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Issues in Folk Literature
Violence
Antifeminism
Examples
A. Violence
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We can find
the prevalence of violence in folk literature, such as
foolish and irresponsible little pigs are devoured, wolves
are cooked in boiling water, witches are pushed into hot
ovens, characters are mutilated in any number of ways.
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However, we
find no reference to blood and nor is there a
great sense of terror. It is a tale of ultimate evil and
the triumph of goodness over adversity. The story is a sad
one, but not without hope and not without justice.
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Many
folktales contain violent actions, but few exploit that
violence and most leave the details up to the reader’s own
imagination.
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From a
Freudian perspective, folktales can provide an outlet
for children to release their hostility, frustration, anger,
and fear because 1) the violence in folktales gives children
a vicarious means of coping with their inner
frustrations, 2) folktales, through their rich symbolism and
evocative story patterns, fulfill unconscious psychological
needs in some children.
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From a
perspective of children’s reactions to folktales, it
shows that children have a desire to see evil punished
and eradicated from the world once and for all. For
example, when given the choice, children most often prefer
versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” in which the
grandmother is devoured and the wolf is ultimately killed,
as opposed to those versions in which the ravenous wolf,
after inexplicably tying up the grandmother and tossing her
in the closet, is miraculously reformed and promised to be
good henceforth.
B.
Antifeminism
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In the
folktales we often see a depiction of negative female
stereotypes (e.g. passivity, subservience,
and fragility) or an evil image of stepmothers,
such as those in “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow
White”.
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Many
folktales portray women as rather helpless (beautiful)
creatures whose futures depend on the kindness of capable
(handsome) men, whom the women must attract by their
pleasing appearance and sweet nature. This perspective
became more prevalent through the animated folktales of
Walt Disney.
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The
presentation of females is distorted probably because men
were the earliest serious collectors of the tales and they
chose to record the tales with a male gender bias.
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In recent
years, many folktales have been retold or published that
reveal positive female role models in stories. For example,
James Finn Garner’s “Politically Correct Bedtime
Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times” (1994) and
Kathleen Ragan’s collection “Fearless Girls, Wise
Women, and Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from
Around the World” (1998).
C.
Examples
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