![]() Hansel stooped and filled the little pocket of his coat as full as it would hold. The moon was shining brightly, and the white flints that lay in front of the house glistened like pieces of silver. "Do be quiet, Grethel," said Hansel, "and do not fret 1 will manage something." And when the parents had gone to sleep he got up, put on his little coat, opened the back door, and slipped out. Grethel wept bitterly, and said to Hansel, "It is all over with us." The two children had not been able to sleep for hunger, and had heard what their step-mother had said to their father. "But I really pity the poor children," said the man. "No, wife," said the man, "I cannot do that I cannot find in my heart to take my children into the forest and to leave them there alone the wild animals would soon come and devour them." - "O you fool," said she, "then we will all four starve you had better get the coffins ready," and she left him no peace until he consented. "I will tell you what, husband," answered the wife "we will take the children early in the morning into the forest, where it is thickest we will make them a fire, and we will give each of them a piece of bread, then we will go to our work and leave them alone they will never find the way home again, and we shall be quit of them." As he lay in bed one night thinking of this, and turning and tossing, he sighed heavily, and said to his wife, "What will become of us? we cannot even feed our children there is nothing left for ourselves." They had very little to bite or to sup, and once, when there was great dearth in the land, the man could not even gain the daily bread. You’ll have to let me know what you think in the comments.Near a great forest there lived a poor woodcutter and his wife, and his two children the boy's name was Hansel and the girl's Grethel. Perhaps I did this because I have two loving parents who would not leave my brother and I to starve in a forest (I hope), or perhaps it was to justify the transformation of the children in the final version. Unintentionally, I mimicked the Grimm brother’s step-parent theme. I wanted to illustrate the evolution fairy tales experience over time. In my version, “But the Fairy Tale Isn’t Over” from my collection When Magic Calls, I change the abandoner parent, location, evil witch, and children’s motivation one at a time until the story both comes full circle and is drastically different from the original. However, it was the perfect choice to illustrate how a change in a story’s minor details can completely alter the fairy tale’s message. “Hansel and Gretel” has never been my favorite fairy tale despite how its history fascinates me. It also shows how despite the evil the world might throw at us, we can survive and thrive. “Hansel and Gretel” is about making hard, perhaps morally wrong decisions. ![]() Again, they are showing they don’t believe “real” parents would ever abandon their children in such a way. Then the Grimm brothers changed the tale again in a later version to specify the mother was actually a step-mother. This has always struck me as odd since history has proven men are way more likely to abandon their families, perhaps because women have often been the primary caregiver. ![]() It is believed the Grimm brothers changed the narrative because they didn’t think a father would ever abandon his children. In the Grimm brother’s first version, the mother must convince the father leave their children. In the original story, before the children were known as Hansel and Gretel, both parents abandoned them. However, the reason I chose to create a version of “Hansel and Gretel” was because of the way the Grimm brothers documented the tale. ![]()
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