Natalia's Summary of The Girl Without Hands

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Ram's Summary of Girl Without Hands

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Thank you again, Ram :)

Ram's Summary of Goose Girl

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Thank you, Ram :)

Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales

Americans have...or used to have...a saying that behind every successful man was a strong woman.  Valerie Paradiz' study is about the women who provided the Brothers Grimm with their stories and who, for the most part, did not receive any credit for it.  Ms. Paradiz argues that this occurred because of eighteenth and nineteenth century attitudes towards women.  Women were to be silent and submissive.  It goes without saying that they received limited educations. Indeed, the Brothers Grimm severely criticize their fifteen year old sister Lotte for mourning their mother's death and being unable to devote herself to domesticity the way that their mother had.  Wilhelm Grimm had a very problematic relationship with Annette von Droste-Hulshoff, a bright, feisty young woman who would later become a noted writer.  In fact,  von Droste-Hulshoff's picture appeared on a West German stamp in 1961.




However, the Brothers Grimm experienced other more supportive relationships with women.  I have mentioned their neighbor Dorothea Wild, who later married Wilhelm.  She was also Lotte's close friend and tried to mediate between her and her older brothers.  Here are links to two of the stories that Dorothea or Dortchen passed on to Wilhelm and Jacob.  The first is "The Six Swans," a story that Ms. Paradiz believes reflects Lotte's predicament:

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm049.html

Another was "The Singing Bone," a story that may have reflected Dortchen's own dilemma as the beloved of three of the Grimms: Wilhelm, Jacob, and Ferdinand, their ne'er do well sibling.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0780.html#grimm

Henry Justice Ford's 1894 illustration of "The Six Swans" is below:



Dortchen's sisters also contributed to the Grimms' project.  One of the first stories that they gave was "Child of Mary":
http://www.fairytalechannel.org/search/label/Child%20of%20Mary .  Dortchen's older sister Gretchen was the storyteller this time.  Another of Gretchen's contributions was "The Companionship of Cat and Mouse": 
http://www.cgjungpage.org/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=156
Another sister, Mie, told the tale of "Godfather Death":
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm044.html .  However, I want to close with a link to another of Dortchen's stories, "All Fur":  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm065.html.  "Frau Holle" (pictured below) is another of her stories, too.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm024.html

Another storyteller was Friederike Mannel, a pastor's daughter who ran a guest house in Allendorf.  She also contributed folk songs to a collection by Clemens Brentano, one of the Grimms' mentors.  One of her stories that she gave to the Grimms was "Fitcher's Bird."  The version printed here draws on her telling as well as on Dortchen's:

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm046.html

Allendorf is a common name for a German town or city, but I think that this may be Friederike Mannel's city:

Interestingly, as Ms. Paradiz relates, while Wilhelm enjoyed Friederike's company and respected her knowledge of folklore, he was highly annoyed by his mentor Brentano's young wife, Auguste, who had the temerity to discuss Shakespeare and Goethe.  Auguste was a fellow guest at Friederike's establishment.  Friederike was friendly to Auguste but also shared Wilhelm's annoyance with her.

The Grimms relied on other groups of sisters.  The first were the Hassenpflugs, a family who had emigrated from France because of religious persecution.  Ironically, the Hassenpflugs' stories brought French influences into the Grimms' collection of ostensibly German stories. Over the years, several of their stories were incorrectly attributed to "Old Marie," a fictional servant of the family.  This particularly strikes Ms. Paradiz as Marie Hassenpflug, one of the more prolific storytellers, was a beautiful young lady.  Marie's picture is below:


Among the sisters' contributions was "Little Red Cap":
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm026.html

Charles Perrault's "Little Red Riding Hood" may be found here: 
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html#perrault

Another contribution was "The Maiden with No Hands": 
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/armlessmaiden/index.html

The second group of sisters were the von Hauxthausens, members of the German nobility and themselves collectors of German folklore.  Some of the stories that these women gave were written in dialect.  This particularly pleased the Grimms who were linguists as well as collectors of stories.  One story was "The Maid of Brakel" : 
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/4459/
Another, more famous, is "The Bremen Town Musicians" although the version given here is attributed to Dorothea Viehmann, another important storyteller and the only one who was given credit during the Grimms' lifetime.

http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm027.html

"Devil Greencoat" was another story that the von Hauxthausens gave the Grimms.  Unfortunately, it is not available online, but you may reconstruct it from Surlalune's annotations:
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bearskin/notes.html

"Bearskin," a heavily revised version is available here: 
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bearskin/index.html

The youngest von Hauxthausen sister, ten year-old Anna, was particularly helpful to the Grimms.

Annette von Droste Hulshoff's sister Jenny was the source for "The Worn-out Dancing Shoes":
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/twelvedancing/index.html
In 1874, Charles Deulin, a French author, reworked this story:
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/twelvedancing/stories/lang.html
By the way, even though Annette terrified Wilhelm, he was very much attracted to Jenny, a sweeter and less opinionated young woman.  He may even have wished to marry her.


Finally, I'd like to mention Dorothea Viehmann, an older woman who more closely fit our preconceptions of the Grimms' sources.  Once middle class, she had married a tailor (an occupation that appears frequently in the Grimms' stories), and by the time she met Jacob and Wilhelm, she was quite poor, living a hand to mouth existence.  The stories that she provided included "The Goose Girl":
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/goosegirl/index.html

"Doctor Know It All" :
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm098.html

and "The Three Army Surgeons":
http://www.pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/story171.pdf

Unsurprisingly, not only did Dorothea Viehmann receive credit for telling the brothers her stories but her picture appeared in their collection.


