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Fairy tale symbolism and psychoanalysis
Fairy tale symbolism and psychoanalysis
It may be due to the difficulty in pinpointing the origin of fairy tales, but literary analyses on fairy tales are primarily done through the psychoanalytic lens. Oedipal and incestuous desires are prominent, not to mention sex drives. For instance, the beanstalk in Jack and the Beanstalk is often interpreted as a phallic symbol, and Cinderella's shoe is interpreted as a vaginal symbol.
Since many fairy tales convey a growing-up story, it makes sense that these stories deal with the tricky adolescent stage where the individual goes through changing relationships with their parents and society and confront themselves as sexual beings.
It is with this respect that I present several possible symbolic meanings associated with each story - the parts on psychoanalytic studies may at times seem too radical, but they enable us to see the significance of spiritual maturity and transformation in the tales.
Little Red Riding Hood
Little Red Riding Hood
Over the course of its narrative history, two prominent versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” (or “Little Red Cap,” as is named in the Grimms’ 1812 version) have taken shape within the collective memory of the fairy tale.
The first version is Charles Perrault’s, the lesser known rendition. Bettelheim criticizes Perrault's version for its direct moral teaching, which leaves little room for imagination and thought. Bettelheim argues that Perrault’s version “ends with the wolf victorious; thus it is devoid of escape, recovery, and consolation; it is not–and was not intended by Perrault to be–a fairy tale, but a cautionary story which deliberately threatens the child with its anxiety-producing ending . . . It seems that many adults think it better to scare children into good behavior than to relieve their anxieties as a true fairy tale does” (167). In addition, Little Red is presented as a character who readers would not want to and cannot identify with; the odds are against her: she is not to stray from the path, but who is there to warn her? And why is the Grandmother, who has done no wrong, destroyed?
The second, the Grimms’ “Little Red Cap” is the better-known version readers will think of today. Here, Little Red gains agency, is warned of straying from the path, and, essentially, comes of age—developing into a young woman by the end of the story. Several symbols in the Grimms’ narrative serve importance within Bettelheim’s psychoanalytic reading:
The home, which symbolizes shared abundance, as well as simultaneous protection (her parents’ home from which she comes) and helpless incapacitation (her grandmother’s home, to which she travels) through her encounter with the wolf
The Wolf, a seducer, who symbolizes “all the asocial, animalistic tendencies within ourselves” (172). At the same time, however, we are drawn to him and, therefore, it is important to understand what makes him so attractive rather than to remain naïve about his power.
The color red, symbolizing “violent emotions, very much including sexual ones” and the red cap, “a symbol of premature transfer of sexual attractiveness” (173). Grimms’ version does not directly mention sexuality, but rather, it is supplied (sub)consciously by the reader to make sense of the story.
Little Red Cap’s budding sexuality is a point of confusion for the character because she is not yet mature enough to work through the complicated feelings; she subconsciously “gives away” Grandmother to the Wolf, an act of oedipal ambivalence that “removes” the Grandmother as competition.
The Grimms have an alternative variation, as well, that includes an added ending, with another wolf attempting to seduce Little Red away from the path. She then collaborates with Grandmother to trap the wolf, locking him out and drowning him in the trough outside. This partnership between (grand)parent and child allows the child to fully mature.
The hunter, who shows restraint and becomes an automatic hero (though not prominent aspect) of the story. Rather than shooting the Wolf immediately, he cuts him open to rescue Grandmother and Little Red. He otherwise has little interaction with Little Red; it is she that stuffs the Wolf’s belly with stones to kill him. Little Red and Grandmother’s “escape” from the Wolf is a type of Cesarean rebirth that symbolizes development towards a higher plane of consciousness.
Bruno Bettleheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, 1975.
Fiasco Theatre's rendition of Little Red and the Wolf.
Little Red Riding Hood, played by Lilla Crawford in the film.
"Red" Lucas, or Ruby, played by Meghan Ory in Once Upon a Time.
Rapunzel
Rapunzel
Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy) and The Witch (Meryl Streep) in Disney's Into the Woods (2014).
Prince Charming (Josh Dallas) and Rapunzel (Alexandra Metz) in Once Upon a Time.
Rapunzel in Disney's Tangled (2010).
