The Real Hansel and Gretel

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The Real Hansel and Gretel

• Fairy Tales and Economics
• Brighid Walsh

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The Synopsis

• At the edge of a great forest there once lived a
  poor woodcutter. He could scarcely manage to
  feed his wife and his two children, Hansel and
  Gretel, and this made him miserable. The day
  came when there was nothing left to eat in their
  house but one loaf of bread, and he grew terribly
  anxious

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• On the third day, chilled and hungry, they came
  upon a little house that was built of bread. Its
  roof was made of pancakes and its windows of
  sugar candy. The children were so happy to see
  it that they ran up to it and they ate greedily

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Context Setting

• 19th Century Europe
• Middle Class
• Food shortages
• Starvation
• Poverty
• As a result, infanticide was common, and in fact
  practical.

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Similarities to Hard Times

• Appearances vs. realities
• For example, the witchs house was this façade of
  food and wealth, but this is what could have
  killed them.
• Giving into the hard times
• The parents were forced to leave their children
  in the forest because they could not feed
  themselves, let alone their children.

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Important Themes

• Family/ Community
• Children were seen as expendable to the parents
  would be sacrificed for food
• Sent into the forest, a common symbol for
  non-community in the Grimms fairy tales.
• The children were removed from their family and
  community.

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• Wealth
• Contrast between wealth and children Parents are
  child-rich but not monetarily wealthy
• This sets the parents against the children, the
  children against the parents, and both against
  poverty, or starvation.
• The witch is really the only one with wealth, as
  represented by her house and the jewels found by
  Hansel and Gretel at the end.
• Note, this wealthy witch was who was going to
  eat them

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Concluding Thoughts

• Lots of deception in this fairy tale. The
  parents were deceiving in bringing Hansel and
  Gretel, leading them into the woods. The witch
  deceived the children by her house and
  hospitality (by that, I mean feeding them so she
  could eat them later).
• More investigation into the context of the Grimms
  brothers compilation of these stories could
  further add to the understanding.

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Sources

• Bottigheimer, Ruth B. Grimms Bad Girls and Bold
  Boys The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales.
  New Haven Yale University Press, 1987.
• Lesser, Rika. Hansel and Gretel. Toronto
  McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1984.
• Weber, Eugen. Fairies and Hard Facts The
  Reality of Folktales. The Journal of the History
  of Ideas, 42 (Jan. 1981) 93-113 .