Theseus and the Minotaur (Theseus uses string to find his way back through the labyrinth) and tales of child abandonment occur in the Russian fairy tale Vasilisa the Beautiful (also involves a witch, the infamous Baba Yaga) and the British folklore tale Babes in the Wood which has a far more tragic ending.
Other versions of Hansel and Gretel involve the witch not being a witch but the devil and the children escape by slitting his throat, or where the stepmother and the witch are the same person (because the stepmother is dead once the witch is) or where the stepmother and witch are sisters and the stepmother deliberately marries widowers with children to send those children through the woods…
Overall the moral of this story is supposed to be ‘don’t trust strangers.’ Because of course they may very well lure you into their home made of sweets and eat you.
I could only be so lucky to find a home made of sweets.
We think the sole evil in this story is the witch. But it isn’t. We spend so much time focusing on her that we often forget about the other adults involved in this story.
Don’t get me wrong – this witch is not nice. She is a cannibal. She lures children into her home with strategically designed architecture and interior design and BAM! her plan is to munch her way through them. I find I cannot justify this behaviour.
The Grimm’s message of ‘don’t trust strangers’ is still apt though and the story of Hansel and Gretel is probably why so many parents tell their children, ‘don’t take sweets from strangers’ because we fear that anyone giving treats to children are up to no good.
Unfortunately, the message that is glossed over and isn’t the one that was intended is slightly more sinister – sometimes you can’t trust adults you know. In the original version we have parental neglect from both parents and in the second version we have parental neglect from the stepmother but the father doesn’t do a thing to stop it.
You think it wouldn’t happen? There’s too many sad news stories to say it does.
Which brings me to…. why, oh hecking why do the children want to live with their father at the end of this? Kids…. no. Just get rid. You’re rich now. You have jewels. Go into the towns and away from the trauma of the forest and just let your completely spineless father think that you died. When you’re older you can use those jewels to start a business or something. Maybe a charity for abandoned children. Maybe a bakery. Just don’t go back home!
Where did the witch get all the stuff to make a gingerbread house?! There’s a famine. It’s a wood. I gots to know.
There’s a famine. The witch was hungry. Maybe she was reduced to desperate measures and… no. I still find I cannot justify this behaviour. But I can understand it. Dammit me and my witch sympathising ways.
Eavesdropping is not always a bad thing.
At one point in the original text the witch says, “they shall not escape me again.” Say what now? Is there a backstory here? Is there context to this?! What does she mean again.
I feel like I need to know if this is a constant pattern, a cycle that repeats itself over and over again like Groundhog Day until the witch wins.
I am fascinated by the female roles in this story. There are three and I feel that they actually fit The Triple Goddess of Mother, Maiden and Crone. Unfortunately they don’t fit appropriately as they become ‘twisted’ in some aspects.
Gretel is obviously the Maiden on account of her age and innocence but during the course of the story this innocence is lost. Not (thankfully) in a sexual way but she transitions from being a lost child in the wood relying on her brother towards taking agency in a situation when she has to be the one to do something. This something is a brutal act of violence against another. It’s hard to retain innocence once you’ve actively burned a woman to death.
The stepmother fulfils the role of the Mother but again – quite obviously doesn’t. The Mother role is one of maternal care, fertility, and links to nature. In Hansel and Gretel the stepmother fills the role of ‘mother’ in name only, rejecting maternal care of the children and using nature (in the form of the woods) as a method in which to leave them to die. She doesn’t even provide the option of a quick death to the children but instead leaves them to the possibility of worse fates.
The witch is the Crone. The witch is a destroyer and represents death and endings and so in Hansel and Gretel she appears to fulfil the role of the Crone quite closely. However the Crone is supposed to represent the calm and natural ending of a cycle and wisdom – not exactly what the witch in this story is all about.
Birds are dicks.
They were totally working for the witch. One watched the children leave the house, a whole bunch ate the breadcrumbs and then one deliberately led Hansel and Gretel to the witches house.
When some folklorists state that this fairy tale has Christian allegories and metaphors and that the birds represent Christ I’m sort of like… huh?! I don’t see it. I don’t see it because the birds helped lead the children to their potential death.
Birds are dicks.
I really struggled with this as there doesn’t seem to be an abundance of Hansel and Gretel retellings but these came to mind:-
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer – “Gingerbread” (tv show) an episode based on Hansel and Gretel but with a twist (and one that is familiar)
- Disenchantment – “Faster, Princess! Kill! Kill!” (tv show) an episode which contains Hansel and Gretel (with a similar twist)
- Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (movie)
- The Witch of Duva by Leigh Bardugo (short story) also with a twist
There are already quite a few ‘twists’ on this tale and the popular; ‘the witch is not evil but the children are’ take has already been done. In some ways I like that; the children are wicked and the stepmother gets rid of them because they are a danger to her and others, the dark woods nurtures them and the witch isn’t a witch but just a poor old woman. Events play out and the children win. We believe the children because children = innocence and goodness and old women = witch. And we don’t like witches do we? Sigh.
As mentioned, this version has been done so many times that it is no longer an original take on the tale. I would actually struggle to think of an original re-telling but the version that I particularly like is Leigh Bardugo’s ‘The Witch of Duva’ which can be found in ‘The Language of Thorns.’ Thoroughly recommend!
Next one won’t be until the middle of December but it will be on Rapunzel.
Eavesdropping is not always a bad thing.
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