Fairy Tales and Capital Punishment

Previous posts on this blog have discussed how fairy tales relate to controversial subject matter such as nationalism, politics and racism. However, out of all the issues associated with fairy tales, one of the most problematic is their use of capital punishment. Many fairy tales are notable for ending with the villains getting executed in particularly lurid and gruesome fashion. Fairy tales appeal to us because of their ability at providing wish-fulfilment, and there are few things more satisfying than seeing a villain punished for their misdeeds (something which doesn’t happen as much as we’d like in real life). However, the use of the death penalty to deal with them raises a number of issues.

To start with, we need to establish a distinction between capital punishment and other means of killing off a villain. For example, Disney films often end with the villain suffering an impressively disturbing death, providing a welcome dose of darkness in otherwise light-hearted movies. However, Disney villain deaths are often accidental, with baddies such as Gaston, Frollo and Clayton falling to their deaths as a result of their own hubris. In the Disney films where the hero or heroine actively kills the villain (e.g Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid and Mulan), it is done during a battle, either out of self-defence or the need to protect others. There is a world of difference between a death which occurs by accident or in battle, as unpleasant as it may be, and executions which are designed to be as degrading, terrifying and protracted as possible. Thus, even those who enjoy seeing the Wicked Queen from Disney’s version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves fall to her death can find it uncomfortable when the Brothers Grimm version ends with the Wicked Queen being forced to dance herself to death in red-hot shoes. The nearest thing to a villain being executed in a Disney film is when Scar’s hyenas turn on him at the end of The Lion King, and that is the result of his henchmen acting in their own self-interest. In contrast, fairy tale executions are the result of a normally benign ruler (who usually tends to be the husband or father-in-law of the protagonist) adopting the role of nemesis and inflicting an incredibly unpleasant punishment in the name of justice.

However, there are techniques which make the use of capital punishment in fairy tales seem more tolerable. The main way of doing this is by reducing the characters to archetypes. Just as the heroes are purely good, the villains are purely evil. The lack of depth and internal psychology makes it much easier to hate the villains, as they are defined solely by negative traits and actions, increasing opposition to them enough to make execution seem like an appropriate punishment. In fairy tales, capital punishment seems to be presented as a relatively reliable instrument of justice. Although heroic characters may be threatened with the death penalty (as in The Six Swans) they are invariably rescued before anything bad can happen to them. One major issue with capital punishment is the fact that many innocent people get executed for crimes they didn't commit, but as this doesn’t happen in fairy tales, it seems a lot less unjust. In addition, the gruesome deaths which occur are described in a very superficial way. We just hear that they happen – the details are omitted, as the blood, gore and pain which makes these fates so unpleasant is not mentioned in any way. This creates distance between the action and the audience, ensuring that there is less awareness of the reality of capital punishment and putting it within the fantastical context of the fairy tale environment.

A key way of creating distance from the villain and justifying the use of capital punishment is through a frequently used trope called the ‘Original Position Fallacy’, in which a character makes an unwise proposal based on the mistaken assumption that they will not suffer the consequences of it. This plot device is often found in the subgenre of ‘False Bride’ fairytales (of which The Goose Girl is the most notable), in which a villainous stepmother or maidservant steals the protagonist’s throne. These stories end with the heroic king discussing the plight of the heroine and asking the villain what punishment should befall the person responsible for this. Said villain doesn’t realise that the ruler is referring to their misdeeds and, out of sadism or a desire to protect their secrets, suggests a particularly nasty form of execution for the criminal, most often involving being stuffed into a barrel lined on the inside with spikes and dragged through the streets by horses until they bleed to death. It is then revealed that they have “spoken their own sentence”, and the punishment is carried out on them instantly. With the ‘Original Position Fallacy’, the villain literally brings their fate upon themselves. This makes their suffering into a direct punishment for their overconfidence, reducing its disturbing impact.

