“I think the poets have made a mistake: because the world of the fairy-tales is a brighter and more varied world than ours, they have fancied it less moral; really it is brighter and more varied because it is more moral.”
-G.K. Chesterton
I am going to do something very dangerous, I am going to debate a point—posthumously—with arguably one of the most influential and well-respected commentators and moralists of the Western world, G.K. Chesterton, who wrote extensively and eloquently on many subjects, among them fairytales. (And also had a great head of hair.) You may not have heard of Chesterton, but if you are a fan of fairytales, which, if you’re reading this you probably are, then you have almost certainly stumbled across a quote of his that has been often repeated without attribution:
Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.
Now, I do not claim to have a tenth the knowledge of fairytales that Chesterton does, and I’m certain that were the great man still alive today he would wipe the floor with me, nevertheless, I not only am going to disagree with him, I am going to disagree with him about something that most people believe: that fairytales are inherently moral or at least that they provide moral guidance. The fact is that as much as I think that they are entertaining, and in their original forms often wickedly and subversively so, I also think that fairytales are a very dangerous place to seek guidance of any sort—particularly moral guidance.
So, let’s lay down the ground rules. I’m going to select two classical fairytales that are generally considered to teach a valuable moral lesson. In selecting these stories I am going to pass over some fairytales like Bluebeard that have truly horrible things to teach us about morality. (i.e. listen to your husbands, ladies, or you may end up slaughtered in your basement.) I will also pass over the clearly amoral stories like Sleeping Beauty where punishment is exacted on an innocent with no consequence. And, I will not even mention Hans Christen Anderson except to say that if you read The Red Shoes or The Little Mermaid you might come to the conclusion that he really didn’t like children at all. Instead, I am going to focus on fairytales that most people naturally assume have a moral, but in which the moral is subsumed by one or more gross immoralities also taught by the story.
The Beauty And The Beast: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
“Beauty,” said this lady, “come and receive the reward of your judicious choice; you have preferred virtue before either wit or beauty, and deserve to find a person in whom all these qualifications are united. You are going to be a great queen. I hope the throne will not lessen your virtue, or make you forget yourself.”
Here then is the moral we are meant to take from the story The Beauty and The Beast, as most famously told by Mme. Leprince de Beaumont in the 18th century, that Beauty’s ability to see the good virtues of the Beast, despite his outward appearance, is laudable and leads to good things. In the story it cannot be doubted that Beauty’s behavior is exemplary. When her father is in financial trouble she asks for no gift, when she does ask for something it is a single rose, and she only asks for that so her abstinence would not silently condemn her sisters for their own lavish desires. When her father returns home and tells them that by picking the rose for Beauty he has doomed himself to die at the Beast’s hands unless one of his daughter’s takes his place, it is Beauty that insists on going. And so on. It is also true that the Beast is generous and kind to Beauty once she arrives, giving her no cause, except through his ghastly appearance, to believe he is evil or has evil intentions. All that is required for the ‘happily ever after’ to arrive is for Beauty’s virtue and kindness to see through the outward bestial mask the Beast has been cursed with. And she does.
The moral in this framing of the story is easy to see, but the problem is in how we come to this happy end. First, it must be remembered that the only reason Beauty and the Beast are together is that the Beast threatens Beauty’s father with death unless one of his daughter’s takes his place. Nor is it ever promised or assumed that the Beast will be kind to the girl. Instead, Beauty and her family all truly believe that the creature will kill her as soon as she is delivered to him.
As soon as he was gone, Beauty sat down in the great hall, and fell a crying likewise; but as she was mistress of a great deal of resolution, she recommended herself to God, and resolved not to be uneasy the little time she had to live; for she firmly believed Beast would eat her up that night.
Now Chesterton would tell you that all of this was justified, because the father stole a rose from the Beast’s garden. Indeed, he wrote a long essay in which he says that the real morality taught by fairytales is that “all happiness hangs on one thin veto; all positive joy depends on one negative.” In other words that the act of taking the rose justifies the extraordinary punishment meted out to him and by fiat on his innocent daughter.
I suppose I might agree with Mr. Chesterton were the Beast a true innocent. In other words, were the Beast to have no motive behind the punishment except a desire for justice, but in truth the Beast is himself under a fairy curse that requires him to get a maiden to fall in love with him (in the original being measured by whether she would sleep with him). So, rather than being an innocent, the Beast is a hunter that actively sets out to entrap Beauty’s father to get the girl. And what a job he does trapping him.
In the story Beauty’s father is lost in the woods and stumbles upon the Beast’s apparently abandoned castle. In most versions the man is, at first, very reticent to intrude, but things simply keep appearing to satisfy his needs. He is cold and there is a fire. He is wet and there are dry clothes. He is hungry and there is food. He naturally assumes (with typical fairytale logic) that some good fairy has placed this castle in his path to help him. Tragically he is mistaken.
