FAIRY TALES

How Fairy Tales Have Changed Over Time

                                                                            

Over time, fairy tales have adapted in many ways regarding the target audience, morals taught, and point of views differing from the original stories.When children today think of fairy tales, they think of the sing along songs, beautiful princesses, and, of course, Prince Charming. But, in the original stories, the tales were not as sweet and child friendly. For example, the fairytales portrayed in Anderson's and Grimm's fairy tale books are not based around the idea of a pretty princess's main obligation being to find her prince. Some of the morals include Red Riding Hood's "do not talk to strangers" and, more speficically, "little girls should not talk to men." In the original fairy tales the morals were based upon using scare tactics and religious backgrounds to teach lessons, rather than ending each story with a happy ending. In addition to this, the original fairy tales were written for adults, not children, to preserve oral traditions and stories told by spinners.

 

One main example of a major change is the adaptation to introduce a financial gain for each story. This is seen within all of the Disney adaptations and on modern television and movies such as Once Upon A Time and Maleficent. These examples also twist the idea of a hero and a villian by providing different perspectives regarding the coupling of beauty and good, ugly and evil, and violence being a masculine attribute.