Rapunzel’s origins come not from the well-known Grimms’ version in the 19th century but from the earlier Italian (Giambattista Basile’s Petrosinella, 1634) and French (Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force’s Persinette, 1698) versions. In each version, common elements emerge, such as the couple longing for a child, an ogress/sorceress who steals and locks Rapunzel away, and, of course, Rapunzel’s long hair by which people enter and exit the tower. These various accounts make up the overall “Maiden in the Tower” narrative.
As Philip Pullman explains in Told Again: Old Tales Told Again (1955), both the Grimms’ and Walter de la Mare’s “Rapunzel” had “the decorousness their period demanded”: in their versions, the Prince is not blinded, his search for Rapunzel is brief, and Rapunzel no longer remarks that her clothes no longer fit (6). In the common archetype, though, Dame Gothel cuts Rapunzel’s hair, enraged by her knowledge that Rapunzel is pregnant, and sends her into the woods to fend for herself. This act symbolizes “loss of a beautiful part of the girl’s body [castration]; it severs the link of the girl to her mother [loss of the mother]; and it enables the mother to have for herself something which had formerly been the girl’s [reparation]” (Andresen 71).
Hannah B. Harvey compares Rapunzel’s agency across the Grimms and Basile versions, arguing that the Grimms’ Rapunzel is a passive figure—things occur to her and by happenstance—whereas Basile’s Rapunzel is more active heroine. In either case, notions of sexuality are far more direct than in other archetypes (like Jack, Little Red, and Cinderella): the young maiden is pitted against the mother/crone, whose actions are intended to repress and limit Rapunzel’s maturity. 19th century literature scholar Carolyn Vellenga describe that, no matter the variants in each retelling, “the queen, the fairy and even the sorcerer are interchangeable; all are good and evil, passionate and cruel (toward lovers who scorn them); now one, now the other, has the upper hand, but love/ardor (which is always faithful) eventually triumph” (Vellenga 70).
Furthermore, as psychoanalysts might read, Rapunzel’s eventual coming-of-age is an overcoming story in which she gains confidence to make decisions and take on her new identities as lover and mother. This growth and development in one’s identity is similarly true of the other young characters represented in Sondheim & Lapine’s musical—yet, Sondheim & Lapine’s Rapunzel does not, in the end, get to “grow up” and, as audiences will see, she meets a much different ending than her fairy tale counterparts.
Andresen, Jeffry J. “Rapunzel: The Symbolism of the Cutting of Hair.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, vol. 28, no. 1, 1980, pp. 69-88.
Pullman, Philip. Introduction. Told Again: Old Tales Told Again, by Walter de la Mare, 1955, Princeton University Press, pp. 1-8.
Vellenga, Carolyn. “Rapunzel’s Desire: A Reading of Mlle De La Force.” Merveilles & contes, vol. 6, no. 1, 1992, pp. 59-73.
The Witch
The Witch
The Witch in Into the Woods belongs to Rapunzel's story, but her role as the one who leads the plot with her hands in other stories makes her explorable as a separate story.
The Witch in fairytales is a multifaceted character. She is ambiguous, shifting, and most importantly, a liminal figure of undecidedness. Going back to psychoanalysis again, she represents the "bad mother" who is inseparable from the "good mother." Thus, the stepmothers often appear as the Witch who lies at the other end of the "good mother." The Witch often comes with their ability to switch between the two extreme appearances - one of an old and monstrous figure and the other a beautiful, young, and attractive woman. The constant back and forth between the binary poles throw the audience into confusion.
In Into the Woods, she is both a villain and a helper, one that the other characters are afraid of yet relying on. The Witch then brings her own demolition at the most important moment of the play with her grand solo "The Last Midnight," leaving other characters lost in the woods.
The Witch is also a being that is "comparable to giants and other creatures representing the substance of the world." (Fohr 122) In other words, she represents nature and earthly qualities that are at times at odds with human's course of achievement. She is one who tends to gardens and is an herbalist who knows how to use them. Human's premature use of the garden may bring hurdles to their lives. In Rapunzel's story, the Witch is an outright guard at the gate, keeping Rapunzel from proper growth into an adult. Divested of the opportunity to explore a developing sense of ego and desire, Rapunzel displays an unstable state of mind in Into the Woods.
