Throughout history, wealth has been a touchy subject, to say the least. On one hand, books like The Great Gatsby and TV shows like Gossip Girl have allowed people the world over to feign over fantasies of a limitless wealth. On the other hand, events such as the 2008 Financial Crisis and resulting demonstrations against the “1%” in cities across the globe have villainized those same wealthy persons in the real world. This dynamic ties back to a central belief in the “rags to riches” story. People are happy to entertain themselves with representations of wealth in the arts, but only if this wealth is seen as personally attainable. In this way, they are happy to accept the disadvantages that come with a lack of wealth, but if, and only if, they believe that one day they will find themselves in that same position. But, when an event like the 2008 Crisis fractures the illusion that anyone can work hard and become well-off, people are less keen, and at times outright hostile, to positive representations of wealth in the arts and the real world. After the 2008 crash, most people’s negative feelings toward Wall Street were fed by movie depictions like The Wolf of Wall Street. Authors, playwrights, and other living artists have harnessed the zeitgeist of the current pull between reality and the American Dream in a unique way. However, depicting the zeitgeist concerning wealth is in no way an unprecedented move. Often, authors in their respective eras have captured these feelings in their stories in order to uphold the current social structures around wealth, or push back against a certain movement. One type of literature that harnesses this feature extremely well is the Fairy Tale. In this essay I will argue that the Fairy Tale is a useful tool in contextualizing the feelings surrounding wealth in its respective society and era.
When we think of the Fairy Tale in our collective imaginations we think of innocent tales that we are happy to read to our children. Free from sexual imagery and cursing, the Fairy Tale is the perfect form of entertainment. And, this may be true as far as the Disney fairy tales that we know and love are concerned. However, most of these fairy tales, such as Cinderella or Beauty and the Beast, come from a much deeper, darker history which has had its true message altered and softened, if not totally changed, by Disney. Digging deep into the origins of these fairy tales unveils the complex socioeconomic climate of their places in history, and these hidden messages are much more profound than the Disney plot may suggest. Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint once said, in their paper Political readings, “All fantasy is political, even – perhaps especially – when it thinks it is not” (102). I find this to be especially true regarding the development of the fairy tale. However much the fairy tale may change over the course of centuries, it will still be a product of its time. In this essay I will uncover the socioeconomic and political messages buried within 3 Fairy Tales: Beauty and the Beast, A Golden Pot, and Cinderella.
A Fairy Tale that permeates the collective consciousness of childhood for many Americans is Beauty and the Beast. As one of the most classic Fairy Tales of all time, it has gone through many iterations in not just rewrites, but also film and theater. As the tale moved through the centuries it has been adapted and softened from the hard-hitting 1740 version. In this analysis I will be using Beauty and the Beast from Lang’s 1889 collection The Blue Fairy Book, which preserves many of the original facets of the story, while being much more accessible to the general public. Beauty and the Beast tells the tale of a large family, one comprised of a wealthy merchant and his 12 children, and their relationship with wealth. One day, misfortune strikes the family and their house burns down; shortly thereafter, a storm sinks all of the father’s ships at sea. The family is forced into poverty until one day the father receives word that one of his ships may have been found. Long story short, the father’s ship is sold to pay off his debts and the family is not rescued from their quite average lifestyle. On his way home, the father picks a rose for Beauty but, unfortunately for him, it belongs to an aristocratic monster known simply as Beast. The father and Beast negotiate over compensation for the rose, and they settle on one of the daughters, Beauty. Beauty goes to live with Beast and eventually falls in love with him. Money takes a very central role in the story, and by analyzing the time period in which the story was written and themes of the story we can hypothesize the motivations of Villeneuve in writing Beauty and the Beast.
