The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales

“Hansel and Gretel”

The Brothers Grimm story of Hansel and Gretel begins with a brother and sister being sent away by their poor parents, who can no longer feed them. Bettelheim writes how this corresponds to a child’s anxiety of being abandoned and left to starve by their caregivers. Hansel and Gretel become fixated on food, and Hansel’s starvation anxiety leads him to make the foolish choice of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs back to the home. The initial intention to return home, in Bettelheim’s view, symbolizes the child’s attempt to return to dependency after being thrust into independence. An intervening bird who eats the bread crumb trail symbolizes the outside world forcing the children out of such regression.

The story’s famous gingerbread house, which Hansel and Gretel encounter in the woods and immediately begin eating, symbolizes the return to an oral stage of development (a developmental stage in Freudian psychology), where the children could rely on an all-giving mother’s body to nourish them. Bettelheim explains that “it is the original all-giving mother, whom every child hopes to find again later somewhere out in the world, when his own mother begins to make demands and impose restrictions” (161). The gingerbread house owner, who initially feeds the children more, seems like a stand-in for the good mother—however, she is a wicked witch who wants to eat the children. Her plans “finally force the children to recognize the dangers of unrestrained oral greed and dependence” (162). This is because the witch speaks to the children’s anxiety that the original good mother was not feeding them for their own benefit, but rather to eat them.

The children learn to submit their id-dominated appetites to the mastery of the ego as they come up with a plan to trick the witch and shove her into the oven. When they take the witch’s jewels back home, they have a new mature role as contributors to the parental home, rather than being its mere passive recipients.

Facing the exaggerated danger of the witch indicates Hansel and Gretel’s newfound ability to cope with the world’s dangers, and the story provides a hopeful model for the child.

“Little Red Riding Hood”

As with “Hansel and Gretel,” the predominant theme of “Little Red Riding Hood” is being devoured. However, Little Red Riding Hood—or Little Red Cap, as she is in the Brothers Grimm version—is a pubertal child who encounters temptations in line with her stage of development. Rather than being intimidated by the outside world, Little Red Riding Hood is enchanted by its beauty and suggestible to the wolf’s idea that she should enjoy the pretty road to her grandmother’s house rather than doing her duty and going straight there to deliver the food. Here, Bettelheim interprets the plot to mean that Little Red Riding Hood is regressing from the reality principle to the pleasure principle as her curiosity tempts her to discover the world outside of the home. Bettelheim emphasizes that the wolf would have no devouring power unless part of him appealed to Little Red Riding Hood’s own asocial, id-based tendencies. For Bettelheim, this is because as she enters puberty, Little Red Riding Hood returns to the oedipal stage of wanting to seduce her father away from her mother. The father is unmentioned by the narrative; however, Bettelheim suspects that he is “in hidden form” in the complementary forms of hunter and wolf, whereby the wolf represents the danger of overwhelming oedipal feelings, while the hunter represents the rescuer (178). Thus, the wolf is the seductive, dangerous half of this father figure, while the rescuing woodcutter is his protective counterpart. According to Bettelheim, the story teaches young girls that they should not seek to outdo their mothers in seduction of the father or a figure like him, but should instead be content to be protected by him a while longer, until they are truly sexually mature.

Bettelheim observes that Little Red Riding Hood points the way to her grandmother’s house, thus unconsciously giving the wolf permission to devour her grandmother. In Bettelheim’s view, this is a result of Little Red Riding Hood’s “budding sexuality, for which she is not yet emotionally mature enough” (173). The author asserts that the seductive red cap or red hood given to the girl by her mother is too mature for a girl of her age and invites attention for which she is not ready. Thus, Little Red Riding Hood directs the wolf to her grandmother’s house in the hope that this more mature, sexually prepared woman can satisfy his appetites. However, seeking to avoid the danger of encountering the wolf alone nearly leads to Little Red Riding Hood’s ruin. From the wolf’s perspective, getting rid of the grandmother first, rather than devouring Little Red Riding Hood on the spot, indicates that as soon as a mother figure is done away with, the path will be cleared for acting on his desires.

