These tales typify
parental roles. There seem to be strong unchanging characteristics associated
with fathers, step-mothers and biological mothers.
The father is shown
in most stories as a powerless figure, unbothered by the plight of his
biological children and gullible to the charms of his second wife. In
‘Aschenputtel’, Aschenputtel’s father never shows his disapproval on the way
she is treated by her step-mother. One wonders whether he even disapproves in
the first place.
In Hansel and
Gretel, the father leaves his biological children in the forest to be starved
to death. The repetitive misogynistic tone of the stories makes you believe
that it was the step-mother who cajoled the father into performing this cruel
act. Thus the presence of an evil, malicious and unreconstructed step-mother
helps in exonerating the father of all his crimes. The father is insensitive
irrespective of the absence of a step mother as seen in ‘King Thrushbeard’.
Most of the tales conclude in delicious revenge or a ‘happily ever after’
consolation, while the father is part of neither.
The Grimm brothers lost their father at a young age and the
absence of a father in their childhood is evident in the presence of an
inconsequential father in the stories. We have low expectations from a
widowed man playing the role of a single father even today. Are these stories
partly responsible for that image in our mind?
There is no
examination of the step-mother, she is the villain. Period. These stories have
conditioned our mind to associate wickedness with step-mothers. The biological
mother too is unexamined though she is portrayed as angelic. She is manifested
in several forms, be it in the form of nature in the story of ‘Aschenputtel’ or
in Hulda in ‘Mother Hulda’.
Hence, these
structured tales with their recurrent plots and typified characters manage to
set ingrained notions of rigid parental roles in society
