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Sex And Sexuality In The Grimm's Fairy Tales

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In 19th Europe, the idea about sex or sexuality is more restricted than the present days. Fairy tales were not an exception; they could not depict direct expressions about sex or sexuality. For instance, in the Grimm’s Tales, there are few descriptions about sex or sexuality. However, the fairy tales were needed for giving some drills to children and above all, ones about sexual development for children who became their puberty, and hence, Grimm implied some hidden descriptions about sex in his stories such as “The Little Red Cape”, “The Frog King”, “Rapunzel”, or “Fetcher’s Fowl”. “The Little Red Cape” , a well-known story that is read and enjoyed all over the world even in the present days, in fact, includes many tips of unconscious sexual …show more content…

The princess, the protagonist of “The Frog King”, holds a golden ball and drops it into a well in the earlier part of the story, which means that she then loses her innocence , purity, and perfection, because the shape of the ball, a sphere, and the color, gold, are symbols of these features (Bettelheim, p.287). Also, it can be the pleasure principle. As soon as she drops the ball, the frog appears from the well, and she make a promise that she allows him to accompany her, and that represents maternal burdens. She takes her farewell of her virtues and after that greet an ordeal in order to mature as an adult female. After that, she does not readily keep the promise, which means she is now driven by the id, so her father tells her to keep it. The father here stands for the superego because he insists on a promise (Bettelheim, p.288), which is obviously connected to social criteria or the reality principle, and hence she is struggling between the id and the superego, which is the very role of the

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