Grimm brothers fairytales have blood and horror restored in new translation

It is time for parents and publishers to stop dumbing down the tales for children
, says editor of uncut edition
Grimm
Alison Flood
Wednesday 12 November 2014 11.09 GMT Last modified on Friday 3 February 2017 20
.05 GMT
Rapunzel is impregnated by her prince, the evil queen in Snow White is the princ
ess s biological mother, plotting to murder her own child, and a hungry mother in
another story is so unhinged and desperate that she tells her daughters: I ve got to
kill you so I can have something to eat. Never before published in English, the f
irst edition of the Brothers Grimms tales reveals an unsanitised version of the s
tories that have been told at bedtime for more than 200 years.
The Grimms Jacob and Wilhelm published their first take on the tales for which t
hey would become known around the world in December 1812, a second volume follow
ing in 1815. They would go on to publish six more editions, polishing the storie
s, making them more child-friendly, adding in Christian references and removing
mentions of fairies before releasing the seventh edition the one best known toda
y in 1857.
Jack Zipes, professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the Unive
rsity of Minnesota, says he often wondered why the first edition of the tales ha
d never been translated into English, and decided, eventually, to do it himself.
Though the Grimms kept about 100 of the tales from the first edition, they chang
ed them a good deal. So, the versions with which most English-speaking (and Germ
an-speaking) readers are familiar are quite different from the tales in the firs
t edition, he told the Guardian.
His version of the original 156 stories is just out from Princeton University Pr
ess, illustrated by Andrea Dezs, and shows a very different side to the well-know
n tales, as well as including some gruesome new additions.
How the Children Played at Slaughtering, for example, stays true to its title, s
eeing a group of children playing at being a butcher and a pig. It ends direly:
a boy cuts the throat of his little brother, only to be stabbed in the heart by
his enraged mother. Unfortunately, the stabbing meant she left her other child a
lone in the bath, where he drowned. Unable to be cheered up by the neighbours, s
he hangs herself; when her husband gets home, he became so despondent that he die
d soon thereafter . The Children of Famine is just as disturbing: a mother threate
ns to kill her daughters because there is nothing else to eat. They offer her sl
ices of bread, but can t stave off her hunger: You ve got to die or else we ll waste aw
ay, she tells them. Their solution: We ll lie down and sleep, and we won t get up agai
n until the Judgement Day arrives. They do; no one could wake them from it. Meanwh
ile, their mother departed, and nobody knows where she went.

Rapunzel, meanwhile, gives herself away to her captor when after having a merry t
ime in the tower with her prince - she asks: Tell me, Mother Gothel, why are my cl
othes becoming too tight? They don t fit me any more. And the stepmothers of Snow W
hite and Hansel and Gretel were, originally, their mothers, Zipes believing that
the Grimms made the change in later editions because they held motherhood sacred .
So it is Snow White s own mother who orders the huntsman to stab her to death and
bring me back her lungs and liver as proof of your deed. After that I ll cook them
with salt and eat them , and Hansel and Gretel s biological mother who abandons the
m in the forest.
Zipes speculates that the Grimms changes were reflecting sociologically a conditio
n that existed during their lifetime - jealousy between a young stepmother and s
tepdaughter , because many women died from childbirth in the eighteenth and ninetee
nth centuries, and there were numerous instances in which the father remarried a
young woman, perhaps close in age to the father s eldest daughter .
Cinderella s stepsisters go to extraordinary attempts to win the prince in the ori
ginal Grimms version of the tale, slicing off parts of their feet to fit the gol
den slipper - to no avail, in the end, because the prince spots the blood spilli
ng out of the shoe. Here s a knife, their mother urges, in Zipes translation. If the s
lipper is still too tight for you, then cut off a piece of your foot. It will hu
rt a bit. But what does that matter?

Not such innocent fun an illustration from the new translation of How Some Child
ren Played at Slaughtering. Illustration: Andrea Dezs/PR
Zipes describes the changes made as immense , with around 40 or 50 tales in the fir
st edition deleted or drastically changed by the time the seventh edition was pu
blished. The original edition was not published for children or general readers.
Nor were these tales told primarily for children. It was only after the Grimms p
ublished two editions primarily for adults that they changed their attitude and
decided to produce a shorter edition for middle-class families. This led to Wilh
elm s editing and censoring many of the tales, he told the Guardian.
Wilhelm Grimm, said Zipes, deleted all tales that might offend a middle-class rel
igious sensitivity , such as How Some Children Played at Slaughtering. He also adde
d many Christian expressions and proverbs , continued Zipes, stylistically embelli
shed the tales, and eliminated fairies from the stories because of their associa
tion with French fairy tales. Remember, this is the period when the French occupi
ed Germany during the Napoleonic wars, said Zipes. So, in Briar Rose, better known
as Sleeping Beauty, the fairies are changed into wise women. Also, a crab annou
nces to the queen that she will become pregnant, not a frog.
The original stories, according to the academic, are closer to the oral traditio
n, as well as being more brusque, dynamic, and scintillating . In his introduction
to The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm, in which Marina Warn
er says he has redrawn the map we thought we knew , and made the Grimms tales wonderf
ully strange again , Zipes writes that the originals retain the pungent and naive f
lavour of the oral tradition , and that they are stunning narratives precisely beca
use they are so blunt and unpretentious , with the Grimms yet to add their sentimen
tal Christianity and puritanical ideology .
But they are still, he believes, suitable bedtime stories. It is time for parents
and publishers to stop dumbing down the Grimms tales for children, Zipes told the
Guardian. The Grimms, he added, believed that these tales emanated naturally fro
m the people, and the tales can be enjoyed by both adults and children. If there
is anything offensive, readers can decide what to read for themselves. We do no
t need puritanical censors to tell us what is good or bad for us.
To order The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm for 21.21 (RRP 24
.95) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.
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