WEEK 43 - Male and female heroes in fairy tales
PETRA
I finished reading Bettelheim's book The Uses of Enchantment some time ago. But one of the lessons this week was dedicated to that, so I would like to talk about it a bit.
I think that everybody knows at least a few fairy tales and is also able to summarise their contents. But mostly we remember only the very visible part of the whole story. We see the meanings of good fighting bad, weak showing hidden strength, lost being found… As Bettelheim says there is much more in fairy tales.
Most of their meanings are hidden. Bettelheim points out that these kinds of stories are intended for children as they provide a specific kind of life guide only children can really understand. And it all happens unconsciously.
One of my favourite parts of the book is the one where Bettelheim talks about the gender of main characters of fairy tales. Nowadays we tend to be very corect with this and don’t like to see stereotypes connected to boys and girls. Author says that regardless of the gender of the character children know the story concerns their own lifes.
Even though heroines and heroes in fairy tales mostly represent opposite ways how to approach the world, they both together symbolise two ways everybody has to take to grow to their own personality. One means dealing with the personal inner world and the other one is focused on building relationships with the outer world. So, it is actually only one way of human’s life shown in two separated story lines.
I finished reading Bettelheim's book The Uses of Enchantment some time ago. But one of the lessons this week was dedicated to that, so I would like to talk about it a bit.
I think that everybody knows at least a few fairy tales and is also able to summarise their contents. But mostly we remember only the very visible part of the whole story. We see the meanings of good fighting bad, weak showing hidden strength, lost being found… As Bettelheim says there is much more in fairy tales.
Most of their meanings are hidden. Bettelheim points out that these kinds of stories are intended for children as they provide a specific kind of life guide only children can really understand. And it all happens unconsciously.
One of my favourite parts of the book is the one where Bettelheim talks about the gender of main characters of fairy tales. Nowadays we tend to be very corect with this and don’t like to see stereotypes connected to boys and girls. Author says that regardless of the gender of the character children know the story concerns their own lifes.
Even though heroines and heroes in fairy tales mostly represent opposite ways how to approach the world, they both together symbolise two ways everybody has to take to grow to their own personality. One means dealing with the personal inner world and the other one is focused on building relationships with the outer world. So, it is actually only one way of human’s life shown in two separated story lines.
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