Editing Fairy tale (section)

==Association with children==
[[File:Cutlery for children detail.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Spoons for children;engraved on them are fairy tale scenes from "Snow White", "Little Red Riding Hood", and "Hansel and Gretel".|Cutlery for children. Detail showing fairy-tale scenes: [[Snow White]], [[Little Red Riding Hood]], [[Hansel and Gretel]].]]

Originally, adults were the audience of a fairy tale just as often as children.{{Sfn|Zipes|2007|p=1}} Literary fairy tales appeared in works intended for adults, but in the 19th and 20th centuries the fairy tale became associated with children's literature.

The ''[[précieuses]]'', including [[Madame d'Aulnoy]], intended their works for adults, but regarded their source as the tales that servants, or other women of lower class, would tell to children.<ref name=Seifert1996Chap3>{{cite book |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511470387.005 |chapter=The marvelous in context: The place of the ''contes de fées'' in late seventeenth-century France |title=Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690–1715 |year=1996 |pages=59–98 |isbn=978-0-521-55005-5 |first1=Lewis C. |last1=Seifert |publisher=Cambridge University Press }}</ref> Indeed, a novel of that time, depicting a countess's suitor offering to tell such a tale, has the countess exclaim that she loves fairy tales as if she were still a child.<ref name=Seifert1996Chap3/> Among the late ''précieuses'', [[Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont]] redacted a version of ''[[Beauty and the Beast]]'' for children, and it is her tale that is best known today.{{Sfn|Zipes|2007|p=47}} The Brothers Grimm titled their collection ''[[Children's and Household Tales]]'' and rewrote their tales after complaints that they were not suitable for children.{{Sfn|Tatar|1987|p=19}}

In the modern era, fairy tales were altered so that they could be read to children. The Brothers Grimm concentrated mostly on sexual references;{{Sfn|Tatar|1987|p=20}} [[Rapunzel]], in the first edition, revealed the prince's visits by asking why her clothing had grown tight, thus letting the witch deduce that she was pregnant, but in subsequent editions carelessly revealed that it was easier to pull up the prince than the witch.{{Sfn|Tatar|1987|p=32}} On the other hand, in many respects, violence{{nsmdns}}particularly when punishing villains{{nsmdns}}was increased.{{Sfn|Byatt|2004|pp=xlii–xliv}} Other, later, revisions cut out violence; J.{{nbsp}}R.{{nbsp}}R.{{nbsp}}Tolkien noted that ''[[The Juniper Tree (fairy tale)|The Juniper Tree]]'' often had its [[Human cannibalism|cannibalistic]] stew cut out in a version intended for children.{{Sfn|Tolkien|1966|p=31}} The moralizing strain in the [[Victorian era]] altered the classical tales to teach lessons, as when [[George Cruikshank]] rewrote ''Cinderella'' in 1854 to contain [[temperance movement|temperance]] themes. His acquaintance [[Charles Dickens]] protested, "In an utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected."{{Sfn|Briggs|1967|pp=181–182}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva239.html |title=Charles Dickens's "Frauds on the Fairies" (1 October 1853) |website=The Victorian Web |date=23 January 2006 |access-date=13 March 2013 |archive-date=23 July 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130723022732/http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva239.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

