Blog Post 10

For Friday, April 19, your blog post should take the form of a 300-500 word sample of your creative project. Use the space below to either reflect on some of the research you’ve done concerning the fairy tale you have chosen to adapt (it’s history, what it talks about, what criticism you have of it, etc.), or post a sample of the creative adaptation you are writing, or both!

21 thoughts on “Blog Post 10”

  1. Cinderella is the fairy tale I decided I would be writing about. The reason I chose this one is because I can take so many messages out of it, the way I interpreted it, and also it’s the fairy tale I recall the best. It’s such a classic one and I think everyone knows it. The original story shows us that what is meant for you will find you. One day you can lose a shoe, and the next day it will bring you to your prince. Life is unpredictable so something that you could consider bad luck at the moment could actually be good for you, and you won’t even be aware of it until later on. Also, I really liked the fact that the prince was looking for her, it shows the effort that every man should make when he likes a woman.
    Cinderella’s story has the same idea as many other fairy tales, a prince comes and saves you, it’s very romanticized and teaches young girls to expect to meet their prince and savior too, and daydream about it. This storytelling makes it seem possible to find such a love, which has effects later on too, when it comes to girl’s expectations. But, also Cinderella’s hard life conditions are also shown, as how mistreated she is, and how her stepmother is trying to make her feel less worthy and make her life miserable. Regardless of that, Cinderella doesn’t change, she doesn’t let her situation make her anything else than a kind person. And in the end, that kindness and goodness pay off for her, because she gets magical creatures to help her, and she meets her prince as she deserves. Unfortunately, in real life, things don’t always go this way. My criticism of this fairy tale, like with many others, would be that it’s always needed that a man comes and saves you. As much as such a happy ending is romanticized and to find love is beautiful, women can also be happy on their own, and create a beautiful life with or without a man. Because, not everyone’s destiny is the same, and not everyone will magically meet their prince. So, the way I will be adapting to this story is such that the happy ending won’t be centered around a man. The prince will be there, but just as an add-on to and not the main reason for Cinderella’s happiness.

    When it comes to Cinderella’s origin and history I’ve found multiple different sources about it, so I am not sure which one would be accurate to use. I will do more research on it or I might leave the history out if it’s not a necessary part of the paper?

  2. When researching the history of the fairy tale Rapunzel, I have found that different sources have different accounts on the origin of the story. Since the story was first orally passed down, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where it was first told, especially considering that the tale is over 300 years old. The story of Rapunzel was most popularly published in the Brothers Grimm “Children’s and Households Tales” in 1812, however the story had been written down previously in lesser known versions which the Grimm brothers used as references. Rapunzel stands out from many of the other fairy tales in the Brothers Grimm’s collection, as it is one of few with a happy ending. The origins of the tale can be traced back to the Italian story of Petrosinella and the French story of Persinette in which the witch names the baby after Parsley, since that was the herb stolen from her garden instead of the Rapunzel flower. Many believe the story of Rapunzel is based on the “true” story of Saint Barabra, a Christian Martyr who was trapped in a tower by her father for he believed she was too beautiful. Regardless of the true origins of the tale, all its cultural variations have themes of female purity, the sheltering of women, and female curiosity. These themes reflect the values of medieval society, and how they affected women’s lives.
    The plot of the Brothers Grimm version starts with a couple that longed for a child. After the woman miraculously became pregnant, she started having intense cravings for rapunzel: German for a type of lettuce. The couple’s neighbor had a large garden which had rapunzel, and when the women’s cravings for the plant became deadly, her husband started to steal it. Eventually the man is caught by the neighbor who turns out to be a witch, and she allows him to keep stealing the plant if their first born is given to her. When the child is born the witch steals her and names her Rapunzel, trapping her in a tower when she becomes 12. The tower had one high window and no doors, so for the witch to come in and out she would call “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair” and Rapunzel would let down her long hair on a hook for the witch to climb. One day a prince overhears this and copies the witch, letting himself into the tower. The prince and Rapunzel get engaged and Rapunzel gets pregnant, and when the witch finds out she cuts off her hair and banashes her. The witch uses the hair to lure the prince back to the castle, and in shock of Rapunzel’s absence he falls from the tower into thorn bushes that blind him. After hopelessly wandering through the forest one day the prince finds Rapunzel who had already given birth to their twin babies, and Rapunzel’s tears cure the Princes’ blindness and the two live happily ever after.

