Hansel and Gretel

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Hansel and Gretel
Artwork by Arthur Rackham, 1909
Folk tale
Name: Hansel and Gretel
Data
Aarne-Thompson Grouping: 327A
Country: Germany
Region: Cassel
Published in: Grimm's Fairy Tales
Related: The Lost Children

Hansel and Gretel (German: Hänsel und Gretel) is a fairy tale of Germanic origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm. The story follows a young brother and sister who discover a house of candy and cake in the forest and a child-devouring witch. The tale has been adapted to various media, most notably the opera Hänsel und Gretel (1893) by Engelbert Humperdinck and a stop-motion animated feature film based on the opera.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Hansel and Gretel are the children of a poor woodcutter. Fearing starvation, the woodcutter's wife (variably called the children's mother or stepmother) convinces him to lead the children into the forest and abandon them there. Hansel and Gretel hear her plan and gather white pebbles from the front garden to leave themselves a trail home.

After their return, their mother clears all the pebbles from the front garden when she learns the children used them to find their way back. She subsequently convinces the woodcutter to abandon them again further in the forest so they cannot find their way back; this time however, they can only leave a trail of breadcrumbs. Unfortunately, the various animals of the woods eat their trail of breadcrumbs, causing Hansel and Gretel to become lost. (The story up to this point is identical to Charles Perrault's Le Petit Poucet.)

Lost in the forest, they find a house made of gingerbread and candies, with sugar windows. Unable to resist, they begin to eat it. The inhabitant of the house, an old woman, invites them in and prepares a feast for them. The table is covered with candy, nuts, pancakes and other sweets. The woman, however, is a witch who has built the house to entice children to her, so that she can fatten and eat them. She locks Hansel in a cage, and makes Gretel her servant. While she prepares to cook Hansel, she orders Gretel to fetch candies and fats to force feed Hansel. Unable to do anything, Gretel weeps bitterly and does as she is told.

In the cage, Hansel finds a thin bone from his meals. When the witch tells Hansel to stick out his finger (so she can tell if he is fat enough to eat), he deceives her by sticking out the bone instead. The woman has poor eyesight and is very old, and thus cannot see that Hansel's "finger" is actually a bone. Days pass by, but the witch cannot perceive how fat Hansel is getting. She gets frustrated and decides to eat him anyway, "be he fat or lean". She tells Gretel to climb into an oven to be sure it is ready to bake, but Gretel guesses that the witch intends to bake her, and tricks the witch into climbing into the oven, closing it behind her. Hansel is freed and the children take jewels from the witch's house and set off for home with the help of a beautiful white dove. After reuniting with their father and finding out that their stepmother has died, they all live happily ever after.

The story follows what author Christopher Booker characterizes as an "Overcoming the monster" plotline, similar to that of Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk.[1]

[edit] Origin

"Hansel and Gretel" is one of several European tales in which children outwit an ogre into whose hands they have fallen. Their plight is involuntary, unlike the hero of the 'Jack' tales who actively seeks monsters and ogres in order to obtain loot, engage in blood sports, or win enduring glory. The Grimm brothers learned "Hansel and Gretel" in Cassel from the young girl Dortchen Wild, who years later would become Wilhelm Grimm's wife.[2] The basic elements of the tale are found throughout the world, although their simplicity makes it hard to tell whether a given instance is a borrowing or an independent invention.[3]

[edit] Analysis

The tale from the Brothers Grimm was meant to be a pleasant fable for middle-class consumers of the 19th century; the original however was probably an admonishment of the hardships of medieval life.[4] Abandoning children in the woods to die or fend for themselves because of famine, war, plague or other reasons, was not unknown, in particular during the crisis of the Late Middle Ages. Many critics have posited that the tale likely stemmed from historical instances of abandonment caused by famine; see the works of Jack Zipes and Maria Tatar for example,[5] with the obvious message of not accepting the seeming generosity of strangers, and the harder to hear message of parents' thoughtless or intentional cruelty to their own children.