On his way home, the man passes an arbor in the Beast’s garden filled with roses and remembers Beauty’s request and plucks one—and is doomed. Unlike the similar parable in the garden of Eden, there was no warning given that the roses were off-limits, and in all other things Beauty’s father was free to indulge. One could rightly ask that had it not been the rose would the Beast not have found some other pretext to seize the man? If there is justice here it is an arbitrary and capricious justice that undermines the moral lesson. Does the Beast’s later behavior toward Beauty excuse his earlier cruelty? Why can the Beast, of all the characters in the story, show this dual nature (good and evil) and still be redeemed while Beauty must be perfectly virtuous? If there is a moral here, it is difficult to find among the weeds of bad behavior and cruelty.
Cinderella: “Goodness is rewarded and meanness is punished”
“When the wedding with the prince was to be held, the two false sisters came, wanting to gain favor with Cinderella and to share her good fortune. When the bridal couple walked into the church, the older sister walked on their right side and the younger on their left side, and the pigeons pecked out one eye from each of them. Afterwards, as they came out of the church, the older one was on the left side, and the younger one on the right side, and then the pigeons pecked out the other eye from each of them. And thus, for their wickedness and falsehood, they were punished with blindness as long as they lived.”
Cinderella would appear to have a very straightforward moral: honesty and goodness are rewarded and “wickedness and falsehood” are punished—and punished quite severely I might add. But, this moral judgment is applied, as in Beauty and the Beast, in a manner so sloppy and indiscriminate that it undercuts the entire lesson.
First and foremost, Cinderella’s stepmother would appear to be far more guilty of the crimes of wickedness and falsehood than the stepsisters. Consider, it is the stepmother, not the stepsisters, that makes and then breaks a promise to Cinderella to allow her to go to the King’s ball if she finishes her chores. Also, it is the stepmother, not the stepsisters, that comes up with the plan to cut off pieces of the stepsisters’ feet so the glass slipper will fit them. Despite all this, the stepmother escapes the story unpunished. As does, I may mention, the most monstrous of the characters in the story—Cinderella’s father.
Here is a man that allows his actual daughter to suffer horribly at the hands of his new wife and daughters and does nothing. And, there can be no doubt of his not knowing about this. Consider the way the story describes Cinderella’s life after the father adopts his new family.
They took her beautiful clothes away from her, dressed her in an old gray smock, and gave her wooden shoes. “Just look at the proud princess! How decked out she is!” they shouted and laughed as they led her into the kitchen. There she had to do hard work from morning until evening, get up before daybreak, carry water, make the fires, cook, and wash. Besides this, the sisters did everything imaginable to hurt her. They made fun of her, scattered peas and lentils into the ashes for her, so that she had to sit and pick them out again. In the evening when she had worked herself weary, there was no bed for her. Instead she had to sleep by the hearth in the ashes. And because she always looked dusty and dirty, they called her Cinderella.
There is simply no way that the father could not notice that his daughter, who his new wife had taken to calling Cinderella, had no nice things to wear, or was constantly slaving away, or slept in the hearth and was filthy. Worse still, when the prince asks the father directly whether or not he has a daughter besides the stepsisters he lies.
No,” said the man. “There is only deformed little Cinderella from my first wife, but she cannot possibly be the bride.”
The father’s betrayal here is difficult to understand and impossible to condone. And yet, again, he escapes the story with no consequence. There is no moral sanction here. This by the way is a common problem in many fairytale stories, where the father’s cruelty or negligence are excused.
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In Hansel and Gretel, the wife may come up with the plan to abandon the children in the woods, but it is the woodcutter that actually goes through with it. For this crime the wife dies and the woodcutter lives happily ever after with the children he betrayed.
- In Snow White it is without dispute that the stepmother is evil (trying four times to kill the girl), and for her crimes she is placed into burning-hot shoes and forced to dance until she dies. What about Snow White’s father? He is alive throughout the story and presumably never notices when his only precious daughter disappears from his castle. There is absentmindedness and then there is gross negligence.
- People often say that the miller’s daughter inRumpelstiltskin deserved to lose her child, because she deceived the king into thinking she could spin straw into gold, and yet no one mentions that it is her father that tells the original lie, and twice the king threatens to kill her if she does not complete the task.
Chesterton, in summing up his views on fairytale morality writes:
It is surely obvious that all ethics ought to be taught to this fairy-tale tune; that, if one does the thing forbidden, one imperils all the things provided. A man who breaks his promise to his wife ought to be reminded that, even if she is a cat, the case of the fairy-cat shows that such conduct may be incautious. A burglar just about to open some one else’s safe should be playfully reminded that he is in the perilous posture of the beautiful Pandora: he is about to lift the forbidden lid and loosen evils unknown. The boy eating some one’s apples in some one’s apple tree should be a reminder that he has come to a mystical moment of his life, when one apple may rob him of all others.
In Chesterton’s view of fairytale morality it is fine that in failing to invite the fairy to the christening you may have just sentenced your daughter to death, or in plucking the rose from the beast’s garden you may forfeit your life, because it teaches us how tenuous is our position in this world. And, perhaps this point is defensible, though I think the draconian nature of the punishments undercuts the morality of the judgment. However, whether you agree with me or Chesterton on that point, for punishment to be moral and just it must be applied evenly and to all. Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Fairytales simply do not follow this maxim. Punishment is too often applied to those least culpable, or to those completely innocent, leaving the real villain (and often the powerful and male characters) unscathed. Without this basic thread of fairness it is better to read fairytales for entertainment and seek your moral lessons in a more reliable place—perhaps fortune cookies or the Sunday comics.
