Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood

Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood
ISBN-10
0691214816
ISBN-13
9780691214818
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
332
Language
English
Published
2020-06-30
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Author
Maria Tatar

Description

When Hansel and Gretel try to eat the witch's gingerbread house in the woods, are they indulging their "uncontrolled cravings" and "destructive desires" or are they simply responding normally to the hunger pangs they feel after being abandoned by their parents? Challenging Bruno Bettelheim and other critics who read fairy tales as enactments of children's untamed urges, Maria Tatar argues that it is time to stop casting the children as villians. In this provocative book she explores how adults mistreat children, focusing on adults not only as hostile characters in fairy tales themselves but also as real people who use frightening stories to discipline young listeners.

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