However, by the time the story reaches the Grimms in the form of "Aschenputtel," the cruelties the stepsisters commit become relatively petty exaggerations of normal sibling relationships, and the extent of their punishment (whether blindness or mutilation) seems curiously outsized. Furthermore, in most other "traditional" versions of the story -- including Perrault's "Cendrillon" (60-9) and the various "Native American" and "African Cinderellas" (Bascom 154-6) -- no violent punitive episode is necessary at all
As a newer medium, video games have been less comprehensively examined as a cause of increased aggression, but violent acts (from firefights and martial arts encounters to more localized punching and slapping) appear to be prevalent in several genres, even those marketed to and explicitly rated as being suitable for children (Thompson and Haninger 591). Because the video game experience encourages players to go beyond the role of passive observer and actively participate in aggressive displays, some research suggests that this medium sets up a "continuous cycle of reward" (Funk et al
Adult aficionados like Zipes and his readership may appreciate these "stark realities," but as the tales were edited and revised for a juvenile audience, their brutality becomes much more problemmatic. Maria Tatar confesses after rehearsing the self-explanatory plot of a relatively obscure story, "How Children Played Butcher With Each Other," (Grimm 650-1) that "much of the material that came into the Grimms' hands was hardly suited for children" (181), and would likely disturb many adults
Attempts to reconstruct an original Chinese (and global) Cinderella narrative concede that at its basis, the story begins with abuse: "Once upon a time, there was a little girl who suffered. Her sufferings were various and terrible" (Jameson 73)
In a discussion of Taiwanese variants of a "Little Red Riding Hood"-like tale involving a tiger, Wolfram Eberhard notes that relatively few oral accounts linger on the tiger actually devouring people: "Perhaps mothers did not want to frighten their children by telling this detail, an additional violence in a violent story" (31). Most commercial adaptations for juvenile markets have adopted a similar approach; in some versions of "Little Red Riding Hood," for example, nobody is eaten and even the wolf simply runs away when his scheme fails (Shavit 155)
This is the Old Testament logic of an eye for an eye. In fairy tales, getting even is the best revenge (Tatar 182-3)
put it in 2003, "the scientific debate over whether media violence increases aggression and violence is essentially over" (81). As a newer medium, video games have been less comprehensively examined as a cause of increased aggression, but violent acts (from firefights and martial arts encounters to more localized punching and slapping) appear to be prevalent in several genres, even those marketed to and explicitly rated as being suitable for children (Thompson and Haninger 591)
Even by Bettelheim's standards, the "blood in the shoe" sequence is inarguably striking (memorable) but in the absence of a transgression of equal weight, it simply seems both confused from a didactic perspective and, more importantly, potentially disturbing to a juvenile audience. At best, it is simply gratuitous, and while children love the slapstick or "preposterous" violence of cartoons and some fairy tales (Twitchell 23), gratuitous violence also leads children to consider violent behavior normative
Empson entitles his essay "The Child as Swain" because he is eager to stress the overwhelmingly romantic view of childhood in the Alice books, and links it to the child-like sexlessness of Carroll's worldview. But there is arguably more fear operating in Alice than in Mary Lennox: Empson instead stresses the "cool courage" of Alice as a protagonist in the two books (Bloom 4), in the face of such menace as the Queen's constant calls for beheading
Yet I hope to conclude by demonstrating that the two books share a similarity of purpose in approaching young readers. Burnett's The Secret Garden may have a child protagonist, but it begins with a coolly unflattering portrait of little Mary Lennox, whom "everybody said…was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen," with a "sour expression" and a "yellow…face" after years of illness (Burnett 2)
I plan to show this as well, and build a relation between the characters and the inanimate objects. (Tressider) (Ashliman) In short, my story will be about a nature-loving woman who a prince falls in love with and marries her
I will be build a connection to the children and the flower by showing that one petal will fly away and go apart, which eventually will happen to the children as well. (Rosinsky) In the original tales, there was a lot of reference to sexual topics
I plan to show this as well, and build a relation between the characters and the inanimate objects. (Tressider) (Ashliman) In short, my story will be about a nature-loving woman who a prince falls in love with and marries her