Evan Florentino

Kylee Pastore, Anna Voisard

FIQWS 10105, 10005

11/17/2022

Naivety and Weakness: A Key Factor in Fairytales That May Impact Children

Fairy tales have been developed throughout history to convey the lessons included in their stories. Millions of individuals are exposed to the concepts of naivety and weakness through fairy tales. Depending on the moral of the story in various fairy tales, this may have an effect on children. Many authors have been found to use the ignorance and fragility of their heroes to promote morality or character development. Due to this, the protagonist acts irrationally in order to discover the results of their choices. Along with the original authors, others have taken other fairy tales and rewritten them to illustrate the protagonist’s courage and intelligence, which results in various outcomes from the original. Fairy tales like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Cendrillon,” and more rely on naivety and weakness to introduce plot and character development.

Naivety and weakness can be used in unique ways; there isn’t only one way to use them in fairy tales. Various authors use this as a way to connect the reader to the protagonist. In Charles Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood,” it is said that “The poor child, who did not know that it is dangerous to stay and listen to a wolf, told him: ‘I am going to see my grandmother, and I’m taking her a bun and a little pot of butter that my mother is sending me with.” (99). When we read this, we can see that Perault intentionally portrays Little Red Riding Hood as ignorant in order to set up the story’s plot. Children may view situations differently and may believe that talking to strangers in particular is acceptable. By the end of the story, when we witness the wolf consuming her, Perault utilizes this to both teach the reader a lesson and demonstrate what happens if you carelessly converse with a stranger. Some people have analyzed this story more thoroughly, like Jack Zipes in his book, “The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood,” where he said, “I argued that the origins of the literary fairy tale can be traced to male fantasies about women and sexuality. In particular, I tried to show how Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers transformed an oral folk tale about the social initiation of a young woman into a narrative about rape in which the heroine is obliged to bear the responsibility for sexual violation.” (1). His analysis proves there is a possibility it may impact children when reading these versions of “Little Red Riding Hood.” He goes more in-depth and shows how the character is made weak and naive to carry these unjust responsibilities as a child.

Since she had been foolish from the beginning of the story, the Grimm brothers insist on illustrating a lesson being taught when interpreting “Little Red Cap” today. When she encounters the wolf and chooses to engage him in conversation at the beginning of the story, Little Red Riding Hood demonstrates naivety, which is a lack of experience or judgment. She then goes into great detail about what she was doing and where her grandmother’s house was. Being innocent, Riding Hood believed it was OK for the wicked wolf to know this. As a result, she and the grandmother are attacked by the wolf and saved by an unidentified huntsman who had been seeking the wolf for some time. It then says, “And Little Red Cap thought to herself, ‘Never again will you stray from the path by yourself and go into the forest when your mother has forbidden it.’ ” (Grimm 87). Thus, giving the impression that they had made her innocent so she might learn from that awful event that we just read, it was clear that it was a teaching moment for her and that she realized she ought to have listened. The Grimm Brothers use this to introduce character development because they had already established the reason why they wanted to make her innocent, which may have a beneficial effect on kids in this situation. An article named “What is the Moral of Little Red Riding Hood?” written by Hasa states, “The Moral of Little Red Riding Hood” is that you must never trust strangers. Even a very friendly stranger may have very bad intentions. Little Red Riding Hood finds herself in danger because she talks to the wolf and naively points out the direction of her grandmother’s house.” (1). This reinforces the claim that naivety and weakness are used in fairy tales as key factors in fairy tales that brings purpose to the stories and shows children may read this and be impacted by it since they can learn a valuable lesson from the struggles of Riding Hood in this version.

Another case of naivety and weakness is exhibited in another fairy tale, Charles Perrault’s “Cendrillon.” This version of Cinderella is made to shoulder all the blame and wicked comments from her family, we see her barely refuse or stand for herself in times when she should’ve. An example of her letting things slide is when in the story it says, “For pity, sisters—you are making fun; that kind of thing is not for me.’ ‘Quite right—how everyone would laugh, to see Cinderbum going to the ball!”(Perrault, Cendrillon 131). Cinderella lives with the burden of being the stepchild since she is bombarded with disrespectful attitudes due to her lack of strength. Perrault used her weakness as a scapegoat for the plot to see her go from rags to riches despite being weak. Suggesting that weakness is awarded at the end and showing how weakness is used as a key factor in her character and story. If I were to learn of this story as a child, I’d most likely believe that it’s best to ignore negative attitudes toward myself. That’s why I believe in this case it may impact a child since it implies that they may believe they shouldn’t stand up for themselves in real life. The child may interpret the story as her being rewarded despite her lack of strength but in the real world it doesn’t work that way, if you don’t stand up for yourselves then you will continue to live being disrespected by certain people. An interesting case was when someone lived a similar life as Cinderella, in the article “Cinderella’s Lifetime Abuse,” written by Rajini Sooryanarayana, it states, “Her mother died when she was an infant, her father left the family shortly after, and her older siblings raised her, treating her much like Cinderella, forcing her to perform household chores, besides being beaten and starved by her older sister. When she was older, she ran away and was later taken in by her older brother, in exchange for helping with his growing family. This was a welcome refuge from the abusive situation that she escaped from, living with little or no shelter for a time.” This is an intriguing situation because it may be argued that she later stood up for herself when she ran away, which was the result of her previous failure to do so. This was an illustration of how a young reader of the fairy tale can interpret the character’s mistaken belief that it is acceptable to not protect oneself from ridicule.

Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” also shows naivety being used. The story says, “Afterward she made two nice beds for them, decked in white. Hansel and Gretel went to bed, thinking they were in heaven. But the old woman had only pretended to be friendly. She was a wicked witch who was lying in wait there for children. She had built her house of bread only in order to lure them to her, and if she captured one, she would kill him, cook him, and eat him; and for her that was a day to celebrate.” (Grimm, Hansel and Gretel 47). This clearly shows the reader that Hansel and Gretal weren’t aware of how dangerous it was to trust strangers due to the naivety drilled into the characters. And Hansel and Gretel are children, so it’s easier for a child to relate to the characters. In the article “Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry,” Jack Zipes said that further evidence that we have avoided confronting the grave issues that this fairy tale communicates while simultaneously rationalizing is provided by the history of how readers have responded to their narrative. (41). Further reinstating the idea of children being impacted by the story and rationalizing wrong ideas.

           In “Bluebeard,” the character was warned not to open the door to the room, but her naivety helped her ignore the red flag. It was said that “After a few moments, she began to see that the floor was all covered in clotted blood, and that it reflected the bodies of several women, dead, and tied up along the wall (they were the wives whom Bluebeard had married, and whose throats he had cut one after the other)” (Grimm, Bluebeard 108). Bluebeard then returns and plans to kill her after finding out she had seen the dead bodies, but her brothers come to her rescue and get her out of the situation. She needed to be saved by strong men, which showed her weakness. And the article “A Women’s Portrayal in Snow White” talks about Snow White and other fairy tales; an example is when it states, “In most fairy tales and stories, the female plays the role of being naive and always ends up getting herself into danger, then the man comes along and saves her life. Women are never capable of saving themselves and always need a man to protect them, according to literature.” (Dubrowski). Bluebeard’s story can be considered to agree with Dubrowski’s article because she couldn’t save herself at the end of the story, thus proving characters are made weak on purpose.

In conclusion, naivety and weakness play as key factors in fairy tales and may impact children’s interpretations of these stories. Various fairy tales had multiple uses of weakness and naivety, which were used as key factors in developing the plot since most of the time they used them to introduce character development and give the stories a way to incorporate morals. And the stories showed some outcomes of how it may have impacted them—some had good outcomes, some had bad outcomes. Leaving us with the idea that authors have turned to naivety and weakness to connect their stories to readers to help relate. 

Works cited

Dubrowski, Katie. “A Women’s Portrayal in Snow White.”Fairy tales and Fantasy Literature,  31 Aug. 2009, pp. 1-

A Women’s Portrayal in Snow White

Hasa. “What is the Moral of Little Red Riding Hood.” Pediaa, 20 May. 2016, pp. 1-

https://pediaa.com/what-is-the-moral-of-little-red-riding-hood/#:~:text=The%20Moral%0   of%20Little%20Red%20Riding%20Hood%20is%20that%20you,direction%20of%20her%20grandmother’s%20house.

Jacob Grimm, and Wilhelm Grimm. “LITTLE RED CAP.” The Original Folk and Fairy Tales   of the Brothers Grimm, Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 85–.

Perrault, Charles, and Christopher Betts. “The Complete Fairy Tales.” The Complete Fairy Tales,    ………Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2010. Pp.108-131,

Sooryanarayana, Rajini. “Cinderella’s Lifetime Abuse.” Journal of the American  

Geriatrics Society (JAGS), vol. 63, no. 1, 2015, pp. 175–175,                         https://doi.org/10.1111/jgs.13179.

Zipes, Jack. Happily Ever after : Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry.         Routledge, 1997, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203949153

 Zipes, Jack. The Trials & Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. 2nd ed., Routledge, 1993.

                pp. 78–109,