Fairy Tales
Archetypes in Fairy Tales
Archetypes in Fairy Tales
Archetypes are woven into many fairy tales and stories, appearing in most characters as they move through the plot. They are the commonly recurring character types and personalities found in most narratives. The twelve archetypes generally accepted today were developed based on the work of Carl Jung, a psychiatrist and a psychologist born in Switzerland. He believed that they describe themes and personalities in our lives. Each of these twelve archetypes play their own parts: the Hero, the Lover, the Magician, the Sage, the Rebel, the Explorer, the Creator, the Ruler, the Innocent, the Everyman, the Caregiver and the Jester (Golden). These are found in both traditional folklore fairy tales and in movies and books popular today. Main characters are usually examples of the Hero: the person who survives terrible hardships, or saves the world. The Lover, the romantic interest and the character guided by their love, is also a common role, appearing in most romance books. These common character types reflect stages of our own lives, as a child, playing “the Innocent”, then later the Sage as we grow wiser and see the world in different ways.
Figures in stories change as we change in our own lives, characters evolve over the course of the story as they grow. In Grimm’s “Rapunzel” the husband who sneaks into the witch's garden to pick rapunzel for his pregnant wife portrays several archetypes. His character is a smaller one and is only in a short section of the story, but he is the Hero, bravely sneaking into the witches' garden, the Lover, making sacrifices for his wife, or the Everyman who has no special powers and only desires to live a good life. When the child is born and the witch comes to take her away. Although she proceeds to lock the child in a tower, the witch is, in some ways, the Caregiver, because in her own way she is trying to protect Rapunzel from the world, keeping her safe in the tower, even though she is considered the villain of the story. A young prince hears Rapunzel singing in her tower and pursues her. Rapunzel, though scared when instead of the witch, the prince climbs up her braid, grows to love him. When the witch discovers that the prince has been sneaking into the tower, she cuts off Rapunzel’s hair and banishes her into the wilderness where she survives on her own and then gives birth to twins. The witch also punishes the prince, blinding him and sending him stumbling in the forest until finally he finds Rapunzel. Though at first the prince is the Hero, out seeking adventure, he meets Rapunzel and grows into the Lover as he travels blindly through the woods searching for her. Rapunzel’s character, too, is complex and always changing: from the Innocent, a child locked away in a tower by the witch, to the Lover when she meets the prince, and then the Caretaker herself when she bears two children.
In another common fairy tale, “Puss in Boots” several other archetypes appear, and as the story progresses some of the characters transform and change, becoming different archetypes. The tale begins with the death of a miller. He is very poor, but he leaves everything he owns to his three sons: the mill, the donkey, and his cat. The youngest son receives the cat and though he is at first disappointed, the cat proves to be very clever. In this story,the cat embodies the Jester (which is also known as the Trickster or the Joker). This is the clever archetype who is often cunning and funny. He enjoys life and is always playing tricks. He tricks rabbits and partridges into his snares which he then presents to the king. Although he is one of the central characters in the story his archetype and personality stays somewhat the same. Instead he is the force changing the youngest son as he goes through the story. The cat makes a plan to help him, and instructs the youngest son to bathe by the side of the road. The king, who represents the Ruler, with power over the cat’s success, soon passes by and the cat yowls that the Marquis de Carabas was drowning. The king stops and rescues the boy, then, believing that he is the Marquis de Carabas, invites him to ride in his carriage. The cat, Puss in Boots runs ahead, instructing the villagers he passes to say that the land belongs to the Marquis de Carabas. When the king later passes them, the villagers do as the cat says and tell him that the land belongs to the boy. Meanwhile, Puss in Boots visits an ogre’s castle where he again plays a trick, making the ogre turn into a mouse and then eats him. He then claims that the ogre’s castle belongs to the Marquis de Carabas. Here the youngest son changes status, becoming “the Marquis de Carabas” in the eyes of a king, and at the same time the archetypal role he embodies starts to shift. He now owns a kingdom and land and holds power, so he begins to become the Ruler archetype.
“The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Anderson shows transformation of the characters in both the archetypes they represent and in the mermaid herself as she changes from fish to human. The story begins with the little mermaid as the Innocent, the naive and optimistic archetype. One by one, her five sisters see the human world telling her stories from the surface. When she finally turns fifteen and is allowed to swim to the surface, she is enchanted by it. When she spots a ship with a prince aboard she is even more delighted, and when a storm sinks their ship she chooses to rescue the prince. Here she begins to become the Lover as she falls in love with a human. The little mermaid, driven by her love, goes to the sea witch begging for legs to walk on land. The witch grants her wish but at the price of her voice, which the mermaid sacrifices for love. The witch embodies the Magician, and uses her magic to fulfill the mermaid’s wish, but in the process twists her power and steals her voice. Although the mermaid tries to win his love, the prince is oblivious, and so on his wedding day she is doomed to turn to sea foam. Her sister’s try to save her, by giving her a knife and instructing her to kill the prince so that she can return again to the sea, but she refuses their help and throws the knife away, disappearing into the water. The little mermaid dies sacrificing her chance at life for her for the prince who does not even love her.