Fohr, Samuel D. Cinderella's Gold Slipper: Spiritual Symbolism in the Grimms' Tales. Sophia Perennis, 2001.
Vaz da Silva, Francisco. "Fairy-Tale Symbolism: An Overview." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 2017.
Phylicia Rashad as The Witch in the original Broadway production of Into the Woods.
The Witch in Disney's Snow White (1937).
Camila Cabello as Cinderella in the 2021 jukebox musical movie Cinderella.
Dania Ramirez (Cinderella) and Andrew J. West (Henry Mills) in Once Upon a Time.
Julie Andrews in the original 1957 version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella.
Brandy in Disney's 1997 remake of R&H's Cinderella.
Cinderella
Cinderella
There are two major threads of interpreting the Cinderella story: that of spiritual growth and sexual connotations.
Death and Rebirth
Cinderella is a child-to-adult maturation story in the face of parents' absence. Cinder means ashes, and ashes signify death, as people return to dust after death. Cinderella is in grief at losing her mother, but she shakes it off and transforms into a different being in the course of the story. "The motif of being covered with ashes and then throwing them off and revealing oneself symbolizes spiritual death and rebirth" (Fohr 107).
The spiritual death and resurrection may imply a process of mourning, but they can also connect to Christian themes. Samuel Fohr, professor of Philosophy, analyze the prince as God's revelation since Cinderella's spiritual growth depends on meeting him. In this context, the Cinderella story conveys the theme of "advancement toward the realization of God and the sense of wholeness it engenders" (Fohr 102).
Birds
If Cinderella is a story of spiritual awakening, the birds signify the messengers bridging the spiritual and mundane worlds. The birds offer pieces of advice and guidance unattainable in this world. Cinderella's ability to speak with the birds testifies to her shamanic qualities.
Psychoanalytic Interpretations
There are two main versions of the Cinderella story, one of which portrays Cinderella's father as the villain, trying to catch and kill her every midnight after the ball, and the other that presents the fairy godmother (Marcus 82).
Oedipus Complex
Whether villain or not, the father seems to occupy an interesting space in the story, making it attractive to apply the lens of Oedipus Complex.
The cross-gender Oedipus Complex places the stepmother in the position of the adult female that Cinderella has to destroy in order to grow into a mature lady. This stepmother is the "sexual rival" for Cinderella, representative of the "bad mother" as opposed to the deceased "good mother," to use psychoanalytic terms that identify a baby's development of a sense of an ego separate from the mother.
Cinderella's competition to win the father explains the father and prince's chase for her every midnight, as Cinderella is deliberately encouraging the men to pursue her. Donald M. Marcus, scholar of medicine, interprets the shoe left on the third night as an intentional clue-giving to spur the prince's chase (Marcus 85).
Marcus argues that "the Cinderella story indicates the way in which our little heroine will eventually solve her oedipal struggle by giving up her incestuous attachment to her father and turning toward a less incestuous love object [the Prince]." (87)
The Slipper
The shoe is a tenuous motif found across the different versions and what stays after the disappearance of all other fairy-produced items.
The symbolic meaning of the shoe, in the context of a maturity tale, becomes virginity and vagina.
"The shoe can be hypothesized as a virginity symbol, a feminine virtue which once lost cannot be replaced but remains in the hands of the man responsible for the loss. In the story the shoe remains with the prince." (Falassi 283)
In this sense, "the putting of the foot into the slipper symbolically represents the sexual consummation of their relationship." (Thomas 20)
What seems like a far-fetched association is backed up by substantial evidence about the widespread European wedding custom where the shoe-fitting was a performance of the bride's subjugation to the groom. (Thomas 21)
In this sense, the shoe may represent the values against female subjectivity, but another look into the shoe's function complicates the issue. It is Cinderella who puts her foot (metaphor of phallus) into the shoe. Thus, Cinderella obtains the authority of the mature adult comparable to that given to men who have successfully passed oedipal stages.
Falassi, Alessandro. "Cinderella in Tuscany." Cinderella: a Casebook, 276-293. Edited by Alan Dundes. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.
Fohr, Samuel D. Cinderella's Gold Slipper: Spiritual Symbolism in the Grimms' Tales. Sophia Perennis, 2001.