Another reason for retaining the use of capital punishment in fairy tales is the need to reflect the fact that they tend to be set in a much harsher era. Fairytales typically take place in an unspecified version of the past which exists between the medieval era and the dawn of the industrial revolution. During this time, maidservants would be harshly punished for their infractions. In Germany, even petty misdemeanours from maidservants were treated as major crimes, with lazy or dishonest servants being forced to stand in the pillory and being banished from the town. Meanwhile the ‘Bloody Code’ in Britain meant that many maids were hanged for mere theft. In this context, the crimes which the villainous maidservant commits in The Goose Girl (Refusing to fetch water for the princess she is meant to be looking after, stealing her throne, forcing her to work as a servant tending geese and killing her horse) are definitely worthy of more extreme penalties. The period was also defined by a belief in the “divine right” of the absolute monarch, as kings, queens, princes and princesses were believed to receive their power from god. This meant that attempts to subvert this hierarchy posed a major threat to order and stability. In fairy tales, this danger is often embodied by devious maidservants and wicked stepmothers trying to assassinate or overthrow the protagonists, and a harsh response to them reinforces the message that mistreatment of royalty can have dire consequences. The society of the past was much more brutal and barbaric than the more permissive world we live in today, and the use of capital punishment in fairy tales reflects this reality whilst expressing it in a fairer way, with only villains truly suffering.

The decision to cut capital punishment out of fairy tales is often dismissed as an attempt to sanitise them. However, there are reasons of getting rid of it which go beyond a desire to avoid traumatising children. One reason is the need to adopt a more realistic approach, which avoids the moral certainties needed for the death penalty to be acceptable. This is made clear by comparing the Brothers Grimm story The Six Swans with Hans Christian Andersen’s version of the tale, The Wild Swans. Both feature a protagonist who is accused of witchcraft, but gets rescued by her brothers at the last minute. In The Six Swans, the heroine is deliberately framed for witchcraft by a wicked stepmother who kidnaps her children. The story ends with the crimes of the stepmother being exposed, and she gets burnt at the stake instead of the protagonist. However, in The Wild Swans, the character who accuses Princess Eliza of witchcraft is an overzealous archbishop, who is portrayed as misguided rather than evil and does not receive any punishment for his actions. The Wild Swans simply ends with Eliza’s innocence and purity being recognised, disproving the archbishop’s allegations about her. This difference in approach indicates a more sophisticated attitude towards morality. In real life, you are more likely of finding an antagonist like the archbishop, who acts based on mistaken assumptions and prejudices as opposed to pure malice. In this situation, the best way of dealing with them is simply to demonstrate that they were wrong. Even when using more straightforward villains, modern fairy tales have often sought different ways of giving the villains their comeuppance without killing them. In recent Disney hits such as Frozen and Moana, villainous characters have been humiliated instead of killed. Villains have been less important to recent Disney films, as the studio has focused increasingly on providing more complex and developed protagonists, so they don’t really need a spectacular defeat. Furthermore, the outright villains in these movies, such as Hans and Tamatoa, are focused on upholding their personal image (Hans with his “Prince Charming” façade, Tamatoa with his boasts about how shiny he is), meaning that the most satisfying way of dealing with them is to discredit them. Sometimes, there are better ways of dealing with a villain than simply killing them, and undermining their beliefs or image can be a stronger punishment.

