Everything You Think About Fairy Tales Is Wrong
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It’s an odd thing about fairy tales—they’re always under attack, yet they always survive. Like Snow White, they are constantly being threatened by proud malevolence, yet they’re always finding shelter among the noble and humble, and even when they seem dead, they keep coming back.
The attacks have been much the same since at least the Victorian era (when, as Prof. Tolkien said, they gravitated to the nursery along with the old furniture)—fairy tales are ‘unrealistic,’ childish, silly, ‘escapism,’ and so on. More recently, they’re ‘sexist’ and create unrealistic expectations, especially with regard to romance.
All this, I think, is very silly. True, it’s easy to deconstruct a fairy tale. It’s also easy to deconstruct a Ming vase, but doing so says more about you than about the art of Chinese pottery. Fairy tales simply aren’t built to stand up to that kind of criticism because they’re meant to do other and more important things.
A whole book could be written defending fairy tales against their detractors, but let’s focus on the most relevant one to us here on CatholicMatch: the idea that fairy tales create unrealistic expectations, especially with regards to romance.
Fairytales aren't meant to be realistic; they're meant to be true.
In the first place, the potential of fairy tales to create a false idea of the world seems to me something that happens much more often in books and essays than in real life. They are, in fact, probably the least likely genre of fiction to do so.
Any child of moderate good sense can see at a glance that a fairy story is several steps removed from reality by the mere fact of it’s being a fairy tale with such obviously made-up, yet delicious to the imagination ideas as dragons, fairies, giants, and the like. No one who loves fairy tales, whether a child or an adult, loves them because he believes in them.
On the other hand, more ‘realistic’ stories have a much greater potential to create this kind of unrealistic idea of the world. C.S. Lewis points this out in his essay On Three Ways of Writing for Children ; if the events of a story are obviously impossible (i.e. finding magic beans that turn into a beanstalk to the sky where the hero steals from an evil ogre), it remains just a story. But if the events are not essentially impossible, but merely improbable, it is then that the reader may be tempted to expect real life to be like the stories.
As Lewis succinctly put it, “I never expected real life to be like the fairy tales. I think that I did expect school to be more like the school stories.”
The truth of both fairy tale and real romances is this: morality matters.
It is not the fairy tale that breeds an unrealistic view of the world; it is the realistic, ‘slice-of-life,’ contemporary story. Dreaming of dragons and princesses doesn’t breed discontent; dreaming of millionaires and models does. It isn’t the willowy Disney princess who sets an impossible standard of beauty: it’s the glamorous actress or fashion model. The princess was never assumed to be real; the actress is, though the image of glamor she projects may be every bit as imaginary.
Which brings us to the fairy tale romance.
The first thing to remember is that most fairy tales aren’t romances, properly speaking. They’re morality tales. That is, Cinderella is not fundamentally about the relationship with the prince; it’s about the heroine’s good conduct. The prince is just the reward. The whole trope of the fairy tale hero marrying the prince or the princess is used because it is a simple concept that encompasses many earthly goods: love, family, wealth, and status, and hence is fable-speak for ‘was richly rewarded.’ It’s a similar device to the crowns, halos, and white robes the Bible uses to describe the saints in Heaven; not that Heaven necessarily involves jewelry and fine linens, but that these things express the glory we will experience there.
But that doesn’t mean the fairy tales don’t teach us anything about romantic relationships. We just have to understand what they’re actually saying.
How to win the heart of the princess? Be faithful.
Let’s take what I think many would consider the typical fairy tale romance: that of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. The prince sees the beautiful princess in the forest, dances a waltz with her, and they decide they are in love (which prompts the reasonable question, “what’s your name?”). She then falls under an enchantment from a wicked fairy, forcing him to battle a dragon to rescue her with true love’s first kiss, whereupon they marry and live happily ever after.
Completely unrealistic? Well, yes and no. Obviously, a single musical number isn’t what one would call a stable foundation for marriage. But consider: based on this one brief meeting, the prince first defies his father (in a respectful way that wins the old man over), then endures capture and imprisonment by an evil fairy, fights his way out of the fairy’s castle, plunges into a forest of thorns, and battles a fire-breathing dragon, all for the sake of winning the woman he loves.
In other words, whatever the basis for his love, he’s committed to it body and soul. His love may be the result of a single waltz, but he’s completely invested in it and willing to do anything to make it work.
And that, ultimately, is what matters most; not how long or how well he’s known his beloved, but how committed he is to the relationship. He’s not dithering or ‘keeping himself open:’ he’s all-but declared “I’m going to marry her or die trying.” The trope of ‘love at first sight,’ properly understood, is an image of commitment.
Modern TV romances, which reward self-interest, often falter.
Contrast this with the romance of a typical modern sitcom, which ostensibly shows something more or less like real life: the hero and heroine meet, find one another attractive, start dating, have sex, probably break up for a time then get back together, decide to move in together to ‘see if it works’ (there’s a romantic phrase for you), then may or may not decide to get married, using vows they wrote themselves, and with the proviso that they can always get a divorce.
The fact that it usually does ‘work out’ on TV is far more unbelievable than the idea that love at first sight, followed by a battle with an evil fairy-turned-dragon leads to happily ever after. The former involves no final commitment, no self-surrender, nothing but a kind of mutual agreement to keep going until one or the other decides to stop. The latter involves total commitment, a willingness to face and overcome all obstacles, and a selfless determination to see the thing through to the end.
In other words, fairy tales provide an image of what goes into a successful relationship that is far more true to life than that in most contemporary romances.
And the moral of the story is...
Again, fairy tales are what they are; they’re not meant to be taken literally. You’re probably not going to experience a romance that is, in detail, like those found in the tales of Charles Perrault.
However, the ideas of the old fairy tales should be taken to heart; that if a man expects to be worthy of a beautiful princess he’d better be prepared to be a hero and that if a woman wants to be worthy of a hero she’d better be faithful and kind. Fairy tales show us that selfless devotion and courage are required to overcome the obstacles on the path to true love, and that happily ever after only comes through complete, unreserved commitment to one another.
Who says fairy tales are unrealistic?
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