Volume 34, Number 19 · December 3, 1987
Cleaning Up Snow White
By Janet Adam Smith
Grimms' Bad Girls and Bold Boys: The Moral and Social Vision of the Tales
by Ruth B. Bottigheimer
Yale University Press, 211 pp., $22.50
The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales
by Maria Tatar
Princeton University Press, 266 pp., $19.95
Grimms' Tales started as the work of scholars. The brothers Jakob and Wilhelm, with their interest in language and folklore, aimed to preserve in print stories hitherto only known in oral versions—told by traveling pedlars, market women, spinners at their wheels, parents to children. Deeply patriotic, the Grimms saw their Kinder- und Hausmärchen—Nursery and Household Tales—as a vital part of the national heritage, now saved for future generations. Ever since then other scholars have found Grimmland a splendid terrain where, wandering in the dark forests of the tales, anthropologists, philologists, sociologists, psychologists, and now feminists may discover a gingerbread house of delicious significance, and quarrel among themselves as to whom it belongs.
Review, 2922 words
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