The wolf’s devouring of Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother should be taken symbolically rather than literally. Children, better than adults, can understand that Little Red Riding Hood dies when she is eaten by the wolf and is reborn when the hunter cuts open his belly. Her death symbolizes the end of her premature attempts to cope with the world, while her rebirth indicates her ascendance to a more mature plane of existence where she is ready to meet the world and its challenges.

“Jack and the Beanstalk”

There are many variations of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and Bettelheim believes all deal with the different phases of a boy’s sexual development. A lesser-known English version called “Jack and His Bargains” tells of a rebellious son who sells his father’s cow at a fair for a magic stick which will defeat all enemies. Jack uses this stick to defeat his father and goes again to the fair where the man gives him a fiddle and a bee that plays beautiful songs. He uses the latter two gifts to win the heart of an unsmiling princess. However, Jack refrains from making a move on her in bed for the first three nights, and her angry father throws him into a pit of wild animals. When Jack uses his magic stick to tame the beasts, the princess marvels at “what a proper man he was” (185), and they properly marry and have many children. For Bettelheim, the stick has obvious phallic associations as it represents the phallic stage of development where the child believes that its own body has magical powers. Entering this stage enables Jack to defeat his father and the princess’ other suitors; however, when he delays consummating the marriage, it indicates that he subjugates the tendencies of his id, represented by the wild animals he defeats, with an ego-managed self-control. He thereby truly comes of age.

While “Jack and the Beanstalk” deals with a younger boy, it similarly tackles the theme of masculine development, according to Bettelheim. The story begins with the end of a beloved cow’s milk-giving days, signaling the completion of Jack’s oral stage of development. In contrast, Jack’s accession to the magic beans indicates a progression to the phallic stage, where he finds security in a “fantastically exaggerated belief in what his body and its organs will do for him” (189). Here, this is a stage of sexual development where the boy thinks he can rely all on his own body for fulfillment. As the seeds are scattered to grow a vertiginous beanstalk, Jack believes he will achieve ascendence by climbing to the top, relying on the strength of his young body. At the top of the beanstalk, an ogre figure, representative of a father, presents Jack with his oedipal conflict when Jack wishes to replace the father-figure ogre.

Jack matures where he realizes that he cannot rely forever on the magic solutions suggested to him by the phallic stage. He therefore cuts down the beanstalk and, as a result, relinquishes the idea that the father is a destructive ogre. Instead, Jack will try to live in the real world during his next phase of development.

The Jealous Queen in “Snow White” and the Myth of Oedipus

Fairy tales encourage not only the child to resolve their oedipal struggles, but the parent as well. Figures like the jealous queen in “Snow White” show how a parent can become consumed by the envy they feel towards their child and the fear that the latter will surpass them. This parallels King Laius’ fear of his son Oedipus as a competitor and his wish to destroy him. The fairy tale does not explain the motivation behind the parent’s jealousy; however, Bettelheim imagines a past wound obstructs the queen’s love for her child.

For Bettelheim, it is a reassuring idea that the parent may be as jealous of the child as the child is of a parent. He argues that reading fairy tales on this subject may be constructive in dealing with such issues of envy. However, more importantly, “the fairy tale reassures the child that he need not be afraid of parental jealousy where it may exist, because he will survive successfully, whatever complications these feelings may create temporarily” (195). While oedipal myths end tragically, fairy tale protagonists who have resolved oedipal conflicts give the child hope on the journey to become themselves.

“Snow White”

Some versions of “Snow White” make the oedipal competition between mother and daughter explicit, as they feature a father figure wishing for a girl as white as snow, with cheeks as red as blood, and hair as black as a raven’s feathers. When such a girl is born, this arouses jealousy in the mother, who finds ways to get rid of the girl. In the Brothers Grimm version, it is the mother who wishes for a daughter with Snow White’s coloring; after the mother dies, the stepmother who replaces her is the one who wishes to destroy Snow White.

