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A review by doriastories
Clever Maids: The Secret History Of The Grimm Fairy Tales by Valerie Paradiž
5.0
This wonderfully written little book has completely blown away my (mis)perceptions regarding the Brothers Grimm and their famous collection of folk tales. My only complaint is that Paradiz's tiny tome is just too small; upon finishing it, I wanted more!
This is such an important book, drawing attention to the long-neglected true history of the Grimm brothers' collection. Rather than having been the product of painstaking travels and collecting of tales from German peasants from all around Germany, the famous Grimm volumes of folktales were almost entirely made up of stories collected by bourgeois and upper-class educated German women, who generously told and transcribed the tales that they had grown up hearing and telling. These tales had always been passed from woman to woman, largely ignored by educated men, until the time when Napoleon's incursions into the German homeland humiliated the pride of German men, and gave rise to the nascent German nationalism that fueled the wars and empire-building of the next two centuries.
It was this desire to recover and preserve that which was perceived (sometimes inaccurately) to be innately and "purely" German, which spurred scholars such as the Grimm brothers to turn their attention to the long-ignored old wives' tales, and publish them under the auspices of male-dominated scholarly practice. The women who helped them in this arduous process did so willingly and even eagerly, and did not object to the fact that their efforts and contributions went unmentioned when it came time for the volumes of stories to be published.
Now, Paradiz tells the story behind the stories; the tale of how the Grimm brothers came to take credit for the years-long undertaking, a labor of love, and how the false tale of their volumes' supposed creation and authorship came to be promulgated in the centuries after they died. A ground-breaking work for literary, folkloric and feminist studies, yet also an easy read, with clear language, including many excerpts from letters to and from the Brothers Grimm.
This is such an important book, drawing attention to the long-neglected true history of the Grimm brothers' collection. Rather than having been the product of painstaking travels and collecting of tales from German peasants from all around Germany, the famous Grimm volumes of folktales were almost entirely made up of stories collected by bourgeois and upper-class educated German women, who generously told and transcribed the tales that they had grown up hearing and telling. These tales had always been passed from woman to woman, largely ignored by educated men, until the time when Napoleon's incursions into the German homeland humiliated the pride of German men, and gave rise to the nascent German nationalism that fueled the wars and empire-building of the next two centuries.
It was this desire to recover and preserve that which was perceived (sometimes inaccurately) to be innately and "purely" German, which spurred scholars such as the Grimm brothers to turn their attention to the long-ignored old wives' tales, and publish them under the auspices of male-dominated scholarly practice. The women who helped them in this arduous process did so willingly and even eagerly, and did not object to the fact that their efforts and contributions went unmentioned when it came time for the volumes of stories to be published.
Now, Paradiz tells the story behind the stories; the tale of how the Grimm brothers came to take credit for the years-long undertaking, a labor of love, and how the false tale of their volumes' supposed creation and authorship came to be promulgated in the centuries after they died. A ground-breaking work for literary, folkloric and feminist studies, yet also an easy read, with clear language, including many excerpts from letters to and from the Brothers Grimm.