Gender and Cultural Values in Hansel and Gretel - Literature review Example

Gender and Cultural Values in Hansel and Gretel, by the Brothers Grimm Fairy tales have left an imprint on childhood memories and belong to our cultural imagery, as well as myths. The study of fairy tales is essential in order to understand the foundations and evolution of the values that are present in our fiction and our culture. The present paper refers to the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, by the Brothers Grimm, and considers its gender and cultural values. The role of women has great significance in this fairy tale. Both villains (the stepmother and the witch) are women, and at the end another woman (Gretel) executes revenge against one of them. The death appears as punishment for the evil, and the good children deserve life. Although not specified in the story, it is possible to infer that the stepmother starved, that is, she died on the way she was afraid to die, what she intended to avoid for her; whereas the witch suffers the death she wanted for Gretel. The stepmother abuses from the vulnerability and helplessness of the children, but the situation is reversed at the end of the story. Hansel and Gretel are able to become retaliation and feel “revenged” for all that was done to them. They had the risk of dying in the woods, but they returned with treasures from the witch’s house that solved their father’s situation. The character of Gretel suffers a change during the course of the tale. At the beginning, Hansel fulfills the role of protective brother, and he controls the situation. He has the idea to pick up the pebbles, in order to mark the path home. He decided where to go and when to act. When they arrive at the witch’s house, he also indicates what to eat. The form in which the children were separated represents a gender difference. Gretel must cook, while Hansel remains locked and receives the best food. At the beginning, Gretel is portrayed as a weak girl, who cries when she and his brother are in trouble. She cries when she hears that the stepmother is planning to let them alone in the woods. Her reaction is the same, when she awakes at night in the woods and finds that they were left alone. Hansel consoles her and guides her in this situation, not just with words, but also physically, when he takes her hand. She also cries in the tale when the witch locks Hansel in the stall. However, she realizes that crying was no solution, when the witch announces that she would slaughter and eat Hansel. Gretel was psychologically tortured by the witch, for she must boil the water that would kill her brother. This pressure enables her to overcome the situation, acquire the intuition about what would occur to her and not to resign to the witch’s wishes. The moment in which Gretel pushes the witch inside the oven and closes it represents the first moment in which Gretel takes an active role. Before, she was guided by her brother, and at the witch’s house she was forced to obey her commands. This character is the only one that shows a change along the story. The attitude of the brother was consistent the whole time, as well as the passivity of the father, the cruelty of the stepmother and the evil hypocrisy of the witch. From this moment on, Gretel assumes an active role: she saves Hansel, tells the duck to take them to the other shore of a large body of water, knows that the duck cannot carry both at a time, and manages to find the way home. The stepmother and the witch show slyness, proper of their representation as villains. They are incapable of saying directly their intentions, but they lie to achieve their purposes. In the case of the stepmother, she says to the children that they must wait for her and their father in the woods. When Hansel and Gretel return home due to the pebbles, the stepmother does not admit her truly intentions, and accuses them to stay too long in the woods. At the other hand, the witch made an attractive house for children. She invites Hansel and Gretel, and allows them to peacefully sleep at her house, because she wanted to gain their confidence. Later, the children apply similar methods to save themselves. Hansel uses a little bone to pretend it is his finger and to let the witch believe that he does not get fat. Gretel pretends ingenuity when the witch wants to bake her, and achieves to lock the witch in the oven. She succeeds in saving her brother, also when they leave the witch’s house and she calls the duck, which they used to reach the other side of the body of water. The happy ending of Hansel and Gretel demonstrates the victory of good, and considers sufferings as a necessary period to battle against difficulties. The fairy tales questions moral values in extreme situations: Is abandonment of children justified in order to survive? The concept of murder is also challenged. The murder is justified in order to save the own life, as Gretel did, but the witch’s anthropophagy is not. The lack of a sense of motherhood enables the Brothers Grimm to portray the stepmother as the villain, as they do in other fairy tales (e.g. Snow White and Cinderella). A stepmother is capable of abandoning her stepchildren, because they were not hers, an action that would be unconceivable in a mother. The father was not an authority at home and he adopts a passive attitude, since the stepmother manages to convince him to accept the abandonment, despite his own wishes. The resignation of the father in reference to the destiny of his children occurs strongly in the second intent of leaving the children in the woods. He only thinks that it would be best to share the last bread with the children rather than abandoning them, but he does not discuss with his wife, because he had agreed to abandon them before. His attitude was resistant to change. The characters of the father and the stepmother have not considered the possibility of a change, and the second intent of leaving the children is very similar in structure to the first one: the idea comes from the stepmother, the father accepts, the children are aware of the plan, and Hansel leaves a track in the way. Furthermore, the dialogs in concern to the animal that Hansel uses as an excuse to stop and throw the pebbles onto the path, and the words in order to console Gretel are very similar. Although the father accepted his wife’s decision to abandon the children, he is not judged in the tale. His remorse and his former reluctance justified him at the eyes of the readers. The stepmother is portrayed as an evil woman, and she shows features as egoism and cruelty. She insults the children, calling them “lazybones” or “fools”. The proper name has a value of humanization in the tale. The only characters that are called by their names are Hansel and Gretel. The readers ignore the name of the father, the stepmother and the witch. They act like prototypes: both women as villains without moral concerns, and the father as a passive man. In a cruel world, full of dangers and evil intentions, intelligence is required to survive. The children were forced to a quickly maturation. At the end of the fairy tale, they are able to identify the way home and they provide the family with treasuries. The vision of Hansel and Gretel is positive, they are victimized by the narrators (in expressions such as “the poor children”), and they often invoke God, because of the close relationship between religiosity and good. The children who read the fairy tale could feel identified, since the main characters are also children. The witch represents a contrast with the world of the woodcutter’s family. She monopolizes candies, bread and sweets, as well as precious stones, in an environment where the rest of the people were starving. Although there is no vision of aristocracy, as presented in other fairy tales portraying kings and princesses, the witch enjoys material benefits. The cultural and gender values that can be identified in Hansel and Gretel are also present in other fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers, and belong to the cultural tradition in many fantasy works. Hansel and Gretel contains the elements that are inherent to every unforgettable fairy tale: the struggle between good and evil, the winning of the good and the punishment of the evil, and it still fascinates young and adult readers. Work Cited Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Trans: Jack Zipes. New York: Bantham Books, 2003. Read More