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Fairyland Revisited
| Article
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11649 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1986 |
2,008 Words |
| Author
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Leil Lowndes and Stephen P. Silberling
Leil Lowndes is a free-lance writer living in New York. She
is the director of Applause, Inc., which provides promotional
service to major corporations. Stephen P. Silberling is an
attorney in New York and has done extensive magazine writing. |
The wondrous world of witches and wishes, palaces and princesses, fairies and spells that so many of us inhabited in our childhood imaginations is now being revisited by a number of mothers and child psychologists. Few of us have ever doubted the power of fairy tales. We have always believed that fairy tales are instrumental in helping children find meaning in life - that they teach good values and help children crease an order out of a chaotic universe. The German poet Schiller wrote that "deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life."
A child psychologist whom the academic community respects as the greatest authority on fairy tales is Bruno Bettelheim, author of the 1976 classic The Uses of Enchantment - The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. He and most of America's educators feel that fairy tales benefit children who are coping with the psychological problems of growing up and integrating their personalities.
But now, perhaps stemming from a 1984 conference at Princeton University where over 100 zealous intellectuals gathered to analyze The Influence of Fairy Tales on Society, a number of educators are taking a second look at such hallowed stories as "Cinderella," "Hansel and Gretel," "Sleeping Beauty," "Snow White," and "Rapunzel."
Some skeptical academicians and parents are beginning to argue that fairy tales are magical stories that allow children to experience the kind of perfect justice they rarely see in life. For instance, the big bad wolf, attempting to go down the chimney of the third little pig to eat him, falls right into pig three's boiling soup pot and becomes food himself. Children seldom fail to be enraptured when the huffing and puffing of the big bad wolf at the pig's door is acted out for them. Bettelheim counters this by explaining that "The Three Little Pigs" teaches the nursery-age child in a most enjoyable and dramatic form that we must not be lazy and take things easy, for if we do, we may perish. Intelligent planning and foresight combined with hard labor will make us victorious over even our most ferocious enemy - the wolf!
But, cry the nouveau-critics, "the story does not render a 'truthful' picture of life as it is, and is therefore unhealthy." Bettelheim counters that children realize that the tales are not trying to describe the external world and "reality." He would agree with Tolkien who, addressing himself to the question of "Is it true?” remarks that of much more real concern to the child is the question of "Was he
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