Who's Afraid of the Brothers Grimm?: Socialization and Politization through Fairy Tales

Over 170 years ago the Brothers Grimm began collecting original folk tales in Germany and stylized them into potent literary fairy tales. Since then these tales have exercised a profound influence on children and adults alike throughout the western world. Indeed, whatever form fairy tales in general have taken since the original publication of the Grimms' narratives in 1812, the Brothers Grimm have been continually looking over our shoulders and making their presence felt. For most people this has not been so disturbing. However, during the last 15 years there has been a growing radical trend to overthrow the Grimms' benevolent rule in fairy-tale land by writers who believe that the Grimms' stories contribute to the creation of a false consciousness and reinforce an authoritarian socialization process. This trend has appropriately been set by writers in the very homeland of the Grimms where literary revolutions have always been more common than real political ones.¹

West German writers² and critics have come to regard the Grimms' fairy tales and those of Andersen, Bechstein, and their imitators as "secret agents" of an education establishment which indoctrinates children to learn fixed roles and functions within bourgeois society, thus curtailing their free development.³ This attack on the conservatism of the "classical" fairy tales was mounted in the 1960s when numerous writers began using them as models to write innovative, emancipatory tales, more critical of changing conditions in advanced technological societies based on capitalist production and social relations. What became apparent to these writers and critics was that the Grimms' tales, though ingenious and perhaps socially relevant in their own times, contained sexist and racist attitudes and served a socialization process which placed great emphasis on passivity, industry, and self-sacrifice for girls and activity, competition, and accumulation of wealth for boys. Therefore, contemporary West German writers moved in a different, more progressive direction by parodying and revising the fairy tales of the 18th and 19th centuries, especially those of the Grimms.

For the most part, the "classical" fairy tales have been reutilized or what the German call "umfunktioniert": the function of the tales has been literally turned around so that the perspective, style, and motifs of the narratives expose contradictions in capitalist society and awaken children to other alternatives for pursuing their goals and developing autonomy. The reutilized tales function against conformation to the standard socialization process and are meant to function for a different, more emancipatory society which can be gleaned from the redirected socialization process symbolized in the new tales. The quality and radicalism of these new tales vary from author to author.⁴ And it may even be that many of the writers are misguided, despite their good intentions. Nevertheless, they have raised questions about the socio-political function of fairy tales, and this is important. Essentially they reflect upon and seek to understand how the messages in fairy tales tend to repress and constrain children rather than set them free to make their own choices. They assume that the Grimms' fairy tales have been fully accepted in all western societies and have ostensibly been used or misused in furthering the development of human beings who might be more functional within the capitalist system than other non-conformist types of people. If one shares a critique of capitalist society, what then should be changed in the Grimms' tales to suggest other possibilities? What structural process forms the fairy tales and informs the mode by which the human character is socialized in capitalist society?

Before looking at literary endeavors to answer these questions by West German writers, it is important to discuss the nature of the Grimms' fairy tales and the notion of socialization through fairy tales. Not only have creative writers been at work to reutilize the fairy tales, but there have been a host of progressive critics who have uncovered important historical data about the Grimms' tales and have explored the role that these stories have played in the socialization process.

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Until recently it was generally assumed that the Grimm Brothers collected their...