Discussion Week 5

If we do critical mischief or harm to the narratives when we read multiple versions of them at a time, then it is in the form of lumping all the stories together and not seeing each version as one individual contribution by an author. This is in contrast to not being able to connect the texts together as efficiently as we would if we were reading each story one after the other. I feel as if the historical chronology plays a big part in the analysis of each version as well. In many cases, there are slight differences over time. If we take an ancient version and compare it to a modern version, the differences are going to be a little more apparent than if we take versions and place them one after another closer historically.

After looking over the readings this week, I started to see many similarities with the different stories by the Brothers Grimm. Just like many of the more famous fairy tales which we have already examined such as Snow White and Cinderella there always seems to be an evil female character which is central to these stories. In Mother Holle and Little Sister, Little Brother, for instance, we see an evil witch or stepmother, which wished to further her own daughter’s plight rather than the main character’s good luck. They are of course different in their aspects. In Mother Holle the kind and hard working stepdaughter was made to spin yarn until her fingers bled, she was also referred to in the story as “the Cinderella of the household” (Tatar 135). When the stepdaughter went looking for the spindle she lost and returned to her stepmother with riches, she became jealous and sent her ugly and lazy, but biological daughter to try to duplicate her good luck. The same type of situation happened in Little Brother, Little Sister. When the little brother and sister were beaten by their stepmother, they sought a better life by running away. The brother was turned into a deer and then hunted by a king. Good luck shined upon the little sister, however, because the king found her and made her his bride. Jealous of this the stepmother went to kill the young queen and replaced her one-eyed daughter in her place. It seemed that even though the step children are better off, the stepmother had to try to further her offspring in each of these cases, but failed in the end. These are obviously stories which teach moral lessons which focus on jealousy being cynical and hard work, perseverance in the face of adversity being positive.

I also noticed that there were similar situations with children being turned into animals, specifically with Ravens. In the Seven Ravens and The Twelve Brothers, this is certainly the case. In both stories, brothers were changed into ravens by some enchantment whether that was by an old woman or an off-mark wish by a father for his boys to be turned into the black birds. In both cases, it is the sister who saved her brothers in an ironic twist. I say the twist is because it is the daughter being born which sent the brothers off in the first place. But in all actuality, these two stories also suffered from a father who placed the importance of the daughter over his sons. The father in The Twelve Brothers even planned to kill his boys after conceiving his first daughter.  

Works Cited

Tatar, Maria., editor. The Annotated Brothers Grimm, W.W Norton and Company, 2012.