Off with Their Heads!: Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood

by Maria Tatar

Overview

When Hansel and Gretel try to eat the witch's gingerbread house in the woods, are they indulging their "uncontrolled cravings" and "destructive desires" or are they simply responding normally to the hunger pangs they feel after being abandoned by their parents? Challenging Bruno Bettelheim and other critics who read fairy tales as enactments of children's untamed urges, Maria Tatar argues that it is time to stop casting the children as villians. In this provocative book she explores how adults mistreat children, focusing on adults not only as hostile characters in fairy tales themselves but also as real people who use frightening stories to discipline young listeners.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691214818
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	332
Sales rank:	771,644
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Maria Tatar is Professor of German Literature at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
I	Rewritten by Adults: The Inscription of Children's Literature	3
II	"Teaching Them a Lesson": The Pedagogy of Fear in Fairy Tales	22
III	Just Desserts: Reward-and-Punishment Tales	51
IV	Wilhelm Grimm/Maurice Sendak: Dear Mili and the Art of Dying Happily Ever After	70
V	Daughters of Eve: Fairy-Tale Heroines and Their Seven Sins	94
VI	Tyranny at Home: "Catskin" and "Cinderella"	120
VII	Beauties and Beasts: From Blind Obedience to Love at First Sight	140
VIII	"As Sweet as Love": Violence and the Fulfillment of Wishes	163
IX	Table Matters: Cannibalism and Oral Greed	190
X	Telling Differences: Parents vs. Children in "The Juniper Tree"	212
Epilogue: Reinvention through Intervention	229
Notes	239
Select Bibliography	273
Index	289

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the 1992 Book Prize in Literature, German Studies Association

From the Publisher