To be sure, [Carrie] is a special kind of fairy tale: it is an adult fairy tale explicit in matters of sex, killing and revenge, and if the young appreciate it, it may be because their tastes have grown ahead of their chronological age. But Carrie is nevertheless a fairy tale: rites de passage, supernatural powers, magic and rites of sacrifice. Since fairy tales feed on such themes, the folktale opus is quite similar the world over. But Carrie, made into a highly popular movie, and thus rendered into a series of images, largely does away with the one unshakable source of ethnicity in folklore, namely the language of the people. The film medium as well as the inexpensive translations into many languages made by the industry of successful paperbacks assure Carrie of a wide, international diffusion and turn it into the new universal fairy tale.

The German romantic poet Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), once said: "deeper meaning lies in the fairy tale of my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life." (p. 282)

The fairy tale … suggests, implies, hints about significant problems facing the child, and does so through imagery rather than discourse. In Brothers Grimm's "Little Snow White," we read:

(The Queen) whilst she was sewing and looking out the window, at the snow, she pricked her finger with the needle, and three drops of blood fell upon the snow…. Soon thereafter she had a little girl, who was as white as snow, and as red as blood, and her hair was as black as ebony; the child was therefore called Little Snow White. And when the child was born the Queen died.

What follows is the appearance of the cruel stepmother and the conflict between the two…. The stepmother looks into the mirror and says, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?" only to discover that now Snow White outshines her in beauty. She decides to destroy the rival. But are we not dealing in this fairy tale with a deeper meaning covertly presented as magic? Could not the drop of blood in the snow be menstrual blood signifying Snow White's coming of age and thus leading to mother-daughter rivalry? In the child's mind the mother in her role of a rival becomes an evil stepmother. In another fairy tale from the Grimm collection, "The Goose-Girl," the blood and a girl's sexual maturation are tied together even closer. In this tale a queen sends her daughter to her betrothed, "to a prince who lived a great distance." Along with many objects which would seem to fit a dowry, the mother gives her daughter something rather curious: a blood stained handkerchief…. (pp. 282-83)

Unless we are willing to seek a deeper meaning in this story, "The Goose-Girl" becomes rather senseless. On a rational plane, the gift of a handkerchief with three drops of blood has precious little meaning. But the blood-stained piece of cloth clearly suggests maturation demonstrated by the menstrual cycle; this is all the more obvious since the girl having received the blood-stained handkerchief departs to marry. But the goose-girl refuses to grow up. She drops the handkerchief. Still, with the help of the old king, a father figure, she reaches maturity and is ready for marriage.

Thus the fairy tale imagery catalyzes fantasies about social and sexual anxieties. By identifying with the fairy tale hero, the child meets these anxieties head on, lives through them. At the end of the fairy tale, the child experiences not only moral edification, but also a sense of catharsis for having lived through an often frightful experience…. Hence the mass appeal of the fairy tale: it is edifying, it is entertaining and it is consoling—one needs not be overly fearful, things will always turn all right; the fairy tale answers the child's psychic needs.

Stephen King too reserves a deeper, subtextual meaning for Carrie, when he states on the very first page of his novel: "Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level, where savage things grow." (p. 283)

Carrie begins with Carrie White's first period. Unlike the fairy tale, the flow of menses is made here quite explicit. The opening scene of the book takes place in the school shower room. There, Carrie's schoolmates in a "hoarse, uninhibited abandon" shout "Period, Period!" and "Plug it up!", as Carrie White is experiencing her first menstrual cycle: "The blood was dark, and flowing with terrible heaviness. Both of Carrie's legs were smeared and splattered with it, as though she had waded through a river of blood."