    Sources:
    Warner, Marina. “After ‘Rapunzel.’” Marvels & Tales, vol. 24, no. 2, 2010, pp. 329–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41388959. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024

    Seaver, Carl. “The True Story of Rapunzel” History Defined, December 17th 2022, April 19, 2024

  3. I decided to write about the fisherman and his wife.
    After reading it, it was a good fairy tale with a very interesting moral. A fisherman named Hans and his wife Greta once lived. Hans found a special fish one day that had the power to grant wishes. Say what you want to ask for, the fish said. The fish granted Hans’s wish for a comfortable house. Greta thought their new house was nice, but she still wanted more. She asked that Hans make bigger wishes, such as a mansion and money. Greta’s wishes were met each time by the fish. But Greta was never happy. She wanted to rule as queen. Hans was depressed, losing their peaceful life. The fish was gone when he returned to the sea to request Greta’s wish. Hans realized that their problems had come from their greed. He wished to have their previous condition of life to return. I think that this fairy has a lot of life lessons to teach the children. I think the first lesson is to never be greedy about anything and also that nothing is granted and forever in life.
    Greta and Hans had a modest beginning in life, but their greed leads them to always wanting more and never being happy with what they already have. Growing up, children can learn the happiness that comes from having enough rather than constantly looking for more. The story emphasizes the fact that nothing in life is guaranteed. The magical fish first grants Hans and Greta’s wishes, but in the end it disappears and leaves them with nothing. This can teach kids that it’s dangerous to rely too much on other people to be happy or successful.
    Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are the writers of The Fisherman and His Wife, it was published in 1812.

  4. The fairytale I have chosen for my creative project is Rapunzel. This story holds “an unusual position in fairytale scholarship” (Forster 2015:2). Rapunzel was first popularized by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 in their series of “Children and Household Tales,” but this story has various origins. Scholars have studied that this story actually began with the “Tale of Danae” in Ancient Greece and the poem “Shahnama” in the Persian Book of Kings (Forster 2015:2). Later on this story of Rapunzel was further portrayed in France and Italy in the stories of “Petrosinella” and “Persinette.” Finally, the Brothers Grimm adaptations of Rapunzel received the most recognition, influencing future adaptations. The Grimms’ version of Rapunzel differs significantly from the Disney movie. This story begins with a couple who have been wanting a child. After a while, the woman became pregnant and developed a prolonged craving for Rapunzel, a type of plant. As her craving grew, her husband began to steal this plan from their witch neighbor’s garden. He later was caught by the witch who gave him one condition: he may steal Rapunzel as long as they gave her their child after birth. The witch kidnaps the girl and holds her captive in a tower; however, her long hair is what gets her saved as a prince appears and they fall in love. Following a series of events with the witch, Rapunzel and the prince lived happily ever after.
    One thing I found interesting while reading research about the original and the history of adaptations. Researchers believe that the feminist era of Rapunzel adaptations began in the year of 1970. The development is influenced by cultural ideologies to further adapt Rapunzel into modern contexts(Forster 2015: 3). As seen throughout fairy tales, usually the female character is a princess who is saved by a prince. Although there are these structural roles it is believed that there are underlying feminist messages in these stories, like Rapunzel (Forster 2015:3). I have still yet to read the paper about feminism in fairy tales because it is quite long. Still, these are the key points I have read and caught my interest. Overall, I believe there has been a significant change in these adaptations, but the majority of them continue to uphold the stereotype that the male character, such as a prince, must always save the princess. In my adaptation, I am trying to change that ideology but keep the main elements that are seen in the tale of Rapunzel.

    “Rapunzel.” New World Encyclopedia, http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Rapunzel#Credits. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
    Forster, Gary. Fairytale Theory and Explorations of Gender Stereotypes in Post-1970s, June 2015, Dora.dmu.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/d60c56b4-5450-487f-85ab-d62f6acf39ea/content.

  5. The fairytale I have chosen to focus my creative project on is Hansel and Gretel. I am hoping to do a modern spin on it. Essentially, the story follows Hansel and his sister Gretel, two young children whose parents, their father and stepmother are going through some hard times financially. The stepmother then suggests to the father leaving the children in the woods, however, both children overhear them talking and Hansel decides to collect pebbles. When the parents take the children out into the forest, Hansel drops pebbles on the route they take, so that he and Gretel will be able to return home. After arriving at their spot, the parents tell the children that they must go to chop some wood and that they will be back soon; they instead do not return. Hansel then returns home with Gretel by following the pebbles that he previously dropped. The parents are surprised when they return, however, they try again to leave the children in the woods. This time though, the stepmother locks the children’s door, and Hansel can’t leave to collect pebbles. Instead then, he chose to leave breadcrumbs from the last piece of bread they are given to eat. The same process happens, but this time the children can’t find their way home because the breadcrumbs were all eaten by the creatures of the forest. Thus, they get lost for three days before being led to a gingerbread house by a white bird. They begin eating at the house, but a witch then comes out and invites them in. They were well fed; however, then the witch reveals to Gretel that she wants to “fatten” Hansel up so that she may eat him, and Gretel is fed very little food. When the witch checks Hansel to see how big he has gotten, Hansel tricks her with a bone as opposed to his finger. The witch is impatient and decides to eat him now instead, telling Gretel to test the heat of the oven by crawling into it. Instead Gretel tricks the witch by asking her how she could crawl into it, and when the witch demonstrates, Gretel pushes her into the oven. The two children escape across the water on the back of a duck they met previously in the story, and eventually find their way home. The stepmother had died, and the father was ecstatic to see his children, as he never truly wanted to leave them in the forest.