The original publishing of Beauty and the Beast was nearly 60 years before the French Revolution. And, while this story was written 90 years after, it preserves the original facets of the story and serves as a near-direct translation of the story into English. It has long been suggested that the Disney version of the film holds strong parallels with the French Revolution, and while that version was heavily modified, as Disney tends to do, it is easy to see parallels within our own version as well. The French Revolution was a period of intense social upheaval in pre-Bonaparte France in which sought to redesign the country’s political landscape. The Revolution started after the Third Estate, the bottom 98% of non-aristocratic French, grew tired of their lack of political power and the monarchy and overthrew the aristocracy. After years of bloodshed the French Revolution ended with a death toll in the tens-of-thousands and a Republic in place. There is a strong context of the pre-Revolution years within Beauty and the Beast. The majority of socioeconomic subject matter of the story can be captured in one vital scene. When the Beast, an archetype of a French aristocrat, finds the father picking one of his roses he treats him with absolute indignation. He scolds the father, saying “‘Your insolence shall not go unpunished… you are very ready with excuses and flattery… but that will not save you from the death you deserve’” (104,105). Beast does not kill the father but instead asks that the father gives him one of the daughters. Absolutely outrageous abuses like this at the hands of the upper-classes paint the aristocracy in a grim light and highlight the class relations of the 18th century. Overall, it shows that the lower and middle classes were expected to bend to the will of the upper classes who act as complete monsters. With this illustration of the aristocracy as a class of people at ease with killing a man over a flower and demanding a daughter for compensation while they themselves lived in estates, it’s easy to see why the common people felt so strongly that a revolution was needed. In Barbot de Villeneuve’s Beauty and the Beast, French nobility are, quite literally, beasts. While Beauty and the Beast concerns a society on the brink of social upheaval and villainizes the wealthy, other Fairy Tales work in the opposite manner. Fairy Tales like E.T.A Hoffmann’s The Golden Pot are more concerned with upholding the social pecking order and preserving class distinctions.
E.T.A. Hoffmann describes his The Golden Pot as a modern fairy tale. While it isn’t so modern today, it still brings new concepts into the ages-old fairy tale structure. The Golden Pot, at its most basic, is a story about a young man on the bad side of an old, poor witch. The opening scene takes places at a market, where Anselmus, the main character, runs into an old lady as she sells apples and cakes. The lady drops her basket of apples and cakes and the surrounding market-goers swarm to pick up the fallen goods. Our first taste of potential bias in the story comes at this moment, when the narrator tells us, “The other crones left the tables where they were selling cakes and brandy, surrounded the young man, and scolded him with plebian fury” (1). While a scolding after running into someone does not seem so unusual, it is quite unusual to describe the anger that comes out of an interaction like this as “plebian fury.” Anselmus apologizes and pulls out his wallet to pay for the apples and cakes he destroyed, and the woman “[seizes] it greedily and hastily [tucks] it away” (1). From the very beginning of the story, the soon-to-be-villain is painted as a greedy, street-vending “plebian” while Anselmus is assumed to be “a gentleman of the cloth” by a passerby (8). These interactions and assumptions relates the socioeconomic status of characters with their perceived ability for good. The story progresses with Anselmus being employed by an academic in the role of transcribing ancient text, while he fights with the witch over control of his own love-life. While Anselmus seeks to marry a beautiful snake-woman, the witch has him fall in love with another young girl through trickery. Subtle cues like these instruct readers that persons from a lower socioeconomic status are happy to get their way through dirty tactics and their actions should always be viewed through a lens of mistrust. Socioeconomic indicators are used as a tool of character development in many forms of storytelling, with the wealthy and educated being viewed as a wholesome bunch and the lower-class being viewed with mistrust.
If nothing, The Golden Pot is a product of its time. E.T.A Hoffmann (1776-1822) was by no means a wealthy man. Though from a professional, academic family, he often wrote fantasy stories such as The Golden Pot to supplement his shoddy income. This realization makes the class snobbery present in this Fairy Tale all the more shocking; it suggests that the disparagement of the lower-classes was not the blind-spot of an aloof aristocrat, but rather intentionally written in to reinforce class distinctions. But, we do not see a clear distinction between wealthy and poor in The Golden Pot, but rather a distinction between poor and intellectual, as the witch earns money by selling goods on the street and the other characters are employed as consulates or archivists. The Golden Pot was written during the era of German Romanticism, when intellect and culture dominated the social hierarchy. This empowered Hoffmann, whose ancestors had been jurists and he himself an intellectual, to bolster the social order and ensure that he remained a respected member of society as a member of the intelligentsia. In this way, Hoffmann appropriated the general form of poor vs. wealthy and recasted it to suit himself and the zeitgeist of 19th century Prussia as poor vs. intellectual. The Golden Pot may be a Fairy Tale, but it’s also a representation of a unique socioeconomic climate.