Although these stories are myths, they relate to our lives. The characters have experiences that we encounter as well.In my own life I have fallen in love and devoted all my thoughts to someone who didn’t even love me. I was constantly reaching out to her and trying to connect, while she halfheartedly answered but made no effort to reach out herself. I think I embodied the Lover, but in an unhealthy way. I went from the Innocent, happy with my life, to the Lover, constantly wondering if she loved me back. Even when the relationship ended I still struggled to stop hoping she’ll change her mind. In my own experiences and doubtless in those of other people, the archetypes reflected in our beings change as we go through life and undergo new experiences. Even the most fictional stories are based in some way on our lives. The Hero embarks on a dangerous journey, which is a metaphor for the journeys that we embark on in our lives. The characters grow and learn and transform, and during all of this the archetypes are reflected in them.
Works Cited
“Writing 101: The 12 Literary Archetypes.” Masterclass, 30 August 2021. www.masterclass.com/articles/writing-101-the-12-literary-archetypes. Accessed 1 October 2022.
Golden, Carl. “The 12 Common Archetypes” http://www.treeoflifecounseling.life/essays/the_12_common_archetypes.html. Accessed 7 October 2022.
Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, Norton, 2002, Accessed 1 October 2022.
First draft (On only one story)
Archetypes in The Blue Belt
Archetypes are the foundations of all plots, representing many of the characters in folktales books and stories. Archetypes are the commonly recurring character types and personalities found in most narratives. According to MasterClass, there are 12 main archetypes found in most plots: The Hero, The Lover, The Magician, The Sage, The Outlaw, The Explorer, The Creator, The Ruler, The Innocent, The Everyman, The Caregiver and The Jester. Main characters are usually examples of “The Hero” ; the person who survives terrible hardships, or saves the world. “The Lover” is also a common role, appearing in most romance books. These common character types are reflected in stages of our own lives, as a child, playing “The Innocent”, then, later “The Sage” as we grow wiser and see the world in different ways. Because they so resemble our roles in life, the same archetypes are found in tales from all over the world, from many different cultures. Archetypes are particularly apparent in folklore, and can be seen in the simple traditional structures of fairy tales and lore.
In The Blue Belt, from East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Old Tales from The North, (Edited by Noel Daniel and Illustrated by Kay Nielsen) several archetypes are featured. A young boy and his mother come across a blue belt that grants the wearer great strength. The lad is an example of the hero, as over the course of the story, he overcomes many challenges. They come to a brightly lit house and although the mother fears that trolls live there they go inside. A troll does indeed live there but nevertheless, the lad asks to spend the night. As he prepares to sleep he hears the troll and his mother talking, they plan to kill the boy. He listens closely and the next morning when the troll tries to crush him with a boulder, he escapes and breaks the troll's leg with a boulder of his own. This is a typical example of the hero outsmarting the thuggish villain with his wits.
As in many fairy tales this is repeated three times. The troll and his mother again scheme, and the lad listens. When the troll attempts to feed him to his lions by instructing his mother to feign ill and ask her son for lion’s milk, the boy tames the beasts and survives again. Outsmarted again the troll plans to send the lad to the house of his two brothers where they grow apples that put the eater to sleep. However the boy brings his lions and when he falls to sleep, they guard him from trolls, killing both brothers. This is where another archetype comes in; The Lover, the character whose main purpose in the plot is that of the love interest. The king of Arabia’s daughter had been taken captive by the trolls, and upon waking the lad sees her and, as men often do in fairy tales, proposes to her right away.
In time the princess returns to her castle to see her family and the boy is left alone. Having nothing else to do, he invites the troll and his mother to come live with him. Asking to see the blue belt, the mother snaches it from her son, taking away his strength, and using the troll's advice, burns out his eyes and strands him in a boat. The mother is an interesting character in this story, because, although at the beginning she warned the lad against trolls, she now completely sides with one and decides to kill her only son. Luckily for the lad, the lions, whom he had tamed, followed the boat and saved his life. The Lions act as Caregivers in this story, and although the boy did nothing for them, they follow him out to sea and give him food and shelter. The Lions are the only thing keeping him alive. Additionally, they discover a spring that returns his sight.
