I have decided to start reading my way though the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Since there are quite a few, according to my nook 607 pages worth, I decided to do a small write up of each, or every couple, as I go through them.
The first one on the list is the story of The Frog Prince. I’ve heard of this tale. Girl goes to a fountain, meets a talking frog, kisses him, he turns into a handsome prince and they live happily ever after the end.
Well not quite.
In the original, we have a beautiful youngest daughter of the king playing with her golden ball. It falls in the fountain and she promises the talking frog that if he gets it for her, she will be his friend and let him live/be with her in the castle. Agreement occurs, but after she’s got her golden ball back she completely reneges and runs away.
The frog hobbles his way up to the castle and demands his fee. The daughter is like, “Ew gross! Frog cooties!”. The king intercedes and is all like “Dude, you made a promise. Stop being a brat.” She begrudgingly keeps her promise until she gets so pissed off at how ugly the thing is that she throws him against the wall.
She throws him against the wall! And this causes him to turn into a prince!
What kind of promotion of violence is this? What I get from the heroine in this story is make false promises and violence will lead to awesome rewards.
According to the footnote, the story is supposed to represent the scared virgin afraid of a man’s beastly desires, and then after the fear is gone it is replaced with happiness, because sex is not that bad. I guess I could see this, but taken at face value and not reading into it so much, the lesson I get is being a bitch will result in great rewards.
Maybe next time someone is annoying me I’ll throw them into the wall and get a prince in return.
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ReplyDeleteI love the fairy tale collections. I'm working my way through all the children's books in 1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up.
I found you through Blog Hop Friday (my first time).
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of your blog, devoted to your challenges...have never seen one like this before. Each year I make some personal reading goals (this year I made three), and I took on several challenges as well. Do you ever find that you feel like you're reading for your challenges as opposed to picking up whatever happens to call to you at the moment?
Welcome to the hop, BookGirl!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you like my idea. You see, what happened was that I found myself either not reading or reading the same thing over and over again. Then I found challenges. Being super competitive, I've taken them up.
Sometimes, I've found myself reading for the challenges, but more often I find myself taking tons of romance novels that I want to read and trying to fit them in!
Thanks for stopping by!
Hi, There! I'm a new follower, passing through from "The Hop." I like the idea of creating blog posts dedicated to challenges you're working on. I am involved in a couple of challenges, but I find my attention drifts too much (and I'm too bull-headed) to participate in many challenges at once. I do have the ones I am partaking in posted under my "Challenges" tab, though and - of course- I keep my readers updated via blog posts as well. :)
ReplyDeleteHappy Reading & Happy Hopping!
O hai, I haz hopped by! ;)
ReplyDeleteThe problem with my reading challenges is not (really) that I can't keep up with reading, but the blogging part is very time consuming! So kudos to you :)
My hop @ Graasland.