Maria Tatar - Off with Their Heads!

OFF WITH

THEIR HEADS!

OFF WITH

THEIR HEADS!

FAIRYTALES AND THE CULTURE
OF CHILDHOOD

Maria Tatar

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Copyright 1992 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,

Chichester, West Sussex

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tatar, Maria M., 1945

Off with their heads! : fairy tales and the culture of childhood / by

Maria Tatar.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-691-06943-3

ISBN 0-691-00088-3 (pbk.)

eISBN 978-0-691-21481-8

1. Fairy talesHistory and criticism. 2. Folklore and children.

3. Childrens storiesPsychological aspects. I. Title

GR550.T38 1992

398.45dc20 91-26470

R0

FOR ANNA, JOHN, AND STEVE

Our anxiety for his

future makes us careful in

ridding him of bad habits and making

his will supple as Lockewhom we are

now readingwould say. The other night he

cried after being put to bed, not of course from

pain, but mere contrariness. I tried to induce him to

be quiet and failed. I then took him out of bed and

whipped him, and as he cried out even more, pressed

him close to me, and held his head and bade him be quiet.

In a moment, after a convulsive sob or two, he became quite

quiet. I put him back into his cot, told him to be quiet and

to go to sleep, and left him. Not a sound more did he make,

and he went to sleep. The next day at noon he cried again

when put to bed. I went to him and told him he must not cry,

that he must lie down...be quiet and go to sleep.... He

became and remained perfectly quiet, and went to sleep. He

now goes to bed noon and night and to sleep without a cry.

If this can be done, how much more may not be done?

What a responsibility! What a suberb instrument,

gymnast of virtue and of beautiful conduct, may

not a man be made early in life.

...

Thomas Cobden-Sanderson in his

Journals (1886) on how he disciplines

his eighteen-month

old son, Richard

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

And then, as to Puss in Boots, when I came to look carefully at that

story, I felt compelled to re-write it, and alter the character of it to a

certain extent; for, as it stood, the tale was a succession of successful

falsehoodsa clever lesson in lying!a system of imposture

rewarded by the greatest worldly advantage!a useful lesson, truly,

to be impressed upon the minds of children!

George Cruikshank, To Parents, Guardians, and all Persons

Entrusted with the Care of Children in his Puss in Boots

W THEN LUCY of the Peanuts comic strip is called upon to tell the story of Snow White, she rises to the occasion in characteristic good form: This Snow White has been having trouble sleeping, see? Well, she goes to this witch who gives her an apple to eat which puts her to sleep. Just as shes beginning to sleep real well... you know, for the first time in weeks... this stupid prince comes along and kisses her and wakes her up. To this strong misreading (to borrow Harold Blooms term), Linus responds, I admire the wonderful way you have of getting the real meaning out of the story.

Getting at the true meaning of our cultural stories can be a real challenge. While some may believe, with Hemingway, that messages are for Western Union and not for books, almost all of us turn to childrens stories with the expectation that morals and lessons will be forthcoming, even in those cases where they are not spelled out in the text. For every Mark Twain who wants to banish anyone trying to find a moral in a book, there will be a hundred Duchesses of Wonderland who assert that everythings got a moral, if only you can find it. Others will emphasize the way in which that particular trait constantly gets George in trouble and imperils his life. Is Curious George an exemplary story or a cautionary tale? It is often up to the adult reader to produce the real meaning that is then, in subtle or not so subtle ways, passed on to the child.

Meaning is produced by more than the words on the page. Stanley Fish has taught us that reading and the attendant process of interpretation engage us in an active process that creates a text by constructing its meaning. We each belong to an interpretive community with shared strategies not for reading but for writing texts, for constituting their properties. The marks of those shared strategies are not always readily apparent in our readings, in large part because the interpretive community to which we belong usually produces textual truths continuous with our cultural beliefs. Ambiguities, disruptive moments, contradictions, and gaps are suppressed in favor of the construction of a concise, self-evident, universal truththe real meaning of the tale. This true meaning often turns out to be nothing more than an ossified and ossifying bit of wisdom with little relevance to the lives of those who read or are readthe tales.

While the literature we read as adults (and here I refer primarily to nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels) traditionally registers its disapproval of conformity and idealizes resistance to social regulation, the literature we read to our children by and large stands in the service of productive socialization. From its inception as a commercial endeavor with Newberys A Little Pretty Pocket-Book (1744), childrens literature has openly endorsed a productive discipline that condemns idleness and censures disobedience even as it hails acculturation and accommodation. While some stories have been so openly and violently coercive that they lose their socializing energy, turning instead into horror stories or surreal comedies (the German Struwwelpeter comes immediately to mind), the vast majority of tales from Newberys time on have played a powerful role in constructing the ideal child as a docile child.