Based on my own experiences and what I have learned this semester, fairytales are a crucial part of the literary world. Fairytales are important for people of all ages but most significantly they play a role in the mental and emotional development of children. They help children to feel understood in their feelings and teach them how to navigate the world around them with the stories, characters and moral lessons.
One theorist we learned about that helped me better understand fairytales was Bruno Bettelheim. He talks about how fairytales are essential for the emotional development of children which I found interesting and hadn’t previously thought deeply into. He goes through how children often apply fairytales to the world around them when they are facing a challenge. For example, by seeing characters in stories face struggles, children are able to solve internal conflicts they are facing. Ultimately he shares the idea that fairytales are therapeutic for children in the way they provide them with solutions to real world problems.
Something I learned that surprised me was how each fairytale can be interpreted in many different ways. For example one of the most shocking interpretations we learned about was in Little Red Riding Hood. Before this class I had never thought about how this story could be seen as sexually suggestive. When I previously thought of fairytales before taking this class I viewed them as innocent stories for children that had moral lessons, but now I know that each age group could interpret them extremely differently and give the stories different meanings and purposes.
The thing that interested me most about our topic was how each retelling or version of a fairytale can vary. For instance, The Brothers Grimm’s versions of stories versus Charels Perrault. When reading the Annotated Fairytales book in class, I appreciated the side bar notes that Tatar added because oftentimes they would tell you how an aspect of the story highlighted compared to other versions. This made me interested in learning more about each version of the tales which is why I chose to do my research topic on the global variations of Rapunzel.
One thing that I think would be worthwhile to add to the class is looking at the different variations of one tale whether it be different literary versions or even film adaptations. I think it would be interesting and fun to spot the differences between the versions as a class and talk about why the authors chose to make those variations. I also think it would be something different to watch a film instead of only reading them and seeing how they differ.