The reduced focus on villains has coincided with an increased emphasis on heroes and heroines. Instead of being mere visions of beauty and power, they have to be strong, realistic characters and positive role models. This means that, for those who read old fairy tales, it can be uncomfortable to see the kind, beautiful heroes and heroines reacting to extreme methods of execution by standing back and doing nothing. In fact, in one horrifically racist ‘False Bride’ story from Portugal, The Maid and the Negress, the heroine herself is the one who suggests that the villain should be killed, with her bones made into bed-steps and her skin used for a drum. Even when her suffering is taken into account, this is unnecessarily sadistic, making the supposedly virtuous princess into a much less appealing character. More recent stories have often featured different responses to villainy, giving the protagonist greater depth in the process. In several adaptations of The Goose Girl, including the 2009 version for the popular German fairytale series Sechs Auf Einen Streich (Six in One Stroke), the heroine intervenes at the very last minute, choosing to spare the wicked maidservant from her gruesome demise and have her exiled instead. These versions of the story often make it clear that the maidservant’s actions are motivated by her frustrations with her job, and her dissatisfaction with life as a servant (This is seldom discussed in the original fairy tale, where she seems to be acting out of mere spite). Thus, the heroine’s willingness to show mercy indicates that, unlike her enemy, she is not going to let her experiences of forced servitude make her bitter and resentful. The need for protagonists to set positive examples for the audience means that they need to be merciful and compassionate as well as brave and beautiful, and refusing to use capital punishment is an excellent example of this more enlightened approach.

Conclusion

Like many issues, the decision of how to punish the villains in a fairy tale is a matter for the storyteller. If you have to kill off a villain, accidental deaths or deaths in battle are probably preferable. They tend to be integrated into the story more effectively (the execution of a villain tends to occur at the very end of the story, after their defeat) and offer the most satisfying aspects of capital punishment, such as ensuring that the villain can’t hurt anyone again, without the numerous problematic features. That said, the gruesome creativity of execution scenes in fairy tales tends to make them highly memorable, and many readers enjoy these moments. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they should be kept, as the means of punishing a villain should depend on their personality and behaviour. Whilst some tales have antagonists who are annoying rather than evil and not worth punishing in such an excessive fashion, others feature villains so despicable that even the most gruesome execution is not nasty enough for them. Ultimately, the approach taken towards capital punishment should vary according to the type of story. In a more moralistic tale which adheres to the primal sensibilities of Brothers Grimm, executing the villain in gruesome fashion can be an effective way of appealing to our desire for revenge. However, in a fairy tale which places more emphasis on providing complex and interesting characters, the use of capital punishment is often unnecessary and inappropriate, and should generally be avoided.

10 Most Notable Woman in the Fairy Tale Genre

The most famous people associated with the fairy tale genre (such as Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Andrew Lang and Walt Disney) have tended to be male. However, fairy tales actually have their roots in tales told by women, about female desires and insecurities. The dominance of female protagonists and antagonists in these stories, as well as the fantasy setting, ensure that they are primarily associated with a female audience. Recently, there has been increased focus on making fairy tales more feminist, but female writers and storytellers have always been integral figures in the fairytale genre. In order to highlight this, here is a list of ten of the most notable and interesting women who have helped make fairy tales so popular and successful.

These women represent various facets of the fairytale world, ranging from adults-only stories to Disney films. The list includes writers, translators, and storytellers, and covers a period of 350 years. This only scratches the surface – there are numerous great female authors and storytellers who were not included here. However, the women on this list have had the greatest influence on the development of the fairy tale genre.

(Note - This article does not include female illustrators such as Jane Ray, Lisbeth Zwerger or Emma Chichester-Clark or female scholars such as Maria Tatar and Marina Warner. This blog will feature articles about them in the future, but for now, we shall focus on storytellers only.)

Madame D’Aulnoy (c.1650-1705)

Although she was not the first author in the fairytale genre, Madame D’Aulnoy was the person who invented the term “fairy tale”. This was derived from Les Contes Des Fees, a collection of stories which she published between 1696 and 1698. The facts about D’Aulnoy’s life are notoriously unreliable, but most historians believe that her writing career started in 1690, when she established a literary salon in Paris. Before then, she had been in an arranged marriage to a baron later imprisoned for treason and was allegedly involved in several affairs. This gave D’Aulnoy a scandalous reputation, but the fairy tales she told in her salon helped her gain respectability as an intellectual. She also wrote a number of historical novels, and was even elected into the prestigious Accademia Galileiana.