Jack Heckel is the writing team of John Peck, an IP attorney living in Long Beach, CA who is looking forward to the upcoming release of Once Upon a Rhyme, and Harry Heckel, a roleplaying game designer and fantasy author, who is looking forward to the publication of Happily Never After.
These are very, very strict Catholic statements, and it must be remembered that Chesterton was a Catholic lay theologian who occasionally made Opus Dei look more liberal than Pope Francis. It’s probably fair to say that this view deeply informed his attitude toward and interpretation of fairy tales and morality.
Nice analysis. I think the point made by the tales you cite is that there are practical consequences in life that may well not be tied to moral considerations.
What about Snow White’s father? He is alive throughout the story and presumably never notices when his only precious daughter disappears from his castle. There is absentmindedness and then there is gross negligence.
This made me chuckle.
“Darling, er, didn’t there use to be a young lady around the palace? Some sort of relation of mine?”
I think I disagree with your judgement of the Beast. As you point out:
in truth the Beast is himself under a fairy curse that requires him to
get a maiden to fall in love with him (in the original being measured by whether she would sleep with him). So, rather than being an innocent, the Beast is a hunter that actively sets out to entrap Beauty’s father
…but this pretty well excuses the Beast from blame, doesn’t it? He isn’t entrapping people out of malice, he is obliged to because of this curse. I suppose a truly ethical Beast would have said, like Ruthven Murgatroyd in Ruddigore, “I refuse to follow the terms of this curse. Now let it fall on me if it must” but can we really fault him for not doing so?
It’s a particularly nasty curse, too, given the Beast’s ugliness and his terrible reputation – everyone believes (for no apparent reason) that he’s a cannibalistic monster. Not easy to meet members of the opposite sex under these circumstances.
On a scale of 1 to Chesterton, my knowledge of fairy tales is probably about 2, but there’s something I want to mention.
Could it be that some of these characters escape punishment because they have no narrative agency? The father in Cinderalla must be callously indifferent to his daughter’s treatment, both for the set up and the resolution of story. The story is about Cinderalla and her stepsisters, the other characters serve narrative purposes as convenient and so escape either reward or punishment.
Maybe we’re supposed to derive the moral of the story from the actions of the protagonist and her opponents and treat the other characters as mere narrative expedients. That creates no obligation on the reader to follow through but it might explain the lopsided nature of these ‘morals’.
Could it be that some of these characters escape punishment because they have no narrative agency? The father in Cinderalla must be callously indifferent to his daughter’s treatment, both for the set up and the resolution of story.
This is true – it’s like other children’s stories in which the first thing you have to do is find a reason why their parents aren’t around (they’ve been evacuated/ they’re at boarding school/ etc.)
I don’t think it’s so much evil or cruelty on the Beast’s part, but desperation. I mean, he doesn’t actually do anything, he just threatens to.
“Oh you have a family huh? Daughter you say? Well I’ll kill you for taking that rose unless you send one of them here.”
really translates to
“Finally someone wandered by. But it’s some old guy, damn. Oh daughters? But there’s no way he’ll just send them out here for tea. I’m gonna have to inprovise here. LYING LYING RAWR.”
I don’t think disagreeing with a dead man about his opinions on fairy
tales is particularly dangerous. As it is, you applied a different
ideology than Chesterton’s, from a different generation, to a fraction of a quote, from a man who’s too dead to clarify intent or opinion, with little consideration for the values of the fairy tales’ original time period, and unsurprisingly came to a different conclusion about whether you found a couple of stories moral. That’s not particularly remarkable.
Very strict Catholic statements? I often think Catholicism and theology/religion are about as well understood as quantum theory.
Taken on its own, the quote is just barely Catholic as I understand it. One of the defining bits of Catholicism is that forgiveness is possible, no matter how much the Church has managed to screw that message up.
It is definitely a strict statement, but then again, it’s an incomplete one. The above quote has been taken out of context, and so the meaning has been twisted a good deal. It would be worthwhile to look at the surrounding text. Chesterton, from what I can tell, is commenting on the nature of morality and happiness in fairy tales generally, and connecting that to the way morality plays help us to learn. The Beast’s behavior is not supposed to be pardonable, it’s supposed to be a reminder to the cautious reader, who then thinks over the details (as Jack Heckel has done very well). It works as a cause for thought, not a substitution for it. Check this out (it’s Chesterton, from that same book):
“This great idea, then, is the backbone of all folk-lore—the idea that all happiness hangs on one thin veto; all positive joy depends on one negative. Now, it is obvious that there are many philosophical and religious ideas akin to or symbolised by this; but it is not with them I wish to deal here. It is surely obvious that all ethics ought to be taught to this fairy-tale tune; that, if one does the thing forbidden, one imperils all the things provided. A man who breaks his promise to his wife ought to be reminded that, even if she is a cat, the case of the fairy-cat shows that such conduct may be incautious. A burglar just about to open some one else’s safe should be playfully reminded that he is in the perilous posture of the beautiful Pandora: he is about to lift the forbidden lid and loosen evils unknown. The boy eating some one’s apples in some one’s apple tree should be a reminder that he has come to a mystical moment of his life, when one apple may rob him of all others. This is the profound morality of fairy-tales; which, so far from being lawless, go to the root of all law.”