Bettelheim views the stepmother as a narcissistic figure who is threatened by her stepdaughter’s independent existence and the idea that she may one day have a beauty that will eclipse her own. Snow White thus becomes competition, in the stepmother’s eyes, for the father’s affections. Bettelheim stipulates that at a preconscious level, Snow White may be jealous of the attention her father pays his wife, as she may wish that energy was bestowed upon herself. However, Snow White’s narcissism causes her to project her jealous feelings onto the queen, who she believes wants to destroy her. Thus, the “pubertal girl’s oedipal struggle” is “acted around the mother as competitor” (205). Bettelheim conjectures that the queen’s famous magic mirror speaks in Snow White’s voice. As a little girl, Snow White thinks her mother the most beautiful person who ever lived—but, as she grows, her adolescent fancy leads her to believe that she herself is the fairest one. Still, says Bettelheim, the adolescent’s wish to surpass the same-sex parent is also a fear, because they dread the idea that the still more powerful parent will find out and punish them.

When Snow White evades the stepmother’s attempts to eat her, she lives for a while in the woods with seven hard-working dwarves. For Bettelheim, this is a period when the pubescent girl attempts to re-enter her latency phase and so escape the perils of adolescence. He regards the dwarves as half-child, half-adult beings who are stuck in the phallic stage of development and thus, never ascending to the genital stage, do not understand Snow White’s desires. These desires come to the fore when Snow White is tempted by the disguised stepmother’s gifts, which are figure-enhancing items that appeal to the girl’s vanity. These gifts include a poison comb and a corset that the stepmother laces so tight that Snow White falls down in a deathlike faint. Each time, the dwarves come to Snow White’s rescue, and she reenters her latency phase. Bettelheim regards that the comb, for example, is “‘poisonous’ to Snow White in her early, immature adolescent state” as she is tempted to be a sexual being but not yet able to deal with its consequences (212). The final temptation is the apple, of which the Queen eats the white half, giving Snow White the red poisonous half. Red symbolizes eroticism and the death of Snow White’s pre-sexual being. The sleep that follows is like a final gestation period in which she revives enough for maturity and the prince who rescues her. Such rest is necessary to the assumption of a higher consciousness.

“Goldilocks and the Three Bears”

Like “Snow White,” “Goldilocks” tells the story of a little girl lost in the woods and finding a house that has been temporarily abandoned by its inhabitants. However, unlike with “Snow White,” the reader is not told why Goldilocks is in this predicament; she seems to come “from nowhere and has no place to go” (218).

Arriving at the three bears’ house, Goldilocks lands upon the complete family setup. Although the bears are away from home, the customized furniture implies that father, mother, and baby bear know their roles. In contrast, Goldilocks is an imposter who struggles to find an identity. Goldilocks tries each bears’ porridge, chair, and bed as an experiment for where she fits in. Bettelheim argues that the number three is essential to “Goldilocks,” symbolizing the search for a personal and social identity as the child “must learn with whom he ought to identify as he grows up, and who is suitable to become his life’s companion, and with it also his sexual partner” (220). Bettelheim posits that Goldilocks’s sampling of father bear’s dish, chair, and bed first indicates her expression of a typical girl’s oedipal wish to be close to her father. When she finds the father’s things do not suit her, she tries on the mother’s for size. The mother bear’s food and furniture symbolize the oral stage of development, when Goldilocks was denied nothing—however, they are unsuitable for Goldilocks at this more advanced stage. The baby bear’s food and furniture seem perfectly adequate; however, Goldilocks is too heavy for the chair, and it breaks. This indicates that she does not exactly fit in with the child figure in the family, either. Goldilocks thus remains an imposter, and there is no happy ending for her.

Given the Goldilocks story’s ambiguity, a child’s experience of the tale will depend very much on how the parent narrates it and how sympathetic they are with a child’s wish to see how adults live and explore their secrets.

“The Sleeping Beauty”

Bettelheim characterizes adolescence as a stage where intervals of lethargy alternate with frenetic activity. “The Sleeping Beauty” emphasizes that a period of quiet concentration and self-focus reflects the time around the first menstruation, when girls become self-involved and sleepy. Boys also may become more introverted during puberty. The fairy tale’s message is that “after having gathered strength in solitude they now have to become themselves” (226), as a deep sleep is a prelude to maturation.

