Ok, first of all I’m really sorry this is late and still hope I can get some sort of credit. I went on the blog yesterday night and no new posts had appeared, I think there must have been something wrong with my internet, but when I checked it this morning I saw all the posts.
Anyway, I have to go ahead and disagree with the last two posts and say that Bettelheim’s essay “The Struggle for Meaning” made me think about fairy tales as more than just children’s entertainment. Although Darnton’s essay, as the other blog’s suggest, does talk about the many different ways in which fairy tales go further than entertaining a child, I liked the specific ways Bettleheim talked about how a fairy tale affects the child’s psychology. Rather than simply making a child laugh or allowing her to imitate the princess in the story she was just read, fairy tales are important stepping stones. As Bettleheim says they “carry important messages to the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind” (271). They are important to a child’s development as there are not other stories like them. They are fantastical and induce wonder and bring up problem’s that must be solved. Different from other children’s stories, fairy tales are often upfront and gruesome, and don’t pad down the difficulties of life like say the Bernstein Bears do. Bettleheim says, “The fairy tale, by contrast, confronts the child squarely with the basic human predicaments” (273). Fairy tales show children that fairness is not a guarantee in life and that despite difficult circumstances, life goes on.
The way Bettleheim describes the importance of the fairy tale to a child’s development rather than entertainment made me see his as the better essay.
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I have to agree with you that Bettleheim does a better job presenting an explicit argument that fairy tales are more than children's entertainment when he says that they are for child's development. But consider this: while Bettleheim says they are more than just children's entertainment, are they still just for children? I can only think of two passing references in the essay that fairy tales might be for a wider audience than children. And, is it important to think of fairy tales as for a wider audience?
ReplyDeleteI am also not sure fairy tales are the only thing that give a child's psyche a chance to develop. It would be easy to write those examples into any picture book. And I am sure a psychoanalyst could find the deeper symbolism in anything anyway.
As a side note, last semester I picked up a bearenstein bears chapter book called "No Guns," about the "culture of violence" and its effects on schoolchildren. Arguably, the book made a very complex issue into a digestible form for the child psyche to grow on.
In response to Holly -- who is to say that there are no other stories like fairy tales that "carry important messages to the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind?" I beg to differ. Try reading some Greek mythology.
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