Notice the bit about playfulness, and the “may be” and the “may rob.” He’s not being authoritarian about anything.
I also don’t know how Chesterton made Opus Dei look more liberal than Pope Francis, so I would need some examples before I could argue that point. All I want to say is that fairytales obviously aren’t a substitute for careful thinking (this article was great and pointed out how the morals might get lost in the telling of the tale), but they might be a good tool in careful hands.
The remark from Chesterton is from Tremendous Trifles (1904) – many years before his conversion to Catholicism:
“Fairy tales are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon”.
I think the OP missed how fairy tales make their points. They’re not saying that the world is a good place, and that for example the Beast is wonderful and just. He is being punished because he is not. He learns to be good by falling in love with a virtuous woman. And the point of the story is that in a cruel and unjust world, if you, like Beauty, stick to your virtues you will be rewarded.
I have to admit, I have never been that into Chesterton, even if we share the same beliefs for the most part – many of my good friends really like him, but something about his writing style/logic puts me off.
But, I actually really do like that quote. I actually enjoyed reading the article and yes, it’s good to discuss unfortunate implications, the way morals can get garbled and the way some morals change over time. But I also highly doubt that Chesterton would literally say that in a real life situation the people in these events would deserve what happened to them.
Also, Demetrios, your comment actually made me laugh out loud :) Although, I do agree with the Onion Kight here, and I don’t actually think Pope Francis is “liberal” in the sense Americans use it but that is something I can get into quite heated discussion with even amongst Catholic friends so I’m not too terribly interested in doing so here ;)
I don’t see how they are any different from what Jesus says at Matthew 5:29. If your eye is causing you to stumble, then cut it out and throw it away. In other words, your happiness — your life, your salvation, and all positive joy — could depend upon getting rid of one negative. If you do not, then your life could be forfeit. This is precisely what happens in the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. They had all the blessings — all the positive joys — of the Garden, but then lost it all because of one negative … disobeying God’s one expicit command.
Which seems to be the point Chesterton is making: fairy tales are far from lawless (immoral), as “the poets” claim. They all operate on this notion of conditional peace and happiness; that you must do X, or refrain from doing X, in order to obtain happiness. In this way, they are fundamentally moral, since all ethics rests on the idea of people choosing one action or another, which in turn leads to their happiness or doesn’t, depending on the choice that is made.
I’m kinda wondering, why is the female Beauty and the male Beast? Why isn’t the female Beast and the male Beauty? Would that alter the moral any?
There are two things to keep in mind about fairy tales.
Firstly, almost all have come down to us from an oral tradition, which means you get all sorts of interpretations and mistranslations in the mix.
Secondly, each is a simple framing story to express a particular idea, so the background characters are paper thin. If you’re telling a story over a fireplace, your listeners aren’t expecting the Father to have much of a place – this story is about
EmberCinderella and how she marries a prince.I must have read a dozen different versions of most of the Grimm collected tales before I left school, and while the gist was the same, the specific circumstances were often wildly different. A simple example would be that I have never read the addition of the stepsisters being blinded.
I’m kinda wondering, why is the female Beauty and the male Beast? Why isn’t the female Beast and the male Beauty? Would that alter the moral any?
Here’s one, sort of:
http://www.worldoftales.com/European_folktales/Romanic_folktale_2.html
The fairy tales assume a harsh, frequently unjust world in which bad luck or the cruel arbitrary malice of the powerful may well inflict crushing punishment — that is, they’re a pretty accurate reflection of reality.
The moral lessons are about how people -deal- with this framework.
All,
Sorry my comments are so late this time, but usually I get a notice when these things post, and this time I didn’t.
First, I know a lot of posters have asked the question about whether it is fair to judge fairytales the way I am in this post. Narrative limitations and the fact that they arise from oral traditions make it inevitable that, unlike a novel, it will not be possible for the story to track down all the guilty parties and hold them accountable. I actually agree with this. However, it is entirely the inappropriateness of using these stories to provide moral teachings that I am arguing. Fairytales were not designed, originally, to be moral tales, but rather to be entertainment, typically for and by women, to be told around cooking fires and while weaving. This is why fairytales are often contrasted with fables or parables where a moral teaching is at the heart of the story.
This is why I frame this article as a counter-narrative to the way in which Chesterton advises we view fairytales. On this point I think I still disagree with some posters who would say that I have taken Chesterton out of context. I think the quote in the article summarizes Chesterton’s point well, namely, that fairytales do present a moral world-view that is laudable. The quotation I use is from an essay entitled “Fairy Tales” that was collected in a text called “All Things Considered”, which was published in 1908. The beginning of that article sets out Chesterton’s premise:
Granted, I may be being a solemn (though hopefully not superficial) person, but it is with this premise, and the related conclusion, that I disagree. Towards the end of the paragraph I originally highlight in the article, Chesterton writes:
This then is where Chesterton and I part, fundamentally. Whether it derives from his Catholicism or something else, I believe Chesterton is taking the stance that fairytales, with their arbitrary judgments and punishments, are a perfect reflection of the actual moral world, which in his view is mystical in nature. I, on the other hand, believe that morality is derived by humans, and so must be, at its root, human in scale and therefore understandable to humans.