After regaining his sight the lad returns to the troll and his mother to steal back the belt. The lad then kills his mother and blinds the troll, completing the classic hero story. But there is still the Lover, the king of Arabia’s daughter. At this point in the story the boy almost becomes more of The Lover himself, acting solely to find the princess. The lad begins his journey to find her, finding a large egg on the way, he cracks it, setting a huge bird on his trail.
He makes it to Arabia alive, but the king, to protect her, has hidden his daughter, and only one who found her would be granted her hand in marriage. The lad purchases a white bear skin, and dresses in it, posing as the beast and playing tricks for audiences. When the king hears of this bear, he orders it brought to the palace to entertain him, and upon seeing his performance, brings the bear to his daughter's hiding place to entertain her as well. She is at first scared, but when the king leaves he takes off the skin, revealing his true nature, and they both rejoice. But the lad wished to win her hand in marriage, so taking off his bear skin, he approached the king again, asking to attempt to find his daughter. The king is another example of an archetype. He serves as The Ruler, he governs this part of the story, choosing to watch the bear, show him to his daughter, and then offer him the chance to marry her. Having seen where she was kept, the lad wasted away his time until the last minute when he bade the king to follow him. He easily found her, and upon kicking down the door, the lad announced that he was the one who saved her from the trolls.
This tale, and many others, contain many common archetypes, seen in the adventures and romances of traditional folklore. They shape these stories with their familiar personalities. Found in ancient tales passed down from generation to generation, as well as in books and movies today, they live on in all narratives. The Hero, The Lover, The Guardian, The Sage, every archetype, they work in harmony to weave together the plots of today’s best loved stories.
http://www.gxunanning.com/scic_2013_2014/documents/The_12_Common_Archetypes.doc
The Grimm Brothers And Their Fairy Tales
The Grimm Brothers and their Fairy Tales
Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumplestiltskin, all these stories may have been lost to time if they had not been documented. These fairy tales were collected by the Grimm brothers, to preserve and publish the folklore of Germany, and have now become the beloved tales of so many children. But why do we know these stories so well?
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, born in Germany 1785 and 1786, began their careers by attending the University of Marburg from 1802 until 1806, to study law. Later, both brothers worked as secretaries, before pursuing their love for folklore. They worried that the rich traditions and tales of their homeland would be lost to time, and set out to collect and publish a book of the stories, songs and poems of Germany. The brothers wanted to preserve the language and culture of Germany's people and document their stories. They gathered primarily oral tellings of popular tales from peasants, as well finding some stories from written sources, and wrote refined versions of the fairy tales they had found, although they tried to stay true to the folklore. They published their first collection of folk poetry and stories, Kinder- und Hausmärchen, in 1812. These tales were meant to preserve the traditional stories, and were supposed to be used by scholars to learn about the culture. However they continued to publish new additions to their original tales, and began straying further from their original oral tellings, and began publishing longer stories. As well as adapting the original stories, they also added many new ones to the first collection. Although they were trying to preserve the traditions of their country, the tales they published most likely grew quite different from the tales that mothers told their children.
They had meant for the stories to serve mainly as documentation of the culture, however the public began reading their stories. The book eventually became one of the most popular books of its time , and the most famous collection of fairy tales in the world. Adults and children alike were reading their works. As they continued to revise, they took out anything they deemed inappropriate. Mentions of sex before marriage were almost completely annihilated. In Rapunzel, the girl asking Mother Gothel why her dress was so tight, became her asking why she was harder to pull up then the prince, (and the story also implied that Rapnzel and the prince were married.) The stories were morals of sorts; wicked stepmothers were punished for vanity and kind humble princesses got happy endings. However The Grimm brothers weren’t afraid to add gore, many villains died in gruesome ways, and punishments were terrible. Snow White's stepmother is killed at her stepdaughter’s wedding with red hot iron shoes, Rapunzel's prince’s eyes were gored out by thorns as he plummeted from the tower, and the witch of Hansel and Gretal was burned to death in her oven.
An essay by Louis Snyder (published in 1987) points out the nationalistic characteristics in the Grimm’s tales, arguing that the brothers wrote the tales to preserve and spread German beliefs, as much as to document the stories. The fairytales they published promoted obedience and authority speaking to the ideal German citizen. The villains were punished and the courageous were rewarded. Their stories also contained antisemitism, with some of their tales featuring Jewish antagonists who were presented as dishonest thieves, and punished in cruel ways. This perhaps links to the violence in many of their stories.
