And there, many people obviously thought, they needed to stay.īut they don't stay there. The stories that people had told each other to pass the long nights had become children's tales. By the third edition, Rapunzel tells the witch that she is lighter to pull up than the prince was, and the twins, when they turn up, turn up out of nowhere. Rapunzel no longer let it slip that she had been meeting the prince by asking the witch why her belly had swollen so badly that her clothes would not fit (a logical question, given that she would soon be giving birth to twins). The Grimms responded to market pressure and bowdlerised enthusiastically. And they were surprised when the adults who bought their collections of fairytales to read to their children began to complain about the adult nature of the content.
They were primarily collectors and philologists, who assembled their tales as part of a life's work that included massive volumes such as German Legends, German Grammar and Ancient German Law. Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, to pick two writers who had a lot to do with the matter, did not set out to collect the stories that bear their name in order to entertain children. Fairytales became unfashionable for adults before children discovered them, though.
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