Off with Their Heads!

When Hansel and Gretel try to eat the witch's gingerbread house in the woods, are they indulging their "uncontrolled cravings" and "destructive desires" or are they simply responding normally to the hunger pangs they feel after being abandoned by their parents? Challenging Bruno Bettelheim and other critics who read fairy tales as enactments of children's untamed urges, Maria Tatar argues that it is time to stop casting the children as villians. In this provocative book she explores how adults mistreat children, focusing on adults not only as hostile characters in fairy tales themselves but also as real people who use frightening stories to discipline young listeners.

List of Illustrations II"Teaching Them a Lesson": The Pedagogy of Fear in Fairy Tales IIIJust Desserts: Reward-and-Punishment Tales IVWilhelm Grimm/Maurice Sendak: Dear Mili and the Art of Dying Happily Ever After VDaughters of Eve: Fairy-Tale Heroines and Their Seven Sins VITyranny at Home: "Catskin" and "Cinderella" VIIBeauties and Beasts: From Blind Obedience to Love at First Sight VIII"As Sweet as Love": Violence and the Fulfillment of Wishes IXTable Matters: Cannibalism and Oral Greed XTelling Differences: Parents vs. Children in "The Juniper Tree" Epilogue: Reinvention through Intervention Notes Select Bibliography Index