[Sigmund] Freud once observed that ever since the menstrual flow ceased to function as an olfactory attraction between the male and female of the species …, the menstrual cycle became an activity both feared and abhorred. Anthropological studies well complement Freud in this respect. Joseph Campbell notes, for example, that among the primitive tribes girls in their first period are placed in isolated huts where they remain secluded for the duration of the menstrual flow. This, one should think, to impress upon them the significance of the rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood, and also to stress the privacy of the act. Carrie, therefore, is guilty of breaking a taboo by displaying her menses in public. But her schoolmates are guilty too. For it is the duty of those who know to instruct those who are coming of age. It must be noted that Carrie has her first period at sixteen; thus unusually late. All her classmates are, therefore, well initiated into womanhood. But rather than help, they merely give vent to their disgust and abhorrence. Only one girl in the group, Susan Snell, assumes the role of an older and wiser member of the community who will lead Carrie through the difficult rite of passage….

But Carrie does not listen. In a sense, like the goose-girl, she refuses to grow up. Later on in the novel Sue Snell will try to help again and at the end she will be the only person present at Carrie White's death.

A child cannot cope with the idea of a mother that is both good and bad: a mother that on the one hand brings the child into the world, feeds it, tends to its many needs and on the other is angry, scolds the infant, indulges in sexual rivalry (often imaginary) with the child. Whence in "Little Snow White," (as in many other fairy tales), the mother, having given birth to the child, conveniently dies, while it is the stepmother who wants to repress Snow White's budding sexuality, because she wishes her own to blossom.

In Stephen King's novel the fairy tale stepmother finds her counterpart in Carrie White's own mother who wishes to repress her daughter's sexuality. The good mother on the other hand is Susan Snell.

In Carrie, Carrie White's first period, or in other words her passage from childhood to womanhood, is followed by the School Spring Prom. Only girls invited by boys can attend. Carrie has no boyfriend, but Sue Snell does—Tommy Ross—and she convinces him that he should ask Carrie to the Prom while she, Sue, will simply stay at home. Carrie goes to the Prom with Tommy disregarding her mother's violent objections:

"Red," Momma murmured. (Referring to Carrie's dress she made herself for the Prom).

"I might have known it would be red."

"I can see your dirty pillows. Everyone will. They will be looking at your body. The Book says—"

"Those are my breasts, Momma. Every woman has them."

"Take off that dress," Momma said.

"No." "Take it off, Carrie. We'll go down and burn it in the incinerator together, and then pray for forgiveness.

We'll do penance …"

"No, Momma."

Momma screamed. She made her right hand a fist and struck herself in the mouth, bringing blood.

She dabbled her fingers in it, looked at it dreamily, and daubed a spot on the cover of the bible.

Carrie's mother flaunts religion as a substitute for human growth due to her own sexual inadequacy. (pp. 283-85)

But if Carrie's natural mother, like the fairy tale stepmother, tries to repress the girl's budding sexuality. Susan Snell, assuming the role of a fairy tale natural parent, gives Carrie Tommy Ross and at the Prom, significantly called the Spring Prom, Carrie White blossoms in her womanly beauty…. And finally, Tommy and Carrie are elected the first couple of the ball…. And then came the blood. Just as Carrie White, unmindful of the age-old taboo, displayed her menses in public, so now the vengeful crowd composed of school kids, at the moment of Carrie's greatest triumph on her path of passage from childhood to maturity, repays her by showering both her and Tommy with buckets of pig's blood.

Spring and pig's blood are significant concepts. Carrie, through her awakened sexuality, becomes the Queen of the Spring Ball. Does she not imitate Persephone, who too rises each year in the spring with the awakened nature? But, as [Sir James George] Frazer points out [in The Golden Bough], Persephone may have been worshipped in the figure of the pig, with pigs sacrificed in her honor….

Since Thesmophoria [an ancient Greek agricultural festival dedicated to Demeter and her daughter Persephone] was celebrated in November and the rites with the swine concern Persephone's descent into the underworld, isn't the drenching with pig's blood a kind of mock sacrifice aiming to render the rising spring goddess Persephone-Carrie, into a goddess descending into the earthly abyss with the onset of winter?