In the first editions of the Grimms' collection, there was no stepmother; the mother persuaded the father to abandon her own children. This change, as in Snow White, appears to be a deliberate toning down of the unpleasantness for society in general who can't bear to think of mothers trying to hurt and kill their own children.[6]

That the mother or stepmother happens to die when the children have killed the witch has suggested to many commentators that the mother or stepmother and the witch are, in fact, the same woman, or at least that an identity between them is strongly hinted at.[7] Indeed, a Russian folk tale exists in which the evil stepmother (also the wife of a poor woodcutter) asks her hated stepdaughter to go into the forest to borrow a light from her sister, who turns out to be Baba Yaga, who is also a cannibalistic witch. Besides highlighting the endangerment of children (as well as their own cleverness), they both have in common a preoccupation with food and with hurting children; the mother or stepmother wants to avoid hunger, while the witch lures children to eat her house of candy so that she can then eat them.[6]

The tale is Aarne-Thompson type 327A.[8] Another tale of this type is The Lost Children.[9] Although they are not classified under this type, the Brothers Grimm identified the French Finette Cendron and Hop o' My Thumb as parallels to the story.[10]

[edit] Adaptations

  • The opera Hänsel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck was first performed in Weimar on December 23, 1893, and is often performed at Christmas today.
  • In 1954, the opera was adapted into a stop-motion animated film Hansel and Gretel: An Opera Fantasy with comedienne Anna Russell providing the voice of Rosina Rubylips, the witch. The film featured spoken dialogue, but also retained some of Humperdinck's music, sung in English instead of German.
  • The 1954 Looney Tunes animated short Bewitched Bunny retells the story of Hansel and Gretel, featuring Witch Hazel and starring Bugs Bunny in a novel role, in which he rescues the children before being captured himself.
  • In 1958, a live musical adaptation of the story, starring Red Buttons, Barbara Cook, Rudy Vallee, Hans Conried (in drag as the Witch), Stubby Kaye, and Paula Laurence was presented on television by NBC. It featured songs by Alec Wilder and William Engvick, the same team that had created the Mickey Rooney Pinocchio, which had been performed live on television in 1957. A cast album of the show has recently been released on CD.[11]
  • In December 1982, Live from the Met presented a complete production of Humperdinck's opera on television, again sung in English.
  • In December 1983, the opera's Evening Prayer music was heard as the opening theme of the television episode "Hansel and Gretel" from the anthology series Faerie Tale Theatre.
  • There is a live-action film made in 1988 starring Hugh Pollard and Nicola Stapleton.
  • There is also a Korean live-action film made in 2007 which is a retelling of the story in which the children are the occupants of the house and travellers are the innocents.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Booker, Christopher (2005). The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 22. http://books.google.com/books?id=tujDvUEpY10C&pg=PA22. 
  2. ^ Opie, Iona; Peter Opie (1974, 1992). The Classic Fairy Tales. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 236–237. ISBN 0-19-211559-6. 
  3. ^ Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. pp. 36–37. http://books.google.com/books?id=z-Iz6J9hStEC&pg=PA36. 
  4. ^ Coulton, George Gordon (1989). The Medieval Village. pp. 326. http://books.google.com/books?id=wzfs3HLiDjUC&pg=PA326. 
  5. ^ Tatar, Maria. The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales. pp. 49. ISBN 0-691-06722-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=lTtMH_ezI4UC&pg=PA49. 
  6. ^ a b Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 45, 57. ISBN 0-393-05163-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=ehzvhjL5_W8C&pg=PA44. 
  7. ^ Lüthi, Max (1970). Once Upon A Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.. p. 64. 
  8. ^ "Tales Similar to Hansel And Gretel". http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/hanselgretel/other.html. 
  9. ^ Delarue, Paul (1956). The Borzoi Book of French Folk-Tales. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.. p. 365. http://books.google.com/books?id=qYGSS8Nt1r8C&pg=PA365. 
  10. ^ Tatar, Maria. The Annotated Brothers Grimm. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 72. ISBN 0-393-05848-4. http://books.google.com/books?id=6gX-hNshMJEC&pg=RA1-PA72. 
  11. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Hansel-Gretel-Yeomen-Guard-Original/dp/B001QEIHX6/ref=pd_bxgy_m_img_b

[edit] External links

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