Reflection on Grimm's Brother Fairy Tales - Lit X Topic

I have read the first three fairytales in the collection of short fairytales by the Grimm’s Brothers. So far I have noticed several common themes, including the stereotyping of gender roles and an obsession with royalty and monetary richness. The first three fairytales, The Frog Prince, A Tale of One Who Traveled to Learn What Shivering Meant, and Faithful John all revolve around royalty and beautiful princesses and keep the male and female characters locked in strict gender specific roles. The Females are omitted from most of the stories action, and stay at home in a state of "happy homemaker" constantly cooking, sewing or cleaning, waiting for somebody to come make them a wife and complete their life. The are portrayed as beautiful, delicate and simple minded. For example in Faithful John, The Prince who has fallen inlove with a princess simply from looking at her portrait, steals the Princess from her home. At first she is alarmed, but upon learning that the boy is a Prince who wants to marry her she falls in love with him. I feel that in these stories the term love is tossed around very loosely and often mistaken with infatuation. The heroic males, in contrast to the females are portrayed as strong, powerful, smart and dominering. They always rescue the day and save the girl all before dinner. Their only fault seems to be falling head over heels for women based solely on appearance as demonstrated in The Frog Prince and Faithful John. They are the providers for thier wives and families and as Kings are in charge of Everyone in thier realm.



Another thing that suprised me about these fairy tales is thier graffic fighting scenes and descriptions which in my opinion seem very inappropriate for young children. For Example in Faithful John, The servant John is turned into stone after saving his master, the king's, life. In order to bring him back to like the king must "cut of the heads of both of his children with his own sword and sprinkle [John] with thier blood" (34). Who does that, honestly thats insane?