In the aftermath of this mock sacrificial rite to Carrie-Persephone, the heroine of Stephen King's novel does indeed grow into a kind of divinity of winter's death, rather than spring's renewal, who imparts her will and thoughts to others, and whom others, albeit total strangers, know with that special kind of mythical knowledge. To investigate this aspect of Carrie's development, however, it is necessary to step back to the beginning of the novel.

In folk lore, it is a commonly accepted tenet that sexual maturation should be accompanied by the acquisition of special kind of wisdom hitherto not possessed by the novice. Rites of passage, or initiation rites are the major theme of fairy tales, and are usually depicted as a quest. At the end of the quest, after many trials, a young boy or girl emerges safe and whole to be sure, much wiser, and usually with a spouse. (pp. 285-86)

Thus in the framework of folklore it is quite natural that Carrie White should develop a special kind of knowledge upon reaching sexual maturity. For Carrie this knowledge is telekinesis, or the ability to move objects at will, by the power of one's will…. (p. 286)

Splashed, drenched in pig's blood at the point where she was selected the Queen of the Spring Prom and thus cruelly mocked at the climactic point in her short and unhappy life, Carrie puts her telekinetic powers to awesome use of destructive vengeance which she hurls upon the people and property of Chamberlain, Mass…. At the end of the novel Carrie dies from wounds inflicted by her own mother whom she in turn kills by telekinetically stopping her heart from beating. But like Persephone, the dying and born again goddess of spring renewal, Carrie too has her resurrection in the little girl Annie, about whom we read on the last page of King's novel. The little girl, only two years old, is endowed, like Carrie, with the telekinetic potential.

Knifed by her own mother, Carrie staggers from the house and dies some distance from her home. Susan Snell is with her in her last dying moments. Susan simply knew, with that special kind of unexplainable knowledge where Carrie was, what she felt…. (pp. 286-87)

In her death Carrie clearly merges the image of Susan with that of her mother. Susan Snell, to be sure, is the good parent who helps in the child's development and growth. Susan is central to the concepts of consolation and moral instruction that are an integral part of the fairy tale and are present, as well, in Stephen King's Carrie. Susan Snell is the only person from Carrie's school not to have fallen prey to Carrie's telekinetic ire—hence the consolation and also the moral lesson: good people live, bad die. Susan is a good mother and she lives; Carrie too lives on in Annie.

It is important to note that the film prefers Gothic horror to this important aspect of folklore tradition, namely consolation and moral edification. In the film Carrie, at the very end, Susan has a dream … in which she goes to Carrie's grave only to be threatened suddenly and most unexpectedly by a horrid, bloody hand reaching for her from Carrie's grave. This scene is most effectively horrifying, alas at the expense of very important aspects of folklore tradition: moral edification and consolation.

Carrie then is folklore. It is a fairy tale and like the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Afanas'ev in Russia, it feeds on universal myths, magic, ancient ways and the narrator's rich imagination. But Carrie's narrator is far more sophisticated than the story tellers of the Grimms or Afanas'ev, and so is his audience. The narrator has evolved into a writer and the mode of transmission to a literate audience is no longer oral: it is "the million copy bestseller" paperback easily translatable into many languages, and the film largely reducing the story to its image content. Carrie then is a universal fairy tale, folklore of the last quarter of the twentieth century. And Carrie enjoys the popularity of folklore, updated to be sure through the explicit treatment of sex and violence. It responds to deeply rooted sexual and social anxieties. It also offers consolation and moral edification; but alas, it would seem that there exists an inverted ratio between explicit sex and violence on the one hand and consolation and morality on the other: the greater the one, the lesser the other. (p. 287)

Alex E. Alexander, "Stephen King's 'Carrie'—A Universal Fairytale," in Journal of Popular Culture (copyright © 1979 by Ray B. Browne), Vol. XIII, No. 2, Fall, 1979, pp. 282-87.