Goldberg, Harriet. "Cinderella." The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. Edited by Jack Zipes. 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Marcus, Donald M. "The Cinderella Mortif: Fairy Tale and Defense." American Imago 20, no. 1 (1963): 81-92.
Thomas, Susanne Sara. "Cinderella and the Phallic Foot: The Symbolic Significance of the Tale's Slipper Motif." Southern Folklore 52, no. 1 (Jan 1, 1995): 19-31.
Vaz da Silva, Francisco. Symbolic Themes in the European Cinderella Cycle. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk is a peculiar tale that has gone through a radical transformation from its "original" version and comes with ambiguous moral direction. Scholars assume that the story came from Jack and the Giants, which was a story filled with grotesque giant-killing scenes. Here, Jack is an adult, clever, and an outstanding giant-slayer. In this epic story, Jack gets knighted and goes on a series of giant-slaying adventures.
A morally ambiguous story
At first glance, Jack and the Beanstalk seems to criticize the giants’ cannibalism and wealth, but another glance suggests that it encourages thievery, deception, and murder at the same time. This double-layer makes it hard to decide who is good or bad, and what to take away from this tale.
The most widespread version features the giant's wife saving Jack at his first visit, to which Jack responds with thievery and murder. However, many other versions include a scene where Jack meets a fairy-like woman in the upper world where she tells him that "the giant had stolen his wealth from Jack’s father," providing "a moral justification for Jack’s thefts: he is only taking what is rightfully his" (Goldberg 20).
There are many different directions one can take to interpret the story:
Social Inequalities
It was in the Victorian era in England that today’s Jack story adaptation became widespread. At the time, England was suffering from the ever-growing gap between the rich and poor and unfair child labor. The complete division between the upper and lower world in Jack and the Beanstalk reflects the impossibility of moving through the social and economic ladder.
The sudden growth of the beanstalk symbolizes the rise of the working class. At the end of the beanstalk lies the treasure guarded by the figure of an insurmountable giant - the international (white) monopoly capital (Giddy 363).
"In myths, the geography or cosmology manifested in the image of the giant tree is important: as the tree reaches from one world to another, it emphasizes both the separation and the possibility of interconnection between the worlds. When such a tree is part of a folktale, the focus is often on the opportunity it affords the hero to climb it." (Goldberg 14)
Colonial Background
The Victorian era was also the time of colonialism, led by the British Empire. The story embeds many colonial metaphors in its imagery and language. To begin with, geography represents the identity of each world, which was the part and parcel of the colonial enterprise.
The Giant is naturally positioned as the Other, inhumane character, unworthy of sympathy because he is set as "geographically, physically, and morally outside of 'civilization'" (Szumsky 22). The Giant's inability to appreciate the harp's music attests to his "uncivilized" status where wealth lies as a waste, waiting to be saved by the cultured.
Being an adventure story, Jack's tale "encourages curiosity and exploration," not to mention it justifies and encourages thievery and murder as if it is the due course of an adventure (Szumsky 22). Further, the story suggests that such deception and crime is acceptable as long as it is contained within the Other's world.
Critique of materialism
"The bean often illustrates the poverty of the household: it is the last item of food in the larder; or, having discovered it by accident, the poor man is pleased to have found even so small a bit of food." (Goldberg 17-18)
It is notable that Jack visits the Giant's world repeatedly, each time stealing items of more material value than before. While Jack's extreme poverty absolves his first thievery, we watch the purpose of his stealing transform from survival to luxury and greed.
But has Jack thrived on his robbery? The tale shows his pursuit of "property as a medium to a culturally endowed notion of success" (Szumsky 20). Clearly, Jack is engrossed in a material success - almost addicted to it that it takes him to committing murder.
A grown-up Jack in Chris Colfer's book series, The Land of Stories.
Daniel Huttlestone as Jack in Disney's Into the Woods (2014).
Patrick Mulryan as Jack in Fiasco Theatre's Into the Woods.
Christian allegory
"The word bean - in medieval English bene - is cognate to the Dutch boon and Old High German bona. It thus radically means good, and the beneficent stalk of Goodness may be equated with the stalk or stem of Jesse, the ladder of Jacob, and the chain of Lug." (Gaskill 908)
If Jack and the Beanstalk is a Christian allegory, the beanstalk functions as Jacob's Ladder or The Tower of Babel. The former justifies Jack's actions by emphasizing the value of hard work and risk-taking, while the latter uses Jack as a foil to warn its readers of human conceit.