Jack Zipes discusses the impact that historical and cultural context had on the Grimms' stories.  One wonders how much impact the storytellers' own lives had on the stories that they chose to give the brothers.

After Dorothea Viehmann's death in 1815, the Brothers Grimm moved on to a new stage of their careers.  Of course, many of their younger storytellers and collectors had also married and become mothers, so they no longer had time to provide the brothers with stories.  As Ms. Paradiz observes, from this point on, the stories that the brothers collected would be print versions from old libraries.  Wilhelm also spent much time adapting stories for young readers.  Even then, Ms. Paradiz notes, parents considered the Grimms' stories to be too harsh for their children.

I'll close with some images from the Grimms' stories.

This is actually an illustration of Hans Christian Andersen's retelling of "The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes":


Ah, this is a good place for a picture of a cat and a mouse!!

Here is a modern illustration of "Little Red Cap":

Once again here are the town musicians of Bremen .... in Bremen!

The Brothers Grimm: From Enchanted Forests to the Modern World

This summer I resolved to learn a little more about fairy tales, specifically about the people who have written or transcribed them.  Probably the most famous of these people are the Brothers Grimm (Wilhelm and Jacob), so I've begun my reading with Prof. Jack Zipes' study (pictured above).  This book is more than a biography as it covers not only the brothers' life stories but also the impact that their tales have had on German readers (scholars & common readers)--and the reasons that they have had such an impact.

Do you know about the 2005 movie, The Brothers Grimm, that starred Heath Ledger?  (See the link below for the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QkwDld1d4


    That is not the real story.

However, contrary to what we "know," neither did the Brothers Grimm go out to the farms and forests and collect stories from German peasants.  As Prof. Zipes points out, the brothers gathered their stories from literate, middle-class storytellers who came to their house.  (Wilhelm even married one of the storytellers, Dortchen Wild, a pharmacist's daughter.)  The brothers then collected different versions of these stories, revising and editing them for publication.  Wilhelm continued to rework these stories as the audience of the collections changed from adults to children.  Here is a link to a comparison of different versions of "Hansel and Gretel":
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm015a.html

You may also read different versions of "Snow White" here:
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm053.html
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0709.html#snowwhite

Prof. Zipes therefore discusses the Grimms' tales as literary fairy tales, works that draw on both orality and print.  Although the Grimms' tales occupy a unique position in German and world culture, they are also very much a type of literature that was very popular in the 19th century.

Arthur Rackham's illustration below is from an English translation of "Snow White" (1909).  In this version, she is called Snowdrop.


Prof. Zipes also points out that the most well-known stories, the ones that we think of when we think about the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales, do not represent all of the stories that the brothers collected, revised, and edited.  Here are links to some other stories.  We may talk about "Godfather Death" in class: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm044.html.  Prof. Zipes discusses "The Maiden Without Hands" at length:  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm031.html  Another story that he alludes to is "Frau Trude" :  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm043.html

To see Justin Chen's art inspired by "The Maiden Without Hands," go to this link:
http://jkhc.blogspot.com/2009/02/maiden-without-hands-click-image-for.html

In fact, when we think about the most well-known stories, we may really be thinking about versions by Walt Disney or one of the many 20th-century writers for children!  

Prof. Zipes seems to be most interested in the historical and cultural context of the Grimms' stories.  Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm lived from 1785 to 1863 and 1786 to 1859.  During their lifetime, Germany was not one country.  It was divided up into different, independent states such as Hanover and Prussia, and, during the early 1800s, these states became satellites of France.  In other words, they were ruled by members of Napoleon's family.  As a result, the Grimms sought to preserve German culture and were very much in favor of German unification.  Their family situation complicated their political and cultural activism.  Since their father had died when they were boys, Jacob and Wilhelm also had to struggle to survive in a world where money and social standing were essential.  Both men trained as lawyers and worked in a variety of professions.  Yet ultimately they were successful.  They were able to pursue their cultural activism and publish a number of works, including the beginnings of a German dictionary as well as their anthologies of fairy tales.  The brothers were proud of their success and attributed it to their values (hard work, love of family, Protestant piety).  Prof. Zipes suggests that their stories reflected both the larger political and cultural context and the brothers' personal situation. 

Below is a map of Europe so that you may see where Germany is:


  Also, below is a picture of Kassel, the city that the Grimms called home.  It is now described as "the capital of the German fairy tale route":


Prof. Zipes concludes by showing how central the Grimms' tales are to Germans.  The stories are truly a common cultural currency and represent a different kind of popular culture, that is, folk culture.  As examples of folk culture, they played a key role in Germans' efforts to rehabilitate themselves after WWII and, in East Germany, to establish and support Communism. Late twentieth century authors in West Germany reworked these stories for adults and children both as satire and as stories that continued the Grimms' tradition of political and cultural activism.  Some of these reworkings are poems!  German pop psychology draws on the Grimms' tales in ways that intrigue yet infuriate Prof. Zipes.   He considers these pop psychologists' readings to be very limited and limiting.

It is always interesting to see how people from other cultures look at our readings...and at literature in general. 

Below is a picture of a sculpture of the Frog Prince.

And here is an image from a German comic "Frau mit Frosch" (Woman with Frog) about a businesswoman and her modern-day frog prince:

I tried to look for illustrations of some of the more outrageous modern-day adaptations, but they aren't online yet.  In more than one story, the fairy tale heroine starts a union for workers, and one even emigrates to America because our country has no kings or princes.  One hero is helped by an elf named Xram...Marx backwards.  And these were the adaptations from capitalistic West Germany!  The communist East Germans' adaptations were more traditional.