Functions of Children's Fairy Tales

by Ty Hulse

Fairy tales have been considered children's stories for a long time, yet the original meaning of them was very dark and fairly brutal. These where often stories of cannibalism, wicked parents, and brutal punishments, hardly the types of stories one would want to read to their children. Little Red Ridding Hood is for example a little bit of a horror story building tension before the girl is devoured, Jack in Jack and the Bean Stalk is a conniving greedy thief. Yet these problems only exist in the original telling of the stories. Children's fairy tales, are a new phenomenon and they are quite different from the stories of the past.