I realize I am opening myself up to an argument on the philosophy of morality, which will quickly escalate beyond my knowledge, but I think moral philosophy is at the root of my dispute with Chesterton. And, yes, I acknowledge I am bringing a different viewpoint to bear and that is why I reach the opposite conclusion.
By the way, because I am always quick to point out my own errors, and for full disclosure, since writing this article I have discovered that Chesterton’s initial quotation in the article is incorrect. The quotation from his article “The Red Angel” actually says,
I actually agree entirely with Chesterton’s argument in The Red Angel, in that what fairytales do is to teach children that the world has monsters, but also heroes to combat those monsters. I just believe that in telling us that there are monsters and heroes, fairytales don’t also tell us that the monsters are always evil and that the heroes are always good.
My misquote also goes to prove Pulitzer-prize winning biographer Carl Van Doren correct:
Or, as Byron said, about critics, which would apply well to this correspondent, “With just enough of learning to misquote.”
To interpret fairytales outside their context implies some disengagement with the lessons a fairytale is to teach. Those lessons may no longer be applicable. We appropriate tropes amongst the tales to reinforce the society we want. What’s maybe more interesting is determining the fairytales we have today: would we include urban legends? The “American dream”?
I think that if you were to debate the point with Mr. Chesterton, as you suggest with some trepidation above, you would arrive, determined to hold on to your point despite the drubbing about to be delivered, only to find that G.K. agrees with you. He would never defend the cowardly behavior of Beauty’s father or the Beast’s selfishness and cruelty. It would not even have crossed his mind that he might need to say this.
I can see why you would get the idea that he was defending the arbitrary reward and punishment of the fairy world given what you quote above. This does naturally lead the reader to think in terms of the so-called morals of these stories. However, these “morals” were added to these stories by moralizing Victorians, a group for which Chesterton had a strong aversion. He would not have lauded them for using these tales for some sort of moral instruction of the “good little girls don’t tell lies” variety. I think that he would agree with you that fairy tales are not useful in this way.
I am not just pulling this out of the air. Chesterton’s book “Orthodoxy” contains a whole long chapter “The Ethics of Elfland,” in which he explains in great detail his opinions on the morality of fairy tales and what they meant to him in is development. Nowhere in this chapter does he make any mention of the kind of details in the stories that you are here focused on, nor does he draw any lessons of the type mentioned in your article. In fact he specifically mentions both Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella and writes the lessons he learned from these stories:
At the end of the chapter he gives a summary of what he learned from fairy tales and that he learned them even before he was a Christian. These are very broad principles such as that the universe has meaning and that therefore there is a personality behind it that means it. Also:
He is talking about very broad principles related to the nature of reality. If you read his Defence of Penny-Dreadfuls you see that he is much more concerned about the overarching morality of the story rather than the details of what the characters do. The detective in a penny-dreadful might use his fists too quickly, but at least he’s using them against an evil man and to defend someone weak. He is contrasting this with various new ethical systems which were being proposed in his day by diverse groups such as followers of Nietzsche.
He is a supporter of care for the weak, mercy towards wrongdoers and other moral points that are not consistently displayed in fairy tales. This weak point in the tales was not his concern.
@earlofwessex
First, fantastic comment. I have been pondering your post, and reading Chesterton more broadly since it landed in the comments, and I find myself persuaded–nearly. What I mean by that is that I agree that were we to have this debate we would quickly agree that the “morals” of fairytales–their stated morals that is–are not really of much use in describing a moral system. I think we would also agree with many of the points that you raised: that people are for the most part good and that they want good things to occur.
Having gotten past that point, I think we would run into a problem. I agree that he is using fairytales to paint a broad picture of our reality, however, he draws a conclusion I find unacceptable. I cannot get past this quote:
This then is the crux of both my reading and his reading of fairytales, and also the source of our disagreement. Fairytales present a world where conditions are set–arbitrarily–which the characters must live under, and the violation of these conditions can lead to terrible punishment, and from being ejected from the Happily Ever After part of the fairytale. My belief is that living under a condition of sufferance robs you of agency, including moral agency.
Characters in fairytales simply have no choices. Cinderella must be good just as her stepsisters must be bad. That the stepsisters are punished for their evil while the stepmother and father are not is not to be questioned, because that is the world that those characters have been dropped into, and those are the rules to which they have to hew.
Similarly, Chesterton might read in The Beauty and the Beast, that “something must be loved before it is lovable,” but this of course is a tautology that defies logical analysis. It may be true that to be loved another person must find that person lovable, but in our world we can make the choice to reveal to the person we wish to be loved by our most lovable self. The Beast does not, because he cannot. He has no choice. Not only is he robbed of beauty and wit, but the world he is placed in demands that he bring Beauty to him by force and under fear of death. To expect to be loved when your behavior matches your brutal appearance is not reasonable, nor should we require people to love under those conditions.
