FAIRYTALE: THE HIDDEN SECRETS
What do we think when we think of fairytales? Lingering innocence, youthful childhood, ‘happily-ever-after’ stories? Often connoted with pleasant feelings, we might not have expected the dark side of fairytales. To your surprise, fairytales you know are no longer the fairytales you know after you hear this. Quite a number of fairytales had different endings in their origins, marking a sharp contrast to the ones we know now. Let’s explore a few.
1. Cinderella
Remember the lovely young lady eloping away in a pumpkin coach? If yes, then remember where she had to try on the glass shoes along with her wicked sisters who were trying to fool the prince? Well, to start off, Cinderella was known as Rhodopis in the ancient tale. Now here’s the wicked part. The stepsisters actually cut off parts of their own feet in order to fit them into the class slipper. However, they have their eyes pecked out by two pigeons only to spend the rest of their lives as blind beggars while Cinderella gets to lounge about in luxury at the prince’s castle. Quite shocking!
2. Sleeping beauty
‘One last kiss from a true love’ is what the sleeping queen awaits while she is put to sleep when she pricks her finger on a spindle. In the modern tale, she wakes up by a kiss from a charming prince, and those two live ‘happily ever after.’ However, the original tale says differently. She is actually put to sleep because of a prophecy, and it is not the kiss that wakes her up. The prince, rapes her, making her pregnant to two kids. The prince takes her away, while she gives birth to two children, still unconscious. She wakes up when one of her kids sucks the splinter out of her finger wanting mother’s milk.
3. Little Red Riding Hood
The modern version we know is that the Little Red Riding Hood ends up being saved by the woodsman who killed the wolf. However, the original French version says that she is given false instructions by the wolf when she asks her way to her grandmothers. Tricked and fooled, she ends up getting stripped in bed, and eaten by the wolf. After all, the contemporary French idiom for a girl losing her virginity is elle avoit vû le loup – ‘she has seen the wolf.’
