The Fairy Tales Worth Remembering as an Adult

Literature

“The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl” (first millennium B.C.) is a traditional Chinese tale that, in a popular 20th-century version, describes a couple who defy the social order for a love marriage. As punishment, the Queen Mother of the West (or, in some versions, the Jade Emperor) turns them into two stars across the Milky Way that can meet only once a year. To me, it’s a perfect story about how love in a romantic relationship is limited. The love in this story — which transcends two classes, making it more interesting — offers no magic. Subjected to cruelty and oppression, it can only be made into a legend for audiences seeking solace.

“How Some Children Played at Slaughtering” (1812) by the Brothers Grimm is a story about how reality has a different meaning in children’s playacting. In it, a child takes his role as butcher so seriously that he kills the child who plays the pig. The tale sheds an unsettling light on how, for the very young, pretending and living are so intrinsically intertwined that they may not necessarily view reality as adults do. They can make up a reality that has its own rules and logic and stay with it.

“Little Ida’s Flowers” (1835) by Hans Christian Andersen is simply delightful. Little Ida is saddened when her bouquet of flowers wilts so, to comfort her, an older student tells her that the flowers are tired after a night at a ball. After Ida puts the flowers to bed, she dreams of them dancing. I think it’s one of those fairy tales without a moral lesson. What made an impression on me, reading it as a young child and then remembering it all my life, is the fact that it seems perfectly sensible for flowers to go to a ball and tire themselves out. This is a fairy tale touch from Hans Christian Anderson, but such a light one that a reader merely nods and says, “Yes, of course it is so.”

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