D’Aulnoy often used her fairy tales to address contemporary issues. Given that she was active in an era where criticising the French monarchy could have incredibly unpleasant consequences, the subversive undertones of D’Aulnoy’s stories, such as 'The Ram' and 'The Blue Bird', were pretty radical by the standards of the era. These tales often had strong autobiographical elements, dealing with taboo subjects such as arranged marriages, sexual harassment, and the failings of the monarchy. The stories which D’Aulnoy wrote were aimed solely at the patrons of her salon - she had no interest in appealing to children. However, as her tales became popular, they inspired several imitators and got translated into English in 1699. Although D’Aulnoy’s work is overshadowed by the more iconic stories of contemporary Charles Perrault, she deserves recognition for her role in establishing the fairy tale genre and allowing it to gain a greater degree of prominence.

Jeanne-Marie Leprince De Beaumont (1711-1780)

Jeanne-Marie Leprince De Beaumont is another major French fairy tale author, but her primary claim to fame is her role in popularising one especially legendary fairy tale. However, the popularity of Beauty and the Beast should not distract from the rest of Leprince De Beaumont’s work. In 1748, Jeanne-Marie Leprince De Beaumont moved to London, where she gained a job instructing the daughters of prominent aristocrats. This inspired her to establish the journal Les Magasins Des Enfants, which used dialogue format to teach a range of subjects to young girls. It also featured retellings of fairy tales and famous myths and legends. Les Magasins Des Enfants was incredibly popular (130 editions were published in France in the 130 years after it was first published) and as a result of the journal, the fairytale genre began to be primarily associated with child audiences.

Leprince De Beaumont’s greatest success came when she published her version of Gabrielle Suzanne Barbot De Villeneuve’s fairy tale Beauty and the Beast in 1756. Whilst Villeneuve’s 100-page version was incredibly convoluted, with its use of parrot and monkey servants and a subplot about evil fairies at war with humans, Leprince De Beaumont provided a more appealing, if didactic, version. As the appeal of the Beauty and the Beast story lies in the simplicity of the premise (as well as its message about not judging people by appearances), Leprince de Beaumont’s changes allowed the fairy tale to gain greater exposure and wider circulation, ensuring that it became one of the most iconic stories of all time.

Dortchen Wild (1793-1867) and Dorothea Viehmann (1755-1816)

This is an unusual entry for two reasons.  It lists two women instead of one, and these women never published any material. However, Dortchen Wild and Dorothea Viehmann are probably the two most important people on this list. When the Brothers Grimm created their famous book Children and Household Tales, they collected stories told directly to them by members of the middle class. The majority of people who aided the Brothers Grimm were women, including Maria Hassenpflug and Julia and Charlotte Ramus. However, Wild and Viehmann were the two most notable contributors.

Wild contributed stories such as 'The Frog King', 'Hansel and Gretel', 'The Six Swans' and 'Rumpelstiltskin', often assisted by her family, whilst Viehmann told the Brothers Grimm 'The Musicians of Bremen', and contributed to their retelling of 'Cinderella'. Although The Brothers Grimm continually edited the stories throughout their career, they still expressed respect for the women who created them. They singled out Viehmann for praise due to her ability at telling her stories multiple times without changing a single word, making them easy to transcribe, whilst Wilhelm Grimm eventually married Wild. Viehmann, Wild and the other ordinary women who provided fairy tales for the Brothers Grimm deserve to be celebrated. Without them, the defining book in the fairy tale genre would not have existed.

Mary Howitt (1799-1888)

Translators are often underappreciated, as their work simply involves taking an existing work and retelling it in a different language. However, translators can allow great works from foreign authors to gain the attention of international audiences. For this reason, Mary Howitt deserves recognition for being one of the first people to translate the stories of Hans Christian Andersen for British readers.

Howitt’s book Wonderful Stories for Children, first published in 1846, featured translations of ten Hans Christian Andersen stories, including 'Ollie Shuteye', 'Little Ida’s Flowers' and 'The Steadfast Tin Soldier'. She also translated Andersen’s autobiographical novel The Improvisatore and works from the Swedish feminist author Fredrika Bremer. Outside of her work as a translator, Howitt wrote 180 books for children, as well as the famous 1829 poem 'The Spider and the Fly'.

