Fairy Tales and their Fails

Dolly Koghar unveils the real nature of fairy tales and nursery rhymes.

My granddaughter is a preteen, but could easily be my dadee-ma with all the of ‘know-hows’ and ‘know-whys’ she and her generation have. Anyway, we got into analysing nursery rhymes, which while obviously meant for tots and little children, have extremely cruel and sadistic undertones and till date, have quite surprisingly managed to escape the angst of our society’s wardens. It’s also pretty obvious that we haven’t been listening in to the meaning behind the rhymes and stories we encourage our naïve and innocent kiddos to play-act to – for example, “Ring a Ring o’ Roses” refers to the horrible Black Plague, and it actually has the singers ‘drop dead’ with a single sneeze!

Then, there’s that all-too-familiar lullaby, “Rock-a-bye Baby,” which even as non-native English speakers, we’ve crooned it to our lil’ darlings to lull them into a deep, peaceful slumber; safe and secure, loved and protected. Thank the gods that our bambinos couldn’t understand a word of this cradle-song, lest they be traumatised for life. How could any birth mum, unless she was crazier than crazy or, in the tradition of fairy tales, was a witch disguised as a stepmum, place her sweet, hapless little baby in a cradle high up on a tree top? It beats all odds, how she got up there with “baby, cradle and all,” unless she had an accomplice, or flew up and down on a broom.

She also deliberately ignored the threat of snakes, rodents and creepy-crawlies, and literally abandoned the poor soul up there with a soiled nappy, hungry and scared, to swing whichever way the wind blew. We couldn’t help noticing that in the entire jingle, there’s absolutely no mention of the bizarre mum who left the child there; not even after the “baby, cradle and all,” came crashing down to a horrible, mangled finale.

That got our curiosity piqued and we dived into Disney’s Princess Series; be it Snow White,Cinderella,Aurora, Ariel, or Belle – these girls are tall and lissom with Barbie’s unrealistic waistline; possessing shampoo-ad-worthy, luscious, cascading hair, enviably free of split ends and frays; framing their blemish-free, translucent skin and apple-red cheeks, cute little noses in perfect symmetry with their huge, doleful eyes; perfect, but with tragic lives. The birth mother of these girls is usually dead before her time and despite her genes being responsible for these girls’ perfection, she doesn’t even get a passing mention; except for Aurora, whose parents were present at the beginning, through the long nap, and awoke in time to organise her grand wedding to the prince.

The dads are bumbling, inept, and hairbrained, and without their wives pretty clueless about bringing up daughters. So either they let them lose, as in the case of Ariel and Belle; or like the papas of Cinderella and Snow White, they didn’t wait till the wives’ corpses turned cold before bringing home a wickeder-than-wicked sorceress as a stepmum. Then either he too dies off, or if alive, he turns a blind eye to the abuse being wrought onto the angelic and naïve bimbos, who are hopelessly-tolerant and patient, and pathetically helpless. 

They’ve long made peace with the sad lot of their karmas, and gladly wash, scrub, and polish away whilst singing to rodents, cute bunnies, and birds. They dream that “someday, a prince will come” to save them from their miserable plight, since those of us belonging to the ‘fairer’ gender are supposedly incapable of taking care of ourselves, and need a macho, handsome man on horseback to take us somewhere beyond the rainbow, to live “happily ever after!”

Fairy tales end on that note, which is asking for the impossible in a marriage. After all, even if it is a union between the prettiest and most docile of damsels with the most chivalrous dork, there’s bound to be trouble in paradise, whether it be over interference from the in-laws, the kids’ upbringing, money or personal space. Maybe it’s about time I write a more realistic fairy tale, but then it wouldn’t be a tale!