(Don’t) Eat Your Young: The Creation, Deconstruction, and Reconstruction of Communities, Development of Agency, and Modeling of Learning Behaviors in Folklore, Adaptations of Folklore, and Stories Inspired by Folklore
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Frost 3Though the methods of learning remain somewhat consistent, the lessons being imparted have evolved as society changes.In classic fairytales, oftentimes the lessons are taught with the assumption that the character has a community to support them, a village or a family for instance.As societies in the west have become less community oriented and shifted towards a more generalized individualism, the stories we tell children have also changed this assumption.Now the subject of building community, rather than relying on a prebuilt community, has become more relevant and more prevalent in storytelling for children, as can be seen in works like Into the Woods and Coraline.Both of these works have a focus on building, breaking, and rebuilding community around the characters, both for adults and children.As a result, there is also a focus on the agency of the children characters, as they cause and resolve conflicts and learn and grow as a result of their experiences.This agency gives these stories the power to provide models to aid in the personal growth and development of young audiences.These three aspects of the classic fairytales -community, agency, and learning -provide characters to look up to and lessons to learn in order to help young readers function safely in society.The simple lessons of fairytales still aid in providing succinct and streamlined information to their readers and provide much deeper meanings to readers upon closer inspection, even though some of the morals they teach are a bit outdated today.This is where adaptations like Into the Woods arise, which offer lessons that are more applicable and characters that are, perhaps, more relatable, while maintaining the broad strokes of classical fairytales.Similarly, modern tales inspired by classical folklore, such as Coraline, still utilize some familiar story beats or motifs, while also providing modern lessons for modern readers.When read in conversation with one another, all of these narratives serve as mechanisms of learning for both Frost 4 children and adults and also facilitate growth and agency in their readers as well as an interest in the ways in which communities are tested, broken, and then rebuilt.A few clarifying notes on what follows, before we begin in earnest: first, in Neil Gaiman's Coraline, the antagonist is called the other mother, but here Other Mother will be capitalized for clarity.Similarly, in the text of Into the Woods, the Giant's wife, once she descends to the kingdom, is referred to only as 'Giant,' but here she will be called the Giantess so it's obvious which of the two giants in the play is being discussed.Finally, Little Red Riding Hood is generally written with a space between Riding and Hood, but in Into the Woods, her name is Little Red Ridinghood, without a space.I have followed this convention, and thus Charles Perrault's "Little Red Riding Hood," and references to this general type of story will appear with a space, and references to the specific character in Into the Woods will appear without a space.Furthermore, though Cinderella and Rapunzel are major characters in the musical Into the Woods, their stories are not included in the first chapter's discussion of fairytales, due to how well-known the stories are, how closely they are followed in Into the Woods, and due to their being somewhat disconnected from the main ideas of this text in their original forms.Into the Woods follows the Grimm versions of these two fairytales relatively closely in the first act, aside from the intrusions of the Baker and the Baker's Wife, and, due to the very well-known nature of these two fairytales, I do not think it necessary to dedicate a portion of the first chapter to the princess tales.The deeply ingrained lessons of these tales focus on the benefit of being a good person, with those who are kind being rewarded, and those who are unkind being punished.While this is, of course, a good lesson, it is not terribly salient to this discussion of community, Frost 5 agency, and learning, and therefore they have been omitted, with their discussion being confined to their relevance to Into the Woods.Finally, the dates of these pieces are important to know for the understanding of the flow of these stories over time.The classic fairytales do have a difficulty in this realm in that these stories have been told for centuries in the oral tradition, with the versions used herein being different depending on who transcribed the tale, where the tale came from, and when it was transcribed.Many versions of these texts exist in cultures all over the world with differences appearing across time periods and regions.The fairytales discussed in this paper were collected in the 1690's in the case of Perrault's tales, the early 19 th century for the Brother's Grimm, the late 19 th century for Jacobs and "The Story of Grandmother," and the late 20 th century for Calvino, retelling a tale from the late 19 th century.Into the Woods was published in 1987, with an original Broadway run from 1987 -1989 and Coraline was published in 2002.Frost 6 Chapter 1: "Nice is different than good," (Sondheim and Lapine 35): The Classic FairytalesNearly everyone, at some point in their lives or another, has heard a fairytale.This is such an obvious statement that it almost doesn't need to be repeated, but it is also so obvious that it is, at times, taken for granted.One could ask almost anyone on nearly any street, and they could probably tell you some version or another of a classic fairytale.Beyond this, though, there are multiple dimensions to fairytales other than just their near universality, and among these dimensions is the difference between storyteller and listener, generally an adult and a child respectively.Children learn these stories for the first time from someone older than them, and then go on to share the stories themselves, thus further perpetuating the story into new generations, but these stories mean different things to children than they do adults, and that meaning further shifts depending on the individual interpretation, as well as the story itself."Little Red Riding Hood" produces different meanings than "Hansel and Gretel," and those meanings are further different from those of "Bluebeard" or "Jack and the Beanstalk," and this is by design in certain respects.Obviously, different stories demand different interpretations and from those interpretations come the variations in individual meanings and morals.Because of these variations, different modes of learning are expressed by elders to children, which teaches the children the community's values and serves to model movement from childhood to adulthood.These stories also aid in building connections to the community, agency in the child themself, and modeling learning behaviors in general but this does not mean that these stories are only useful for children.Adults learn these stories as children, and, in their growth, they can apply the lessons taught by the story to their changing lives, as well as learn new messages in the telling of these stories as they move from listener to storyteller. Frost 7In her "Introduction: Bluebeard," Maria Tatar states that "Folklore often trades in the sensational -breaking taboos, enacting the forbidden, staging hidden desires, and exploring pathologies with uninhibited investigative energy," (184).Tatar goes on to apply this thought process to the ideologies enacted and emotions elicited by "Bluebeard" and other similar tales, but the statement can be applied to nearly all fairytales, and this, too, is by design.These stories are useless if the characters do not demonstrate the consequences of breaking these taboos, but they also are useless if they do not provide a cathartic outlet to those who are hearing them.In the event that the character breaking social rules is the protagonist, the reader receives the catharsis of seeing someone do something that they have always thought about doing but never could.In the event that the character breaking these rules is the antagonist, there is simultaneously a cathartic release for the reader in seeing the defeat of the villain which has threatened the society, and a reinforcement of the need and benefit of the social rule which is being questioned.In this way, readers are able to see their worst impulses reflected in these characters, and thereby experience these impulses vicariously, and see the benefits and the costs of these actions.This is a double-edged sword, in many respects, but specifically for children: the readers see the dangers of breaking social rules, the potential destruction it can cause, but they also may see more benefits than costs and thereby be encouraged to break or bend the rules.This is the dual nature of the folkloric hero and villain -readers can see the flaws of their society amplified and reflected back towards them and thereby decide if the societal rules are beneficial, or if they should be challenged.Many folktales can be used to illustrate the concepts of community, agency, and learning, but they show them in different ways.The following sections will demonstrate several aspects of these folktales that aid in the discussion of these concepts."Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Little Frost 8Thumbling" both demonstrate the development of agency in the young protagonists through their individual conflicts."Little Red Riding Hood" and other stories which follow similar story structures, demonstrate the different ways that community can be built and broken for the young protagonist across different eras and cultures as the story changes over time and place."Hansel and Gretel" aids in the conversation of the development of agency within child characters, as well as the repeated deconstruction and reconstruction of community between the characters."The Juniper Tree" also aids in the showing the development of agency and community while also demonstrating the ways in which agency can be tak
DOI: 10.13016/m2g7pf-9hdf
Author: Frost, Phebe
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6922467154
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