Josie has a book of fairy tales and nursery rhymes that I read to her and I've been pondering something--the ethics, or lack thereof, in some of these stories bother me. But they're fairy/folk tales, hallowed by time . . . part of the canon . . .yada, yada.
Take Puss in Boots, one of her favorites, despite the scary ogre (she told me that her baby doll Margot is afraid of the ogre because of the growly voice I read him in. But then she told me to do it again.)So, as the story goes, the crafty cat fools the king into thinking that his master, the poor son of a miller, is the wealthy Marquis of Carabas. He inveigles a suit of fine clothes for the lad, as well as a ride in the king's carriage with the beautiful princess. Then the cat runs to the castle of the ogre who owns all the land thereabouts and tricks the ogre into turning himself into a mouse. Whereupon the cat eats the mouse and the miler's son gets the castle, the land, and the princess.
Aside from the fact that the miller's lad and the princess fall in love, based entirely on one another's good looks (and in the space of a brief carriage ride) and the king is happy to marry off his daughter because the young man is (now) a wealthy landowner, it seems wrong to me that the ogre is killed and eaten so that the miller's lad can take over his domains. There was not a word to alleviate this--had the ogre come by his castle dishonestly? Whose land was it really?
Of course I'm overthinking this. But what makes it okay?
In the same book is Jack and the Beanstalk--foolish lad lucks into a beanstalk which he climbs to find a stone castle in the clouds where an unsuspecting giant lives. Lad steals the giant's wealth and kills the giant and lives happily ever after.
Is it okay because ogres and giants are ugly? Like the ogre, the giant (in this telling anyway) isn't given any history of wrongdoing. It's not a story in which the hero is sent to slay an evil critter that has been ravaging the land and then is rewarded for his bravery. (There are few if any female slayers in traditional fairy tales and that's another problem for another day. . .)
I have pointed out to Josie that I wondered why the Miller's lad wasn't arrested for stealing but she just ignored me. Silly Meema.
She won't let me read Jack and the Beanstalk because she doesn't like the looks of the giant. Probably neither does Margot. So I don't have to get into the ethics of that story just yet.
