"Sex and Violence:The Hard Core of Fairy Tales" by Maria Tatar

Fairy tales are common pieces in today's society. They are read by children and adults. However, Maria Tatar suggests that there is a darker message hidden in fairy tales which is commonly overlooked. Tatar suggests that the themes of sex and violence permeate our beloved fairy tales. Tatar states that every fairy tale character is capable of cruelty. In "The Juniper Tree," a woman decapitates her stepson and feeds him to the husband. While, in "Bluebeard," Bluebeard kills his wives for looking into the locked room which holds the dead bodies. In many other tales, we see this cruelty and sick mutilation of loved ones. This violence is the reality of the sunny stories we were heard as children. The main reason we overlook such problematic issues found in fairy tales is because of the watered down translations of Disney. The many translators that modified the tales created versions that better fit their society. The Grimm's versions contained an ample amount of violence while they stayed away from sex which was a taboo topic for the writers. Other writers such as Basile and Perrault incorporated sex and violence into their stories without being flashy about it. Eventually, Walt Disney came along and modified the fairy tales into the versions many of us read today. Disney modified the fairy tales to hide the sex and violence that had been present. He created a "Happily ever after" where good triumphs over evil and the princess get the prince. The darker messages became toned down and in turn were generally missed unless someone was closely analyzing the story.  




 Tatar, Maria. “Sex and Violence: The Hard Core of Fairy Tales.” The Classic Fairy Tales: Texts, Criticism, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2017, pp. 364–373.