Someone should have banned me from motherhood.
While reading bed time story to Minibean today…
Mummy, reading from the book, “… the seven dwarfs -sniggers- laid her -muffled laughs- in the glass coffin… wahahahahaha”
Minibean: Mummy why you laughing? Why funny?
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, nothing you should know.”
And then… as I read on, I added in things on my own. “The necrophile of a prince passed by Snow White’s glass coffin and fell in love with her beauty…..”
Honestly, is it me or most children stories are so warped?
Jack and the beanstalk glamourised a burglar, Goldilocks and her bad manners… the Ugly Ducklings speaks of the importance of looks (it says the moral is to learn to love your true self, but that’s only because it eventually became beautiful, or else what would become of it?!), Pied Piper and his mass child abduction, and many more others which I have came to learn through those children stories DVD and I wasn’t the only raising my eyebrows sometimes.
Don’t even get me started on The Princess and the Pea – about a young woman whose royal identity is established by a test of her physical sensitivity.
And it has nothing to do with the fact that we have been trying to locate that mysterious pea to test our physical sensitivity.
But, the story is about a prince who wanted a real princess for a wife and refused to marry all those he was set up with. And he wanted to ascertain this girl is a real princess by placing a pea in the bedding.
I mean, how shallow can he get? Must have real princess then can get married huh? So other ideal candidates with solid characters are being scoffed at for being a non-princess?! Then it doesn’t give hope to people who believe in Cinderellas (ahem, like yours truly).
“…. that she endured a sleepless night, kept awake by something hard in the bed; which she is certain has bruised her. The prince rejoices. Only a real princess would have the sensitivity to feel a pea through such a quantity of bedding.”
Sorry, my mind is just too deep down in the gutter.
Or maybe, it was just the more subtle way of looking for a virgin bride.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Scarlett Ting and sheena k, Scarlett Ting. Scarlett Ting said: Someone should have made motherhood illegal for me : http://www.joewei.net/2010/07/fairytale/ [...]
You should read the original Sleeping Beauty. Scroll all the way to the end.
http://www.lilithgallery.com/articles/sex/Sex-Trivia.html
I am appalled and greatly saddened. Besides Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty was my 2nd favourite, and I will never look at it the same way again. ARGHHH!
Hi Scarlet Ting!
To read this post of yours of heartening!
Indeed, many fairytales that we have been exposed to are super warped if you think about it from an adult’s perspective. In fact, I got interested in the psychoanalysis of fairytales not too long ago and found out that the original fairytales (eg. from The Grimm Brothers) were rather dark. They were modified to be suitable for the innocent children’s mind. The ideas and moral teachings were however not lost. I.e. The red cape of Little Red Riding Hood symbolizes a girl having her first menstruation and hence is in a precarious situation crossing the woods full of strangers and dangerous ‘wolves’.
The above example is but one of many interesting analysis of a fairy tale. Try googling twisted fairy tales and you’ll find many others.
And yes, the disney illustrators were also being Freudian when they drew a phallic image on the original cover of The Little Mermaid and slipped in the word ‘Sex’ in The Lion King.
Interesting, ain’t it? =D
Sorry to rattle but this topic really intrigues me!
hellooo MewBabe! It’s so interesting to read your comment cos suddenly everything makes sense! Gee, yah, the more i hear it the more warped they are.. though sometimes when i don’t think about it, it does give that fluffiness/dreaminess of what i used to romanticised when i was younger.. maybe ignorance is bliss after all.
but i wanna hear more of your psychoanalysis, it sounds so intriguing, and intrigues me too now!