Fairy tales when you were young

[Nonameanymore]

This is a coincidence I am sure, but I just remembered that I had a recorded version of Puss in Boots was given me to me by NM when I was 4 or 5.
I googled it because I don't remember the story, but here is what I got in wikipedia:

"Puss in Boots" (French: Le Maistre Chat, ou le Chat Botté) is a French literary fairy tale about a cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power, wealth, and the hand of a princess in marriage for his penniless and low-born master. The tale was written at the close of the seventeenth century by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), a retired civil servant and member of the Académie française.[1] The tale appeared in a handwritten and illustrated manuscript two years before its 1697 publication by Barbin in a collection of eight fairy tales by Perrault called Histoires ou contes du temps passé.[2][3] The book was an instant success and remains popular today.[1]

The tale's immorality has provoked some concern about its influence on young minds, but apparently Perrault composed "Le Maistre Chat" and the other tales of Histoires to reinforce standards of civilized conduct in the upper-class French society of the seventeenth century rather than to provide amusement and instruction for the young. Indeed, Puss has been described by one commentator as "the epitome of the educated bougeois secretary who serves his master with complete devotion and diligence."[

Pretty odd


P.

[BonesMS]

This is a coincidence I am sure, but I just remembered that I had a recorded version of Puss in Boots was given me to me by NM when I was 4 or 5.
I googled it because I don't remember the story, but here is what I got in wikipedia:

"Puss in Boots" (French: Le Maistre Chat, ou le Chat Botté) is a French literary fairy tale about a cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power, wealth, and the hand of a princess in marriage for his penniless and low-born master. The tale was written at the close of the seventeenth century by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), a retired civil servant and member of the Académie française.[1] The tale appeared in a handwritten and illustrated manuscript two years before its 1697 publication by Barbin in a collection of eight fairy tales by Perrault called Histoires ou contes du temps passé.[2][3] The book was an instant success and remains popular today.[1]

The tale's immorality has provoked some concern about its influence on young minds, but apparently Perrault composed "Le Maistre Chat" and the other tales of Histoires to reinforce standards of civilized conduct in the upper-class French society of the seventeenth century rather than to provide amusement and instruction for the young. Indeed, Puss has been described by one commentator as "the epitome of the educated bougeois secretary who serves his master with complete devotion and diligence."[

Pretty odd


P.

Yes, it is odd.

At the same time, I'm kinda taking a warped perspective of this by looking at how Puss in Boots is now portrayed in Shrek.

Bones

[sKePTiKal]

Hi P...

I think all fairy tales were designed as teaching tools for children. They are important to my story, for sure! I feel - but haven't yet made the case for - fairy tales being an early form of description of dysfunction - and how to survive it. Grimm's are my favs...

[Izzy_*now*]

Hiya Persephone

So-----just some things to ponder,

The WICKED stepmother...stepmothers have a 'bad' name and poison pretty young ‘gals’…all ‘steps’ are evil.

Snow White is a cheap little nymphomaniac, living with 7 littler men

* Along came a blackbird and snapped off her nose* scared the hell out of my daughter!

Hansel and Gretel are 2 little psychopaths, shoving an old lady into the oven.

Kiss a frog and he becomes a Prince?

At midnight someone turns into a pumpkin?

Pinocchio was a liar

Goldilocks is a trespasser  and destructive of another’s property without her parents interceding!

A mother  allowed her little daughter to go through the  woods alone?

Anyone what to analyze 'The Emporer and wearing of no clothes'?

[bearwithme]

As most of you know, my daughter is two years old.  My NM bought her several classic fairy tale books with most of the ones I read as a child.  Truthfully, when reading them to my daughter, their just downright vicious and have horrible endings.  I try to avoid the ones that are really bizarre.  A lot of classic nursery rhymes have got to be revamped as well.  My gosh, the words are truly nightmarish for a little child:

"...when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all."  (A baby in a tree?  and then falling out? Dangerous!!)

"...three blind mice, see how they run, they all ran after the farmer's wife who cut off their tales with a carving knife, three blind mice."  (Yikes!!!)

"...jack and Jill went up the hill.....and Jill came tumbling after."  (A horrible accident!!!)

"...Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub and who do you think they-be?  The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker..."  (I gotta question this one all together!!)

"...Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall......they couldn't put Humpty together again!"  (He died!!!!)

"...Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater, had a wife and couldn't keep her, put her in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well."  (WTF? Peter must have had mistresses!)

"...along came a spider and sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away."  (Beginnings of arachnophobia!)


There are so many more that catch my attention when reading them. 

Interesting topic Persephone!

Bear

[HeartofPilgrimage]

bear,

I wish I knew all the stories behind the nursery rhymes you mention. I know that "Ring around the rosie" is about the plague, and that "rockabye baby" is a political satire (the author of the rhyme was making fun of his opponents ... but don't know more specifics!)

I had a big volume of fairy tales as a child, I think put out by Reader's Digest, it had a red cover ... maybe somebody out there will recognize what I'm talking about. Anyway, I found most fairy tales to be depressing! Although I would not have exactly used that word at 8 or 9 years old. Although they invariably ended with "and they all lived happily ever after" the weird and horrible trials they were put through weren't made up for by that ending.

It reminds me of when I took Old Testament and we were studying Job. There are a lot of mysteries surrounding this enigmatic little book, but one of the most mysterious is how God "made it up" to Job by giving him a whole new family, new property, and he was prosperous once more. As my OT teacher pointed out, more children hardly makes up for the loss of the first family. And why was Satan allowed to test Job anyway? Scott Peck gives the best explanation I have ever heard in People of the Lie ... that Satan is kind of a generic word for "opponent" and that the angel Lucifer's job originally was to "oppose" humanity to help us grow ... he (or as Peck puts it, it) became evil when he/it began to try and test humanity just for the fun of it, to aggrandize him/itself.

Anyway, even as a kid I think I had this pragmatic mind that was suspicious of fairytale endings. Just like I am suspicious of charming people.

[bearwithme]

HeartofPil:  I can relate to what you said about being a kid and thinking the stories were strange.  When I was little, if something didn't make sense to me, I would analyze it to death and if it still didn't come clear, then I would put it aside and mark it as craziness or weird.  I wondered about several things in the Bible in general, especially the Old Testament.  A friend of mine once told me that she thought that most of the Bible (Old Testament) was just a bunch of fairytales and that it took a full education in theology to decode the moral of each story, etc. 

Remember Aesop's fables?  They scared me all the time and I remember not wanting to read them because they were so dark.  I would like to pick up a book of Aesop's again just to see what I think now.