Le Petit Chaperon Rouge…

The more I look into fairy tales…the more I love.  I’m currently working on my book of fairy-tales re-told, but here’s a piece on the Little Red Riding Hood traditions from The Annotated Brothers Grimm by Maria Tatar:

“ The French and German titles for the story–”Le petit chaperon rouge” and “Rotkappchen –suggest caps rather than hoods.  Psychoanalytic critics have made much of the color red, equating it with sin, passion, blood, sexuality and thereby suggesting a certain complicity on the part of Red Riding Hood in the symbolic seduction enacted in the tale.  But these views have been rebutted by folklorists and historians, who point out that the color red was first introduced in Perrault’s literary version of the tale and that it can have political as well as moral associations.  These days, a girl wearing red produces a nearly automatic association to the story, and advertisers ceaselessly exploit that allusion as they turn Little Red Riding Hood from a childish innocent into a red-hot femme fatale.”

 Lil Red Riding Hood by Karri Klawiter www.redbubble.com

Out of the Ashes: The Symbolic Story of Cinderella

We again find our fairy tales are so much more than kids stories.  “The fairy tale fo the cinder-maid originated as an anti-ecclesiastical allegory repeated by real ‘fairies’ –that is, pagans.”  Ella was the daughter of Mother Earth and her ugly stepsisters were considered the church’s darlings, the military aristocracy and the clergy. 

“An early German version of the story said Cinderella’s real mother, the Earth, though dead, sent from her grave a fairy tree in answer to her daughter’s prayer.  This tree produced golden apples, fine clothes, and other gifts.”  Thus the “fairy godmother” of the tale may have been the ghost of the mother. 

Beautified with her new riches, Cinderella won the “prince” who represents mankind, and their union was symbolized by fitting her foot into a shoe, which was a common sexual allegory.  The Eleusinian Mysteries signified sacred marriage by placing a phallic object in a woman’s shoe.  The glass slipper perhaps stood for the Crystal Cave by which pagan heroes entered. 

Like other secret medieval prophecies of the overthrow of the rich, powerful theocracy, the downfall of Cinderella’s ugly stepmother and stepsisters may have been intended as a prophecy.”

Source: The Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Photo: Cinderella by Citron Rouge at Deviant Art

Who’s the Fairest of Them All?…

 

Haunted, and happy, is how I describe the feelings surrounding my November 12. 2008 blog about The Real Snow White.  It is one of the most popular articles I’ve written about a real life young woman named Margarete von Waldeck, who’s life was cut short mysteriously from an apparent poisoning back in 1554.  She was 21.

When Googling her name my blog site, The Wit Continuum, appears twice on the first page, which is pretty cool, but I wonder how many people are really interested in this infamous person of history.  Was she really the inspiration for the Grimms fairy tale Snow White?  The parallels are interesting to say the least. 

It seems there may be serge in historic discovery going on here by factions unknown.  Continuing the search for more info…and seriously thinking about starting my own Margarete Von Waldeck blog club.  But what do you do with a dead girl?

Ho, Ho, Ho…Merry Christmas and …

With the season swiftly bearing down on us I have found under the Continuum’s spiral staircase another story with a strangeness that confounds us.  Written by one of my favorites, Neil Gaiman, “Nicholas was…” was published in his demented collection of short stories called Smoke and Mirrors.  It is one hundred words long, 102 counting the title, and Gaiman had it elegantly calligraphed one year to send out to everyone he could think of as a Christmas card.  Mmmmm……..(“Mmmmm…….” means we wonder at this with strange admiration.) 

 

Nicholas Was…

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter.  He wanted to die.

            The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.

            Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night.  During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves’ invisible gifts by its bedside.  The children slept, frozen into time. 

           He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas.  His punishment was harsher.

          Ho.

          Ho.

          Ho.