By modern standards, Howitt’s translations were not very impressive. In spite of her knowledge of Scandinavian languages, she secretly translated most of the tales from German editions of Andersen’s work, even though he personally told her not to do this. Worse still, she often removed the vivid descriptions and realistic messages of Andersen’s tales in order to promote her own moralistic worldview. However, Howitt still managed to introduce Andersen’s work to influential figures such as Charles Dickens, and played an invaluable role in making them popular with the wider British public.

Juliana Horatia Ewing (1841-1885)

During the nineteenth century, fairy tales were especially popular in Britain, as authors such as George Macdonald and Oscar Wilde responded to a rapidly changing and increasingly industrialised society by providing fairy tales set within a fantasy environment. They did this with the aim of getting middle-class audiences to face up to the challenges and concerns of the era. Among the authors using the fairy tale genre to deal symbolically with important issues were several women, such as Mary de Morgan, Edith Nesbit, and Evelyn Bland. However, the most significant female author during the period was Juliana Horatia Ewing.

The daughter of Margaret Gatty, famous for didactic children’s books such as The Fairy Godmother and Other Tales, Ewing adopted her own style, which combined the strong Anglican values of her mother’s work with a more light-hearted, subtle approach. Her tales, collected in books such as  Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales, could also convey feminist messages, with many showing resourceful female protagonists outwitting tyrants and monsters. Ewing also edited her mother’s periodical Aunt Judy’s Magazine for Young People, where she initially published many of her stories. Ewing influenced children’s authors such as Frances Hodgson Burnett and Rudyard Kipling, and inspired Robert Baden-Powell to set up the Girl Guides movement. Like all the best children’s authors, Ewing’s work remains timeless, and it deserves to gain the attention of a modern audience.

Leonora Blanche Alleyne (1851-1933)

Leonora Blanche Alleyne was the wife of Andrew Lang, one of Britain’s most iconic fairy tale authors. He was notable for highlighting the role which folk tales could play in understanding ancient customs, and wrote a number of original fairy tales, such as The Princess Nobody. However, Alleyne made valuable contributions to many of Lang’s successes.  

Lang is best known for his series of ‘coloured’ fairytale collections published between 1889 and 1910, ranging from The Blue Fairy Book to The Lilac Fairy Book. However, Alleyne was actually the one most responsible for bringing the anthologies to life. She received aid from a number of female translators and editors, who translated and adapted tales from a number of countries (ranging from France and Germany to Iceland and Armenia). That said, it was Alleyne who translated most of the stories, and her influence was exerted in various ways, as strong female heroines appeared in many stories, and there were warnings that certain tales were more suited to children of different ages. Lang himself later admitted that “these fairytalebooks have been almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang”, claiming that, like Eve in the Garden of Eden, she did all the work under his supervision. The work of Alleyne and her assistants has often been overlooked, but they deserve to be recognised on their own terms, and not just through their association with Andrew Lang.

Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic (1874-1938)

The Croatian children’s author Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic is probably the most obscure name on this list, but it is definitely worth learning more about her. In 1913, her story The Brave Adventures of Lapitch launched her to prominence, but her signature work is Croatian Tales of Long Ago. This collection has been likened to the work of Hans Christian Andersen due to Brlic-Mazuranic’s ability at creating original stories based on Croatian folk tales and legends, with innocent yet fallible protagonists and strong Christian themes. During the 1930’s, Brlic-Mazuranic was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times, although she never won.

Today, Brlic-Mazuranic remains one of Croatia’s most iconic figures. A 2013 adaptation of The Brave Adventures of Lapitch became the highest-grossing Croatian children’s film since the nation gained independence, and a computer project based on Croatian Tales From Long Ago has allowed Brlic-Mazuranic to become popular with a new generation. In 2013, Ivana’s House of Fairytales was opened in her hometown of Ogulin, containing such attractions as a magic forest and a fairy-tale jukebox. The popularity of this museum confirms Brlic-Mazuranic’s status as a Croatian national treasure.