    The story is one that follows the abandonment of children, the nativity and creativity of children, and also a dark side of children. In my research I found that some see this fairytale as a coming-of-age story, in which children learn how to deal with the world around them, and the “importance of self-reliance and independence.” The topic of abandonment especially related to me as I grew up without my mother around. I thought in my retelling of the fairytale I could focus on two kids that had been abandoned by their parents, and were left to fend for themselves on the streets. Thus far, I have not thought about how to develop the “pebbles” and “breadcrumbs.” However, I am hoping to talk about their backstory through someone the children meet that is hoping to help them. As children on the streets, they learned how to fend for themselves, and so it takes longer for the children to open up to the stranger and trust them. However, they eventually do open up. Then something happens to the kids, which will be based around the issue of the nativity of children, despite their street smarts gained through their abandonment. I had the idea then of the children dropping something that only the trusted person knew about which will help them find the children. This is most likely the route that I want to take, however, I will have to reassess as I go along just how much I want to include from the original story and how much I want to take out. The point of the trusted person is already a plot point not included in the original story, but I wanted to include it as a way of showing that children need someone they can trust to teach them and keep them safe. Being deserted by your parents can be detrimental to a child’s life, and whether they survive or not is often based on whether they have someone in their life that can help support them.

  6. I decided to write about the Little Mermaid written by Hans Christian Anderson. By doing some background research, I find that the story of little mermaid might be the reflection of Anderson’s own story. Although he experimented with a range of writing subjects such as poetry and drama, and eventually became famous for writing fairy tales, his personal life is quite lonely. He was never married and had been through a couple of unrequited love affairs, some scholars states these experiences have showed in the plots of the little mermaid sacrifice herself to pursue love.
    The story of the Little Mermaid is about love and sacrifice. Floating to the surface, the Little Mermaid saves a prince who has fallen into the water and falls in love with him, and she does not hesitate to make a deal with a witch for her beautiful voice in exchange for human legs. Even at the risk of turning into a puddle of bubbles, she does not mind. The story ends with the prince, still unaware that he was saved by the Little Mermaid, marrying another woman and the Little Mermaid turning into bubble.
    I like the story for its sad ending and deeply touched by it, since it is very different from “happily ever after” ending like many other fairy tales. However, in the story the image of the Little Mermaid is quite flat, she always sacrifice herself for a man who don’t know her well. She gave up so much can be seemed as blind and lack of individual autonomy especially from a modern perspective.When I work on the adaptation, I wanted to make the Little Mermaid could rationalize herself as a subject while pursuing love and have a better ending. I think it would be better if the story can focus on how the Little Mermaid grow and change.

  7. The story I have chosen to work on is “The Red Shoes” by Hans Christian Andersen, as I mentioned before I have no interest in fairy tails but after focusing more on the past I can recall this story very well and that is the reason I chose it as it also brings back my childhood. I think “The Red Shoes” is a fascinating fairy tale about a little girl named “Karen” who falls in love with a pair of lovely red dancing shoes, but the twist is that those shoes have their own consciousness and push her to dance insanely, no matter how exhausted or in pain she is and ends up getting her legs cut. The shoes represent her pride and craving for attention, sending her down a path of grief and regret. The story itself has grief, jealousy, religion, and superiority aspect to it. The story reminds me of the effects of our choices and encourages us to be devoted to ourselves. But the way this story ended I wanted something different than that so in my story I want the sad end to be a happy ending because what I think is that the story was meant to scare people from their own desires to come true rather than embracing them, so the change basically would be when she wore the red shoes she dedicated the dance to Lord by showing off her talent of how to dance not by representing that she is better than anyone else. This will also show whenever she was in those red shoes she would dance beautifully and everyone who looked at her would admire her as a result, she would make other people follow their dreams the same way as she is following hers and take dancing as punishment for dreadful moments to positivity of happiness.