The motif of delay is apparent in “The Sleeping Beauty” from the time of the heroine’s conception. Her parents struggle to conceive her for years and almost give up hope when, in the Grimms’ version, a frog accompanies her mother into the bath and tells her that her wishes will be fulfilled. Then, at the child’s christening, the 13th evil fairy’s curse that she will prick her finger on a spindle and die—the number 13 being a parallel to the number of menstrual cycles a woman typically has in a year—gets modified into the idea that she will sleep for a hundred years. Fifteen, the projected age for spindle-pricking, was also the typical age of first menstruation for girls in previous centuries. While the king orders all the spindles to be burnt to prevent the girl’s encounter with a spindle, the girl’s ability to find one shows that “whatever precautions a father takes, when the daughter is ripe for it, puberty will set in” (232). The girl, who is overwhelmed by the sight of bleeding, falls into a sleep that withdraws her from the world and protects her from immature sexual encounters. The thorns that grow around her castle indicate her unreadiness for sexuality while the somnolent state of everything around her, indicates her insensitivity to the world. When the time is ripe however, the thorns turn into flowers as the girl’s natural development solves her pubertal woes. The princess’ sleep can be seen as a kind of narcissistic withdrawal, which can only be broken by the prince and his kiss, which directs her eroticism outwards.

Children will interpret “The Sleeping Beauty” differently according to their stage of development. While a young child will view her reawakening as her becoming herself, for an older child it will symbolize the move towards a harmonious coexistence with another after a period of self-focus.

“Cinderella”

“Cinderella,” a story with many variations that likely originated in China in the ninth century A.D., is the archetypal fairy tale about sibling rivalry. Children of both sexes identify with Cinderella’s feeling less capable and valuable than her siblings, even if they can rationally conceive that their predicament is not as harsh as Cinderella’s. The tale enables the child to own their inherent worthiness, while the happy ending gives them hope that they will surpass their siblings.

Bettelheim stipulates that the root of sibling rivalry is the child’s feelings not about their siblings but towards their parents. When the period of the parents’ making demands on the child succeeds the oral stage, where all their needs are met, the child begins to see their siblings as rivals, “fearing that in comparison to them he cannot win his parents’ love and esteem” (238). As a way of unconsciously dealing with their inferiority, even only children can contemplate fictitious siblings whom their parents would prefer to them.

Bettelheim argues that Cinderella’s obscure creeping about the ashes at the beginning of the tale is significant, as young children secretly relate to this state of degradation. They realize that their secret habits and wishes, including an oedipal desire to get rid of the same-sex parent, would be shameful were they to come to light. Thus, seeing Cinderella dirty amongst the ashes is of comfort to these children, because Cinderella is ultimately innocent and good, and they hope that they will be perceived in an analogous way. The character also allows children to harbor their feelings of superiority to their siblings. Such feelings of personal superiority are a relic from the phase of primary narcissism prior to the oedipal phase—a time when a child feels at the center of the parents’ world, and so there is no reason for jealousy. Cinderella, too, enjoyed this period of primary narcissism as, prior to her father’s union with her stepmother, there was a benign real mother who denied her nothing and established a basic trust in herself and the world. Bettelheim regards Cinderella’s obsession with the hearth and ashes as an attempt to hold onto the original nurturing mother, who, like the hearth, was at the center of warmth and nourishment. However, this is futile because the mother figure in Cinderella’s life is no longer the all-providing mother of infancy but the denying stepmother, who sets her tasks such as separating lentils from a pile of ashes in under two hours. The basic trust established by the original mother enables Cinderella to perform such a task.

For Bettelheim, Cinderella’s character journey is one of ceasing to live in the past and through hard work, attaining the stage in development where she is ready for marriage. Cinderella’s ambivalence about growing up is evident in her three trips to the ball. Bettelheim argues that, as with other fairy tales, the number three signifies the child’s position in the family in relation to their parents, while Cinderella’s flight from the prince and leaving her glass slipper indicates an anxiety about retaining her virginity. However, Bettelheim also argues that it is important to Cinderella that her would-be-lover sees her not in her splendid disguise, but in her degraded state amongst the ashes. Then, he can fall in love with the essence of her and not just an appearance.