Nor does Beauty have a choice. She is purely good and self-sacrificing. Here is her debate with herself about marrying Beast:
In other words, she is obligated to love the Beast. Beacuse she is purely good she has no choice in the matter.
The messages of these fairytales may be consistent with Chesterton’s view of the world we live in, but I am still not convinced it is a world-view that is moral.
Hmm, interesting point.
Fairytales present a world where conditions are set –arbitrarily– which the characters must live under, and the violation of these conditions can lead to terrible punishment, and from being ejected from the Happily Ever After part of the fairytale
That rings a bell going back all the way to my latin days, Orpheus and Euridice for starters, let alone most of the other myths.
In every case, the hero is set an arbitrary set of conditions by the gods, a few of which they might meet, mostly they don’t. And the consequences are severe – Orpheus loses Euridice forever simply for looking back at the wrong time. Persephone is trapped in Hades half the year for feeling peckish. Don’t get me started on what Zeus got up to, or Hera did in response, or Odysseus and Poseidon.
Many of the modern fairytales display similar vagaries of logic, but often with unstated requirements.
I suspect much of that is due to a changing society and “moral” structure. The Ancient World was heavily into patriarchy, honoring the gods, and restraining from undue boastfulness lest the Gods smite thee. The medieval world was more about knowing your place, and displaying or attaining the correct virtues so that you would be rewarded in this life or the next.
I wonder now, what is today’s myth to encourage suitable moral behaviour?
I’m sorry that it has taken me so long to get back to you. I’m sure you have seasons of busyness in your life, so I’ll say no more and cut to the chase.
I don’t have a problem of this statement of Chesterton’s because I do think that we live under the condition of sufferance. I did not make this world. I did not ask to be born. I recieved life as a gift and I can keep it only so long as I fulfill certain conditions. I drive responsibly. I do not step off of high buildings. I only eat edible subtances. I don’t find that these constraints rob me of agency. In fact, I think that learning to navigate this cause-and-effect universe is our major assignment in life. I don’t think that you would quarrel with me here, so I’ll continue.
The universe also has a moral order that we need to learn to navigate and this order is something outside of ourselves. In Chesterton’s day, just as in ours, many people thought that moral systems were simply human constructions and it is up to us to form our moral system. However, moral laws, like physical laws, our outside of us. They are something we need to learn to navigate and just as I can’t alter the force of gravity by the exercise of my will, so I can’t change the force of the moral law when I break it.
An example of this from Chesterton’s day is that some people argued for a liberalization of the divorce laws. Legally, marriage was a lifelong, binding commitment and divorce was only granted in extreme cases of unfaithfulness or abuse. Why should people be trapped in a loveless marriage when they, perhaps, love someone else? The law has since been liberalized; divorce is easy and marriages have been breaking down ever since. It turns out that marriage is a lot harder than it looks, especially as it looks when you enter it full of warm feelings. A real marriage requires a lot of dying to yourself for the sake of the other and most people are simply unable or unwilling to do this unless they are “trapped” in the relationship. We always thought that romance keeps commitment alive but when we tinkered with the moral system we learned to our cost and to the cost of millions of children that commitment keeps romance alive. (In fairy tale terms, we must love our spouses when they are the Beast in order to find joy on the other side.) We are prone to wander, especially when the going gets tough. The moral law says, “No, stay in this field and the grass will be greener than it is on the other side.”
As far as being ejected from the happily ever after part of the fairy tale, I have to agree with Chesterton’s point and I think that you might too when I present it differently. Breaking the moral law that we found in our fairyland does destroy the happily ever after. Looking with envy at your neighbor’s new car destroys your enjoyment of your own. Looking at pornography destroys your contentment with your partner and, ultimately, your relationship. When we lie, it destroys our relationships and sense of reality, even if it is convinient at a particular time. Pathological liars are notoriously unable to separate true from false memories. Break a promise and you break yourself. I don’t see that this removes my agency. The cause-and-effect nature of the universe, both physical and moral, gives my choices meaning.
I think, though, that you are objecting to the arbitrary nature of the rules in fairy tales. This arises from the lack of correspondence between the fairyland of the stories and the fairyland in which we live. In fictional fairyland we may be told that on no account must we ever turn the handle of the salt grinder counter-clockwise, or else your magic sword will turn back into a rope. This seems arbitrary to us, but no doubt it makes sense in fairyland. I don’t mean that the characters in fairyland always understand it, but in the bones of fairyland, under the surface, there is coherence. We follow the directions of our mechanic in our care for our cars, even if we don’t understand them. In our world, there is coherence in the moral law even though at times it might seem arbitrary.