The final Fairy Tale I will analyze is Cinderella. While there are thousands of variants on the story, from ancient Egypt to ancient China, that carry the same themes of undue oppression and unexpected rewards, the tale I will focus on is the 1800s version collected and edited by the Brothers Grimm. This version in particular is much more violent and intense than the Disney versions we are accustomed to, although it possesses many of the same themes. Cinderella has two step-sisters who steal her clothes and jewels and force her to wear rags and clean up after them. One day, a royal feast is announced but Cinderella is told she is not allowed to go by her step-mother, on account of not having any clothing to wear. But, with the help of some magic doves, Cinderella is dressed in a fine gown and attends the feast. At the feast, she meets a prince. Her and the prince continue meeting up but one night, upon leaving the prince, Cinderella leaves one of her slippers behind. The prince comes to her house looking for her, and the step-sisters cut off parts of their feet in order to fit the slipper, so that the prince will think them Cinderella and marry them. However, the prince is not fooled, and discovers that the slipper belongs to Cinderella. The two are married and, at the wedding, the magical doves return to peck out the eyes of the evil step-sisters and drive them out of town.
While the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm are technically collected from the oral tradition of story-telling in Germany, it is undoubtedly true that they edited the stories in order to align them with their own views and thoughts. One theory on the themes behind the Grimm Brothers’ work is that it was heavily influenced by Marxism. This theory was researched in Rebecca Cicalese’s senior thesis, “The Grimm Brothers: An Interpretation of Capitalistic Demands and Desires.” Being two educated young men in a changing Germany, it is no surprise that the brothers would have been influenced by the teachings of their contemporaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. After the brothers’ father died, the family fell on financial hardship. Although they were accustomed to an upper-class lifestyle, after the death of their father they were no longer considered a member of the upper-class in the upper-class imagination. In fact, they were denied entry to the university of their choice on account of their new economic class. This adversity shaped the beliefs of the brothers and turned them away from the idea of money being merited and toward the teachings of Karl Marx. This is very clearly illustrated in the Fairy Tale Cinderella. In the beginning of the story, the step-sisters enter their new house and “took [Cinderella’s] beautiful clothes away from her, dressed her in an old gray smock, and gave her wooden shoes.” In a Marxist context, the step-sisters represent capitalists, who unjustly take that which Cinderella has worked for in order to enrich themselves. The step-sisters force Cinderella to work, exploiting her labor for their own benefit, and at no benefit to herself. Later, the step-mother encourages her daughters to maim their feet so that the slipper may fit one of them. This demonstrates how rigid the class structure in many countries was in the 19th century. Social mobility was at an all-time low. So low, in fact, that you may have had to mutilate your feet in order to move up the social pecking order. Furthermore, at the wedding of the prince and Cinderella, the magical birds peck out the eyes of the evil step-sisters, representing the violent clashes between the proletariat and capitalists that Marxism glorified and encouraged. And, in the end, Cinderella is rescued from her proletariat life while her labor-exploiting sisters are left blind, avenged by the bird-henchmen of Cinderella.
While it takes some examination, often hidden messages and agendas are hidden in fairy tales. With some Fairy Tales, like The Golden Pot, authors are not shy about writing in their own feelings on the socioeconomics of the day. Other tales, like Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella, authors are much subtler in their approach to the matter. In any case, it would be foolish to say that a Fairy Tale is nothing but a children’s story; Fairy Tales have complex social constructs that are written in to each and every one, and it’s more than worth it to dig a little deeper, analyze, and discover this deeply fascinating context.