Grimm Fairy Tales are Fucked Up

[Shell B]

In the original Snow White, the Queen was the villain. I guess somehow eating a dead person's heart is worse than this:

"As punishment for her wicked ways, a pair of heated iron shoes are brought forth with tongs and placed before the Queen. She is then forced to step into the iron shoes and to dance until she drops dead."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White#Story_outline

Any other Grimmisms?

[Minimalist]

I don't remember that from the Disney version.

[Jackalope]

Hansel and Gretel

Synopsis:

H&G's stepmother schemes to abandon them in the woods to avert her and her woodcutter husband's starvation. When they find their way home, she orders the woodcutter to again leave them in the woods to die.

They find their way to an old hag's cottage, who captures them and enslaves them, intending to fatten them up for later consumption. Gretel kills the witch by shoving her into the oven, H&G ransack her crib and make off with the valuables. They find their way back to their father (the wicked stepmother [why are stepmothers always wicked?] having died), and live happily ever after on the loot.

Child abuse and neglect, cannibalism, homicide, and robbery all rolled up into a children's story. No wonder kids have nightmares.

Naturally, the modern version found in many children's books reads a bit differently.

[Shell B]

I don't remember that from the Disney version.

Yeah, they left that out in favor of disabled dwarfs.

[Reforged]

I don't remember that from the Disney version.

You need to buy the extended cut dvd.

[Shell B]

I was a stepmother. Still am, if you count connections. I think mostly jilted exes wrote those fairy tales.

[Jackalope]

While not from Grimm's -

Chicken Little / Henny Penny - in at least one version, the protagonist and all of his animal companions are eaten by a fox.

The Gingerbread Man - various versions end with the boastful confection ("you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!") being shown the error of his braggart ways when he is in fact caught, and eaten, by a fox.

WTF do these writers have against stepmothers and foxes? LOL

[Shell B]

No one likes their foxy replacements?

[Jackalope]

Little Red Riding Hood is also a veritable little shop of horrors, with a big bad wolf that eats grandmothers(*) and their grandchildren(*) whole, along with an ax-wielding wolf-butchering psychopath.

(*) Despite modern revisionism, Red's dear grandma was not locked in a closet, nor was Red frightened into running away. Yep, they both were wolf chow-de-dow.

[Shell B]

I read on Cracked the the wolf served grandma to Little Red Riding Hood before eating her too. Rumpelstiltskin apparently pulled himself in half in his rage, as well.