“Oh, you godless child!”: Children’s Literature and the Deepening of Violence, Fear and Horror During the Editorial Process of Grimm’s Fairy Tale “Rapunzel”

Abstract

Children grow up with fairy tales such as Snow White, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. The originally gloomy tales were meant to both educate and entertain. Throughout the years, the horrific elements of the original fairy tales have been edited out of the children’s genre. However, during the rise of the children’s literature genre, fairytales were used as cautionary tales to discipline children. Collectors and writers of fairytales are known to have intensified the level of violence and horror in their collections for this exact purpose. Grimm’s “Rapunzel" is one of the fairy tales edited during this period and could, therefore, showcase the effects of the changes in the literary market. In this research, I will compare and analyse the 1812 and 1857 versions of Grimm’s fairy tale “Rapunzel” to determine whether there is a correlation between Grimm’s editorial changes and the rise of the children’s literature genre.