Sexual awakening
"The terms 'beans' and 'stalk' are common symbols for the testicles and penis." (Desmonde 287)
It is also possible to compare Jack and the Beanstalk with the Oedipus complex. If beanstalk is a phallic symbol, growing from the seed/semen, the barren cow and mother's infantilizing attitude toward Jack represents changing relationships with his mother. The beanstalk leads jack to adventures, dangerous situations, and unruly desires.
In this context, the giant is the father with a masculine authority that Jack has to destroy so that he can successfully acquire manhood and grow into an adult. (Giddy 363)
Bottigheimer, Ruth B. "Jack Tales." The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales. Edited by Jack Zipes. 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Desmonde, William H. "Jack and the Beanstalk." American Imago; a Psychoanalytic Journal for the Arts and Sciences 8, no. 3 (Sep 1, 1951): 287-288.
Gaskill, Alonzo L. The Lost Language of Symbolism: An Essential Guide for Recognizing and Interpreting Symbols of the Gospel. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010.
Giddy, Patrick. "Jack and the Beanstalk: The Human Plot in Narrative Traditions and Contemporary Global Culture." South African Journal of Philosophy 39, no. 4 (2020): 361-370.
Goldberg, Christine. "The Composition of Jack and the Beanstalk." Marvels & Tales 15, no. 1 (2001): 11-26.
Szumsky, Brian E. "The House That Jack Built: Empire and Ideology in Nineteenth-Century British Versions of Jack and the Beanstalk." Marvels & Tales 13, no. 1 (1999): 11-30.
Narrators
Narrators
Jack Broderick as the Narrator in the Public Theatre transfer of Regent's Park's Into the Woods.
The Narrator/"Mysterious Stranger," played by John Vickery in OSF's production.
A striking feature of many Into the Woods productions is the use, or non-use, of the Narrator. Although the Narrator/Mysterious Man plays a prominent part in the original conception of the musical, some modern productions have chosen to do away with him completely, instead dispersing lines amongst the ensemble as in Fiasco Theatre's version, or reframing the (typically adult) narrator via a young child in the Regent’s Park version.
That Sondheim’s overall oeuvre comprises fragmented narratives (a la the concept musical) is in line with Into the Woods’ specific and complex use of a narrator: in Act One, the Narrator attends to the stories as we (and the characters) expect him to. In Act Two, the characters turn on him after the Giant begins to wreak havoc on the town; though he is meant to be an “objective observer” on the outside telling their stories--the only one who knows how the story ends--he is quickly ushered into (then out of) the story as a character himself. In cases where the performer playing the Narrator also doubles as the Mysterious Man, he may be read as altogether biased, too, given his later connection to The Baker.
Significantly, Into the Woods physically manifests the narrator as a person rather than merely a voiceover but shifts away from (and rebels against) an unbiased, all-knowing narrator, who, in their most traditional sense "provid[e] readers with information about the constituents of the fictional world, i.e. information about the narrative time and space, about the characters, and about the fictional events. In addition, many narrators . . . discuss[] the characters and events, or comment[] on the act of narration itself" (Nünning 30). The use of first-person narrators, by comparison, “illustrate the multiplicity of views that continue to challenge the seeming wholeness and authority associated with the traditional tales" (Hyun), which have omniscient narrators. Sook Kyong Hyun argues that “providing multiple, even opposing, perspectives via first-person narrators undermines the authority endowed on the old tale and further the authenticity associated with omniscience.”
Although Into the Woods does not necessarily employ a first-person narrator–i.e. a character telling their own story–the ultimate rebellion against and death of the narrator in Into the Woods symbolizes an overall distrust and displeasure with an authority and with the rigidity over one’s own narrative.
Hyun, Sook Kyong. “First-Person Narrators in the Postmodern Fairytale Retellings of ‘Snow White.” Modern Studies in English Language & Literature, vol. 61, no. 4 (2017): 379–398.
Nünning, Ansgar. "Steps towards a Discourse-Oriented Narratology of the Fairy Tale: On the Functions of the Narrator in Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales." When We Get to the End: Towards a Narratology of the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. UP Southern Denmark, 2005.
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