SOURCE: P. Gila Reinstein, "Aesop and Grimm: Contrast in Ethical Codes and Contemporary Values," in Children's Literature in Education, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring, 1983, pp. 44-53.

[In the following essay, Reinstein shows that Aesop's fables, which reflect a non-idealistic and self-reliant approach to human interactions, were preferred by older, married, non-white, working-class students as a tool for educating the young, but that Grimm 's fairy tales, which reflect an idealistic and self-sacrificing approach to human interactions, were preferred by young, single, white, middle-class students.]

People often think of Aesop's fables and the folk tales of the brothers Grimm together, since both are collections of traditional folklore, classics of children's literature, and important sources of American popular culture. Both are retold in elementary school readers; both are regularly selected by artists for reinterpretation and reissue as picture books. Political cartoonists and advertising campaign designers take advantage of the public's familiarity with Aesop and Grimm for purposes of their own. Aesop and Grimm appear to have been adopted by and incorporated into our culture, to the degree that few children grow up today without somewhere along the way absorbing the plight of Cinderella and the fate of the tortoise and the hare. Sometimes these stories are first encountered in library books or school texts, but more often they are introduced through the popular culture, by way of animated cartoons, Sesame Street or Walt Disney adaptations, mass marketed books like those published by The Golden Press, and in the most traditional manner, by word of mouth.

Although the popular culture tends to link the stories of Aesop and Grimm together, actually the fables and folk tales are profoundly different and provoke very different responses from their readers. It is these differences in origin, in content, and in reader response which I propose to examine.

Neither fable nor folk tale originated as children's literature. Little is known of Aesop, himself, but legend has it, according to Perry, that he was a Greek slave of the 6th century B.C., and the fables attributed to him were originally designed as political criticism in an age of repression. The fables are not simplistic children's stories, but highly intellectual exercises which take abstract ideas and translate them into formalized dramatic encounters. Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, in contrast, were nineteenth century philologists and students of German regional culture. They gathered the tales which bear their names from diverse sources, and their interest in the stories was not primarily child oriented; they were studying folklore and the history of words in the spoken German language.¹ Over the years, both Aesop's fables and the Grimm's folk tales became the property of all the people, not only intellectual orators, not only scholars of language and folk literature; and both have become the special property of children.

As early as the first century A.D., the Roman writer, Quintillian, recommended that children study the fables to help them develop skill in reading and writing.² Caxton produced an edition of Aesop in 1484, making it one of the first books ever printed in English. During the Renaissance, educators such as Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Boke named the Governor (1531) recommended that the fables be a child's first reading. Such notables as Sir Philip Sidney, Francis Bacon, and John Locke endorsed the teaching of Aesop to children. Since the first edition of Aesop that was designed specifically for children, in 1692, there have been many versions of the fables for children, with and without morals, illustrated and elaborated, almost without number.

The first collection of folk tales by the brothers Grimm was released in 1812, entitled Kinder und Hausmarchen, and although the Grimms intended the book to be read to children, they saw children only as a "secondary audience."³ coming after adult scholars. The first English edition was published in 1823, and has been available ever since. There was some opposition to children's reading these fairy stories when they first appeared, because they violated the doctrines of rationalism, but Charles Dickens, Juliana H. Ewing, and others defended the folk tales as vehicles for the teaching of morality. In the October 1, 1853, edition of Household Words, Dickens wrote,

It would be hard to estimate the amount of gentleness and mercy that has made its way among us [through fairy tales]. Forbearance, courtesy, consideration for the poor and aged, kind treatment of animals, the love of nature …

all are absorbed by young readers of these stories.

The fables and the fairy tales both convey values which our society respects. Each collection of Aesop's fables presents a fairly consistent world view, a philosophy, a prescription for right behavior. It is the same with the brothers Grimm. Despite Bruno Bettleheim's assertion in The Uses of Enchantment that the folk tales do not prescribe behavior, the Grimm stories present a rather clear ethical code based on an unstated philosophy that recommends certain behaviors and warns against others. It is perplexing that the ethical code of Aesop's fables is dramatically different from that of the Grimms' folk tales, and yet both are highly influential sources for the teaching of values to young people in our society. Each collection of folklore embodies a sense of what the world is like and how one must live to succeed in that world.

Some examples will help demonstrate their differences.

