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A review by jaepingsu
Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm
3.0
I wanted to like this collection more than I did. I'd started reading these as a child, but got overwhelmed by the sheer number of them, and the repetitiveness, and as an adult I still found it hard to push my way through. Since the two brothers went around collecting popular folklore stories, it makes sense that so many of them have similar themes (or, often, pretty much the same story, just with a different spin), as these would have been stories that were passed down between families, and the evolution of the spoken word story generally leads to changes in those stories.
It is a relief to read the non-diluted, Disney-fied versions, that's for sure. These stories are a whole lot more brutal and violent than the versions so many of us are used to, thanks to Disney and other productions that sugar-coat them.
While it is an interesting look into history and the old folk tales of the past, the part I found creepy and grim was the attitude towards women. Not only is it the evil stepmothers, or stepsisters, who are always cruel and end up dying some hideous death at the end of the story for their conniving ways, but the female leads themselves. So many of these stories are about finding a prince in order to get married and live "happily ever after." It's really an awakening to the attitudes of gender of the past, and reading all these stories it really gets to the point where it feels like that message is being beaten in. Not only does the sexism run wild, but I was shocked to discover the anti-Semitism of "The Jew Among Thorns," a story I was not at all familiar with.
Still, I did enjoy revisiting many of these stories, but the overwhelming themes about women either being evil and plotting, or objects to be won by handsome men of nobility, is really a hard thing for me to get by and I can't comfortably rate it higher than 3 stars.
It is a relief to read the non-diluted, Disney-fied versions, that's for sure. These stories are a whole lot more brutal and violent than the versions so many of us are used to, thanks to Disney and other productions that sugar-coat them.
While it is an interesting look into history and the old folk tales of the past, the part I found creepy and grim was the attitude towards women. Not only is it the evil stepmothers, or stepsisters, who are always cruel and end up dying some hideous death at the end of the story for their conniving ways, but the female leads themselves. So many of these stories are about finding a prince in order to get married and live "happily ever after." It's really an awakening to the attitudes of gender of the past, and reading all these stories it really gets to the point where it feels like that message is being beaten in. Not only does the sexism run wild, but I was shocked to discover the anti-Semitism of "The Jew Among Thorns," a story I was not at all familiar with.
Still, I did enjoy revisiting many of these stories, but the overwhelming themes about women either being evil and plotting, or objects to be won by handsome men of nobility, is really a hard thing for me to get by and I can't comfortably rate it higher than 3 stars.