The Grimm Brothers

The Grimm Brothers are probably the most well-known collectors/writers of stories. They were 19th-century academics who were interested in language and culture and were part of a movement that sought to collect folklore. Many others followed in their footsteps in other parts of Europe. Collecting folklore, specifically the oral traditional stories, was one way of making a claim for cultural national unity.

The Grimm Brothers produced collections of what they termed “märchen“, perhaps best translated as “wonder tale.” Grimm’s Fairy Tales was originally known as Children and Household Tales. The first edition, in 1812, contained 86 stories; ta second volume of 70 stories followed in 1815. Over the next years, until the seventh edition of 1857, the brothers added and subtracted stories, and rewrote many of them with an eye toward improving their suitability for children and increasing their suitability in terms of the values of 19th-century German-speaking middle-class societies. This often took the form of removing sexually explicit material, though not violence.

As part of our work on fairy tales, you are choosing one story to work on in-depth, looking at many variations, so you may, for example, find it interesting to look at a story fro the Grimm Brothers’ from the 1812 publication and compare it to that of 1857. And then to see how it is retold again and again.

Read

The Juniper Tree

Read the Text

Via Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, edited by D.L. Ashliman

Detailed line drawing of a woman kneeling before a tree in a dress with bodice. In the branches of a tree is a glying bird, behind is an open door and a window — Louis Head, illustration for The Juniper Tree, 1917; Public Domain via WikiMedia Commons

Optional

The above story, perhaps unsurprisingly, is often not included in later works of the Edwardian period intended directly for children. Not that the stories didn’t have their disturbing and strange moments.

Look at this example of “The Goose Girl” retold in Grimm’s Fairy Tales Retold in One-Syllable Words, published in 1899 by McLoughlin Brothers (among other things, the story features the decapitated head of a horse talking.)

Watch

The video below talks about The Robber Bridegroom, a story similar to Perrault’s Bluebeard.

What are two or three things that you’ve started to notice in these literary fairy tales? Has anything surprised you so far?

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Comments

19 responses to “The Grimm Brothers”

Natasha Marques

February 13, 2024

These stories have a lot of concepts with the Disney fairytales. In the junpiter tree the description of the child ” child as red as blood and as white as snow” reminded me of Snow white and what she looked like when she was born ” skin as white as snow, lips as red as a blood”. Mother always dying at childbirth and leaving the child alone, always a evil step-parent who fills in and does horrible things to the child.
Second story reminded me of hansel and Gretel, leaving food trails so they wouldn’t get lost. Killing and chopping people up to eat.

These stories also had some cruel crimes, cutting off a child’s head and murdering people. Very dark and vicious.

I remember running into Grimm books, and I remember enjoying the darkside of things. I also loved watch the TV Show “The Grimm”

Reply
1. Quesia Cruz
  
  February 18, 2024
  
  hi,
  you made me remember these stories and also connect them to others, it is surprising how the new tales took and changed these old ones to make them fit in the mow world.
  
  Reply
Hanan Almoflihi

February 17, 2024

I noticed that there is a common theme of eating and cooking people, specifically children, which I find disturbing. A second thing I noticed is that the evil person usually is brought to justice at the end, and usually killed.

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Obeed Ahmed

February 17, 2024

One similarity with the stories that i noticed is that they usually involve royalty and the upper class. A second similarity I noticed is that the good children do not die. In both stories the children were though to be eaten, but in the end they were all okay.

Reply
Renee Montperous

February 17, 2024

I have seen that there is usually a terrible stepmother who treats their stepchild horribly. The second narrative makes me think of Hansel and Gretel, who left food trails to help them find their way home. It’s horrifying that a lot of these stories include killing and chopping up children to eat.

Reply
Basamat Hamdan

February 17, 2024

What are two or three things that you’ve started to notice in these literary fairy tales? Has anything surprised you so far?

I have noticed that there is a lot of cannibalism involved. In “The Juniper Tree,” the boy is beheaded and then cooked into a stew. His father really seems to enjoy the taste. In the story told in the video, the woman is chopped into pieces and salted. I have also noticed that there is a general trend of murderers. I never read stories from the Grimm brothers, but both stories depict the murder of innocent people (the boy and the woman, respectively). Both stories also depict the murder of the villain (the step-mother and the husband, respectively). It also seems to be a common trope where the step-mother is evil and eventually gets found out/killed for her atrocities. Talking animals is also common, such as the bird in the video or the beheaded horse in “The Goose Girl.”