A lion fell in love with a farmer's daughter and asked for her hand. The farmer couldn't bear to give his daughter to the beast, but since he was also too much afraid to refuse, he struck on this scheme. When the lion kept pressing his suit, the farmer said he found him quite worthy to marry his daughter, but that he couldn't give her to him unless he pulled out his teeth and cut off his claws, for his daughter was afraid of them. The lion was so much in love that he readily submitted to both, but the farmer was now contemptuous of him and chased him off with a club when he came back. [Lloyd W. Daly, trans., Aesop without Morals, p. 152]

This fable clearly suggests that love leads one to be foolish; one must, therefore, beware of it. Love produces weakness, not strength. The farmer's manipulative duplicity is rewarded, for this story takes place in a world in which the weak must use cleverness to survive when the strong seek to dominate them. The following fable further demonstrates that respect comes from power: surrender the means to power and you lose what you might otherwise have kept:

A lion, an ass, and a fox reached an agreement with one another and went out to hunt. When they had made a big catch, the lion told the ass to divide it for them. When the ass divided it into three parts and told him to take his choice, the lion flew into a rage, jumped onto him, and ate him up. Then he told the fox to divide it. The fox left only a little for himself, put everything else in one portion, and urged the lion to take it. When the lion asked the fox who had taught him to divide things that way, he said, "The fate of the ass." [Daly, trans., Aesop without Morals, p. 155]

This fable teaches the reader to learn from the misfortunes of others, and if there is a lion in your midst, you had better respect his power. The clever but weak fox cannot hope for equality. Mercy is out of the question; justice is not to be expected. The fox is lucky to escape from the lion with his life. Another moral is illustrated here:

A fox slipped in climbing a fence. To save himself from falling he clutched at a brier-bush. The thorns made his paws bleed, and in his pain he cried out: 'Oh dear! I turned to you for help and you have made me worse off than I was before.' 'Yes, my friend!' said the brier. 'You made a bad mistake when you tried to lay hold of me. I lay hold of everyone myself.' [S. A. Handford, trans., Fables of Aesop, p. 4]

Faithfulness and cooperation are meaningless here. In the world view presented by Aesop's fables, each individual must defend his own.

The familiar fable of "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse," and the less widely known parallel story, "The Thorn Bush and the Oak Tree," teach the value of obscurity: safety comes before luxury or glory. Consider "The Grasshopper and the Ant" in all its variations: diligent toil is admired; the pleasure principle is a dangerous one to follow. The fable of "The Wayfarer and the Frozen Snake" suggests that a good deed is often not returned, and since some people are inherently evil, no kindness, no charity can change them.

Although there are some exceptions, taken all together, the fables teach pragmatic lessons: they recognize that the world is a dangerous place, full of exploiters, bullies, and false friends. Love counts for little; it exposes you and foolishly allows you to relax your defenses. The fables teach self-protection and the value of hard work. Goodness is rarely rewarded, but evil is often revenged. The fables recognize that in the real world, might does make its own right—unfair, perhaps, but true, nonetheless.

To put it mildly, Aesop's fables are not idealistic. They do not recognize miracles. The world is what it is: the enemies, the people in power, are tyrannical lions, tricky foxes, vindictive snakes; the victims, the little people, are vain crows, foolish donkeys, self-important rabbits, and ill-advised lambs. No one is perfect—neither oppressor nor oppressed—and no one can change who he is. The best you can do, according to the fables, is to stand up for yourself, selfishly, if need be, since you can expect no one else to stand up for you; trust only yourself; expect to be attacked and have the sense to lie low when threatened; and, if you are lucky, take your revenge when you get the chance.

The world of the folk tales collected by the Grimms recognizes enemies and dangers, but unlike the world of the fables, it also allows for perfect goodness and the possibility of coming through a trial unscathed, and resting on that one victory happily ever after. Aesop's fables present no ideal characters, no heroes, no heroines. The fairy tales, in contrast, offer many models of perfection. The perfect female is a Cinderella, a Snow White, a Rapunzel: young, beautiful, gentle, passive, and obedient. She must suffer patiently, until she is rescued by fate, usually in the form of a marriageable young man. The perfect male is young, handsome, kind, brave, generous, gentle, and lucky. He is the one who shares his crust with a fox who just happens to be endowed with magic powers, in "The Golden Bird"; he is the one who arrives, by good fortune, at the castle of the sleeping Briar Rose just when the one hundred years' spell is up. Often he is the simple, unsophisticated youngest son, mocked by his clever elder brothers. In the Grimms' world, intelligence and cunning are frequently signs of character weakness. In their folk tales, forethought seems inferior to blind⁴action; common sense is less valued than simple faith. While Aesop's fables urge watchful cleverness, the fairy tales suggest trust and patience as the better way: after all, miracles can happen. Cinderella can go to the ball in a dress that rains down on her from a tree. Sleeping Beauty may have to wait for a century, but ultimately she awakens to love at first sight. Straw can be spun into gold; brothers can be turned into swans or ravens, and a sister's sacrifice can redeem them. And most significantly, what is dead can be made alive again.