[[Psychoanalysis|Psychoanalysts]] such as [[Bruno Bettelheim]], who regarded the cruelty of older fairy tales as indicative of psychological conflicts, strongly criticized this expurgation, because it weakened their usefulness to both children and adults as ways of symbolically resolving issues.{{Sfn|Zipes|2002a|p=48}} Fairy tales do teach children how to deal with difficult times. To quote Rebecca Walters (2017, {{p.|56}}) "Fairytales and folktales are part of the cultural conserve that can be used to address children's fears{{nbsp}}…. and give them some role training in an approach that honors the children's window of tolerance". These fairy tales teach children how to deal with certain social situations and helps them to find their place in society.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Walters |first1=Rebecca |title=Fairytales, psychodrama and action methods: ways of helping traumatized children to heal |journal=Zeitschrift für Psychodrama und Soziometrie |date=April 2017 |volume=16 |issue=1 |pages=53–60 |doi=10.1007/s11620-017-0381-1 |s2cid=151699614 }}</ref> Fairy tales teach children other important lessons too. For example, Tsitsani et al. carried out a study on children to determine the benefits of fairy tales. Parents of the children who took part in the study found that fairy tales, especially the color in them, triggered their child's imagination as they read them.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tsitsani |first1=P. |last2=Psyllidou |first2=S. |last3=Batzios |first3=S. P. |last4=Livas |first4=S. |last5=Ouranos |first5=M. |last6=Cassimos |first6=D. |title=Fairy tales: a compass for children's healthy development – a qualitative study in a Greek island: Fairy tales: a timeless value |journal=Child: Care, Health and Development |date=March 2012 |volume=38 |issue=2 |pages=266–272 |doi=10.1111/j.1365-2214.2011.01216.x |pmid=21375565 }}</ref> [[Jungian]] Analyst and fairy tale scholar [[Marie Louise Von Franz]] interprets fairy tales{{Efn|For a comprehensive introduction into fairy tale interpretation, and main terms of Jungian Psychology (Anima, Animus, Shadow) see {{harvnb|Franz|1970}}.}} based on Jung's view of fairy tales as a spontaneous and naive product of soul, which can only express what soul is.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jung |first1=C. G. |chapter=The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales |pages=83–132 |title=Four Archetypes |year=1969 |publisher=Princeton University Press |jstor=j.ctt7sw9v.7 |isbn=978-1-4008-3915-5 }}</ref> That means, she looks at fairy tales as images of different phases of experiencing the reality of the soul. They are the "purest and simplest expression of [[collective unconscious]] psychic processes" and "they represent the archetypes in their simplest, barest and most concise form" because they are less overlaid with conscious material than myths and legends. "In this pure form, the archetypal images afford us the best clues to the understanding of the processes going on in the collective psyche". "The fairy tale itself is its own best explanation; that is, its meaning is contained in the totality of its motifs connected by the thread of the story. [...] Every fairy tale is a relatively closed system compounding one essential psychological meaning which is expressed in a series of symbolical pictures and events and is discoverable in these". "I have come to the conclusion that all fairy tales endeavour to describe one and the same psychic fact, but a fact so complex and far-reaching and so difficult for us to realize in all its different aspects that hundreds of tales and thousands of repetitions with a musician's variation are needed until this unknown fact is delivered into consciousness; and even then the theme is not exhausted. This unknown fact is what Jung calls the Self, which is the psychic reality of the collective unconscious. [...] Every archetype is in its essence only one aspect of the collective unconscious as well as always representing also the whole collective unconscious.{{Sfn|Franz|1970|pp=1–2}}

Other famous people commented on the importance of fairy tales, especially for children. For example, [[G. K. Chesterton]] argued that ''"Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon."''<ref>* {{Cite book |last=Chesterton|first=G. K.|author-link=G. K. Chesterton|date=1909|title=Tremendous Trifles |publisher=London: Methuen & Co.|page=2nd paragraph in XVII}}</ref> Albert Einstein once showed how important he believed fairy tales were for children's intelligence in the quote "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales."<ref>{{cite news |id={{ProQuest|1427525203}} |last1=Henley |first1=Jon |title=Philip Pullman: 'Loosening the chains of the imagination' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/23/philip-pullman-dark-materials-children |work=The Guardian |date=23 August 2013 |access-date=21 August 2020 |archive-date=29 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200829114556/https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/23/philip-pullman-dark-materials-children |url-status=live }}</ref>

The adaptation of fairy tales for children continues. [[Walt Disney]]'s influential ''[[Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)|Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs]]'' was largely (although certainly not solely) intended for the children's market.{{Sfn|Clute|Grant|1997|loc="Cinema"|p=196}} The [[anime]] ''[[Magical Princess Minky Momo]]'' draws on the fairy tale ''[[Momotarō]]''.{{Sfn|Drazen|2003|pp=43–44}} Jack Zipes has spent many years working to make the older [[traditional stories]] accessible to modern readers and their children.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Wolf |first=Eric James |date=2008-06-29 |work=The Art of Storytelling Show |url=http://www.artofstorytellingshow.com/2008/06/29/jack-zipes-fairy-tales/ |title=Jack Zipes&nbsp;– Are Fairy tales still useful to Children? |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100107145754/http://www.artofstorytellingshow.com/2008/06/29/jack-zipes-fairy-tales/ |archive-date=7 January 2010 }}</ref>