Pearls before Swine

 

Friend Xerxes has reinforced my view that most people cannot understand any message conveyed in parable or narrative form. He has recently weighed in on the meaning of several popular fairy tales.

He advises that Hansel and Gretel teaches us that “adding a new person to an existing group always creates tensions.”

He means the stepmother.

This is not a viable interpretation. To begin with, it ignores morality. Apparently, she meant no harm in leaving the children in the forest to be devoured by wild beasts. It was just some perfectly reasonable or else instinctive reaction to the tension of being new to the family. No doubt any of us would have done the same. 

Next, in the original version of the story, she is the childrens’ biological mother, not a stepmother. The Grimms introduced the “stepmother” concept, here and elsewhere, because they thought the story was otherwise too disturbing for their readership.  Being unfair to stepmothers everywhere. 

So stepmotherhood is hardly the main point of the story. She is not a new person added to the group.

Next, this ignores the culpability of the father, who agrees to the deed.

Next, it ignores the witch, who is the worse villain.

The real message of Hansel and Gretel is that children should not trust adults. Including their own parents. They should be alert to the dangers, and they should stick together in solidarity.

Next, Xerxes explains that Goldilocks and the Three Bears teaches us that the good is always found in the mean, the average between two extremes. Goldilocks discovers this by sampling the three bowls of porridge, sitting on the three chairs, and sleeping in the three beds. In each case, one is “just right.”

Yet it is not clear that Goldie’s preference is always for the mean. Of the three beds, she prefers not the one of average size, for example, but the smallest, and specifically on the basis of its size. It was neither too long at the head, nor too long at the foot. It is forced to see that as an average. Similarly, while she preferred one chair as neither too soft nor too hard, it was also the smallest, and the weakest—a point made most salient by the fact that she broke it. Again, it is arbitrary to read this as the average of the three chairs.

And it is hard to see how, had she chosen to prefer a different bowl of porridge, chair, or bed as her favourite, this would have had any impact on the major action of the story. She still would have been eaten by the bears—as the original story ends. Or have had to jump out the window and run away—as the common bowdlerized version has it. 

The real message of Goldilocks is that children should be respectful of others’ property, and not trespass or greedily grab things. The bit of business about trying each bowl of porridge, each bed, and each chair, is to show that Goldilocks has no concern for others, supposing everything is for her pleasure.

Lastly, our faithful lefty correspondent tackles Little Red Riding Hood. It is apparently about how we expect to be rescued from our troubles by some trusty woodsman. The issue is who that woodsman is: is it government, or private enterprise?

He prefers government

However, in the original story, there is no woodsman. Little Red Riding Hood just gets eaten by the wolf, as does her grandmother. The woodsman, like the stepmother in Hansel and Gretel, was introduced by modern reteller fearing the original story was too shocking for readers.

The point of the story of LRRH is the same as that of Hansel and Gretel—and of most fairy tales. Children should not trust adults. Not even their own grandmother. And they must therefore always be on their guard, keep their wits about them.

Why does Xerxes consistently get the point wrong? Aren’t the real messages obvious?

I think it is because he, and most of us, avoid moral interpretations and any reference to morals at all cost. Moral references or any suggestion of divine retribution make us feel frightened and guilty.