Lessons For All

People have found fundamental lessons embedded in folk and fairy tales. Many warn of the consequences of breaking taboos, and these warnings can be both literal and metaphorical. ‘The Juniper Tree’ (see Part One), for instance, is at one level a story about the evils of cannibalism. Many folk and fairy tales, as well as myths and legends, warn against this transgression. Since there would be little point in warning against a desire unless it were an obvious temptation, it is possible to deduce that the urge to eat the weak and vulnerable, as represented by children, had to be made repugnant. But the taboo can be understood less literally, as warning against failing to distinguish the difference between your own group and another. This distinction is essential for the transmission of healthy genes. So a story like ‘The Juniper Tree’ (see Part 2) warns against both cannibalism and incest and , of course, against the possible harm from those who, like step-parents, have no genetic investment in the children they are asked to care for and therefore may see them as rivals to their own children.

But these tales do not confine their lessons to parents and children, and not all the lessons they teach are warnings. ‘Bluebeard’ has troubled many over the years because it seems to reward that most reviled of creatures, the curious woman. Bristol Old Vic’s Head of Props, Bill Talbot, explains how they went about making the gruesome brides' bodies to illustrate the tale. You can trace the set development in set designs as well. The wife in the tale transgresses and, as the bloody key or egg (depending on the version) suggests, may also be understood to have been unfaithful to her husband. But is it he rather than she who is punished? Widow Bluebeard not only lives to marry again, but is able to provide for her brothers and sister. Why should this be? Despite the fact that ‘Bluebeard’ is usually included in collections of ‘best-loved tales’, it offers a very different version of what men and women need and of desire in a marriage. Far from upholding the attractions of the virgin, it, like Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, points to the merits of the wealthy, experienced woman. With her sexual knowledge and her independent fortune, the widow has much to bring to a relationship.

In recent years, critics have identified the ways in which traditional tales help to civilise the young by socialising them into their societies’ norms and values, and do so in ways that are unlikely to be forgotten. Watching Carol Ann Duffy’s versions of the tales in Beasts and Beauties , for instance, it is clear that they make use of ancient oral story-telling devices such as repetition, rhyme and rhythm. But their power also comes from the fact that they often pass on actual experience. Think, for instance, of the topography of fairytale land. Is there anybody who can’t tell you that this realm is made up of cottages in forests and castles on hills and all kinds of supernatural folk? Such information isn’t arbitrary – it encapsulates both actual experiences and psychological insights. On the one hand, the over-crowded cottages of fairy tales, with ten in every bed and all their inhabitants dreaming of bottomless pots of soup and great chains of sausages, pass on through history a sense of how it was to live a peasant’s life in times when food was scarce, and famine a constant threat. Cottages were dark, there was only one bed, and food was meagre. But just as stories in which adults eat children can simultaneously warn against cannibalism and incest, so tales of dark woods and parents who are prepared to abandon their children can offer children important messages about growing up.