In this multi-post series, we hope to answer some of your questions about different genre fiction. Throughout GENRE FICTION 101, you’ll learn about different genres and their place in the publishing world. We’ll discuss popularity, profits, typical tropes, controversies, and more. Read the first installment here.

What are fairy tales?

The term “fairy tale” encompasses a wide range of narratives, and many of them do not contain fairies. A fairy tale is a type of folklore that typically features a magical figure—such as giants, talking animals, witches, or fairies—in a short story. Though we often associate fairy tales with children, they were originally intended for adult audiences and frequently depict sex and graphic violence.

Fairy tales are often referred to as “wonder tales” or “Märchen,” especially in academia. We know that fairy tales began as oral stories, but the exact history of the fairy tale tradition is difficult to pin down since the oral tradition lacks permanent records. People didn’t begin to write down fairy tales until the 17th century, creating a literary fairy tale style known as “Kunstmärchen.” Because of its oral tradition, there is no “pure” or “original” fairy tale. We cannot know, for example, what the first “Little Red Riding Hood” tale was like.

Common Attributes of Fairy Tales

In her research, creative writer and fairy tale scholar Kate Bernheimer discusses four attributes that we can typically find in fairy tales.

1. Flatness

Fairy tale characters are flat, rather than well-developed. These characters lack psychological depth and are not emotionally complex. We don’t necessarily understand a character’s motivations or backstory. These characters often take on a single characteristic that encapsulates all we know about them: you might meet a wicked stepmother, a lonely prince, or a jealous sister in a fairy tale. Bernheimer suggests that we think of these characters as “silhouettes.”

2. Abstraction

Details such as setting and time tend to be very abstract in fairy tales. We learn about “a land far, far away” and hear tales that take place “once upon a time.” We don’t get details about where the kingdom is located or when the story took place. Even the nouns in fairy tales tend to be general, rather than specific. You’re more likely to read about a “tree” than a “cypress,” and you’re more likely to hear about a “dog” than a “husky.” Bernheimer explains, “Fairy tales tell; they do not often show.”

3. Intuitive Logic

Fairy tales do not follow everyday logic. If you begin to question why something occurred in the fairy tale, you’ll quickly notice this nonsensical characteristic. They follow their own logical rules, and you’re expected to buy into this intuitive logic and not question it.

4. Normalized Magic

The fairy tale world is a magical world. Characters do not question why magic occurs; instead they accept magic as a normal part of their day-to-day interactions. Readers or listeners are also expected to accept the presence of magic at face value. Bernheimer writes, “In the fairy tale the magical and the real coexist—this is a technical element. This is craft.”

ATU Tale Type Index

You can find several varying versions of the same fairy tale in different communities across the world. In order to organize these various stories, there are a number of classification systems designed to group similar fairy tales together. The most prominent classification system is the ATU Tale Type Index (sometimes called the AT System), which was originally developed by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne in 1910. Since its initial publication, it has been modified and expanded greatly by other folklorists. It catalogs and organizes thousands of fairy tales by motif.

For example, there are several “Little Red Riding Hood” variants, and each culture has a different approach to this tale type: in a version from France, there is a young girl who tricks a wolf that is pretending to be her grandmother; from China, there are a girl and boy who escape a tiger disguised as grandmother; from Italy, there is a little girl who encounters an ogress in her grandmother’s house; and from South Africa, there is a tale about a girl who escapes a cannibal pretending to be her mother. The ATU Index catalogs stories like these, which have loads of overlapping similarities, under “ATU 333: Little Red Riding Hood.”

Propp’s Dramatis Personae

Vladimir Propp, a Russian folklorist and scholar, outlined a set of seven character archetypes that you can find in fairy tales. These archetypes are referred to as the “dramatis personae.” In some cases, the dramatis personae overlap. For example, a single character can be both a villain and a donor.

Anthologizing Fairy Tales

Oftentimes, when 18th-century scholars anthologized traditional oral fairy tales, they removed material they found uncomfortable or offensive, such as sexual scenes or extreme violence. Folklorists refer to this phenomenon as “bowdlerization.”

For example, when comparing the Brothers Grimm’s original manuscripts to later editions, we can see that the brothers frequently removed sexual references (even subtle mentions of extramarital pregnancy) from the fairy tales. Maria Tatar, a professor of folklore, explains that the Brothers Grimm “openly admitted that they had taken pains to delete ‘every phrase unsuitable for children.’” Although fairy tales were originally intended for an adult audience, Wilhelm Grimm was determined to modify stories for children, likely to increase book sales.

Modern Fairy Tale Retellings

Before we labeled books as “fantasy,” we used to classify some fantasy novels— including Tolkein’s The Hobbit and L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz—as “fairy tales.” Nowadays, we refer to fantasy novels that draw on fairy tale motifs as “fairytale fantasy,” a subgenre of fantasy sometimes called “Fairy Tale Fiction.”

Many fairytale fantasies are written for adults, embracing the original audience for fairy tales. These stories are typically revisionist in nature, taking creative liberties to add character complexity or to question the traditional moral lessons. If you’re looking for examples of this genre, click here or here for reading recommendation lists.

Fairy Tale Controversy

Fairy tales are often a source of controversy and ideological tension. Several critics argue that fairy tales are problematic because of a lack of diverse characters or because the female characters are depicted as passive damsels in distress. While these arguments are important to consider, they also don’t acknowledge the complex history of fairy tales.

Diversity

For example—as we often fail to appreciate—fairy tales are not uniquely European. Every culture has a rich history of fairy tales. Because of this, there is actually an abundance of diversity in fairy tales.

Despite having access to these rich histories, the Disney retellings and popular anthologies with which we are so familiar tend to favor the white, European fairy tales. In other words, fairy tales themselves do not lack diversity, but there are significant issues with the kinds of fairy tales we choose to promote and share with our children.

Feminism

Additionally, and this might surprise you, several historical fairy tales portray women as active heroines and celebrate female courage and intelligence. It’s easy to look at the fairy tales about princesses that we tell our daughters today and notice that many of these stories encourage passivity, helplessness, and physical beauty in women. However, these restrictive expressions of femininity are not present in all fairy tales.

For example, in Joseph Jacob’s “Mr. Fox,” we meet a courageous woman named Lady Mary who uses her curiosity, intuition, and quick wit to uncover a serial killer. Rather than being a helpless, passive figure, Lady Mary saves herself—as well as several other women—from murder. In “The Story of the Black Cow,” a Nepalese variant of the “Cinderella” story, a princess saves a boy from a wicked stepmother (instead of a prince saving a girl).

It’s also worth mentioning that some of the first literary fairy tales were written by proto-feminist revolutionaries, women who wanted to fight against the constraining social roles available to women. However, the Brothers Grimm, the first collectors of fairy tales, entirely dismissed these women, claiming their fairy tales were “inauthentic.”

Similar to the diversity concerns, the issue of female representation might not be a problem inherent to fairy tales themselves; rather, the issue seems to be related to the stories that influential writers and film producers choose to preserve and retell.

The Takeaway

This is not to suggest that every single fairy tale is valuable and free of ethical issues. Many fairy tales do promote the limiting damsel-in-distress image of femininity. And the Grimms’s anti-Semitic fairy tales such as “The Jew in the Brambles” and “The Good Bargain” are just two examples of incredibly offensive and problematic fairy tales. Rather, a closer look at fairy tales suggests we should be more mindful of which fairy tales we choose to preserve and share.