According to the values promoted by the fairy tales, it is better to be self-sacrificing than to look out for your own interests. To go out and aggressively seek wealth and power pretty nearly guarantees a bad end: the gentle sister, in "The Three Little Men in the Wood," is sent to gather strawberries in the snow, clothed only in a paper dress. Her willing helpfulness to the three little old men wins her the dubious reward of having a golden coin fall from her mouth every time she speaks. When her assertive stepsister sensibly bundles up to go out and claim the same, she is cursed for her forwardness by having a toad jump from her mouth every time she opens it. And later, in the same tale, after the good sister has married a king, born him a son, and been transformed by her stepmother into a duck, she returns to care for her infant, not to seek vengeance against the stepsister who has taken her place in the royal bed. It is the evil stepmother who suggests her own awful punishment: "to be put into a cask with iron nails in it, and to be rolled in it down the hill into the water" [Lucy Crane, trans., Household stories by the Brothers Grimm, p. 81]. Once the wicked stepmother and the false queen are punished, the innocently murdered queen is restored to life and happiness.

The prevailing message of the folk tales reads: if you are happily poor, and neither complain nor take active steps to secure your fortune, you may be rewarded with wealth; if you are passively self-effacing and let others mock you, mistreat you, and enslave you, you may end up with both power and fame. Self-sacrifice becomes the prudent course of action. There is a puzzling irony here. The tales imply that it is wrong to set greater value on wealth than on goodness, yet material rewards are given to those who set the least store in them.

The Aesopic fables suggest that evil is commonplace. The Germanic folk tales present evil in more terrible guises, but also show that the virtuous victims are ultimately better off for having tangled with the evil.⁵ Whatever curses or privations the innocent victims must endure, they are never embittered, never discouraged from their steadfast goodness. Cinderella doesn't whine to her stepmother about how unfair it is that she has to pick lentils from the ashes in order to win the right to attend the prince's ball; the girl in "Rumpelstiltskin" doesn't curse her father for putting her life on the line, saying she can spin rooms full of straw into gold when she hasn't got a notion how to do it. It is as if there is a shatterproof bubble around these characters, so that they are never tainted by their contact with evil, never permanently damaged. Even if they seem to die, like Red Riding Hood or the little brother in "The Juniper Tree," they are wonderfully restored to life. Magic helps them accomplish impossible tasks, and because of their flawless virtue, in the end, their burdens are lifted, their enemies are punished (brutally, as often as not), and they find themselves elevated to new planes of material success and emotional satisfaction.

Folklore does not exist apart from people; it rises from and expresses the beliefs, needs, and hopes of those people who created it and kept it alive. Aesop's and the Grimms' stories, although not native to America, have nonetheless been absorbed into the American folk and popular culture and can, therefore, be presumed to express ideas and values important to our culture. Because of the all-but-universal familiarity of American children with many of the fables and iairy tales, I have taught Aesop and Grimm to students in children's literature courses at two different colleges, to give them adult perspectives on material which they "have always known." The students in one group attended a four-year state college in New England; those in the other group were enrolled at a two-year community college, a branch of the City University of New York. Interesting as the differences between Aesop and Grimm are, almost as interesting are the different reactions of the students to the fables and the fairy tales.

Their response seems to vary with their own socioeconomic background. Students in children's literature classes at the New England college were predominantly young, single, white, and middle to lower-middle class. The students in comparable classes in New York City were predominantly older (30-60 years old), married and raising children, black or Hispanic, and working class or on welfare. The four-year college students were mostly straight out of high school, often idealistic, and relatively innocent of the ways of the world. The community college students, in contrast, had lived in the world—and a particularly rough, urban world.

