“This is exactly the message that fairy tales get across to the child in manifold form: that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence – but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious” (Bettelheim 272 in The Classic Fairy Tales).
Bettleheim’s approach to tales is too narrow not only in the tales he chooses to analyze, as Darnton points out, but also in the way that he groups children into a single identity.
While I understand Bettelheim’s belief that overcoming obstacles on account of the hero or heroine’s virtue is a helpful message for children to learn, it seems that Bettelheim fails to acknowledge other types of tales, those in which the hero or heroine does not triumph (as in the Little Red Riding Hood version mentioned by Darnton) or those in which the hero or heroine got their wishes based on lies and luck (as in The Brave Little Tailor). If Darnton looks at a wide range of different tellings and sources in order to propose some connection to cultural history, Bettelheim should be expected to do the same in order to propose that some symbol has universal psychological meaning.
Moreover, Bettelheim seems to believe that every child has the same unconscious urges and needs and thus every child will respond to and gain from the tales in the same way. With this assumption, he fails to recognize individuality. Would a disturbed child from an abusive family respond to “A Tale About the Boy Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was” just as a child living in a nurturing environment or an autistic child would? Would specifying the type of child even be feasible since all children have different personalities, beliefs, moral values, interests, etc.? Is there then any way to assess the results that the reading of fairy tales would have on “all” children? It seems to me that answering this in the affirmative would enable all sorts of gross generalizations.
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Nicole, I agree with you entirely about the generality of Bettelheim's argument. I like what you brought up about the tales in which the hero/ heroine don't triumph or triumph through deceitful means. I find it difficult to believe that Bettelheim would approve/ agree that children should learn how to succeed underhandely. For instance, he leads us to believe that tales that show consequences are important, but what kind of message would a tale like "The Brave Little Tailor" send to a child (as you pointed out)?
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