Angela Carter (1940-1992)

Adults-only fairy tales have become a pretty significant subgenre in recent years, as writers emphasise the darker, more sexualised undercurrents lurking beneath classic fairy tales. The person most responsible for this trend is Angela Carter, the author of the iconic short-story collection The Bloody Chamber, published in 1979.

The title story, an adaption of the already twisted French fairytale Bluebeard, re-imagined the eponymous wife-murdering villain (renamed “the Marquis” by Carter after the infamous Marquis De Sade) as a sexual sadist whose mysterious locked room is an underground torture chamber. Other stories in the collection adapted iconic (and predominantly French) fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast and Little Red Riding Hood, using them to shine a light on taboo issues ranging from sexual awakenings to necrophilia. Carter specialised in vivid and evocative descriptions, and these enhanced the mysterious and atmospheric fairy-tale atmosphere of her stories.

Apart from The Bloody Chamber, Carter wrote several novels, such as Nights at the Circus and Wise Children, and translated the fairy tales of Charles Perrault. In 1984, she wrote the screenplay to the acclaimed horror film The Company of Wolves, adapted from a story in The Bloody Chamber (One of three stories in the collection based on Little Red Riding Hood). Carter died in 1992, at the relatively young age of 51, but not before introducing adults to the fairytale genre, inspiring modern fairytale authors such as Neil Gaiman.

Geraldine McCaughrean (Born 1951)

Although relatively few people have heard of her outside of the UK, Geraldine McCaughrean is one of the most prolific children’s authors in Britain. She has written around 170 books, mostly aimed at children. These include collections of fairy tales, retellings of famous ballets such as Swan Lake and Giselle, collections of international myths and legends and retellings of classic stories such as The Canterbury Tales. Her retellings preserve the appeal of the classic source material, whilst adding a variety of personal touches to make them stand out.

In 2005, the Trustees of Great Ormond Street Hospital chose McCaughrean to write an official sequel to J.M Barrie’s iconic novel Peter Pan, ahead of 200 other applicants. Peter Pan in Scarlet was published the following year, becoming McCaughrean’s best-known work. Throughout her career, McCaughrean has played an invaluable part in introducing millions of British children to fairy tales and classic literature. However, she has also provided her fair share of original stories, including her latest, Where the World Ends, set in the Outer Hebrides during the early 18^th century. 

Jennifer Lee (Born 1971)

Initially, Disney were dominated by male directors and screenwriters, with women often being consigned to minor roles in the animation department. However, as Disney strived to provide increasingly active and developed female protagonists, women gained increased influence within the studio and began to exert influence over the stories Disney were telling. Linda Woolverton overcame interference from producers to write the script for the 1991 adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, and Brenda Chapman was a key force in making Pixar’s 2012 film Brave (set in medieval Scotland) even though she was fired as director in the middle of production. However, as the writer and director of Disney’s most successful animated movie, Frozen, Jennifer Lee is probably the most important woman to work for Disney.

After helping to write the screenplay to Disney’s 2012 hit Wreck-it-Ralph, Lee was hired to write Frozen, eventually becoming its co-director. Lee was responsible for many of the most important features of the movie, using her own relationship with her elder sister as inspiration when developing the relationship between Anna and Elsa. She also emphasised the musical aspects of the movie (Paving the way for songs such as “Let It Go”), and decided to focus on the concept of love overcoming fear. These decisions paid off, and as a result of Frozen’s extraordinary success, Lee became the first women ever to direct a film grossing more than $1 billion.

Lee has become an integral member of Disney’s creative team, co-writing the story for Zootropolis. In addition, she is writing an adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, due to be released in March 2018. However, the Frozen franchise will take up the majority Lee’s time for the next few years, as she will write the book for the stage version of Frozen, then write and co-direct the much-anticipated Frozen 2, due at the end of 2019.