The Uses Of Enchantment By Bruno Bettelheim Summary

Fairy tales were written a long time ago, in a time where kings and queens still rules over entire countries. A time where women were expected to marry, and those who married into a wealthy family considered the lucky ones. The classic fairy tales that are loved by everyone such as Cinderella and The Frog King both depend on the a young woman marrying the prince and living happily ever after. This need of having to marry royalty created a false notion that in today's age we need to do the same, while at the same time branding women as an item of marriage. According to Angela Smith these tales introduced the idea that “patriarchy … conceive women as domesticated, passive, and dependent beings” (Smith, 428). The single role that women in fairy tales have, is to fit into the hierarchy system by marrying either the king or the prince. In the Frog King the young princess marries the princess despite the fact that he tries to rape her and has only known her for the span of a couple hours. In the other hand Cinderella marries the prince after only knowing him for to days just because he found her glass shoe. These stories create a false notion of having to get married in general and having to marry into royalty as the only way to escape the hardships that one is facing in life. We might see these tales as nothing more than silly and not meaningful, but to a young reader these stories are as real as life. And they are being told that there is no other for of escape from hardships then marriage, when in reality there is many more other options than just

Did you ever have a fairy tale that you loved so much that you read it over and over again? Fairy Tales have been around for a long time, and even the ancient Egyptians had a Cinderella. According to Bruno Bettelheim in “The Uses of Enchantment”, fairy tales help a child understand their conscious selves which then helps them learn to cope with their subconscious fears and anxieties. Many modern day fairy tales are rewritten from an older version of the tale so they can relate to the problems kids today face. “Snow White”, by Brothers Grimm, and “The Young Slave” by Giambattista Basile are examples of this with “The Young Slave” being the older version. Although “Snow White” and “The Young Slave” have many differences relating to the time periods they were written in, both stories still have similarities when it comes to the moral of the story and the protagonist.

Throughout generations, fairy tales have become a main influence in fantasies occurring in children and adults. It begins as a tragedy that ends with riches and happily ever after. In “Cinderella,” Anne Sexton mocks the happiness and perfection brought within the stories. She gives a whole new perspective of the famous happily ever after ending. Most of the characters in these stories are not doing so well but then by chance, become wealthy. Throughout the story there were points about terrible decisions being made, and most of the people would rather marry in riches, which is also going to extremes to get the easy life.

In the ancient world, Fables were not meant to be for children. Their pedagogical intent was supposedly addressed to an illiterate population, which needed to be taught the values of the society and how to behave in it. In fact, the concept of Fables as children-oriented literature is recent and have its roots in the eighteenth-century, even though there are some proofs of older fables intended to educate children .

During the time of a Great War or great economic despair, people seek release from their anxieties in fantasy. Movies, plays, books, and other diversions drew people out of their own lives and into a safer, more glamorous world. For instance, Horatio Alger, Frank Capra and Walt Disney were known to showcase positive, idealized, and overly optimistic pictures—fairytales, some argue—that moved and inspired audiences, hence the prominence of the traditional, fairytale genre. And a trademark of this genre is having a feel good, happy ending. This appeals to mostly children and some adults, but it does not attract everyone, for some storytellers have separated themselves and have purposefully gone against this genre of storytelling by taking the controversial “anti-fairytale” approach, ending stories with a downbeat,

The author, the assistant professor at the University of Oradea, uses what she coins a “gender lens” to peer into the gender and behavioral effects that fairytales have on children. She dives into the idea of how the fairytales were constructed with her data she reconstructs the writing process that the writers of that exact time would've preformed to recreate the mind behind the tale. She especially evaluates the old fairytales and how they have evolved into Walt Disney's fairytales. Snow white was a great representation of a fairytale that the gender lens peered right into, showing the monolithic stereotype of a women and how she seeks a man for finical and physical security. The author finds that even with young children playing with these

Fairy Tales tell a story in which a protagonist must overcome a situation that deals with overcoming an obstacle. Many scholars have come to believe that fairy tales have a deeper meaning than just the moral of the story. Some have even said that fairy tales are a way in which children can learn to think on their own and even see the world differently. While fairy tales have existed to entertain people, they also allow children to realize that life can be unfair but that happiness can be found anywhere by showing how various characters act against the obstacles they face until they ultimately succeed in finding true happiness.