Overall, I am really surprised at how dark these stories are. I am glad some of them have happy endings, but I can’t shake off the weird feeling after reading about murder and cannibalism. It’s all really new to me, especially the cannibalism. I never expected it to be a recurring theme.

Reply
Cheyenne La Fritz

February 18, 2024

There is always an emphasis on the beauty of the women in these tales. Their beauty is their defining characteristic and sometimes a plot point. The father is alive and the birth mother is dead. If there is a stepmother in the story, she is always evil. Cannibalism is another theme in all of these stories. I was surprised by how gruesome all of these stories were.

Reply
1. Quesia Cruz
  
  February 18, 2024
  
  hi,
  yes you make great points! beauty seems to deceive the prince etc., they almost share the same plots.
  
  Reply
Milen Bekis

February 18, 2024

What are two or three things that you’ve started to notice in these literary fairy tales? Has anything surprised you so far?

In the literary fairy tales, they are very gruesome. Good does not win in the end and death usually occurs. The stronger ones prey on the weak. I knew this was the origin of all the Disney stories. Disney glorified and glamorized the Grimm Brothers. No one wants to watch a movie and have it end terribly. We have the real word for that.

Reply
Aya Ibrahim

February 18, 2024

I’ve noticed an emphasis on symbolism through color, repetition and rhyme, and cases of exaggerated harm or violent circumstances. It’s a little surprising that these stories can still be considered children’s stories, even though I grew up hearing them

Reply
1. Quesia Cruz
  
  February 18, 2024
  
  hi,
  i agree with your comment, it has a lot of violence.
  
  Reply
Quesia Cruz

February 18, 2024

What are two or three things that you’ve started to notice in these literary fairy tales? Has anything surprised you so far?

they are carnivore tales, it always has to do with parents not liking their children, it surprises me that in these types of fairy tales eating humans is not out of the ordinary. The stories use color to describe certain things, and everything is exaggerated.

Reply
Hasiena Madramootoo

February 18, 2024

What are two or three things that you’ve started to notice in these literary fairy tales? Has anything surprised you so far?

something that I notice in these fairy tales is that there is most likely to have that one character to represent beauty. Another that is common amongst these tales is that there is always a upper class and there’s mostly likely a dark side to them. something that surprised me was in the Grimm tale where the old lady help the girl.

Reply
Badra Ahmad

February 18, 2024

I’ve noticed the prevalence of archetypal characters such as heroes, villains, and tricksters, each serving specific roles within the story’s structure. Many fairy tales exhibit a pattern of transformation, where characters undergo significant changes or growth throughout the narrative.

Reply
Jennifer F. Angel

February 18, 2024

I noticed a lot of gore and cruelty. Execution is very common in these stories. The Robber Bridegroom, sounds a lot like Hansel and Gretel when the daughter in the story leaves a trail to the robbers house but only that! The issues in the stories are coming from issue of not following the norm. In The Juniper Tree the wife longed for a child and The Robber Bridegroom, the daughter needed to get married. Both stories have the similarity of cannibalism and murder.

Reply
1. Basamat Hamdan
  
  February 20, 2024
  
  Hey Jennifer, I like your comparison between The Robber Bridegroom and Hansel and Gretel. I thought making a trail in a forest sounded familiar but I couldn’t remember from where.
  
  Reply
Hannah Xhani

February 18, 2024

What are two or three things that you’ve started to notice in these literary fairy tales?
Violence is talked about with such weird contexts. In the video, The entire family is killed and simply its ” all because of a boob finger.” Its strange how violence is played off so smoothly and the involvement of cannibalism is spoken with normal reference as for example they didnt want to eat the girl sitting at the table because she was simply too ” raw.”

Has anything surprised you so far?
the ending of the first story was so insane “The father and Marlene heard it and went out. Smoke, flames, and fire were rising from the place, and when that was over, the little brother was standing there, and he took his father and Marlene by the hand, and all three were very happy, and they went into the house, sat down at the table, and ate.” How can this the happily ever after ending!

Reply
Revette Hinkson

February 19, 2024

I have noticed that some of the beautiful fairytales as we know them today seem to be built from some of the details in these Grimm stories. The stores as we know them today are based on cannibalism, murder, and magic. What has surprised me, is that even though the stories are very dark in nature, the endings are pleasant.

Reply
Marissa Acosta

February 20, 2024

I’ve noticed a lot of elements of violence, fear, and pain. I think this is to warn children, and maybe people in general, of the outcomes of not doing what you’re “supposed to.”

Reply

S24 Performance of Children's Literature