Analysis of Story Of The Three LIttle Bears by Eleanor Mure - Essay Example

Analysis of Story of the Three Little Bears The Story of the Three Little Bears by Eleanor Mure is about Goldilocks and three polite bears. One bearis small, the other is medium, and the last is large in several aspects. Goldilocks, finding that the home of the bears is empty, enters into their house and eats the porridge, sits on the chairs, and tries to sleep on the three different beds. When the three bears return to find that someone had entered their home, they were quite upset. Goldilocks is afraid of what the bears might do to him so she jumps through the window and is never heard of again.

After reading the short story, I could feel no gratification at all, especially since the ending is quite unusual. Unlike in most children’s stories that have a happy ending or a lesson, the significant lesson to be learned from the story is not quite clear to me, and I think this would be the case for children who would read this too. It implies punishment for people who do not respect other people’s property. For me, this would not be effective. Rewards would be more appealing in teaching children.

Perhaps one of the lessons that the author tries to teach here is that of moderation. Goldilocks finds herself choosing the middle path. She likes the porridge that is not too warm nor too cold; she chooses the chair that is not too hard nor too soft; and she prefers the bed that does not have too much space above her head or below her feet. Yet, if this lesson is indeed the intention of this story, then it is not clear as no obvious rewards are given for her actions. On the contrary, punishment is implied for Goldilocks at the end of the story.

It troubles me that the words “she broke her neck” were used at the end to imply punishment for her rude and disrespectful behavior. But then again, whether or not she was indeed punished is left for the reader to guess, as there was no trace of her and the bears never saw her again. I find this quite troubling, since it makes me wonder what the point of the story really is. There is no clear reward or punishment for the actions that Goldilocks did, and thus, whatever the lesson this story is supposed to teach children is not reinforced.

During the course of the story, I felt a sense of hope that it would end up great. Since the bears were polite and good-natured, I was hoping that they would forgive Goldilocks for what she did. Yet when it reached the end, Goldilocks simply ran away. The story leaves the reader hanging, and not pleasantly at that. Digging deeper than just reading the short story on the book, I learned that the original story from Mure ended much differently than what is published on most books today. Instead of Goldilocks running away, the bears try to burn her alive and drown her.

They are not successful, so in the end, what they did was to impale her on a church steeple. In this version, she was not the beautiful Goldilocks, but an old woman. Their actions appear to treat the old woman as if she was an evil witch. There is a very similar tale called Scrapefoot, which many believe largely influenced Eleanore Mure. The events were very similar, except that the protagonist is a vixen. It is to be noted that a shrewish woman can be called a vixen (Davis, 2009). It is disturbing where the root of a children’s story like this comes from.

Although it has been edited a lot since then to something that is more acceptable now, and although I think it is not wrong if you read the current version to a child, I still feel uncomfortable about this short story.Works CitedDavis, K. (2009). “The Original Goldilocks: The Story of the Three Bears Was Not the Same as Today.” April 2009 Suite101. January 2009 Mure, E. (1831). “The Story of the Three Bears”. Picture Books.