Many of the state college students found Aesop's fables unpleasantly cynical and felt that they were inappropriate reading for small children, but made interesting intellectual exercises for children of 10 or older. These students believed that it was wrong to take from small children their sense of safety, their trust in loving adults who would shelter them from danger. On the other hand, these same students felt that the folk tales of Grimm fostered kindliness, loyalty, and love, qualities they highly prized. They felt that children should be exposed to the fairy tales early, starating as young as 3 or 4 years old, to encourage imaginative and moral development, and they felt that the exposure should continue lifelong. The community college students did not share these views at all. The city-wise older students discovered in Aesop much of the wisdom they felt their children needed to help them cope with the life of the streets, and they agreed among themselves that Aesop was the very book to read to small children of about 4 or 5 years old, before sending them out of the house alone to play or walk to school. As for the fairy tales of the Grimms, the City University of New York students enjoyed studying them, but reacted with cynical laughter to some of the Idealistic and, to them, totally unlikely behavior of the protagonists. These students felt that the Grimms' stories ignored reality and taught lessons appropriate for Sunday school but not for weekday use. Since most of them were churchgoers and believers, they felt uncomfortable about this inconsistency, but they couldn't avoid it: they did not want their children victimized. They could not afford to teach their children to be sweet, passive, and trusting when the world was so clearly Aesopic to them, so full of predatory lions, wolves, and foxes ready to swallow their children up, and once swallowed, chewed and digested, not magically restored to life unharmed. They saw themselves and their children as the lambs, the reeds, and the ants of Aesop's fables, the powerless creatures who must lie low, use their wits when threatened, and work hard the rest of the time. These students felt that the Grimms' idealized world was appropriate reading for older children of about 8 to 12, for by that time the children could distinguish reality from wishful thinking. Beyond this, they raised some angry sociopolitical questions reflecting their radicalized perception of the fairy tales as an attempt by the "power elite" to keep the masses passively hopeful, rather than rebellious over their lot. Among the more protected and upwardly mobile New England college students, these political issues did not arise.

And of course, the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. The fables and folk tales perform different functions. The former teach self-preservation, acknowledging the difficulties of life for ordinary people in the real world today—and, apparently, in every era of the past 25 centuries, if the continuous manuscript and publication history of Aesop's fables is any indication. Survival cannot be taken for granted; loved ones cannot always protect each other from harm. There are no apparent rewards for goodness, no assurances that justice will triumph. Fables are, and have always been, useful for the presentation of cautionary lessons to the underdogs in Western civilization. The folk tales also recognize that the world can be dangerous, but the rules governing existence are profoundly different. The folk tales create an overtly idealized world in which evil is confronted, fearful situations are mastered, wickedness is punished, and virtue is rewarded. Selflessness seems the sensible course, because it brings great rewards eventually. The lowly, if good

enough, can, therefore, hope to be raised up. This is not the world we know, but the world we might wish to live in.

The students' reactions to Aesop and Grimm were strong and, I think, provocative. It is too often assumed that both fables and folk tales are interchangeably representative conveyers of the morality and values of our culture. Although both are examples of traditional folklore, still alive and meaningful, as well as entertaining and emotionally satisfying, they speak to different kinds of lives, reflect different needs, foster different dreams. Both are good and right, when they fit the lives, the needs, and the dreams of their readers.

Notes

¹ Eliot, Charles W., ed. Folklore and Fable (New York, 1909), p. 48.

² See Daly, Aesop Without Morals, p. 15.

³ Peppard, Murray B. Paths Through the Forest (New York, 1971), p. 41.

⁴ Some of the stories run counter to this trend and urge a little self-help. Grettel must push the witch into the oven and slam the door; Rapunzel must jump from the tower to her beloved. Some of the stories, notably the animal tales such as "Cat and Mouse in Partnership," show the triumph of wit over simplicity. Other tales, including "Hans in Luck" and "Fred and Kate," mock stupidity. But in the main, the most memorable of the Grimms' tales focus on the passively good characters who stumble upon their rewards without any goal-directed behavior.

⁵ Bruno Bettelheim has persuasively argued that satisfying psychological messages run beneath the surface of the folk tales. The protagonist's confrontation with danger and evil, most often emanating from mother and father figures, is necessary to the process of dealing symbolically with strongly felt, but unacknowledged emotions. See The Uses of Enchantment for amplification of these ideas.

References

Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment. New York: Random House, 1976. Pp. 10, 27.

Crane, Lucy, trans. Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm. New York: Dover, 1963.

Daly, Lloyd W., ed. and trans. Aesop Without Morals. New York, 1961.

Handford, S. A., trans. Fables of Aesop. Baltimore: Penguin, 1954.

Perry, Ben Edwin, trans. Babrius and Phaedrus. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. P. xxxv.