Household Stories (Grimm's Fairy Tales)

Summary

Household Stories is Lucy Crane's English translation of fifty-two tales chosen from the Brothers Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen, first published in London by Macmillan in 1882 with pictures by her brother Walter Crane; the library text follows a later reprint and omits the illustrations. The selection mixes the most famous wonder tales with comic stories, animal fables and short nursery pieces. Hansel and Grethel are abandoned in the forest by their poor father and his wife during a famine, find their way home once by white pebbles but not by bread crumbs, discover a house made of bread and cake, and escape when Grethel pushes the witch into her own oven. Aschenputtel, the Grimms' Cinderella, plants a hazel twig on her mother's grave, and the white bird in its branches gives her the dresses and slippers with which she wins the prince; her stepsisters cut their feet to fit the golden shoe. Snow-white flees her stepmother's magic looking-glass to the seven dwarfs, survives the laces and the poisoned comb, is laid in a glass coffin after the poisoned apple, and wakes when the bite is jolted from her throat. Rapunzel lets down her hair from the tower; the miller's daughter in Rumpelstiltskin spins straw into gold and must guess the little man's name; Little Red-cap meets the wolf; the fisherman's wife wishes herself from a hovel to a palace and becomes emperor and pope, then demands power over the sun and moon, and loses everything. Other favorites include The Frog Prince, The Wolf and the Seven Kids, The Bremen Town Musicians, The Gallant Tailor who kills seven flies at one blow, The Elves who make shoes for a poor shoemaker, The Sleeping Beauty, King Thrushbeard, The Goose Girl, Mother Hulda who rewards the industrious daughter with a shower of gold and the lazy one with pitch, The Six Swans and The Twelve Brothers with their faithful silent sisters, and The Golden Goose, in which the despised Simpleton shares his cake with a little grey man and wins a princess. Comic tales of foolish people, such as Hans in Luck, Clever Else, Prudent Hans and Fred and Kate, sit beside darker ones like The Robber Bridegroom and The Almond Tree. The Grimms first published their collection in two volumes in 1812 and 1815 and revised it through seven editions to 1857, when it contained more than two hundred tales.

Top Lessons

• Kindness to the small

  Again and again the hero who shares bread with an old man, spares the ants, ducks and bees, or serves an old woman faithfully is the one who succeeds. The Simpleton in The Golden Goose wins because he shares a poor cake; Mother Hulda rewards the girl who shakes the bed well. The tales teach children that humble acts of kindness and diligence matter.

• Trust in God in dark woods

  Hansel comforts his sister that God will not forsake them, and Aschenputtel's dying mother tells her to be pious and good. Many tales show children facing hunger and danger with faith and courage, and the wicked come to grief by their own devices.

• Greed never says enough

  The fisherman's wife moves from hovel to cottage to castle, then wishes to be king, emperor and pope, and finally to make the sun and moon rise at her command; the sea grows blacker with every wish until she is back in her hovel. The tale shows children how discontent grows when it is fed.

• Faithful silence and the power of a promise

  The sister in The Six Swans keeps silent for six years, even when she is accused and about to be burned, to free her brothers. The miller's daughter in Rumpelstiltskin learns that a rash promise must be paid. The tales take promises and loyalty very seriously.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The tales come out of a rural world where famine, death in childbirth and orphanhood were common, and these hard facts drive many plots. Hansel and Grethel begins with a dearth in which the woodcutter cannot feed his children, and the witch fattens Hansel while testing his finger. Snow-white's mother dies at her birth, as does Aschenputtel's mother at the start of her tale. Rapunzel's mother pines and grows pale with a pregnant craving for rampion, and the prince is blinded by thorns and healed by Rapunzel's tears. Poisons appear as a comb and an apple in Snow-white. These are folk motifs rather than medical observations, but they record common experiences of the early modern European household.

• Hansel and Grethel, opening

  A great dearth leaves the woodcutter unable to earn daily bread, and his wife persuades him to abandon the children in the forest.

• Rapunzel

  The expectant mother pines and grows pale with longing for rampion; later the prince loses his sight among thorns and recovers it when Rapunzel's tears touch his eyes.

• Snow-white

  The queen dies when Snow-white is born; the stepmother tries poisoned laces, a poisoned comb and a half-poisoned apple.

• Aschenputtel, opening

  The dying mother blesses her daughter, who weeps daily at the grave where the hazel tree grows.