The Origin of Fairytales

 

Ava Walter, 12th Grade

When most people think of fairytales, they think of the innocent and entertaining stories from our childhood that we were often told at bedtime as a way of helping us drift off to sleep. These stories may have included Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Three Little Pigs, and many more. Although fairytales such as these are usually aimed at children, the origin of these kinds of stories was quite dark.

Fairytales first originated from European folk stories that were often told orally and designed to have some sort of twist that would allow the story to teach the listener or reader a certain moral lesson. However, these twists were not very child-friendly like they are today. Oftentimes, they featured painful punishments such as little kids being eaten by scary beasts. At the time, it was strongly believed that by over-exaggerating the consequences of situations through these frightening outcomes, children would learn not to misbehave through these stories.

However, fairytales began to shift towards the more family-friendly anecdotes we are familiar with today thanks to a man named Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. These men were the first to rewrite these morbid stories to become more playful and suitable for children. They removed any violence from the original stories and began implementing the "happily ever after" ending so many fairytales have today to uplift children instead of scaring them.

It's hard to believe that the simple stories we were told as kids were actually meant to be much darker, and that if it wasn't for the men that changed the morbid telling of these stories, we would have been told fairytales in a much different and frightening way as kids. Thankfully, fairytales today are meant to be enjoyed by children and teach them life lessons but in a far more innocent way compared to years ago.