Hansel and Gretel

Hansel and Gretel (2009) is the dark origin story behind the beloved fairy tale. The titular characters are ten and eight, respectively. Their mother, shown in flashbacks as a loving woman, died during the birth of Gretel. Their step-mother, younger and meaner, walks all over their father, who is in his early thirties (but looks about sixty).

One day, while going to the market, Hansel begins imagining a land of candy and sweets. One house in particular, made of gingerbread, stays in his mind. Before going to bed that night, he tells Gretel what he had imagined. He goes to sleep, and imagines the house again. Hansel and Gretel walk inside, only to be tormented by their step-mother. She is about to kill them, but he wakes up in a cold sweat.

The next morning, he tells the family what he had dreamed. To avoid being beaten, he changes the step-mother into an old witch. To seem more heroic (and to tell a good story), he also adds in a new ending, where he and Gretel foil the witch, and throw her in the oven. The parents smile at the ending, where the children come home with a pile of gold. After the story ends, their parents send them back to the market.

Hansel and Gretel

As we read in Tatar, Hansel and Gretel “does not so much stage a child’s fears about starvation, exposure, and abandonment as mirror the hard facts of the pre-modern era” (180). I believe the facts which are reflected in the store represent the poverty, family structures, and gender roles of that time. First, the fact that it was the mother’s idea to abandon her children in the forest shows how women were seen as evil and worse than men. Second, the family structures are portrayed by the woman of the household being a step-mother, which was common back then. Third, the poverty is seen through the inability to provide enough food for one small family of four. All these factors lead to the creation of a story like Hansel and Gretel.
To show the world that produced Hansel and Gretel, I would have the children be between eight and ten years old. This way, they are old enough to be capable of finding their way home, but young enough to still seem innocent and make the step-mother appear cruel. The step-mother and father would be in the thirty to forty year range. Finally, the witch, in keeping true to the tale would be very old, ideally around seventy. I would want to make sure that the children appeared innocent, and the step-mother appeared cruel through harsh facial characteristics.
The main problem that would feel into the story would be the famine and poverty. The parents could not provide enough food for their family, which adds tension to the family. The family, of course, is already experiencing tension due to the step-mother’s selfish and cruel ways. The father is torn between his children and his wife. And finally, the children have the problem of being abandoned and forced to survive on their own.

January 20, 2009 "Hansel and Gretel"

Since "Hansel and Gretel" and stories related to it deal almost exclusively with lack of food and hardship, there was obviously some sort of famine occurring at the time. The references to cannibalism make it seem that the famine had drawn on for a long period of time, and people were desperate.
If I were to make a movie about the world that created "Hansel and Gretel," the main characters would be around nine or ten. Hansel and Gretel would be the two oldest children of a large peasant family that was struggling to make ends meet. The supporting cast would consist of the large peasant family who were hard working and practical, and a richer, aristocratic family that had not been greatly affected yet by the famine.
The peasant family's struggle for money and food would be the main problem that fed the storyline. In order to survive the family would sell Hansel and Gretel to a rich family as servants. In return, the family would receive money to buy food, and also have less mouths to feed because Hansel and Gretel would be at the richer family's home.
The fairy tale could serve as the warnings that their parents gave Hansel and Gretel about how they should behave as servants: always be prepared like Hansel in the story with his pebbles, do not go looking for trouble like the children in the story did when they began to eat the house, and always keep your wits about you like Hansel in the tale by using the bone as his finger and Gretel did by pushing the witch into the oven. If the children obeyed their parents and behaved, they could return home someday like the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel".

Audra Crosby

Assignment: January 20th, 2009

Stories such as Hansel and Gretel are really exaggerated and fantastical representations of what was occurring in real life during this time period. Times were incredibly dire and many families were suffering through severe economic hardships. I am sure, just like in the story, many families had a difficult time not only accessing food but divvying up reasonable shares for each member. So, any pitch for a movie that shows the world that produced Hansel and Gretel would require the main characters to be suffering through a similar situation. Setting, costuming, and other aspects of the mise-en-scene would be required to explain the perilous hardships befalling on the family. Every effort would be taken to create an atmosphere of despair that is present in the family in the story.

The characters themselves would need to be young children. To fully translate the differences between the desires of the adolescent and the mind of the adult, the actors would need to be young or middle-aged. The young actors would naturally be able to convey the innocence and curiosity present in the characters. The supporting actors, namely for the parents, should be middle-aged to represent wisdom that can be only attained through experience. And the witch, for comedic effect, because even drama needs some comedy, should be very old. Such a translation of this story onto film will help convey the purpose of teaching morals and maturity to children – at least according to Bettelheim.

The constant struggle to survive during times of such hardship would be the best backdrop for a possible Hansel and Gretel film. A strong portion of the beginning of the film should be devoted to the daily grind and difficulties the family has to go through. This can range from the parents finding it difficult to purchase and accumulate food to showing incredibly small portions of meals on the family members’ plates. Furthermore, the stepmother’s traditional position as a terrible and atrocious member of the human race should be pursued. It would create an interesting and tense dynamic within the family as they both try to feed each other, and in the stepmother’s case, rip it apart.

Sahil Patel

Assignment: 20 January 2009

Please respond to the prompt below by tonight (Tuesday) at midnight. You should place your response in a new post, rather than using the “comment” function. Later this week, you will be able to check back and see featured entries on our main page, The Philosopher’s Stone.

Keene imagines the world that created the fairy tales we read today in The Juniper Tree. Considering this Ur-world, full of poverty, fear, ignorance, and a need for storytelling, imagine what factors would lead to a story like Hansel and Gretel.

Pretend you want to pitch a movie that shows the world that produced Hansel and Gretel. How old would the main characters be? What would your supporting cast look like? And perhaps most importantly, what sorts of problems would feed into the Hansel and Gretel story? Use the week's readings to guide your thinking; consider the themes which appear in the various fairy tales from England, France, and Germany.