The material of the slipper at the center of Cinderella, which enables the prince to identify her as the rightful bride, varies according to the tale’s teller. The famous glass slipper comes from the version by the French pioneer of courtly fairy tales, Charles Perrault. Bettelheim reads further psychoanalytic symbolism into the shoe: On the one hand, it symbolizes the vagina as a place “into which some part of the body can slip and fit tightly” (265), while the idea that it cannot be stretched is resonant of the hymen, which breaks upon first intercourse. The prince’s wish for a bride who fits the shoe indicates his desire for a specific type of femininity. According to the patriarchal expectation that women should be smaller and daintier than men, the fact that Cinderella’s feet are smaller than her sisters’ indicates that she is more feminine. The sisters mutilate their feet in order to pass as the rightful bride, however, each time, chanting birds give them away, drawing the prince’s attention to the blood. For Bettelheim, the sisters engage in “self-castration to prove their femininity” (268). However, in doing so, the bleeding also symbolizes menstrual blood, which (again, in a patriarchal society) indicates that they are less virginal than Cinderella, who does not bleed when her feet enter the slipper. Bettelheim argues that Cinderella’s lack of bleeding eases the prince’s unconscious fear of menstruation. This indicates further that her sexuality is not predatory like her sisters’ but rather patient and yielding. In addition to Cinderella’s integrity, her willingness to be seen as her dirty self is what makes her the true bride. However, despite Cinderella’s continence, her willingness to be seen amongst the ashes (in addition to her initiative in shoeing her own foot) indicates her desire for a sexual union with the prince.

Overall, says Bettelheim, the story of Cinderella reassures parents that they may have to take up the position of “stepparents” (withholding, unindulgent figures) in their children’s own interest. Next, it reassures children of the necessity of undergoing a servile, Cinderella-like existence for a time in which they find and can prove their worth.

The Animal-Groom Cycle of Fairy Tales

I: “The Struggle for Maturity”

Bettelheim argues that the fairy tales that he has discussed thus far offer little information about what being in love means. Instead, stories such as “Snow White” and “Cinderella” focus on the self-development needed to reach a level of maturity where one can fall in love. However, this is not enough as “one becomes a complete human being who has achieved all his potentialities only if, in addition to being oneself, one is at the same time able and happy to be oneself with another” (279). One must also reverse earlier attitudes, which repressed and shamed sexual impulses, with the idea that sexuality can be redeemed through love and experienced as beautiful and natural. The fairy tale heroines’ lack of carnal feelings towards their rescuing princes, claims Bettelheim, “is actually the void left by their repression, and this repression must be undone” before a happy marriage, complete with a healthy sex life, can be achieved (280).

Bettelheim believes that fairy tales are a great way for children to learn about sex, as children can respond to the symbolic language and imagery in their stories according to their stage in development.

II: “The Fairy Tale of One Who Went Forth to Learn Fear”

The author contends that this idea—of ridding oneself of sexual repression before achieving happiness in marriage—is expressed most cogently in a Brothers Grimm story about a hero who feels that he must learn to shudder upon entering the institution. After many attempts to feel fear, the hero finally learns to shudder when his new wife pours a pail of freezing water and little fish over him in their marriage bed. Bettelheim argues that the hero lost his ability to shudder or feel fear so “that he would not have to face the feelings which overcome him in the marital bed—that is, sexual emotions. But without these feelings […] he is not a full person” (281). By making the hero shudder, the wife not only makes him vulnerable but restores his humanity. He is only fit to be united with another when a full spectrum of feelings are available to him.