    • Hi Mehreen, I am so excited to read how your adaptation comes out, it sounds so interesting. I am also doing one of Andersen’s works and I never realized the amount stories he wrote. This story reminds me of a movie called The Christmas Shoes. It is a very sad movie about this little girl who is on the hunt to find these red shoes to complete her mom’s dying wish. Her mom was a dancer and dreamed of having those shoes, but she got so sick that she had to stop performing. I wonder if that movie is based on this fairytale.

  8. Little red riding hood was a huge part of my childhood. I grew up listening to this story and performing it on stage when I was little. From what I recall this version of the story was told to me by my grandmother. It was little red riding hood, instead of the forest it is in Lahore, a city in Pakistan. In replacement of wearing a red cape, this story embraces the beautiful and colorful culture of Pakistan. She is wearing a beautiful traditional outfit with a very vibrant and elegant scarf, traditionally called a Dupatta. Lastly she did not fall into conflict with wolves, in this version she had gotten lost in the busy and loud streets of Lahore as she was going to her grandmothers house.
    The reasoning behind her cause of conflict remained the same in both versions. She had ignored the orders of her mother when she told her not to fall astray from her path or she will face a big problem. The moral of both stories also was identical, when you disobey you will face the consequences of your actions. This was very beautiful to me because despite the cultural differences the lesson has still remained the same. Not only in my version but almost every version that was written.
    As far as remembering the history, I do not remember much, I was too invested in the story to ask for historical context. However, I do remember the reason why my grandma told me this story. When, I got a bit older she told me it was to scare me and to ensure that I do not disobey anyone. I think I did learn the lesson when I was little but I’m not sure. This version of the fairytale would be perfect for me to adapt for my final project.

  9. I have chosen to adapt Little Red Riding Hood. It is the fairy tale that I am most familiar with, having known the story before reading in class. I plan on changing the genders from the original, as well as the wolf. As of right now I have decided to make it a young boy visiting his grandfather, and portraying the wolf as an ogre of some sort. One of the reasons I decided to change the genders was to shy away from the underlying theme of sexual predators. It has been understood that the combination between a lonely little girl walking about picking flowers and a big bad wolf coming up to her is showing the wolf as a sexual predator, which I do not want to incorporate. I do plan to add modern day elements such as disguising the ogre as the grandfather by wearing a face mask, but want to keep the plot close to the original. I want readers to easily decipher that it is an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood. The fairy tale itself can be seen as tragic or comedic. I want to stay true to that and let the reader interpret the tale in whichever way they seem fitting. The original can be seen as tragic for the obvious reason that the wolf eats the characters, but funny in the sense that the girl is so naive and that the situation is so unrealistic. In the research I have done, sources support the idea that Little Red Riding Hood has mixed interpretations tone-wise, and touch upon the argument if it should even be told to little kids. I want my adaptation to walk along this line of controversy (not too graphic, but enough to make some young children startled) because of the lesson it teaches. Children should be taught to not talk to strangers, especially when on their own. The original story effectively preaches this message, as the girl ultimately ends up being eaten by a wolf; graphic enough to frighten children into learning “stranger danger.”

  10. I chose the iconic fairytale of “Beauty and the Beast” for my creative project. The reason for choosing this fairy tale is due to me growing up consuming such types of stories, mainly thanks to Disney. So far, I’ve only watched the animated and live-action adaptations of Disney. However, out of curiosity, I did some research and found out that the original fairy tale was written in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, which, by the way, was inspired/based on the real story of Petrus Gonsalvus and Catherine.

    Beauty and the Beast, to keep it short, tells the story of a young woman who decides to go after her father who has been imprisoned by the Beast for breaking into his palace. The young woman offers herself as a prisoner in exchange for her father’s freedom. Interestingly, after getting to know the Beast, she starts seeing his good side. As their relationship evolves, the young woman helps the Beast turn into a better someone.

    For my adaption of the fairytale of the Beauty and the Beast, because I plan on adapting the story to a more modern and relatable style, I will be exploring and adding into my adaptation issues such as social anxiety, depression, as well as the importance of family, and how it influences characters to make certain decisions.

    For instance, I plan on exploring more of the Beast’s social anxiety, Belle, the young woman’s deep relationship with her father, and how or why his disappearance made her want to go after him. Additionally, I will be setting the fairytale’s environment into something more relatable, that we can more easily imagine or feel, such as a small town instead of a village.

    • Hi Darlin, I really enjoyed reading your analyzation of the history of The Beauty and The Beast, I never knew it was based on a true story so many centuries ago, that was very insightful! I believe your adaptation of this fairytale is creative and will be very fun to read. Good Luck!