“Do not say something if you do not believe it to be true.” We may ask why we shouldn’t, especially when it would really help us avoid some trouble to speak a lie. Is this law arbitrary? No, what we say, what we believe and what we do should all be the same. This is what makes us a whole and complete person. It is integrity. The more we violate this law, the more fractured is our personhood, the more damaged our psyche, and the less at peace we are. A person of integrity finds themselves in many fewer situations in which telling a lie seems to be the only way to avoid trouble. The ultimate end of the road of dishonesty is the destruction of our personhood in madness. You could say that this is the loss of agency as we no longer have the ability to choose to speak truth. To the peson who doesn’t understand this, it may seem arbitrary, but it’s not.
Moving on to the choices of fairy tale characters, I think that some of this comes from the limitation of the genre. The stories are, by nature, very short and as a consequence there is some two-dimensionality to the the characters, but the fact that the stories sometimes include inner dialogue such as you quote for Beauty indicate some choice. I don’t see that Beauty is obligated to love the Beast unless is it because she says that if she were to be so ungrateful, she could never forgive herself. I see this as the consequence of the formation of her character by her earlier choices.
We are all on a journey of character formation as we make choices in life. Some people do seem, for good or ill, to arive at a final, formed character, but most of us are just on the way. This scene above is indicative of one of the formed parts of Beauty’s character. As an illustration imagine that you are at a bus stop and desperately have to get on the bus, but you’ve forgotten your money. A lady sees the distress on your face and gives you her ticket. You notice as she turns away that a $100 bill has fallen out of her purse. Do you pocket this as a windfall, or return it to your benefactor? You certainly have to option to take the money, but I doubt you could live with yourself if you were to be so ungrateful. Your character is set in this regard, but you haven’t lost agency in a meaninful sense. I think that you are glad you aren’t the kind of person for whom this would be a difficult choice.
Again, it seems that I’m not totally disagreeing with you. It’s like we are at 45 degrees from each other, not 180. Thanks for the great discussion, by the way.
I always believed that fairy tales were less a vehicle for delivering morals, but rather a harsh criticism on the lack of human morality. As Jack pointed out in his examples, many of these stories show humanity as these despicable, ugly, disgusting creatures, with a lack of morals. As Jack also referenced, many of the characters other than the protagonist(s), are shown to be the worst of mankind. How can these fairy tales serve up morals, when many of the characters themselves have no such morality?
Wilde once pointed out that “The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Cali ban seeing his own face in a glass”. I know fairy tales aren’t realism, but stay with me here. People don’t like seeing themselves as they truly are, but these fairy tales, the ones that present these criticisms on human morality (or a lack thereof), show us how much of mankind truly bites the dust when it comes to being moral. In a way, when we see these types of stories presented with these unjust characters, we also understand that the world we live in can be unjust too. We understand that these writers are presenting these characters (like the stepsisters, the mother in Hansel and Gretel, etc…) because they want us to see the lack of morals and strive NOT to be like them. So in a way, although these stories may not be the perfect delivery system for morals, they can in fact achieve the same outcome simply by showing us what we SHOULDN’T be.
But yes, the sexism in fairy tales cannot be ignored. The fathers that are in the wrong are never punished are they? But I think that’s a whole other topic.
“I’m kinda wondering, why is the female Beauty and the male Beast? Why isn’t the female Beast and the male Beauty? Would that alter the moral any?”
You should read The Ogre Courting and tell me what you think.
Dookie,
I am so happy you wandered on this post. I think you make a fine point about whether or not what fairytales try to do is hold up a mirror to what we ought not be more than what we ought to be, but I still think in Beauty and Cinderella and other, particularly female fairytale characters, the stories are sketching for their audiences the traits they think are worthwhile in women. I am in the midst of writing a new article on Beauty & the Beast. This is admittedly because of the interest in the topic, but also because I find the current debate over the morality in B&B so odd. The argument seems to be over whether or not Beauty is an example of Stockholm Syndrome, which is an odd 20th century lens with which to view the story. Instead I think what is most disturbing about B&B is that it normalizes what is essentially an abusive (if not physically at least emotionally) relationship. It is, in my opinion, some of the original source material for telling little girls that if he pulls your hair or hits you then he must like you.
Thanks for the thoughts and conversation. I love to see how people look at these old stories with new eyes.
Jack
On that point, one thing to keep in mind is that no one who read the original tale thought that the coercive relationship Beast forced on Beauty was a good thing or should be normal. The Christian belief is that marriage, and by extension all romantic relationships, must be freely entered into by both parties. This is a foundational belief for Western society. Of course, like all such teachings, many have seen it as a barrier to getting what they want and have used manipulation and force to bypass it. This has left many, usually women, in coerced relationships.
I think one of the points that a woman in one of these relationships could draw from B&B is that the best way forward for her is to love the Beast, even though he has not earned this. This is not to say that anyone should stay with an abusive spouse. Spousal abuse is a terrible thing and a violation of the image of God that is each human being. This is why even a woman in a codependent relationship with an abusive husband must leave, even though she would rather stay. His abuse of her touches on issues higher than her individual desires. To remain with him dishonors the image of God that she bears.
I’m now off the soap box and back. The point is that love can precede deserving and being the object of love can have a powerful transformative effect. This could be a powerful message for women trapped in marriages with husbands who do not love them. In such a situation, they will certainly have a happier and better life if they love their spouse anyway than if they have a combatitive or manipulative relationship with him. The only satisfaction that yields if that of pride, which is pretty thin soup. Loving doesn’t mean being a doormat. What it does mean is desiring the best for the one loved – wanting to see them flourish.