III: “The Animal Groom”

Bettelheim next addresses stories featuring an animal groom, whereby a beast is transfigured into a magnificent human through the love of a woman. The author believes that such stories illustrate that, for love to be present, “a radical change in previously held attitudes about sex is absolutely necessary” (282). In the animal groom fairy tales, a man is changed into a beast by a sorceress, for reasons that remain ambiguous. For Bettelheim, this sorceress is a mother-figure who passes on the taboo that sex is animal-like and therefore demeaning. It is only a worthy heroine’s devotion that can disenchant the hero from his state of apparent animality. She can do this if she is willing to “transfer—and transform—this oedipal love for her father most freely and happily to her lover” (284). Thus, the girl’s oedipal complex is resolved, while previously taboo sexuality is redeemed.

IV: “Snow-White and Rose Red”

In the Grimms’ “Snow White and Rose-Red,” the heroines must rescue a dwarf who changed a human into a bear three times. In doing so, the girls must “exorcise” the bear’s “nasty nature in the form of a dwarf for an animal-like relation to become a human one” (286). Here, Bettelheim's analysis reflects how a chauvinistic culture projected sexual perversion onto the non-standard anatomy of the dwarf. However, the story’s moral is that the heroine needs to change her attitude to sex, “because as long as sex appears to her as ugly and animal-like it remains animalistic in the male” (286). Both partners need to be able to enjoy sex for it to become a human interaction.

V: “The Frog King”

“The Frog King” tells the story of a little princess whose precious golden ball falls into a well. A frog rescues the ball and asks that, in return, he should sit beside her, drink from her glass, and accompany her to bed. The princess agrees but does not intend to heed the frog’s request. However, the frog tracks her down, and her father, the king, insists that she keep her promise to the frog.

For Bettelheim, the princess’ golden ball represents “an as yet undeveloped narcissistic psyche: it contains all potentials, none yet realized” (287). However, when it falls into the well, disenchantment that signals the end of childhood ensues and only the frog can restore her state of perfection. The frog, with its slimy amphibian nature, represents childish anxieties about sexuality. It’s phallic form and behavior may at first seem disgusting to a green child, but it is also an agent of restoring their happiness in a more mature form. The king aligns with the superego to ensure that the princess keeps her promise to the frog.

While the princess begins the narrative unfeeling and self-centered, as the frog gets closer to her, she begins to feel many emotions. Indeed, her first feeling is rage, when she throws the frog against the wall. This act changes the frog into the prince, as “the stronger her feelings become, she becomes more a person” (288). As she becomes herself, the frog resumes his original form as a prince. The transformation reveals sexuality’s true beauty.

The frog itself also undergoes sexual maturation, as he begins with the infantile wish for symbiosis with the princess, represented by eating from her place and drinking from her cup. Her act of throwing him against the wall propels him out of this state and thus liberates him from his immature existence. The frog symbolizes psychosexual development because it is an animal that undergoes a radical transformation during its lifetime.

Bettelheim suggests that this fairy tale is a comfort to children learning about sex as it acknowledges and respects their initial disgust. As a result, the child trusts the tale and its message that their original repulsion will turn into something beautiful.

“Cupid and Psyche”

The earliest of the beast bridegroom stories is the classical myth Cupid and Psyche, written by Apuleius in the second century A.D. The goddess Aphrodite enviously punishes Psyche, the youngest and most beautiful daughter of three, by asking her son Eros (Cupid is the Latin version of the name, and Bettelheim uses both interchangeably) to make Psyche fall in love with the most “grotesque” of men. Eros disobeys his mother and presents himself as Psyche’s husband. When Psyche complains of loneliness, Eros invites over her sisters to keep her company. As they are jealous of her beauty, they tell Psyche that “what she cohabits and is pregnant by is ‘a huge serpent with a thousand coils’” (292). They persuade Psyche to sever this gross phallic appendage at night, while Eros is sleeping. However, when light falls onto Eros, Psyche realizes his beauty and refrains from the act of castration. Although Psyche regrets her actions, she must undergo serious tribulations, including entry into the underworld before she can be reunited with Eros.

For Bettelheim, Psyche’s anxiety of the snake “gives visual expression to the inexperienced girl’s formless sexual anxieties” (293). Whilst Psyche loves Eros, she is upset at his severance of her maidenhood and seeks to punish him by attacking his virility—hence her castrating him. However, Eros is never actually a beast, but Psyche’s prejudices mistake him for one.