Disney is internationally known for its extravagant fairy tales containing romances amongsts princes and princesses. These stories are meant to poke fun at the idea of a damsel in distress awaiting her hero. Although, these tales possess ideals that are intended to come across as playful, there may be an underlying dig towards the female gender. A child’s most critical years of learning stem throughout the first five years of life (1). These first five years are when children begin to understand appropriate behavior, empathy, boundaries, and many other social skills that shall remain with them for the rest of their lives (1). Children are most impressionable from birth to five, but instead of creating a steady foundation for learning, parents

A kiss from her true love could bring a beautiful princess back to life. A scullery maid aided by a tad of magic could attend a lavish ball and meet the man of her dreams. A mermaid could magically grow a pair of legs, so that she could be with her human lover. These ‘once upon a time’ stories for young children with the ‘happily ever after’ ending were the perfect getaway to a fantasy world.

In “The Child and the Shadow,” written by Ursula K. Le Guin, the author examines the relationship between a person and his/her shadow and the boundary between the collective conscious and collective unconscious mind. At the beginning of her essay, Le Guin recounts a fairy tale that she remembers from childhood. The fairy tale follows a man, who is too apprehensive to act upon his fascination of meeting the beautiful woman in the house across the street, while his shadow is much more confident in its ability to converse with the woman. He allows his shadow to isolate from himself and go into the house of the woman completely alone. Years pass before the man and the shadow witness one another again, the reader is exposed to the fact that the

The topic of Fairy tales and boiling them down to their original essences to prove that they satirize reality is a peculiar topic due to the fact that fairy tales are praised in our society. They provide us humans with dreams and unrealistic views on everyday life. What if this so called “tale” is satirizing our everyday life because our society put those “tales” on a high pedestal, high enough for them to look down on us. In Rags and Bones: New Twist on Timeless Tales, does Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt succeed to reveal the true nature of tales by “boiling down the stories to rags and bones, and make something new from their fundamental essences” thus speaking to contemporary

From the beginning it has been a habit to tell children stories. A lot of early stories were told to teach morals or to scare children into doing the right thing. A very popular group of writers were the Grimm Brothers who wrote many short stories including Cinderella. However; though the Grimm Brothers stories are known for a lot of good things they also have negative effects. The Grimm Brothers stories have influenced our culture’s movies, books, and TV shows into making young girls believe they are helpless and need a hero to save them.

Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1812) “Cinderella” and “Snow White”, and Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales (1837) “The Little Mermaid”, shows an existence of gender stereotypes occurring in a children’s story. Although fairy tales are an important part of children’s literature, in what way do they influence them? The debate is endless; however, people think the bad influence is mainly on the women because of the way they are stereotyped. The female’s roles in fairy tales characterize women not having their own independence, power, and voice to represent them. In these three stories, the women’s characters perpetuate the stereotypical gender message that the ideal woman is submissive in different ways.

In society, there are gender roles which put each sex in stereotypical figures. These roles affect the way how we speak, dress and act. In general, women expected to behave feminine such as being polite and fragile and on the other hand men are expected to be aggressive and stronger. All these roles are over exaggerated in Disney 's women and men figures.

Throughout history, the fairytale has been a way for children to draw connections to what has already happened in their lives, as well as what they could expect to happen later in life. These stories are by no means realistic for countless reasons, but they carry similar moral values, teaching children to be independent and to believe in happiness. Each fairy tale generally pertains to a different audience depending on the content of the story, with stories such as “Cinderella” and “The Little Mermaid” having been around for centuries, in a near constant state of being retold and rewritten to be more relevant for whatever culture the story might find itself in. Different cultures interpret a diverse array of morals and values in fairy tales, and this explains why so many fairytales have different versions of the same story. Depending on the violence or lessons talked about in the fairy tales children could have a bigger or smaller chance of understanding and acting on what