Turning the fairy-tale inward

Traditionally passed down orally by mothers and grandmothers, fairy tales have always been tied in with women’s wisdom and power. The tellers were often the older women, instructing the younger ones through these tales which outlined social functions and living intricacies. While they worked at monotonous tasks like sewing and spinning, ‘necessary knowledge’ was handed over to the younger ones.

In a period of history where women had few rights, fairy tales were one way that women could make their opinions known. In the older tales the fairies themselves often stood for the aristocrats, having power over many but often caring little, bickering amongst themselves, concerned with their own power struggles. The heroines were the ones to comment on the double-standards of the times, on the painfulness of most arranged marriages, and the false glory of war. The best-known tales today are the ones collected by the Grimms and those written by Perrault, which, however, changed to favor the charming prince rather than the clever heroine.

Most of what we refer to as Fairy Tales today have fewer fairies in them as compared to the older tellings. The German term for fairy tales is Marchen; there is no satisfactory English equivalent. Mar-chen is the diminutive of Mar, a story or a tale, and came to mean a story of wonder and enchantment, which seems more appropriate to us today.

It is the Fairy Tale in the form of stories for children that we are most familiar with. Each of us can recall a childhood favorite - or two; those that we begged to have told to us again and again. And again.

I recall a young niece who, at around age four, had us read The Little Match Girl to her every night. Every night for two whole years. Thoroughly sick of endlessly repeating what I thought was a rather morbid story for a four year old – the ending has the little girl who sold match-sticks dying from the cold after she had tried unsuccessfully to warm herself on a cold winter’s night - I tried convincing her it was boring to have the same story yet again. I tried buying her lovely new books, I even tried firm refusal. None of this worked.

When she was around ten, I thought to ask her what she felt the story was really about. She said that hearing it, she felt ‘safe’ because a kindly old man had made friends with the little match girl, and,
“… there are always nice people, even in her sad life; people who are there to understand you.” My young niece had needed something else from the story and so had made it uniquely her own.
While writing this piece, I called her to find out what impact of the story remained after almost twenty years.

“I remember that I also loved the magic, the possibilities …” she said, and she recalled a part where, left with only three match-sticks, each one the little girl burned gave her the vivid image in the match-light of each of her deepest fantasies. The other little girl, my niece, in her moments of feeling lost or lonely, or simply not-understood by those around her, would later imagine she could light a match and see her wished-for world in it, and this gave her a lot of comfort.

Bruno Bettleheim in his analysis of fairy tales in The Uses Of Enchantment reminds us: “the fairy tale clearly does not refer to the outer world, although it may begin realistically enough and have everyday features woven into it. The unrealistic nature of these tales … is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner processes taking place in an individual.”

May Story bring you in touch with the deeper parts of yourself.

Marguerite Theophil



A lasting message
Storytelling is a powerful way to teach
any concept or principle to any soul,
because a well-told story touches the intellect,
tickles the humor, and embraces the heart.
Storytelling chisels in the stone of the soul
a lasting message.
~ Randel McGee