“The Enchanted Pig”

In a little-known Romanian fairy tale “The Enchanted Pig,” a youngest daughter is married off to a creature who is a man by night but a pig by day. While the girl follows a witch’s recommendation to tie her husband’s leg at night in order to stop him turning into a pig by day, this does not work. Her husband now leaves, telling her they shall not meet until she undergoes severe tribulations. These tribulations are “endless wanderings” that result in her having to give up her little finger in order to use it as the final rung of a ladder that helps her reach her husband and return him to a fully human state (296).

In this story, too, says Bettelheim, the animal husband is a figment of the girl’s sexual anxieties and the learned cultural assumption that females should experience sex as animalistic. In Bettelheim’s view, the same woman may enjoy sex with her husband at night, but resent him for his defilement of her virginity by day. The wanderings and tribulations endured by the female protagonists of this story indicate that to divest one’s sexual anxieties, “one must grow as a person, and unfortunately much of this growth can be achieved only through suffering” (298). In contrast to the cultural expectations of female passivity in sex, the female must make as much of an effort as the male to achieve satisfaction in this area.

“Bluebeard”

The many variations of the “Bluebeard” tale feature the common motif of a wife being forbidden to enter a room in a husband’s absence, and the husband’s murderous rage when he discovers she has done so. In the room are the mutilated bodies of all the other disobedient, unfaithful wives. Bettelheim speculates that the gruesome sight in the room may be a “creation of her own anxious fantasies; or that she has betrayed her husband, but hopes he won’t find out” (301). In the Grimm Brothers’ version, “Fitcher’s Bird,” the wife is given an egg to hold with her, and the egg becomes bloodied, symbolizing her transgression as she enters. Bettelheim theorizes that even the child understands from the motif of the bloodied egg that the wife has committed a sexual indiscretion. For children, Bluebeard’s room symbolizes the fascination and fear of adult sexuality, in addition to the hypothesis that it is full of secrets. In Bettelheim’s analysis, “Bluebeard” is a cautionary tale that warns women against excessive sexual curiosity and men against excessive sexual jealousy, which can make them as beastly as Bluebeard.

“Beauty and the Beast”

Bettelheim draws his study of “Beauty and the Beast” from the 1757 version by Madame Leprince de Beaumont. For Bettelheim, this tale illustrates the healthy transference of a girl’s oedipal love for her father to her future husband. Beauty’s encounter with the Beast begins when her father gets lost in the act of seeking the rose that Beauty desires. The Beast seizes Beauty’s father and says that he will only release him if one of the daughters can come in his place. Beauty agrees to go to the Beast’s palace in her father’s place. At first, Beauty is the Beast’s platonic guest and lives a life of ease at the palace, only greeting him at dinner. At one stage, she begins to look forward to his visits, if only to break her loneliness. However, she refuses the Beast’s marriage proposal. According to Bettelheim, the broken rose symbolizes the loss of virginity and “may seem to both father and daughter as if she would have to suffer some ‘beastly’ experience” (306). At the castle, Beauty’s desire to delay marriage evokes her anxieties about sexuality and her preference of an asexual relationship and an independent lifestyle that has the quality of a “narcissistic non-existence” (307).

Beauty returns to a state of feeling and reciprocity when she discovers, with the aid of a magic mirror, that her father is sick and needs her. The Beast allows her to escape for a week, however, he warns her that he himself will die if she delays her return. In her absence, the Beast pines away, and Beauty realizes her love for him and her desire to be his wife. She thus transfers her oedipal longing for her father onto the Beast. Their love also symbolizes the healing of the rift between the spiritual and animal aspects of humanity. Without Beauty’s love, the animal beast will perish. When she reciprocates, turning his passion into human devotion, he is transformed back into a prince. In psychoanalytic terms, their connection represents the superego’s socialization of the id.

Bettelheim ends his work by emphasizing that the fairy tale functions as a magic mirror that reflects the self and shows the steps required to progress from immaturity to the next stage of human development.