The School of Hard Goldilocks

My parents gave me a Hans Christian Andersen book filled with fairies and the like when I was about 7. I know this wasn't my first book, but it's still probably my most prized. I was skimming through it the other night, and I got to thinking- has anyone noticed that they just don't really make tales as creepy and sad as they used to? Barring a few exceptions like Lemony Snickets, today's kids have NO clue what their great great great grandparents read. Just like the Brothers Grimm, Hans does not hold back. Let's take a brief overview of a few of his works...

There once was a little girl who disobeyed orders from an adult to not put on a certain pair of shoes, and as a result, the shoes refuse to come off her feet and won't stop dancing. In a final act of desperation, she asks a woodsman to chop off her feet. The lesson? Disobey your grand/parents and your feet will be hacked off. That was the Red Shoes. The Little Match Girl doesn't even really have a lesson, does it? Sorry, it's been about 20 years since I read this one in particular, but I think the basic gist is that this little girl freezes to death while trying to sell matches. It has a happy ending, sort of, because her dead grandmom scoops her up for a big Christmas feast in the sky. I guess the lesson is that even if you freeze to death because your family is lenient on child labor because there is no such thing as wellfare in Dicken's era, you will get the last laugh by going to heaven? Sign me up!!

My favorite of these tales is the Little Mermaid. I was transfixed on the concept of creatures similar to us living underneath the waves. (I probably still am, given that my husband gave me this Howard Pyle replica painting as a wedding gift, since it's one of my favorite paintings in the world. Don't worry, I'm not one of those people that has airbrushed t-shirts and statues of mer-people lying around everywhere and crap. The painting is my one and only mermaid reference in the house.)

Anyways, if you have only seen Disney's version, then you really don't know the actual story. It's quite beautiful, but I feel like they would never write a story like this in modern times. It's as dark as the others, and there is no shaggy dog named Max. She makes the decision to have human legs, all the while knowing she will never be able to go back to being a mermaid; she'll never see her sisters or family again. Every step she takes with her human legs is like knives piercing her feet, but she doesn't care because she wants to be near this guy that she rescued from the sea. Meanwhile, he has no clue she's in love with him, and falls in love with another woman, and marries her. Meanwhile her fam pulled some strings and there's a loophole- If she kills her Prince, she can return to the sea. If she doesn't kill him, she will turn to seafoam at sunrise. Uhh, really? Those are my two options? She watches him sleeping peacefully in the arms of his young bride, all the while knowing she will never be able to feel his embrace. She decides that she loves him too much to hurt him, and resigns to becoming nothing by morning. She does in fact die, but because of her decision to choose him over herself, she is rewarded by becoming some kind of celestial being/fairy instead of just seafoam. It gets even heavier. Hans tells the reader that every time a little boy or girl does something wrong, it prevents these fairies from being able to move on to heaven, so you best be good because they are watching you. Um.... holy crap. That's some seriously heavy sh*t for even an adult. Do kids really like this stuff? Uh, well yeah, I did. It was depressing as all hell, but I could handle it in 1988, I'm sure most kiddies would still enjoy these stories without the edited happy ending. I think it's almost BETTER for kids not to believe that the world is made of gumdrops and wishes ALL of the time.

Maybe we should prepare them for certain inevitable facts that Hans and the Grimms can teach us all- There is death everywhere and you and your family are not exempt, you might not always fit in and people may make fun of you because you are different, there are grave consequences to your rash and selfish decisions, yet redemption in self-sacrifice for those you love, bad luck doesn't just visit bad people, and the most important of all- there is a slight possibility that a witch resides in a gingerbread house in the woods near your house and she might want to eat you and your bro for dinner.

Thoughts?