2024年 01月 04日
Sleep
The Theme of Sleep
Sleep is a recurring theme in classic fairy tales where it plays different roles. It can trigger important actions or serve as a medium between different realities. We'll start with a few examples of the best-known stories in the world and slowly add more and more data to hopefully develop a huge informative hub on the role of sleep in fairy tales.
Beauty and the Beast
We often forget the importance of sleep in this famous fairy tale. Beauty comes to the Beast's castle as a kind of hostage but slowly starts liking the horrifying owner. He repeatedly asks her if she will marry him and she constantly rejects him.
Eventually, she has to decide - does she prefer her old or new home? Her father and sisters or the stranger who in all ways offer her a better life. The revelation comes in a very dramatic form. And, of course, it comes in her sleep.
Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825-1916)
Brave Little Tailor
A tailor decides to change his life and leaves his home. He is very smart and comes out as a winner from many dangers. He earns an important position in the king's army and eventually marries his daughter.
Yet he has to pass one final test - he talks in his sleep. This reveals his true identity and puts him in grave danger.
Golden Bird
Sleep is often used as a kind of test in fairy tales. If you can resist this simple pleasure you are worthy of greater challenges, if you can't you are probably just not mature enough. Golden Bird is a typical example of three brothers being on guard. Two fell asleep and the youngest didn't. Contrary to the expectations he is the most mature of all and the only worthy to succeed the king.
Max Teschemacher (1910-1950)
Hop-o'-My-Thumb (Little Thumbling)
This story was written by Charles Perrault but is way more known in slightly different variations by the Grimm Brothers where it's called Hansel and Gretel. Hop-o'-My-Thumb presents seven boys who come to the ogre's house and are in danger of being eaten.
The title character expects that the ogre will attack them in sleep, so he switches the boys' caps with the crowns of the ogre's daughters who are consequently killed in sleep by their father. Later, when the ogre follows the boys, he takes a nap and Hop-o'-My-Thumb steals his seven-league boots.
Sleep can be dangerous but it also presents an opportunity.
Little Match Girl
While many stories use sleep as a symbolic death, this touching fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen goes one step further. The sleep of the poor match girl who suffers from cold and at the same time ironically sells matches is the final solution to her few yet unsolvable problems. She falls asleep and never wakes up.
Graf Franz Ludwig Evarist Alexander von Pocci (1807-1876)
Princess Rosette (The King of Peacocks)
Princes Rosette by Madame d'Aulnoy is a classic case of switched indentity. The princess is on her way to the King of Peacocks expecting to marry him but her companions have different plans.
While she carefree sleeps in her bed, she is thrown from the ship into the ocean. Message of this particular scene? Sleep can get you into more trouble than you might expect.
Rip Van Winkle
This is an old story about a man who didn't like his life, particularly his wife and tried to escape from it on any occasion. Once he met fairy people, partied with them, and fell asleep for two decades. The world around him changed quite a lot in this time. When he returns to his village he finds out he actually overslept his life.
As with all great tales, this offers many interpretations but one conclusion is obvious. If Sleeping Beauty says that sleeping and just waiting can be a good thing, this story claims just the opposite.
Newell Convers Wyeth (1882-1945)
Sleeping Beauty
This is undoubtedly the most famous story with sleeping presented as a unique cure to the curse, thrown at the princess by a wicked fairy. Sleeping Beauty has hundreds of years of history with numerous versions and interpretations. The vulnerability of the title character (Brother Grimm named her Briar Rose) attracted countless artists from all over the world who portrayed the sleeping girl in different poses. Some focused on her only, others added Prince Charming, who eventually wakes her into a new life.
The Three Bears
This cautionary tale is mostly known by different names: Goldilocks or Goldilocks and Three Bears but got through many variations with a fox or an old lady in the role of nosy and unrespectful intruder into the house of the bears.
In all cases, sleep represents the final stage of carelessness. If eating bears' food and breaking bears' chairs is not enough, you can always take your chances and sleep in bears' bedroom, right?
The Wishing Table, the Gold Ass, and the Cudgel
Another classic tale about three brothers who are put to the test of sleep. All of them got through very similar experiences, all earned very similar rewards, and all slept in the same inn where they were tested.
Two of them lost their precious possessions but the youngest passed the test and all got a chance for a happy life.
by fairyman55
| 2024-01-04 07:14
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