Naamloze pagina

Numerous fairy tales (in this case Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) and the legends behind them, are actually watered-down versions of uncomfortable historical events. These darker stories might be too terrifying for today's little lambkins, as well as some adults! Their horrific origins, which often involve rape, incest, torture, cannibalism and other hideous occurrences are brimming with sophisticated and brutal morality. Their images cannot be dispelled easily and their lessons are more powerful than the present-day innocuous fables they resemble. (Huffpost)
As Jack Zipes observes in Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, fairy-tales were revised and repackaged by authors and educators to indoctrinate children: these redesigned fairy-tales inhabited "a type of literary discourse about mores, values and manners" so that children would become civilized according to the social code of that time.