  11. When researching the Sleeping Beauty I wanted to look deeper than the Disney adaptation of the story. I found out it can be traced back to an oral tale in the 1300’s called Troylus and Zellandine but La Belle au bois dormant (The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods) by Charles Perrault was the basis for all adaptations. He also wrote Puss In the Boots and Cinderella. Perrault got his inspiration from a chapter in one of Giambattista Basile’s works called “Histoire de Troïlus et de Zellandine”. A darker version of the story would be The Grimm Brothers’ “Little Briar-Rose”. Another notable one is “Spindle’s End” By Robin McKinley.
    I think overall the earlier versions of stories lack the presence of Aurora. The story is named after her and it is sad to see she is not in the story much. I had the same disappointment as a child watching the movie. This may have been because they wanted to keep her as this “perfect” princess figure that needed to be saved, reflecting the gender stereotypes at the type where women are put in “damsel in distress” situations and men are the “savior” of the story. Sadly that meant Aurora as a character would lack depth. I think at its core the tale tries to talk about “destiny”, the idea that events are predetermined. This can resonate with religious concepts where certain things have to happen because a higher power is at work. For example, the prince is made to kiss and save Aurora in order to fulfill the prophecy in the story. This parallels people fulfilling a spiritual calling for a bigger plan.
    For my telling of the story, I plan on having Aurora never be woken up until hundreds of years in the future. A future civilization finds her and magic is completely foreign to them as they have technology to be their “magic”. I am not sure how I plan for Aurora to wake up or her interactions with the characters of the future civilization. I think what I have so far has a lot of interesting aspects to explore such as how magic and technology interact.

  12. The fairytale I decided to adapt is The Ugly Duckling. I grew up with the typical prince and princess fairytale and I was never a fan. I enjoyed watching people fall in love and dream of finding a true love of my own, but I never liked the idea of women waiting for a man to save them. Anyone can save them, including themselves. That being said, I went researching fairytales for this project because I was unsure how I wanted to write the adaptation. I wanted to find a fairytale with a wholesome and relatable message. I went onto fairytalez.com and read through handfuls of fairytales until I came across The Ugly Duckling. A duckling is born into a family of other beautiful ducklings where he is made to feel ugly and the one left out by everyone. His mom defends him as much as she can until she also accepts that he will always be ugly. He leaves the flock in hopes of finding a place to fit in with other birds, hoping to find his place somewhere when he sees a flock of swans go by. He looks into the lake next to him and realizes he grew into one of them. They welcomed him with open arms claiming to have found another one of them. This fairytale is about the search for personal identity. It makes the character question where do I fit in? A feeling we humans know all too well. The story explores themes of belonging, isolation, togetherness, and acceptance.

    The Ugly Duckling was written by Hans Christian Andersen in Denmark in 1845. He wrote many children’s stories including The Tinderbox and The Princess and the Pea. The inspiration behind The Ugly Duckling was himself and his childhood. As a child, he was called ugly due to his big nose and feet. He considers this story to be an autobiography because of his appearance and growing up, as well as becoming a well-known author.

  13. The fairytale of The Three Little Pigs has been adapted and interpreted in various ways since the nineteenth century. The original story of the three pigs building houses, each consisting of different materials was first introduced in The Nursery Rhymes of England by James Halliwell-Phillipps. However, there have been several adaptations to the story, most notably the 1933 Silly Symphony cartoon that Walt Disney made. Other adaptations include Jon Scieszka telling the story from the wolf’s perspective, or musical adaptations like “And the House Fell Down” by Elton John. The main theme and moral of the story is to educate young children on the importance of hard work, discipline, and diligence.

    My adaptation of the fairytale aims to relay this story in a more modern, but still fictional setting. I had envisioned this story in an almost “Zootopia” sort of vibe where animals are given human characteristics and live their day-to-day lives as human beings—in a sprawling city known as Pawston, lived three brothers named Barry, Harry, and Larry. I would like my story to be much more ambiguous than the simplistic original version. Since everyone already knows how the original story eventually pans out with the idea of the most hard-working brother ending up on top, I am aiming to provide the setting of each brother but not make it obvious how one another correlates to the original. I also aim to incorporate numerous themes of the challenges society endures during the modern day, these could include gentrification, social hierarchies, and economic inequalities. The wolf in this story will likely be a metaphor for the previous challenges I had listed. I am interested in integrating some irony for a sense of satire in the story so I named the city Pawston and also made the three brothers dogs rather than pigs, and perhaps a boar to represent the wolf in the original fairytale. My thought process was that dogs are a domesticated version of wolves, and boars are essentially more aggressive pigs.

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