Earl,
Couldn’t agree more with everything but your first point, namely what was believed at the time about coercive or forced relationships? In 1740, when the original story was written, arranged marriages were quite common. I think if you dive into the history of B&B, that the story is specifically meant to normalize those sorts of arrangements, and to serve as a balm to the frightened girls that might be heading into such situations. I think this is what makes the values so hard to grapple with today, because we attempt to recast it with out more modern sensibilities and keep running into what I call the “original sin” of the story: that Beauty comes to the “relationship” effectively in a hostage exchange. No matter what the Beast does after this point, he can never quite be redeemed in my eyes.
Anyway, your and Dookie’s posts have encouraged me to write an entire article on the new B&B telling, which should be hitting the blog in the next few days. Take a look. I’d love to renew this discussion there.
I have studied (and written) a bit about folk and fairy tales, and the morality of many are (at the very least) compromised. We have taken them out of their houses and thrown them onto a modern road. But even at the time of their first tellings, many of them were all ready compromised. Compromised by tribe and culture, compromised when they traveled, compromised by the hidden assumptions of us against them, etc.
I mean–what to make of the prince in Snow White who (literally in older versions) buys the dead girl in the glass casket from the seven dwarfs. We are supposed to see it as a perfect love story at the end. But what we really should be asking is: what does he want with a dead girl in a see-through box? Each of my guesses/assumptions is worse than the next. He wants keep her on his coffee table as a conversation piece? He is a necrophile? He sees her as an interesting slab of meat for dinner? (Easier than running after deer.) And what does he do when she awakens? <Your answers here!>
The newer Disney versions of Snow White tease out another side of the Beauty and the Beast story which hasn’t been volunteered here but which my daughter–who studied psychology and worked with children and women in compromised relationships, calls “a primer for abusers.” The teapots and plates remind Beauty to be quiet and not annoy Beast. When he is upset or angry, they all tremble.
Jane Yolen
Jack,
I take your point. Even though, in theory, the consent of both parties is required for a valid marriage (really it’s the only thing required – church, minister and witnesses are all window-dressing, theologically speaking), “consent” was often achieved through family and social pressure. So, I have to take back my statement that what happened in B&B was not acceptable at the time. I will have to retreat to the position that there were people in Europe who would not have found it acceptable. In particular, I do think that Beauty’s father trading her for himself would not have been well-regarded. It goes against all the ideals of both fatherhood and manhood which call for self-sacrifice, putting others ahead of oneself, and courage (which is really the measure of a particular virtue at the testing point).
On the subject of arraigned marriages, I suppose that it looks worse to us today because of our individualistic culture in which decisions are largely made based on the benefit to me. In the past, the needs of the group were taken into account far more than we do now. I don’t say this because I want to defend or reintroduce the old system of marriage. However, having said that, I just realized that I have personally known three young women (from three different cultures) when they were told by their parents that a marriage had been arraigned for them. All three were thrilled, very excited, and pleased with the man they had been set up with. That’s just an observation that people can do with what they will.
So the bottom line is that I accept your point. I look forward to your new post on the topic.
Jane,
You’re right that characters in fairy tales behave in very strange ways. It’s funny how the listener often doesn’t notice because we have entered the world of the story. I know that I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the fact that the Prince fell in love with a dead girl and bought her corpse. I just thought of the action as a dramatic expression of his loss. I might have thought that it was a little bit silly. However, since it drove the story toward a happy ending, I took it in stride. I think that this is why often fairy tales don’t really have a moral. We enter the story, accept it, then depart, leaving the story behind.
@29 – funny, I was just reading about arranged marriages today. I also knew a couple in an arranged marriage (they were Indians living in the U.S.) and they were very happy with it. I think part of the issue is that we conflate arranged with forced (and definitely in some parts of the world even arranged marriages are subtly forced through social/family/economic pressure). But in the best of situations it’s seen kind of like a very involved matchmaking process; I believe both of them had rejected previous matches. And if you are from a family/culture where there are tight family ties, then it makes sense that everybody should agree. I think it was the husband who said something like, ‘who better than my family to know a good fit for me?’ In truth I don’t find it too different from some of the matchmaking services out there in terms of taking a proactive approach to finding a suitable mate. I don’t think it prevents falling in love or romance, either. I can see how for some people though the idea of family having any say or influence is very strange! And of course if your family is toxic or just otherwise doesn’t really get you it’s not a good idea. But I come from a large Mediterranean family and while nobody has ever tried to arrange my marriage, nor did they have any formal say in the matter, I also can’t imagine marrying somebody that didn’t gel with my family. My Germanic husband gladly puts up with our antics :).
@30
I think you’re right, especially where you said that the fact that a marriage was arraigned doesn’t mean that couples don’t fall in love or have romance. The overwhelming voice I hear from couples who have been married for a long time (I’ve only been married 21 years, but concur based on my more limited experience) is that romance rises from commitment, not vice-versa.