Their tales were widely distributed throughout Europe and eventually the world, and was one of the most popular books in Germany. However, they were not the only Europeans to write and collect fairy tales; Charles Perrault of France, wrote the well known Cinderella, as well as Bluebeard, Puss in Boots and another version of Sleeping Beauty. Denmark’s Hans Christian Anderson wrote the now beloved Little Mermaid, and French writer Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont published Beauty and the Beast. Some of these tales were created by their authors and others were based on folklore like the Grimm’s stories, but all these tales might have been lost if not for them. The Grimm brothers were likely inspired to collect tales, as they saw other writers doing the same.
But why do we know all these stories? Many people do not know all the Grimms' stories. Most people do not recognize the tale of Clever Elsie or The Dog and the Sparrow, (stories published in the Grimm’s first book) but in America almost every child knows the story of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty. Disney took the folk tales from The brothers Grimm and other collections of tales, and made them known and loved throughout America. Disney's first full length film and one of its highest grossing movies, Snow White, was released in 1937. Disney took the Grimm’s story and added comedic dwarves, who took up most of the movie, and a romantic prince. In the Grimm’s tale it is not a kiss that wakes Snow White, but her coffin being justled as the prince carries her presumably dead body home, causing her to choke out the piece of poisoned apple. They also took out the gruesome death of the stepmother (red hot iron shoes she was forced to dance in) and instead depicted her plummeting off a cliff, a much less violent demise. Disney didn’t want to add as much gore as the original tales, but they kept a very non-consensual kiss that wasn’t even present in the Grimms fairytale.
In 1950, Cinderella came out, based on Charles Perrault’s story and nine years later The Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty was made into a movie, followed by The Little Mermaid (by Hans Chriatian Anderson) in 1989. These stories were hits and children loved them, but they were also reinforcing stereotypes. Disney took the already sexist fairy tales and made them even worse with passive pathetic princesses that could never seem to do anything but fall in love and get rescued.
Soon two more of the Grimm brothers' tales were turned into films, in 2009, the Princess and the Frog came out, and a year later so did Tangled (based on Rapunzel). In these movies Disney strayed a bit farther away from the Grimms' story. Both stories are far from perfect, but they seek to empower women a little more. Tangled keeps the evil Mother Gothel, the princess with long hair and the love interest who finds her tower, but many other aspects of the story are altered, and Rapunzel escapes from her tower to see lanterns, instead of being sent into the wilderness when the witch finds out she is pregnant.
The Grimms stories would surely be less well known if not for Disney's adaptations, so in some ways the movies helped, like the Grimm brothers, to preserve European tradition and culture. However Disney altered much of the stories for the purpose of entertainment, and their movies, especially the earlier ones, were full of stereotypes, both from the original fairy tale, and ones heightened by their film. Their princesses were animated as polite, soft spoken, and beautiful, and showed those traits more then the written characters. These stereotypes were then advertised to the most impressionable people; children. When generations grow up watching these movies, the folktales were being remembered, but it also meant that young children were watching multiple films showing women as helpless weak princesses, whose only purpose was to be “beautiful”, then be rescued by a prince. Disney’s films have definitely improved in this aspect, with Moana, Brave and Frozen, featuring heroines who rescue themselves and didn’t always end the story with marriage to a heroic prince, but most of their fairy tale adaptations did not feature powerful women. While there are new movies coming out, children still grew up watching old movies, and the lessons they teach are so ingrained in our culture that they are hard to undo. Disney helped to preserve these folklore in the form of their films, but that came at a prince.
Sources Cited:
Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, Norton, 2002, Accessed 1 Jan. 2023.
Zipes, Jack. “How the Grimm Brothers Saved the Fairy Tale.” National Endowment for the Humanities, 2015, https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/marchapril/feature/how-the-grimm-brothers-saved-the-fairy-tale. accessed 3 Jan. 2023.
Whittingham, Kat. “The Full Disney Princess Timeline.” In The Book, 11 oct. 2021. https://www.inthebook.com/en-us/blog/disney-princess-timeline/. accessed 5 Jan. 2023
Snyder, Louis L. "Cultural Nationalism: The Grimm Brothers' Fairy Tales." Roots of German Nationalism. Indiana University Press, 1978. 35-54. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Suzanne Dewsbury. Vol. 77. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 11 Nov. 2011. http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE% 7CH1420027001&v=2.1&u=holl83564&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w. accessed 5 Jan. 2023
Stone, Kay. “Things Walt Disney Never Told Us.” The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 88, no. 347, 1975, pp. 42–50. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/539184. Accessed 6 Jan. 2023.
Wikipedia contributors. "Grimms' Fairy Tales." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 1 Jan. 2023. Web. accessed 3 Jan. 2023.
Denecke, Ludwig. "Brothers Grimm". Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 Dec. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Brothers-Grimm. Accessed 4 January 2023.